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Madam clerk, I call a Charlottesville meeting um city council meeting back into order. Madame Vice Mayor, will you read us out of close session? >> I will as soon as it loads. >> Hold please.

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>> And others if we're not logged into the voting, we can do that. 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

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identified in the motion convening the closed session were heard, discussed, or considered in the closed session. >> Is there a second? >> A second. >> Um we'll do a voice vote for this. All in favor, please say yes.

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>> Yes. opposed, please say no. >> Motion passes 5 to zero. Um before we begin, we'll have a a moment of silence. >> Thank you. Thank you very much. Um are there any announcements? One um

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announcement just that the city of Charlottesville is accepting applications for vacancies on boards and commissions. There are a number of boards and commissions with vacancies. Most immediate one, Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority um is accepting applications for multiple positions and has a deadline of midnight

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tonight to apply. Um the other boards and commissions have application deadlines of August 1st. They include the Charlottesville Affordable Housing Fund Committee, Community Development Block Grant, Historic Resources Committee, Jefferson Madison Regional Library Board, Minority Business

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Commission, Police Civilian Oversight Board, Planning Commission, Social Services Advisory Board, Youth Council, and a number of others. If anyone is interested in more information or applying for any of these boards, you can visit boards.sharlottville.gov. And again, those deadlines are August

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1st, except for the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority Board, which has a deadline of midnight tonight for multiple vacancies. >> Thank you. >> And I have an announcement. Um, as many of you know, uh, May was bike month, and

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as part of bike month, the, uh, city, county, um, and state hosted a bunch of events to encourage people to get out there on their two wheels. And um two of the the events that happened were that the um several cities were pitted

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against each other to see who could log more bike rides. And I am pleased to this was put on by the the DRPT. Uh I'm pleased to announce that the city of Charlottesville has won that challenge, beating beating Richmond, Rodoke, and Virginia

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Beach as the top four. Um we have almost double uh of the Virginia Beach trips and um the we went back and forth with Richmond several times. So I'm really pleased that our um community showed up and was able to uh pull ahead in the

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end. Um just because bike month is over does not mean that biking is over. So please keep going out there and please keep logging your bike rides with the connecting VA app so that um our uh transportation professionals can continue to collect data on bike usage.

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Um the other thing is this number one um was the bike month business challenge winner uh which is the um company to company challenge and the city of Charlottesville has won that. So hoay to um staff for logging in their bike rides

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>> walking the road. >> We had 237 logged bike trips. I'm sure there were some more. So, um really awesome to get official recognition and to show the the um the the biking energy

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out in in our community. So, thanks for everyone for participating and again uh keep riding. >> Thank you. I did want to announce the a couple of things. One, the dedication of mails wade that went on Saturday. Um

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councelor Snook and I were there and we read the proclamation again. And it was a wonderful event. A lot of people came out. His family came out. So now if you go on Main Street in that area between 7th and 8th Street, you'll see that it's known as Mel's Way. We did lose another

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um icon in our community, Dr. Florence Bryant. She was 104 years old and um she was amazing. She um I think she was in with her family in Richmond. But when I first got here in this community, her daughter worked with my father and I needed a place to stay. So, I was able

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to stay with her um at her house by Charlottesville High School when I first got into this community. Just very welcoming and just a great place to to start my career, my life here in the greater Charlottesville area. So, we're

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um I think the funeral is tomorrow. >> Funeral is Wednesday. >> Wednesday. Wednesday. Yes. >> Yes. Yes. So, um anyway, hold her and her family in your prayers. She lived a wonderful wonderful long long life. >> Mayor Way, one thing that the obituary

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does not the obituary alludes to but does not actually mention it alludes to the fact that she was a published author. She wrote a book when she was in her 70s entitled Memoirs of a Country Girl and it is about her growing

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up in this area now obviously 100 years ago. uh but has a lot of interesting memories that uh if you at all interested in the way things used to be, Florence knew it. >> I think she was assistant principal um at Charlottesville High School as well

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many years ago. Um any other announcements? Um, somewhat on the same lines, um, the the date and time for the Eddie Harris Senior Park bench dedication ceremony has been set for Friday, July 31st at 10:00 a.m. at

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Washington Park. So, um, put that in your calendars now and I'm sure we'll announce it a couple more times before then. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. There are no other, um, announcements. We're now at um I believe the

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first opportunity for community matters. There's 16 slots, only two people pre-registered. So, opportunity um for 14 others. The first speaker is Laura um Sir Surni >> Si >> Sagani, I'm sorry.

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Um, I came before this council two weeks ago with my disappointment and discuss that there had been no engagement with the unhoused population for the city working meeting to talk about how to

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best serve that population. Um, in the two weeks since that time, um, the only engagement, quote unquote, that the unhoused population has received, to my knowledge, as someone who works with them regularly, is police,

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more and more police harassment, more and more police surveillance. And we've seen this playbook happen again and again in our community. I was there helping unhoused people when they were being evicted from Market Street Park where they had access to resources.

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I was there last summer when people were being evicted from Free Bridge where they had shelter under the bridge and were forced out into the elements using the same kinds of excuses that are being now used to again

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pressure camping people to leave. And the problem is this city has provided no other options for them and no resources. These people like all of us need resources not harassment

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and resources were discussed at that city meeting. I don't think all the resources that should have been on the table were discussed but even those resources that were discussed that were immediately actionable and that meeting at this point was three four weeks ago that planning meeting I have seen no

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action on this there are no portaotties even though a local business owner at that working meeting offered to help manage that situation for you we have community members stepping up trying to provide

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the resource gaps that you all have been unwilling or unable to fill. And I have police I have the chief of police coming down to campers and telling them that they are quote too comfortable.

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That's disgusting. And this city council would have us believe that they have no power to stand up to luxury buildings that are displacing our historical generations of families who built this

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city. But they can wield all the power in the world against someone who has to camp in a tent. They have all the power in the world to say where a tent can be erected, but have no power to say that these luxury buildings that are erasing

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our community and eroding our resources, they have no power against that. I don't think that makes you leaders. I think that makes you capitulators with bullies. This needs to be addressed now. This is all the same battle. All of us are affected by housing and it will

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reach into your houses as well if you don't take care of it. >> Thank you. The next the next speaker is James Webb. James Webb. >> Good evening. Um I'm not James Webb. I'm Allison Webb and I'm reading my

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husband's statement. >> Um so uh Jim is here representing Love Thy Neighbor the Love Thy Neighbor Coalition. Uh we live at 1880 Riverin in Lane in uh Alamar County. Uh we're here today to talk about an interfaith

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coalition that was formed out of concern over immigration enforcement practices. Last summer, a working group at Charlottesville Friends Meeting, also known as Quakers, organized a gathering on faith and immigration at Northside Library.

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A call went out to faith leaders and faith communities, Christians, Muslims, Jewish, Buddhist, and Bahigh in the greater Charlottesville area. and about 130 people from an array of religious congregations and other people of

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conscience gathered to discuss ways that we could support our immigrant neighbors. Over the past 10 months, Love Thy Neighbor has organized educational sess sessions and film screenings at churches to raise awareness of the fearful and inhumane conditions that our

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neighbors face. We have convened an interfaith gathering on the downtown mall attended by hundreds to show support for our immigrant neighbors. Toward this end, the love thy neighbor working group promulgated the following statement on immigration enforcement.

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We as members of faith communities and people of conscience are guided by moral values to support the family and to show compassion to the stranger. We condem we condemn the enforcement of policies that shatter immigrant families when neither

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parents nor children have been charged with violent crimes. We condem we condemn detention without informing family members of the whereabouts of their loved ones or permitting communication and visitation. We call upon you, our elected leaders

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and f fellow citizens to ensure that immigrant families remain together and are treated with fairness and humanity. This statement on immigration enforcement has been endorsed by uh faith communities including the Charlottesville friends meeting,

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Sojourer's United Church of Christ, Grace Church, Red Hill, Taber Presbyterian, and Westminster Presbyterian. It has been signed by hundreds of individuals in the Charlottesville area. We appreciate the council's resolution

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comp condemning harmful immigration enforcement practices earlier and we call upon you to continue to do everything within your powers to keep immigrant families safe and to asssure that all immigrants are treated with fairness and humanity. Our moral

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obligations to each other demand no less. Thank you. Who else would like to speak? Alicia. >> Good evening. Excuse me. Good evening. My name is Alicia Lenahan. I live in the

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county. You overrode the decision by the board of architectural review. You're allowing the Fville project to go forward over the sustained objections by and to the detriment of the residents of the neighborhood. If history is a guide, you

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will allow UVA to systematically erase FIL. So like Gospel Hill, in a few years, it will be gone. The city built West Haven in a hole so it wouldn't be visible from West Main Street. If history is a guide, you'll allow the LB Collective Project to shove

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it even further out of sight over the sustained objections by the residents of Tenth and Page and to their detriment. We are talking about two luxury apartment buildings that will be marketed to students. And because developers aggressively manipulate the

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halfmile boundary, they are not required to include any affordable units and they pay vastly reduced fees. They gladly pay to buy out 100% of their affordable obligations, ensuring their buildings remain entirely occupied by high rent

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tenants. Neither project will alleviate the affordable housing housing crisis nor contribute to a more economically diverse city. For those both those projects, the reduced fees add up to $10 million.

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With that investment, you could intentionally create affordable housing. The repeated displacement of black residents, of poor residents, did not and is not happening by accident. It is happening through public decisions,

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public neglect and public willingness to call harm by other names. Urban renewal, market rate supply, urban density. Interestingly, your approach also aligns with elements of the Trump

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administration's housing policy, which focuses on privatization and deregulation, choking off economically diverse housing opportunities. plans call for abandoning the housing trust fund and therefore abandoning very

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lowincome people. It calls for ending housing first programs that work to reduce homelessness. And of course, it will discriminate against non-citizens, including their mixed status families in federally assisted housing.

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Voters will remember. They'll remember the $10 million. They will remember your utter disregard and disrespect for residents and community members who have named the harm of these meetings for the

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last year. Thank you, MA'AM. I'm going to speak for the next three minutes, but I think it's kind of hard to imagine that you guys will listen after the last year of people saying that we do not want luxury student housing and just every person in the

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city ignoring what so many people come every time to city council to say, come to other meetings to say like has been very loud about it and have just been ignored. But what I want to say is in regards to the Freebridge encampment, um, I was at that meeting a couple weeks

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ago that was closed comment where like you guys talked about trying to get people off of the area that they're staying regardless of how they feel about it. And I wanted to point out that the reason there are so many people there is because the city is making

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everyone be there. People are getting pushed off of everywhere else in the city. And I can tell that the city councilors don't understand that when they say things like, "Oh, what if people just stayed at the Holiday Drive location as if it shows that they don't know that people are being run off at that location? People are being run off

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of everywhere." And that's how we end up with so many people concentrated and the issues that come with a bunch of people really concentrated in one spot that maybe don't even really want to live together, but are forced that by the overpolicing around the rest of the city. It's also caused by overpolicing

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because our police like people who live on the streets are arrested at much higher rates for things that people in houses do too. And that makes it a lot harder to get a job and it makes it a lot harder to get housing. And so like this is this problem is built by overpolicing. And the simplest solution

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to it is to stop the overpolicing. People will naturally spread out and you won't have this like all the issues that come with everyone being there. Like you don't need to force people to leave. you need to stop forcing people to come to that area. And I also want to say in

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terms of sorry um like also on the same line of like our over policing, people are arrested and getting charged with things like like very petty drug possession like for

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having small amounts of residue things that people in houses do. People are getting charged with trespassing. I talked to somebody the other day in the jail who's in for trespassing right now and I told them about what's going on and they're like but that's my home and I'm like yeah that is your home and

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that's what city council is trying to like force people to not have their homes despite not having anywhere they want them to be and I also want to be clear that if you did have somewhere else you want them to be like just letting people move to other areas is enough and in the last 20 5 seconds I'd

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like to also point out where the [ __ ] are the portaotties like that you guys said there's going to We put out this announcement saying that they will be porta potties and then nothing's happened. It seems like you guys asked Cosners, Cosner said no and then you never asked anywhere else. You didn't look into any of the other parking lots in that area. And at this point on the

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field side where there's also lots of people by Zero East High and Rana River Company says we will help you do this. We really want this to happen really bad for our business too. >> It would take nothing. >> Thank you. Anyone over here like to speak? Uh, Cybo Finn with the um, Community

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Climate Collaborative um, C3 has been encouraging the city and Charlottesville Gas to stop buying carbon offsets from British Petroleum for the past few years. I did some more research into the specific projects that we funded over the past year. They're even worse than I thought. Um, after we shared our concerns with city council and utility

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staff, and you all agreed we should not renew a 5-year contract with BP, we also strongly admonish you not to go ahead with the one-year contract either. Here's what British Petroleum funded last year with Charlottesville gas rate payers money. Operations of a wind farm in Argentina, owned by a massive energy

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corporation called YPF, which is focused on quote accelerating oil production in Bakamorta, bringing the Argentina LNG project to life. The wind farm is directly connected to IPF's manantialis barrol field oil fields. It powers at oil production expansion. Um we paid for

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a photovoltaic project solar in India which in a July 2025 report by the international nonprofit corporate accountability received the lowest possible score in the report for actual carbon removal. That report also found that the Vera registry which is responsible for most of the projects we're funding contains the highest

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proportion of problematic credits worldwide. We're funding improved forest management at Hayawa Sportsman's Club in the Olympic Peninsula. Um I'm sorry in the upper penins in the UP. What's the uh Michigan? >> It's a 35,000 acre members only game

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grounds for hunting, fishing, and whatever happens in a country club. It is continuously member-owned for 100 years. It boasts of being the largest private land holding in the eastern US. We're purchasing more energy efficient cook stoves for rural households in Vietnam with the object of reducing use

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for firewood. These projects cannot be audited. There are known to be many duplications of these credits. Cook stove credits were found by a 2023 UC Berkeley study published in Nature to be massively overestimated up to 9.2 times above what the study found as the real numbers. In the Dominican Republic, heat

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from gas power generation is being captured to generate steam. But of course instead of reducing the amount of fossil fuels being burned, the project description itself on Vera's registry says the total capacity of the plant will increase almost uh almost by half from the additional steam generated energy. These credits were awarded on

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the theory that the extra energy from the plant offsets energy from oil used on the national grid. In reality, energy use in the Dominican Republic because of climate change reached an all-time high during the summer of 2025. Demand outstrips supply. The president announced an urgent need to produce more energy. These credits are not valid.

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Both Charlottesville Gas and the city are operating in good faith with the efforts to offset the utilities emissions. But while offsets are a true quagmire, it seems this is very not likely what Charlottesville Gas customers have in mind when they check a survey box asking whether they support the purchase of carbon credits to offset utility emissions. Charlottville must

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not sign a new contract with BP. Not for another year, not for another dollar. >> Thank you. Anyone in this center here like to speak? Miss Charles. >> Good evening everyone. >> Good evening. >> My name is Latricia G. >> Excuse me. Latricia Gals and I am the

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executive director of the Charlottesville Public Housing Association of Residents. Um, and this is just coming from coming here for the past almost year to talk about um, the conversation on LV Collective and what's

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going on in Fville. Um, and so I just wanted to talk a little bit more about density cuz that's a lot of conversations that I've been hearing people having and writing. Um, so density, fairness, and who is being asked to carry the burden of growth in the city. Um, I hear a lot of people say

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that they support density, and I understand that. But if density is truly good for Charlottesville, then density should not only be concentrated in a few neighborhoods. It should be uh not kept for showing up for most, sorry, showing up aggressively near low-income and

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historically black neighborhoods and lower income communities. If density is bringing opportunity, then all neighbors should have their share in opportunity. If density brings tax revenue, then all neighborhoods should share in responsibility. If density is part of the city's housing strategy, then it

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cannot keep falling on the hardest communities that have already experienced displacement, disinvestment, and broken promises. That is the concern. Far is not saying no to housing. We are saying no to change. I'm sorry. We are

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not saying no to change. We are saying to the city that it needs to be honest about where that change is landing and who is being asked to absorb it. Because when luxury student housing, taller buildings, traffic, construction, parking and parking pressures and rising

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land values keep showing up near the same communities, that is not shared growth. That is concentrated impact. And when the neighborhoods when other neighborhoods are protected from the same level of disruption, then we have to ask why. Charlottesville cannot say

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it supports equity while allowing growth to be uneven. Equity means neighborhoods participate in the future of the city. Equity also means the neighborhoods that have already carried the most harm should receive the strongest protections. So my ask is simple. If

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council supports density, make it fair. Do not concentrate the burden in historically black neighborhoods, lowincome neighborhoods, and near public housing. Create stronger protections for community already at risk of displacement. Require real affordability, not just luxury units,

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and developer fees that they already know they can just give. Um, and make sure that public housing residents, black and brown community residents, and lowincome communities have power before the decisions are already made. Density without fairness is not justice. Growth

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without protection is not equity. And development that only some neighborhoods are expected to absorb is not citywide housing. So, thank y'all this evening. I appreciate you. >> Anyone over here like to speak? >> Okay. Yes, sir.

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Please um state your your name and residencies. Um I'm Josh. I've lived in Charlottesville pretty much my whole life. Um and uh yeah, I feel that it's it it's pretty clear to me that this city has a a problem with unhoused people. And I

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don't mean that unhoused people are a problem. um or that it's a problem that they live in Charlottesville or spend time downtown or sleep in public parks. I mean that the people responsible for working on behalf of the Charlottesville community have a problem with unhoused people. Recently, a number of things

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have happened. I won't go into details, but the result is that there's a community of people living near the Ravana River. The city seems to believe that they have more or less solved the problem of homelessness. If so, congratulations. At this point, the city seems to be

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taking a hands-off approach. Now that much of the unhoused population has gathered together away from the public eye, why do anymore? And with a little time and a little encouragement from CPD, uh maybe the problem, quote unquote, problem will just take care of itself. Not only is that incorrect, it's

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straight up cruel. The encampment at the river currently has no access to drinking water, no bathrooms, no basic safety precautions, and no place to dispose of waste. This is apparently intentional. Um, it's pretty clear that the city is aware of the conditions there, but either unwilling to do

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anything or actively opposed to helping. Um, as some people have already brought up. Um, and let's be honest, these are very easy problems to solve. Um, and the fact that they haven't been solved yet speaks volumes.

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Um, how many of you have slept in a tent before? I'm guessing some of you, but not many. Um, how many of you have spent a day without drinkable water or access to a bathroom? My guess is none. Um, my guess is also

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that you haven't been to the been to the encampment or talked to anybody who lives there. If you haven't, I strongly encourage you to do so. What I hope is that you realize that the people living there are in fact like people and your neighbors um, and deserve at minimum

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some basic resources. I'm asking for a couple simple things today. Bathrooms, water, fire extinguishers, and dumpsters. This is not hard to accomplish. These are very, very simple things to ask for. They're not expensive, and it will immediately

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improve the quality of life of people who are in the Charlottesville community. If that isn't something that the members of the Charlottesville City Council are interested in, I'm starting to wonder if you should be

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on the city council in the first place. On a final note, we're all paying attention and we're not going away. You may see more of us. You may see more of me. Thank you. Anyone else? UM, my name is Emily Kingsley. I live in

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Charlottesville and I am also here to talk about our town's housing crisis and the current lack of support and resources being given to unhoused folks um, in particular at the Ryana encampments. And I first want to

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acknowledge the unspoken truth that seeing unhoused people in our town makes a lot of people in Charlottesville uncomfortable. Probably because it forces us to confront how truly unequal this city is. Um and instead of catering

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to the comfort of joggers on the Ryana Trail, what we really should be doing is realizing that we should be really uncomfortable. We should be uncomfortable because of the systems that have gotten us here. And we should

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be uncomfortable with the fact that anyone does not have safe and secure housing in a town this filthy rich. Uh we change these systems and we can change these systems by working with our

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unhoused neighbors and not against them, not by overpolicing them. by listening to them, believing them, and honoring their stories and lives and dignity. And as others have said, there are things that city council could do right now,

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not to solve the the bigger system problems, but to tangibly improve the lives of folks at Freebridge who right now, this is their home. Portaotties, dumpsters to dispose of waste, fire extinguishers,

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safe drinking water, and ice and coolers. And right now there are just folks in Charlottesville who are helping these people get those supplies when really the city could be taking a much bigger role to support them. And there are people who probably don't want the

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city to do that because those things would make living in the camps more tolerable and they're hoping that if it gets bad enough those people will just leave and kind of disappear. But pushing people who are already in a vulnerable

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situation further to the margins is one unconscionable and two it will also never work. Our unhoused neighbors are our neighbors and we will never stop fighting with them. We will not stand by while our neighbors are displaced or

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harassed, threatened or intimidated. We will build the world that we want one step at a time. And our ask, our invite is to build it with us. Thank you. >> Thank you. Anyone else like to speak? >> My name is Joshua Baloo. Um, I've been

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in Charlottesville since 2017. Um, and I came up here from Florida with over $1,000 in my pocket on a train. had plans I made, just didn't talk to anybody about it. I was surprising

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somebody in Warrington. Turned out I got to surprise because I couldn't stay there. There were too many people there. And I ended up getting in touch with a friend and got me to Charlottesville. And he couldn't let me stay at his place either. Got it through region 10.

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And doesn't matter. The point is is since that time I have never had my name on deed of a house. Never needed to, never wanted to really. Um, other than the amenities. Like they said, if you got water, food, stuff like that, the rest

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of this country was free and the constitution was put in place for that fact. We just came up on an anniversary day cuz April 19th was the day I got threatened that people were going to come down and set stuff on fire. They were a little late,

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but um all the things that have been thrown out as far as what's wrong down there, uh they're now trying to tell us we can't have propane when propane had nothing to do whatsoever with the fire. Um I didn't have a heater myself next to my couch, but I was holding an extra

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tank for anybody that needed it. And it took me sitting there running down to the river with a bucket of water dumping it on that propane tank so it wouldn't blow up until the fire department got there. And whatever their timing is, they are lying because we sat there for over 30

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minutes and I had four different people running back and forth trying to put this fire out. Um, I give them that a lot of the people don't want to live there together. There's arguments, fights. It's it's

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breaking down quickly because of the fact that left and right and instead of people helping, we're down there having a look going, "What are they here for? What are they coming over here for? They going to try and make us leave and and left and right every time I hear them come down and say, "Oh, we're we're

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doing a woman's check and all that. We're all well." Um, and so far as far as wellness goes, I mean, just like man can't live on bread alone, he can't live on water and ice alone either. And that's the only thing

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that hasn't been brought by anyone who said they were coming down there to check on our wellness. I stand for both human rights and I stand for the constitution this country was founded upon. And any infringement upon either of those, you'll see my

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face. Thank you. THANK HI, my name is Maria. I am a resident and taxpayer of the city of Charlottesville. Uh, first I want to talk about the issue of affordable housing. I just spent about three weeks trying to help a family of refugees living in Charlottesville that were

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being evicted from their apartment and that couldn't afford the rent and deposit that they knew affordable housing was asking from them went through every uh institution or resource in the city to no avail. No help

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whatsoever for a family like this. If it wasn't for the community, amazing community of Charlottesville residents that open their pockets to help us raise the money, this family would be living in their car right now and her on minor children would probably would have been

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taken away from them because this is the only thing that social services is good at. not for helping families when they are at risk of unhousing but for taking their children away when they are unable to do they have run out of any other uh

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means of doing it and I also want to talk about what happens when people are living in in tents we all think that they are all losers that they are they just didn't know they don't work they are all just see the reality of the city if the housing prices continue to raise

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so We're going to see more and more people living in the streets. You see what is happening in LA right now, what is happening in Mayor cities. You are not doing anything to really help affordable housing in this city. I think what people living in tents right now, what

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they really deserve is a a dignified uh situation of living like a dignified housing and we're not not even asking for that right now. were just asking for conditions of safety and health. When they were moved out of the bridge, it

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was supposedly because of safety h and health uh concerns. Safety and health concerns for who? For the people that go walk by the bridge and they don't like to see them there. For the yogurts that just come run every

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morning and then they go home, they have a nice meal, they sleep in a bed and they forget about it. But they are worried about the safety and health of our city. And who is worrying about the safety and health of the people living in the encampments? Why is it so hard to

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ask for the minimum port enough places for shelter and for heat heating during the winter and cooling during the summer? That is all that we're asking for. Thank you. >> THANK YOU. Anyone else like to speak? There'll be

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another opportunity at the end. Thank you all so much. Um, we will now have the consent agenda. Madame clerk. >> Yes. Consent agenda three, ordinance repealing section 31 and 32 of chapter

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3, amusements of the code of the city of Charlottesville and reserving chapter 3 for future use. Second reading. Four, resolution to authorize donation of easements in city-owned land to the Virginia Department of Transportation

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for the Route 250 and Route 20 intersection and corridor improvement projects. Five, resolution to authorize donation of city rightofway to the Virginia Department of Transportation for the construction of a roundabout at

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Route 631 and John Warner Parkway. Six. Resolution to appropriate $356,85 in additional funds to the streets and sidewalks division operating budget. One of two readings.

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Seven. Resolution to authorize reallocation of $6,300 of previously appropriated funding to social and environmental entrepreneurs for FY27. 8. Resolution to appropriate Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services

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Victims of Crime Act grant award FY26 23,000 123,600 one of two readings. A nine resolution to appropriate the Virginia Department of Social Services Family Assistance Management Grant in the amount of

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$20,000 one of two readings. >> Thank you. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda? >> So move second. >> Oh, okay. Uh, are we going to vote um virtually on this? Okay. >> Yes, everyone signed in.

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>> I was signed in. So, if you're a yes, >> I'm not sure how I'm a yes. I'm not sure how to get back to the page that I was on a minute ago. >> So, if you could get a yes motion passes 5 to Z for the consent agenda. We're now at the city manager report. Mrs.

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Sanders. >> Uh, good evening, council and members of the public. Uh first item is a presentation uh by Todd Neer, Office of Human Rights Annual Report. >> Good evening, Mayor Wade, Vice Mayor Ashen, counselors. Uh >> good evening,

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>> Clerk Robinson, city manager Sanders. Thank you for having us tonight. My name is Todd Neim. I'm the director of the Human Rights Commission. I'm here with Heather Robertson Gaston, the current chair of the Human Rights Commission and appreciate the opportunity to give you a

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a brief report about the work done by the both the commission and the office uh in 2025. Feel like you probably saw the annual report in full in your agenda packet. Um we're not going to go over all that data tonight. Um this evening I'm going to

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try to provide a brief summary of the structure of the human rights division, a review of our key roles and responsibilities under the ordinance and a deeper look at the connections between the commission, the office, and the community and why those connections are important. At the end of the

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presentation, Heather and I will be here for to answer any questions that you may have about either the report or the presentation. Let's make sure I get the button right here. All right. Okay. So I'll begin with a quick overview of the structure of the human rights

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division which is part of the city manager's office. Uh the division was created by the Charlottesville human rights ordinance which was adopted by council in 2013. Uh it includes the commission and the office and we work together in tandem to address uh human and civil rights issues within the

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jurisdiction of the city. Um while the commission focuses on systemic impact and the office focuses mostly on individual assistance both have outreach and engagement duties and we'll talk more about uh the importance of those overlapping responsibilities.

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So this organizational chart represents the structure at the end of 2025. uh want to acknowledge the work of everyone uh on that's named on that uh chart there because it takes leadership at every level to provide human rights services uh to our community. So I'm

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grateful grateful for everyone's collaboration and contribution. There's a few things that I want to note that are that have changed up there. Uh in July 2025, uh we created the policy and impact analyst position. Uh and the intent there was to better support the

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the human rights commission and increase deeper community engagement. Uh in August 2025, Lily Gates moved from the community outreach specialist position to the policy and impact uh analyst position, which left the community outreach position vacant and unfunded

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for the remainder of fiscal year 26. Um as you know, Ashley uh runs Marshall left chief prosperity officer position in February of this year. Lily then left the policy and impact analyst position in March of this year. So the city's currently in the hiring process for both

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of those positions. So the human rights ordinance is basically the guide book for both the commission and the office. Section 2-433 of the ordinance uh organizes the work into six distinct categories. And for brevity and clarity, I've given the

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categories short working titles in the report and in the presentation. Um, I'll give you a quick summary of each so you're just familiar with those if you haven't looked at them recently. Individual assistance focuses on addressing individual complaints of discrimination. Outreach engagement

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includes the various ways that the commission and the office communicates with the community. City policies and practices refers to the commission's annual policy recommendations that they provide to council. the federal workshares uh concerns the agreements with the equal employment uh opportunity

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commission and the fair housing equal opportunity office and the federal government let the legislative program uh refers to the commission's annual recommendations for council's legislative agenda and finally commission policies includes the commission's recommendations to council regarding policies that affect the work

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of the commission and the office directly. So I want to shift to talking about connections between the commission and the office and the community by first looking at the issues we're trying to address and how they're related. So this diagram which I've labeled the continuum

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of harm um shows the relationship between individual discrimination and systemic discrimination. briefly to define those. Individual discrimination refers to incidents in which a person was denied an opportunity uh to access uh housing or employment or

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public accommodations for example due to an aspect of their identity that's protected by law. Systemic discrimination refers to the institutionalized policies and practices that whether intentional or not undermine people's access to opportunities again due to an aspect of

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their identity protected by law. In the report, I use housing discrimin discrimination on the basis of source of funds to illustrate the connection between individual and systemic discrimination. In brief, source of funds was added to the protect a protected class of to the Virginia fair

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housing law in 2020 and to our local ordinance in 21. And that protection was intended to ensure that people with housing vouchers would have greater access to available housing. This change in law address the systemic gap in fair housing protections that had

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previously resulted in exclusionary practices and it now allows us to uh enforce uh that law at local level. Um the challenge is that when even when we disrupt the continuum of harm in one area, it can continue emerge in another

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area which is why consistent community engagement uh and outreach is important. And so as you see in this diagram, the commission tries to address uh discrimination through policy and practice recommendations at the systemic

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level. Office tries to address the individual discrimination by processing individual complaints of discrimination. Um there's gap there's a overlap in those duties um in the sense that the office provides administrative support to the commission as it works on

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systemic impact and the commission supports the office as a public hearing and appellet body for individual complaints but more importantly uh we overlap in our relationship with the community um and that's where I come to community

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outreach and engagement because both comm community the office and the commission depend on community outreach and engagement to ensure that we're meeting the needs of the community. And when I refer to outreach and engagement, I'm using outreach to mean communication that comes from us to the community

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about our services, how to find us, what we do. Engagement, I'm talking about that dialogue, that interplay, that two-way communication where we're receiving feedback from the community, information from the community about their needs that shapes the way we provide services. Outreach and

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engagement are essential. If we're unsuccessfully communicating with the community, then we're less successful at breaking the cycle of discrimination. Without outreach, community isn't fully aware of the services we provide. Without engagement, our knowledge of community issues is incomplete and

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therefore the result is that our lack our services may not fully address community needs. I want to turn the focus back to the structure of the commi of the the human rights division for a moment. Um and another way to look at the work of both

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the office and the commission is as a linear spectrum which I have drawn for you here. Um on the end of one spectrum one end of the spectrum you have individual assistance on the other systemic impact and uniting the two is community outreach and engagement. Um and because it's an annual report I

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have to include some numbers. So I tried to give you some uh data there that shows how we are addressing our services and what data we're collecting um across that spectrum of work. Those are just some of the examples. There's many more

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in the the report itself. In addition to that, um, the spectrum concept can also be used to show you how the roles of staff and commissioners generally align with the six categories of responsibilities in the ordinance that I showed you earlier, but as well as across this generalized spectrum of

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work. Um, and so you can see where on the far end there, for example, the intake specialist and investigator are focused on individual assistance, whereas policy and impact analyst, human rights commission, uh, they're focused on systemic impact director and outreach

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are somewhere in the middle there. But in practice, the alignment is a little bit more nuanced than that. And so these gradient bars that I put below each role there um are trying to show that every role touches the

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spectrum of work uh in all parts in some fashion. Um if you take that a step further, it also gives you the sense that each one of those roles is interrelated. there's there's a supportive and and and uh im impact uh

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role that happens between each of those positions that you see up there. Um and so it's important because those when we have vacancies or gaps in any of the commission or on staff um we're we have

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decreased efficiency and effectiveness uh when we provide services to the community. So why does this matter? Um decreased efficiency and effectiveness of service provision matters because behind every number on this chart here

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um there's a person with a story. Um each of those stories represents a moment in somebody's life where they felt their ability to thrive was limited because of an aspect of their identity or how someone else perceived their identity. And so just like providing transportation or fixing potholes or

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making sure that people can live safely in their neighborhoods, the work of addressing individual and systemic discrimination is ongoing. Things are always happening. The work is ever evolving and some of the situations we face uh by people who come to the office are familiar or

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people who come to the commission are familiar. Um but more often they're surprisingly unique and complex. And so I think that's a tells us that we're a community of diverse human beings all striving to live our best lives, but we bump into the consequences of

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misunderstanding, miscommunication, and frankly fear. And sometimes the commission and the office are able to help conflicting parties listen to one another, expand their perspectives, find resolutions. But sometimes we fail and we learn that

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our own systems have shortcomings that we may need to address by engaging more deeply with the community, making policy and practice changes, or even acknowledging when sometimes resolutions beyond our reach. But our ability to succeed with both individual assistance

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and s systemic impact hinges on our ability to engage in consistent two-way communication with the community. And this is an area in which we have room for growth and improvement and a need for support. So, in the meantime, um the dedicated community members who

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volunteer on the commission and our committed employees who come into the office day after day, we'll keep trying and keep listening and keep doing the work because when we succeed, we help the community take one more step towards being a place where everyone thrives. So,

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we're here for your questions if you have any. >> Thank you. Thank you. I'll start with you, um Jen. Okay. >> Thank you. Is it Heather? >> Yes. >> Thank you for serving on the committee. We appreciate you. Did you want to say

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something before we >> No, I'm just here for questions. >> Questions? Okay. >> I'm just here to answer questions if you have them. >> Thank you, >> Jen. >> Thank you. Um, what is the biggest community issue you've discovered during engagement in 2025?

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Um what we do on the human rights commission is we choose an area of focus every year and um that's because there are nine of us. We're all volunteers. We can't solve every every problem. So we choose a focus based on you know

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previous experience in um 2025. It was uh housing access and stability across protected classes and economic status. Um this year we have broadened it a bit

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to make it economic stability across protected classes. The reason for that is just that what we've discovered when we talk to our stakeholders and service providers in Charlottesville that um providing housing isn't enough to kind

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of crack the kind of inequality the income inequality and wealth inequality that we we have here. So we wanted to kind of broaden the scope. Yeah. >> Great. Thank you. >> That's it. >> Okay. >> Lo, >> I have no questions. >> Thank you.

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>> Um, can you talk a little bit more about what you just said about the the project, the study, the results, and what you found needed expanding? >> Yes. So, what we So, we we're just beginning our outreach to stakeholders

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and service providers. So last year we met with nine. Um I can give you the list. I actually just I decided I would bring it with me just in case. Um we met with Would you Would you like to hear this? >> Sure. >> Okay. Um, we met with the Virginia

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Poverty Law Center, Pedmont Housing Authority, uh, Public Housing Association of Residents, uh, Blue Ridge Area Coalition for the Homeless, Legal Aid Justice Center, Housing Opportunities Made Equal, International Neighbors, Seville Tulips, and um, Sin

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Barreris. I feel like there was another group in there, but I'm not sure. Um, so >> yeah. Yeah. Okay, I think that might be right. Um so that's so what we do is we we have uh usually a large meeting where

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a number of stakeholders will will come and speak. That could be a little bit more collaborative. They can play off of each other a bit. Um we also meet with our state representatives. Um obviously we don't lobby the state representatives. We we might find out about what kind of legislation could

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come up at the state level. Um where there might be some movements that could impact our areas of interest. Uh but then we obviously we bring those recommendations back to you not to not directly to the state because that's uh not in our purview. Um so this year I

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think that we will we'll probably touch base with many of those stakeholders and we'll add a few more um patcham I think we'll probably talk to PCHam. Uh I think we'll talk to um Salvation Army NAACP housing committee just you know we've

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got a long list. Um, yeah. So, oh, but the reason for broadening, do you want me to speak to that? >> Yeah, thank you. >> Um, we just, you know, everyone says when you ask them, what what do you need? The first thing is always housing. It's just always housing. But there are

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other things on the list like, oh gosh, you know, we we have all of these people that we'd like to help and they have they have vouchers for daycare and um they're eligible for for supported daycare, but um the vouchers have a time limit like how long you can um how long

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that voucher will stay good and there aren't enough daycarees to to serve uh for for them to get a spot before the voucher expires. So you just hear all kinds of stories like this and you know if there's some way for us to have a conversation at the city level and say

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okay what is the story with these vouchers and how does that work and is there some way that we can help you know that's we just want to do that >> great thank you so much >> Michael >> one two questions the first I know

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there's been a long journey to enter into an FAP agreement so there's greater ability to do investigations into housing discrimination and that happened right before there was a change in federal administration that um you know has a very different approach to HUD.

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How have things been going with that and has that proven to be a um a barrier that is insurmountable at this point? >> Yeah, I'll speak to that briefly. So if uh in the report I I give you a brief outline of kind of the efforts that we

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took this year uh to get or I'm sorry in 25 to get to um uh fair housing assistance program. Well, I guess what I didn't uh relay to you is that when we finally got the confirmation that uh we

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had everything was substantially equivalent in our in our ordinance um and that we were under review. We we finally got a denial because we protect um gender identity and sexual orientation uh in our uh ordinance. Uh and as well I I may have said this in

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the report. I believe I did actually because that did happen in the fall of last year. Uh they also said that they no longer want to work with localities. They want to work with state agent state level agencies. So for example, we have a FAP office in the department of

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professional occupational regulation. That's that's where our Virginia Fair Housing Office is, which doesn't really it's not historically what they've done because there are fair housing assistance programs all over the country. Um many of them are really

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wondering what to do now. Um and I've talked to a lot of people who who work in those offices, but um that's that's where we stand with that. um they weren't interested in supporting us at this point and and frankly I don't know that it would be in the best interest of the city to do so given the protections

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that that are important um under state law and our ordinance um with with regard to the uh the FEA the Fair Employment Practices Agency. um we haven't pursued that one either. Um because we put all our energy into pursuing the FAP for a while, but also

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looking at what's kind of happening in terms of the trends and protections um in the EEOC, I'm not sure that that is also in the best interest of the city right now to enter a work share that of that type, but happy to talk about it further if you have a different uh

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thought on it. But that's kind of where we're standing with it right now, just kind of waiting and seeing. But you know everything's in place to do the work. It's just that we're not given that opportunity at the moment. I I also wanted if I might if I might um you had asked about stakeholder engagement. So

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one of the things that um the report talks about is the policy and impact analysts work in that realm. Um so Lily took that on in mid August of last year just before we were submitting our policy or our uh state uh legislation recommendation. So she engaged more in

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that uh deep community engagement work with stakeholders later in the fall. Um so she didn't get very far because holidays happen all that stuff. I think she talked to 11 different stakeholders I believe it was. Um one of the things that popped up as the she did a big chart of all the things that people

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brought up she labeled a lot of issues. She categorized those by issue type and the thing that popped up the most was mental health um and the lack of mental health supports for people. Um, so just to make make that uh put that out there because I think that was actually first over housing. It's not to say that

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that's a complete snapshot. That's a small number of providers. She had a list of I think 120 that she was going to try to touch base with over the course of another year. But anyway, just another thing to keep in mind. Um, and we'll we'll keep working on that when we fill that position.

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>> Great. Thank you. Mhm. Well, and yeah, and I unfortunately I don't think there's anything to really do except wait until there's a different federal administration because I think clearly they just are actively against um enforcement of housing and employment

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discrimination and obviously want to remove protections for protection of gender and sexual identity. Um so it's unfortunate and and um you know informally you know you definitely hear that I think particularly in housing that discrimination on source of income

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definitely still occurs in terms of landlords finding ways to de facto not accept vouchers. They won't use those words but it would be interesting to have an investigation that looked at you know the percentage of applicants with vouchers that were denied and the reasons that were stated for for doing

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so I think would likely get some interesting results. Um the only other question is for the on the commission side. Um you've made over the years legislative recommendations would have made it into the city's legislative agenda. Some of which have become state

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law. Um your recommendations have also informed um funding allocations we've made with federal ARPA funds um and and other areas of the budget. But from a commission perspective, are there things you think city council could do to

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utilize the commission better um or to feel like there's more of a a dialogue between city council and the commission? >> Well, I I can just say that we're very interested in that. I think that um

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it it's always good for us to be aware um when we're meeting with stakeholders and service providers. And this is such a clumsy way of saying it, but just what is on the menu. You know, what is what is actually possible to accomplish? Um, you know, we might make recommendations

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about expanding rental assistance or we might make recommendations um about, you know, something else at the city level, uh, opening a low barrier shelter, which obviously you have all been working on quite a bit and we're aware of that. Um but but knowing kind of where things are

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is and and how how our recommendations land with you is is just really wonderful for us I think. So um you know to the extent that people are willing I'll I'll reach out and try to have some conversations about that and if you have anything you know say it now or or we

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can meet about it. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah, I I don't have you know um you know ideas that I'm like oh this is the way to do it but I know with in some context we have um you know at least one yearly joint work session with different commissions or have kind of a more

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formal council liaison that's either a member of the board or you know an um um non- voting member of the board. I I don't know if the commission just had any ideas on what would be useful. >> We have talked about that. Um, I I

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wouldn't want to want to speak for the commission. I know that everybody has been enthusiastic when I um have talked about reaching out to members of the city council um to to just get more information about what what works for all of you. Um how our recommendations

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are are being received, whether or not you need more information, you know, all of that kind of stuff. Everyone is enthusiastic about those ideas. We we don't have any sort of formal position on, you know, we would like a city council member to be on the commission.

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I I don't think people would resist that idea, but um and and we'd certainly love to have you at our meetings. Um that would be wonderful for you to just, you know, uh schedule schedule a time that you can come and we can reach out to you about that. Um all kinds of ideas we can

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we can discuss. Yeah. Thank you for asking. >> That's it for me. Thank you. Thank you all so much. I don't have any comments. I really appreciate the work that you're doing and we'll reach out to, you know, connect in formal informal ways. Appreciate the work that you all do.

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>> Thanks so much. >> Thank you so much. >> Thanks, Todd. Good job. >> Uh James had an item as well. >> All right. Good evening, Mayor W Council. Uh James, deputy city manager. Uh as many of you are likely aware uh we

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have been experiencing significant delays in our building inspections and plan review uh side of the house. And uh I just wanted to offer some context for that um and let you know some of the things that we're working on. Um broadly

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we experience a steady state of kind of a high level of of permit activity. Um and in particular over the last year we've seen some significantly large projects that have come in and taxed the capacity of of staff. Uh more immediately we uh abruptly lost two

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building inspector positions and we've had extended leave for kind of medical and other reasons. So th those that confluence of factors is has kind of put us at a hole in terms of uh plan review and inspections. Um,

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none of this was, it's not to say that some of this wasn't anticipated. As we're preparing for the uh budget last fall, we did our data analysis that we do kind of understanding where we are with uh plan uh permitting activity and

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determined that our greatest need was in residential plan review. And so at that time we took an existing position that had gone vacant recently and we turned it into a new plan review position. Uh but unfortunately we haven't been able to fill that position and we've recently

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upgraded that position in order to hopefully make it a more attractive position. Upgraded in terms of pay um to hopefully make it a more attractive um position. We also um began quite a while ago the procurement process to get some on call

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uh positions in place to provide inspections and plan review per uh purposes. We've succeeded in having two on call companies in place, but we haven't been able to get those positions certified. We will up to date we will only be have one additional plan reviewer who will begin work this week.

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Um all this to say is that there remains a high level of concern. This is an important area of work for the city. It's it's really kind of an essential service both on a public safety side and an academic development side. So this morning, uh, Kelly Brown, NDS director,

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uh, Chuck Miller, our building code official, myself, hosted a meeting over in city space about 7 a.m. with our building community. We had a substantial turnout. I didn't get the count of how many people showed up, but it was probably in the 60 to 80 um, uh, uh,

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count. And um uh we we had a we had a robust discussion. A great deal of concern was presented uh as you would expect around the this situation and we talked about what we are already doing and what we uh could potentially do

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further. Um for one thing we are um we're going to open up um uh or I should put it loosen the policies around our third party inspections so that more people can get in to do third party inspections. Um, and we're going to continue to analyze um the data coming

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back on permit uh permit activity and plan review um to to see if it warrants a uh more robust um requests in the upcoming budget season. Um so, a lot of activity going on, a great deal of attention is being put onto this issue.

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Um and I'm happy to answer any questions. That's u it's a lot for 7 a.m. meeting. So I think people really interested in this item >> on a Monday, no less. >> Yeah. Uh understandably interested.

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>> Yeah. Yeah. >> Well, sorry. >> Yeah. Go ahead. >> Um no, no questions, but I would just say I I'm definitely fully supportive of allowing approved third-party um inspectors, which I know is common in a lot of localities, including Richmond.

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Um, so I hope we definitely move in that direction so we're not needlessly holding up things. And then the second is just more broadly I hope with inspections on the building code and fire code we can adopt an institutional attitude of flexibility and wanting to

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get to yes and not having a perspective that of course we always follow the letter of regulations and law but not having um recommendations saying oh a bike lane can't go here or these requirements must happen and then when you look at the letter of the the the

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regulations it's not actually required and it's preventing things. And so I just hope we can build that kind of positive um flexible culture. Um but that's it. >> All right. And the last item I have for you is update on homeless services. I

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was able to facilitate a homeless services panel in Chapel Hill last week for a chamber visit. Uh we were able to hear from their chief of police, community relations coordinator for the town of Chapel Hill as well as UNCC director of local relations. The key takeaway for me was coordination. And as

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you've heard this evening, this is a very complicated and heated conversation. Uh very difficult situation to to uh address. It's complicated. I think that's what we all know. Um I was able to hear from our community foundation that they are

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working with our continuum of care. That is the group of organizations that are working uh on homelessness on a daily basis. uh working to bring forward that operations plan for Holiday Drive to explore opportunities to uh engage with city staff and just to continue the

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alignment as true partners. Um the city remains focused on encampment protocols, staffing allocations, internal coordination, and leadership alignment. We're going to continue to make sure that the focus remains on trying to serve as best as we possibly can, but acknowledging that we've made it clear

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that those that are in jeopardy uh closest to the river cannot remain in that location. We have to work towards making sure that that becomes a managed process, but it is not a tenable long-term process. I'm meeting with Holiday Drive business owners uh as

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promised when we bought the Holiday Drive building. So, I'll meet with them on Wednesday of this week to bring them up to speed as to work that's been going on and I have a follow-up meeting with Pchum later this week because we're looking at trying to get the overnight shelter possibly opened at Holiday Drive, but that's a big question. Uh,

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and then to discuss their budget needs. So, just sharing again that the city is working and we are not tonedeaf on this issue. >> Thank you. Um, is that concludes your >> that is the report. Could I >> uh we heard a couple folks tonight

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saying that they thought that there was a commitment to get portaotties and things like that on site down by the Ryana River. What's I I don't remember specifically a quote commitment in that respect, but I do remember a lot of discussion about the need for something

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like that. Where do we stand with that? >> There's been consideration there was consideration of doing that. uh we have found it difficult to actually get that done. Um they're the group the group of folks that are are um assembled closest to the river none of the adjacent

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property owners have permitted uh access. So we have been not we have been unable to get uh a porta body placed and serviced and that's the issue. Getting it on the site is one issue. Getting it serviced on a regular basis means they have to be able to access it. the

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reference to Cosner Brothers was the last hope that we thought we might have and that was no. They made that decision that they did not want to support that. Uh we are aware that um the Ravana River Company has expressed the willingness uh to support portaotties there and we're looking into that right now. Uh but

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again the other requests are all things that support the notion of staying in place and that is not the posture that we're taking. >> Okay. The next item on the agenda is an action item is a public hearing an ordinance to

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amend and um reordain city code chapter 31 utility establish a new utility rates and service fees for gas, water and um sanitary sewer and this is the first of two readings. Chris.

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>> All right. Good evening, mayor, vice mayor, council. My name is Jason Mley. I'm the deputy director of utilities, and I am joined by Chris Cullinin, the director of finance, and by Lauren Hillbrand, the director of utilities. And tonight, we are pleased to present

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to you the FY27 uh utility rate report. So, I'm going to start off and give a little bit of background on programs and operations from utilities and then I'm going to hand it over to Chris for the financial uh summary.

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So, a little bit about utilities. Uh we own and operate four utilities throughout the city and then one that reaches into the county. Uh first, water and wastewater systems. We have about 14,800 customers. 94% of those are residential. And for the water system,

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we own and operate 179 mi of water man. And for sanitary sewer or wastewater, we own and operate 169 miles of pipeline. Uh next is the storm water utility. We have 15,700 billable customers. 78% of

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those are residential. And then we have uh 125 miles of conveyance piping that is either in the rightway or on private property that we maintain. Then lastly is a natural gas distribution system uh that reaches into the county as well as

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uh being here in the city. So we have 21,270 customers 55% of which are in the city and 45% are in the county. So with that reaching into the county obviously that's a bigger system. So we have 340 miles 341 miles of of gas mains that we

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own and operate and maintain. So when we think about rates, we think about several things and two of those items are reliability and water quality. Um, one way that we uh maintain that reliability is to not have water service

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disruptions. Uh, I'm sure that you all will recall in the winter of 2025, there was a pretty major water outage in Richmond where they um a winter storm actually caused a an equipment malfunction and several hundred thousand

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people were out of water for 5 days. Uh, this has happened on smaller scales all around us at other localities, Green County, Louisa, Orange, Harrisonenburg, Stanton. uh but um you know obviously we try to keep disruptions to a minimum or

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to zero. So how do we do that? Uh we take proactive approach to address our aging infrastructure. Every year we do a satisfaction survey and so one of the questions that we ask is what is the reliability of your water service. So 100% replied back and said that they

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rated our system as uh either satisfied or neutral of the reliability. So very positive numbers there. So our proactive approach is to have an aggressive capital improvement program to address aging infrastructure. I'm sure that you all knew about our Lucas Avenue phase 1

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water man replacement that occurred from High Street to the 250 bridge uh where we replaced about 2100 ft of 6-in cast iron man with 8 in >> I'm sorry. >> Sorry. I've got a question about that project finish. >> Okay. All right. No problem. Thanks.

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>> So, uh about 2100 ft of 6-in cast iron main uh with 8 in ductal iron. So, now we're getting ready to uh start phase two of that, which is from the 250 bridge to Locust Lane. Um which in that stretch since 2007, we've had seven main

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breaks. So, if we don't address that, that will just continue to get worse. Uh that project is 3,400 ft of 6-in cast iron man that we are upgrading to 8 in ductal iron pipe. Uh, another project that I I'm sure that you all have heard about is our West

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Main Street water and gas infrastructure upgrades. Uh, we are replacing the water and the gas veins from Ridge McIntyre all the way up to the Beta Bridge. Um, the water will go from a 10-in cast iron man to a 12-in ductal iron man, which

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will increase the reliability and capacity through that area. Uh, phase one of that is beginning. Uh that will likely start over the next month and that's natural gas only. Those upgrades will occur in Rugby Road, University

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Avenue, uh Madison Lane, and Chancellor Street. Then once we finish that in about four to five months, we'll figure out where phase two is and and move through that progress. >> Yes. Um so we had um folks from the neighborhood along Locust writing in

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about the um the road condition and we got a response from our our team that there has to be like a settling period before the full repaving. Can you briefly talk a little bit about that just so if anyone's tuning in they know what to expect?

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>> Yeah. So generally the way that works is we will finish a utility project and public works will come behind us and and mill and pave the whole street. Generally you want to wait at least one year for any settlement to happen through the trenches so that doesn't show back through the final asphalt.

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Plus our uh our contractor we have a one-year warranty with them. So we don't want to go in and mill the road and then they come in and cut up the road again to fix settling that occurred in their trench line. So that's generally why we we wait that one-year period to mill an overlay.

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>> So it's going to be a little rough for about a year and then it'll be settled and ready to repave by then. >> Correct. Yes. And then public works will need to decide where that lands on their priority list to pave. >> They did smooth it out some. I know my scooter is on it every day. It's much better. But

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>> yeah, they they actually did a a pretty nice job of going back and milling and overlaying those trench lines. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Great. Thank you so much. Uh the next project that I want to highlight that you all are very well familiar with is a central water line

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that Ryana water and sewer authority is administering. Uh that's 5 miles of 24 in and 30inch water line that will connect the observatory water treatment plant with long street down at pantops at free bridge. Uh this project is important for the community. It improves

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hydraulic connectivity and efficiency through the urban water system. Phase one is currently underway. Uh they are on stage two of phase one. So phase one is from Herford Drive at Stadium Road over to Market Street. That was a little over $47 million project that they're

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working on. And um like I said, they're on stage two, which stage two is in J uh Jefferson Park Avenue from about stribbling down to Cleveland. Uh so they're about 6 to 8 months into a a 4-year um contract here. So more to come

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on that as we progress through over the the next couple of years >> and it a similar vein with that project as it moves into the next phase. Um obviously the reality is it's going to be through main thoroughfare in the heart of Fithville and it's going to be

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a lot of lengthy disruptions um as well as you know noise other things and that's just the reality of it. um you know if people have once it moves to that if people have complaints around noise or they have a concern did this do something to the foundation of my house

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who do they contact and what's that process >> generally I mean they they can contact us but they really need to contact the Ravana water and sewer authority so if there's any questions about who they need to get in contact with they can certainly reach out to utilities and we can point them in the right direction

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>> but RW say will be the main yes contact point okay thank you welcome So staying with reliability and water quality uh one of our number one or our number one priority is always the safety of our customers. Uh so you can see on that same survey annual survey uh safety

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of the drinking water 96% rated us as having satisfied or neutral uh on that question. And then annually we do a consumer confidence report which we're proud to say that the quality of the drinking water meets and exceeds all

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regulatory requirements. Uh that's from testing that's performed throughout the year from us and and Ryana Water and Sewer Authority. And then another item for safety is we completed our lead service line inventory in 2024.

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And through statistical analysis, excavation, reviewing historical records, we're uh proud to say that we found no evidence of lead in either the private or public water systems. So, we encourage the public uh our customers if

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they um replace their line to get in touch with us so we can add it to our our service line inventory. So, I want to talk just briefly about a couple energy efficiency initiatives that we have. Um one very popular one is

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our energy saving trees program. We do this to promote safe digging practices and strategic planning for energy. Uh since 2022 over two events, one in the fall and one in the spring, we've given away over 1,300 trees to uh city

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residents. Another program that we have is the free weatherization to income qualified households. So, we partner up with LEAP, the local energy alliance program, and offer no cost energy efficiency upgrades to natural gas customers for income

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qualified homeowners and renters. So, again, it's been very uh a very good program. To date, 271 households have participated and we've invested over $370,000 in that program. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Um for the tree building program, it's

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great to see that that many trees have been um given away. As you're giving them away, do you let people know how to make sure they're planting them in a safe place? And what does that process look like? >> We do. So, in order to to dig, you're supposed to call 811, right, in this

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utility. So, we make sure that that message is clear and then we also provide um service to a arborist or or somebody so they can call and figure out how to maintain their tree. So, uh, not only do we make sure that they're planting it

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away from their utilities, but we also make sure that the tree lives. >> Great. Thank you so much. >> You're welcome. >> Our, um, our next program to highlight here is a free attic installation self assessment tool. So, this is something that utility staff actually developed in

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house. And what it does is it allows people to uh perform an evaluation and provide guidance or they provide a guidance on how they can um improve their energy efficiency through attic installation, whether they need more. Uh

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but we've had a thousand views on the web page and so far 38 households have started the process. So again, that's something that we continue to hopefully see people take advantage of. And then on the right, uh, you can see the the rebate programs that we offer, uh, the

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thermostat programs, the attic insulation, um, rebate that I was just talking about with the tool, and then attic air sealing. So again, several ways that we are trying to help people be more efficient with their their

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energy needs. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Cullinin. Thank you, Jason. Uh, good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of council. I'm Chris Cullin in the city's director of finance. Um, to ensure the reliable, safe, and high quality utility services

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and infrastructure that, uh, Jason was highlighting requires adequate financial resources. Uh, just as a reminder, um, our utilities operate as enterprise funds. That is they are each uh each utility is a standalone and financially

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water rates and fees pay for water uh services and infrastructure wastewater for wastewater services and infrastructure etc etc. Uh they each act uh each are financed and accounted for separately and um they're designed to operate on a

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break even basis uh as municipal uh owned utilities. So this chart that you see before you here, uh this is the impact on an average city customer uh with proposed utility rates and monthly service charge that would go into effect

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on July 1 compared with those uh same figures from a year ago. And overall uh we are asking folks to pay more for these four uh utilities. In total, it's about just a little less than $10 per month or $9.54.

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For a point of comparison, a year ago, uh, when I was before you, we were looking at $12.84 increase. So, it's a little bit less, but nonetheless, it is uh uh we are asking for additional funds to finance the uh the operations infrastructure

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associated with the utilities. And what you see here, this is the impact on the average customer. Uh the average customer who uses about 400 cubic feet of water per month, that's slightly less than 100 gallons per day. 4,600 cubic feet of natural gas and has an average

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sized uh lot in terms of impervious surface for the storm water calculation. And I'm going to go to each one of these in a little bit more detail over the next few slides. Starting with water. Uh the total revenue requirement for the water uh utility is just a little over

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$23 million in the upcoming fiscal year. That's up at about $2.5 million over the current year. of that $2.5 million increase. Uh the largest portion of that is the city share of Ryana Water and Sewer, both their uh water operations as

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well as the city's share of water uh debt service for their capital improvements for those projects for which we are um responsible for. Uh as you see there in that pigraph, the largest portion of the water bill of of a citizens water bill goes to Ryana for

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utility supply purchases. that number uh that that that chart looks similar for the last few years although the percentage of that is going up and we are projecting that to go up uh even more over the next few years as Ravana uh fully implements and begins

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construction of it the community water supply plan which I'll touch on here in just a moment you see there on the left uh as part of the customer satisfaction survey uh we asked the question rate the value of the of what you pay for your water service and I think One of the

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messages um we try to convey every year when we come before you is that you know we don't just set rates for the purpose of setting rates. They are to provide reliable, safe um highquality utility services and infrastructure. And so that's really what we're trying to propose is the value proposition that

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yes you are paying for these things but in turn um we think we're providing a good value. And so we we we asked this question uh very deliberately for each of the utilities. 91% uh in and of itself that's a great figure. I will

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tell you it's slightly lower than it has been the last few years. So that certainly sends a signal to us of uh for many things certainly communicating and making sure that folks understand what they are getting for that but also to ensure that we are being as diligent financially as possible to ensure that

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um that we are being mindful that yes we are asking folks to pay for these services for what they use. Were the folks who were unhappy? The ones who had their water line break out on Locust Avenue. >> Uh, you know what? It could it could be a possibility. You know, we don't really

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know who answers these questions, but certainly uh that is a possibility that folks may have had an interaction with our utility staff or may have had one of the very rare disruptions that we do have. Um, but to those folks, uh, I would, uh, opine that, uh, I believe

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that water line was over 100 years old. So, uh, unfortunately, they were living there at the time in a 100-year time span that it happened to be replaced. But, uh, infrastructure is one of those things if you do it right, it pays you back generation after generation. I

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think that's a pretty good example of, uh, the folks who put it in 100 years ago certainly got their money's worth and and useful life out of it. And it's our hope that we do that for the next hundred years. But unfortunately, the folks who are there today are the ones having to bear the the brunt of that

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construction. But again, in the long run, uh, we hope that it pays off. >> Can I ask what the lif expected lifespan of the new ductal iron is? >> I'll leave that to the engineer. >> It's typically So, ductal iron is typically a 50 to 100 year lifespan, but

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>> we're probably more on the the high end of that. It's but it hasn't been around for 100 years, so we we don't know exactly, but they they say that it's 50 to 100. >> Okay. And um is that like the industry standard? >> Yes. >> Okay. Thank you.

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>> And I think it's also important to note that it's not just you you put it in the ground, turn on the water, and forget about it. It also requires adequate asset management and maintenance as well to to to get as much of that useful life out as possible to avoid those expensive replacements that you have to have get

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as much useful life as possible out of the infrastructure. >> Thank you. And as I mentioned, um, Revena's share of the, um, cost of the water utility represent about 56%.

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That's a little bit higher. And again, we're projecting that to get get larger as the, as RWSA uh, fully implements uh, the community water supply plan. You've seen this uh, chart before. This is updated as just the beginning of this calendar year, showing uh, the status of

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the different sections. you can see when they've been awarded um the cost differential between the city and the county and the total project cost uh as it was envisioned at that time. Bottom line of the $264 million of the total project, the vast majority of that is

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related to ACSA, but the city utilities uh are uh responsible for $77 million of that uh of those projects. Um any questions on this before I go past it? Because this is

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this is going to be as you look at water rates over the next few years. Uh we do we do deal detail this a little bit more in the utility rate report. Um this piece of the water budget is going to get bigger and bigger and bigger as these projects come to fruition. Raannah issues all the debt associated with

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those projects and that debt service is fully online. So obviously water rates have increased you know over the past six seven years significantly um with more to come with these projects. Have you calculated out yet

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like a ballpark estimate of over the next you know 3 to 5 years how much this is going to increase rates? >> So we do a projection over the next five years not just of the Ravana piece but all the other pieces associated with the utility rates. I believe the average is

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about 8 to 9% per year um over that time period. Um again those are ballpark. It varies a little bit from year to year. I would caution you though that um a big piece you know big pieces of that are associated with not only Romana's infrastructure but our infrastructure as well. Uh projecting capital costs uh has

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been difficult in recent years and I can't imagine that getting any easier going forward. So again, it's based on the best information that we have available, but then every year as we set utility rates, we're we're getting better estimates of those figures. So again, that's um we provide that to

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provide some, you know, projection of what we think they are. Um and that's where it is now. But again, I would caution it uh with that caveat that so much of that is based on uh capital improvement projects. But I guess you could say like

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with all those cav caveats that people could expect at a minimum around 10% increases annually for a number of years. >> Um I wouldn't go so far as to say that again. The ballpark is 8 to 9% on that average based on projections of what we

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know from uh our historic costs for some of our things. Our projected the debt service associated with city projects. We know what we've issued in the past. We have some idea of what we're going to be issuing going forward. So, so that 8 8 to 9% is the best information we have available for all of those pieces. Um,

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what they ultimately will be, uh, unfortunately my crystal ball isn't quite that clear. >> Thank you. >> On can I ask on that same note, were there several years recently where rates didn't go up and now we're no making up for that?

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>> No. uh water rates and since I've been here in 2015 have gone up to some degree or another over that time except for the for the COVID year we held them flat um just given the circumstances of what were happening what was happening at that time u but they have have have gone

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up to some degree uh over that time and earlier today I looked at it just as an interesting benchmark in 20 since 2019 that compared to what's proposed was just on the water and wastewater side $50 less per month for the average

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customer. So between 2019 and what's proposed, the yearly bill for the average customer has gone up 600 about $600 just on the water side >> for a year, >> right? For the year. So pretty, you know, pretty meaningful. >> Absolutely. Um again, you know, this

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there, you know, as Jason mentioned, you know, safe, reliable, um quality utility services um are not inexpensive. Um and again we um you know they're funded by the water customers, the wastewater

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customers and so forth individually and so um not to go too far down a rabbit hole but unlike say real estate taxes which appreciate and and uh uh the reassessment goes up every year. So that revenue base is expanding again our water and wastewater uh utilities are

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more or less built out uh in terms of number of customers in terms of number of cubic feet of uh gallon or cubic feet of water waste water that are generated. So they're somewhat static yet the costs associated with that do continue to go up. So just the way the math works um

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you do see those rate increases on wastewater. Um the total wastewater revenue requirements for FY27 are roughly uh $20.5 million. This is up 1.4 million from this year. uh related, you know, similar to water. Ravana Water and

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Sewer makes up the biggest chunk of the bill and makes up about $830,000 of that $1.4 million increase um in the revenue requirements from last year to this year. Again, on the left, you see the value uh that folks rate their

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wastewater service 92%. Again, a great a good number uh by itself, but again, it's slightly less than it has been. So uh similar to water that certainly um makes us aware of that to make sure that we are uh doing as much as we can to communicate but also ensure that there

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is value in what folks are paying for their utility services. Storm water uh total storm water revenue requirements are just a touch over $5 million. It's about a $96,000 increase. The big drivers of that are infrastructure related. Um the cash

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portion of the CIP of capital projects that are going to be funded is up about half a million as well as an increase in uh debt service for pro for storm water projects that have been bonded uh goes up about $285,000. Um, one thing I note on this, the 89%,

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this is the lowest of the utilities. Um, which again taken by itself, uh, maybe not a bad number, but it is lower. And in, um, from what Jason and Lauren, what they describe is, um, they really seem that that folks don't really totally understand the storm water utility. What

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are they getting? What's it used for? So, there's been a real effort to, uh, do additional outreach. uh they've referenced the storm water drain art program which I think some of you have seen uh very popular just to uh better communicate exactly what uh the storm

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water utility is and what those funds are used for. So um hopefully that number will be going up as a result of those those outreach efforts. And then finally natural gas uh the total revenue requirements are just a touch over $34 million for the upcoming

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fiscal year. that's about 1.3 million less than they were a year ago. Uh the big driver of that is the decrease in the cost of natural gas which uh we're projecting it's about just a little over $800,000 less than it was a year ago. Um

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you'll see the various you know water sorry gas supply purchase makes up the largest share of that utility bill and you can see the other relative um pieces of that of that pie that go along with that. again 93% uh excellent good or

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fair value. Um one of the other um things I did want to mention is we are applying roughly $600,000 of credits we received as a result of a rate case involving Colombia Gas ourselves with a whole whole host of

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other uh Colombia Gas customers. They're our our supplier uh who actually ship us our gas. Um we're involved in a rate case um against the against them. Uh, April and May of last year was when their new transportation rates went into

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place. Um, our customers paid those much higher than they should have been as the courts ruled in favor of of the defendants in December of 2025. And so to get those to get those funds back to our customers as

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quickly and as efficiently as possible, we're using those credits to offset some of the revenue requirements associated with the gas utility. So that does help uh uh the rates uh to to a degree. Um again for all the folks who are customers and you know relative to how

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much they used um we've done this in the past. We've had another rate case I want to say two three years ago. Um we applied the same uh same methodology again. The idea being that folks were were charged more than they should have been. And so we worked as quickly as we

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could to efficiently get those funds back into folks pockets and to to um make sure that uh they didn't actually overpay to get some uh financial benefit from that. And so uh to start wrapping this up a little bit. So when you look at utility

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bill for water uh wastewater and gas, there really two pieces of it. There's a portion based on how much you use uh the volume metric, the volume you consume and then the monthly service charge for the part of the bill based on what uh a

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customer consumes. You can see those changes uh there. As I noted, natural gas uh is actually going down slightly uh as a result of the decline in the price of natural gas, but also to a lesser degree uh the refunds uh the

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credits that we received um as part of the rate case. And then the other part of the bill, the monthly service charge um for water and wastewater. Right now, it's each $10 per month for somebody with a 5/8 inch water meter. That's your

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average uh residential connection. That's roughly 94% of our customers. As you see there, uh there's a $2.50 uh increase proposed for both water and wastewater to bring that from 20 to $25 a month. And the concept behind the

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monthly service charge is that there are aspects of um utility finances that are fixed regardless of how much of the utility you consume. there are just certain costs associated with either being a customer or costs that the

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utility is responsible for regardless of how much we uh actually wind up using. Debt service is actually a really good example of that because we have an obligation to pay that um no matter what. And so and you see that it does vary based on the size of the water

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meter um going all the way up to a 14inch meter. We only have one of those. That's the University of Virginia. Um their water bill is quite large. So, uh, that the number you see there is large, but it's proportionate to how much they also use. Uh, but again, for 94% of our customers, it would be a $5 a month, uh,

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increase for those two monthly service charges. There no changes being proposed to the natural gas uh, monthly service charge, which is $10 per month. U, that concludes our formal presentation. We have to answer any questions you might have. Now, uh, as a

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reminder, this is also a public hearing and so, uh, >> just in time. You you you're losing some of us, man. Just in time. >> Um, it we're asking questions as we were going along, but are there any questions now?

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>> Sure. The what you just spoke on in the gas credit, why do we do a rate reduction rather than a bill credit? We don't do the bill credit um because it was based on certain to do that uh we

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haven't actually done this before but just as I thought through the exercise of doing that we would have to go back to figure out who were customers at that time how much did they consume what was the price of gas at that point in time and then you know another real challenge would be given the transient nature of our community can we find those folks

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now majority of folks are still at the address where they were but certainly not everybody And again doing the credit is not as precise as well. But um but the it seems that the to me that the mechanations that I've just described to do that versus um we got the credit we can apply

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it against the gas rates that uh goes out to everybody who's a customer. And again it does vary it will vary based on how much they use at that time because it's actually in the volumetric rate of that. So, um, perhaps there's no perfect, uh, way of doing that, but that seems to be the most efficient, most

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timely way of getting that back rather than taking more and more time for us to try to figure out those things. >> Thank you. I have one more question, which is um, what affordability protections exist for low-inccome utility customers?

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>> Sure. Um for natural gas the largest one is uh the lie he program the fedally administered lie he program that actually is is administered on the local level by our department of social services um they handle that um it's incomebased uh they there's a whole

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process associated that's a very uh wellestablished uh federal program we also do have some uh we do have some funds within our gas budget within those revenue requirements that you saw for assistance programs similarly we also have local funds available for water and wastewater as well. Last year we

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increased the uh water and wastewater credits from $150 per year per utility to 250. So it went from 300 in total to 500 in total. Uh the simplest explanation being that the the the 150

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was put in in roughly 2012 and obviously as council member Payne referred to referenced utility rates have gone up over that time as though the math actually just kind of worked out that if you compound those increases on top of the 150 it gets you to about 250. So

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again, it was, you know, that adjustment was was needed and due to make sure that the assistant program is keeping up with those rate increases. >> And so if residents need to activate that, they contact you or >> uh they contact our utility billing office. >> Okay. Thank you.

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>> Is that it for now? Lloyd, do you have any questions or comments? Do you have any additional? >> Yeah, I have a couple questions that um I've already gotten a chance to ask, but I wanted to ask them for the benefit of uh the public, which is in the um I don't know if it's worth bringing up

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this slide of but the last one with the proposed monthly service charge and the adjustment. One of my questions was um it's a 25% up charge across the board. Was there a way to do a um like a

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stepped up charge? So the larger the uh water meter, the larger the increase to offset some of the the lower ones. And you answered >> the answer is uh the short and simple answer is no. Uh because again that that

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um that table is based upon the size of the water meters. And so there you want to maintain some proportionality between how big is a 58 inch water meter versus a 14inch water meter. And again uh that's a that's a set ratio. And so uh

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in order to you know to equitably distribute those those fixed costs across those customers based on that you see that it's 25% per water meter side even though the dollar amount does differ uh accordingly.

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>> Um thank you. And then um part of the where are my notes? Um uh one of my other questions was since there's savings in the gas side of things, why can't that rate stay the

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same and we discount one of the other um uh utilities as you explained? >> Sure. Uh so again, it goes back to the concept of enterprise fund accounting and that each one is separate. um gas payers pay for gas service and

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infrastructure, not water, not waste water, not storm water. And and and that's true for each of those. So there's no uh crossing of money across the utilities um as a result of that. >> Thanks. Even though it's managed by you all, it is a separate. >> Correct. Each each one is a separate pot

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of money for a lack of a better term. Um and then um for the offsets that have that were mentioned earlier um some of this price increase goes towards purchasing offsets. >> Um so in in the in the gas utility um I

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believe the amount is just a little over $300,000 for next year. So that is built into those revenue requirements that you see uh listed on that chart and built into the rate calculations accordingly. >> Okay. And can you remind me what we're doing with our offsets? I'm gonna defer

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to Jason on that >> please. >> Sure. So when we we had talked about that the the thought was to renew for one year to give the office of sustainability a chance to uh see what else was out there. So then um if

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there's anything local, any other programs that we can invest in, we could do it at that time. But that's that was the the direction that we were provided and um that's that's what we went with. And for the projects that are available

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on the menu, how much control do we have about picking them? >> Um, we do have some control. I wouldn't say we have absolute control over that, but we can provide our our supplier with what kind of projects we would like to

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see happen. Um, but we can't, you know, we're not going to be able to say we want to do this specific project. >> And have we provided that information? >> We have not. We um we're actually in a process with the contract now. So we're

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uh we we have not had those conversations yet. >> Uh is the office of sustainability in these conversations? >> They will be. Yes. Okay. >> Picking those projects. Yes. And I think they were, if I recall correctly, they were involved the first time when we

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when we uh first started with carbon offsets back in 2021. >> Okay. Um, I think I I mean I certainly don't want to speak for everybody here, but I think if we do have any kind of say in the direction of where we can

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point that money, um, making sure it is highest best use, definitely not a wind farm funding an oil rig, um, or uh, you know, just making sure that that is going towards as high a quality project as we possibly can direct it. while we

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do look at um how we can spend that money differently next year. >> Understood. >> Can I say that everyone? >> Yeah. >> That okay. >> Yes. >> Thank you, >> Michael. >> I want wastefulness. >> Along that uh line of questioning, so

397
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you know, a small portion of the natural gas utility fees obviously go to carbon offset. So, it is relevant to this conversation. Um, when is the the deadline for making a finalized decision

398
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about whether to continue with BP carbon offsets for one year or not? >> Um, well, we we actually just got the contract today. Um, so that's uh that has not been signed, but we were planning on moving forward with that.

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Um, so, uh, if if those conversations need to happen, then we need to speak with city management and and figure that out very quickly. >> Yeah. Well, I would certainly say my my perspective is I don't think it should be renewed for a year. I think we would be better off investing that money into

400
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local initiatives. Um, I just structurally don't think there is a way for those BP carbon offsets to accomplish what we want. Um, so that's at least where I am at. Um, and you know, that's that's >> good to know. I time is urgent, but it

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isn't finalized yet, but I guess it's approaching the deadline for when you make a decision to extend by a year or not. Correct. >> Do you know when that that final decision will occur? >> I No, I do not. I do not know that this time. I don't know what that deadline is, but we were we were planning on

402
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moving on it very quickly because like Chris said, we have already we've picked it into the rates and that's what we were going to to do. Can I follow up on that? Do you mind? So, that is something that we've at least I know I've expressed as well that we're not gung-ho about the one-year

403
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extension, but what was explained to us was that there was a fiduciary obligation to ensure highest certification of whatever the money goes towards or something. Can you explain a little bit more about

404
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how we need to why we're doing this or why we've been kind of >> why we're doing what >> in the one-year extension instead of um a quicker turnaround and figuring out what what locally we could do instead or regionally. Part of why we haven't moved

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on locally is because we haven't identified what the local alternatives are and whether or not there are uh mitigation offsets clearly understood so that the trade-off would be known therefore to be considered which projects should we invest in

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>> right that's what I mean we have like a fiduciary obligation to spend the money on something that is certified and >> I don't know the lingo but like it can't just be >> something that we know will be good locally. It has to there's some

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qualifying board that has to approve it or something. >> This is the the understanding that this is using enterprise funds, right? So, we are obligated uh to use the money that people pay as part of paying their paying for their gas service

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um towards things that that actually relate back to the gas utility. And so if we're if we're using the money to offset the carbon impact, that's a qualifying use. But we have to demonstrate that the that the that in

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fact that those those those dollars are um are are going to uh to offset the carbon. So when we refer back to the the uh the lo the local ones um when when we

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looked into this issue anything that might resemble a local project in order to offset the same amount of carbon that we were that these other projects are offsetting it was it would require something like I'm not going to remember exactly but like planting a forest that was like three times the size of the

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city right um the the the enormity of of the of of the scale and the cost to applied here locally meant that we would be not coming anywhere near actually offsetting the carbon impacts of the of the gas uses us usage the level what we're doing. So that is the reason for

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the one-year study period to look into this is what are the what are the actual options and what what what are the things that we can do that meet our fiduciary responsibility to those rate payers for the level of of for for what they're meeting the expectation which is

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to offset the carbon use not to do projects that that that may have that benefit to a limited extent but don't do it to the extent that >> so the metric we're trying to meet is the carbon an offset, not the spending of the money. And what is the risk we

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take? Is some someone going to sue us or who is holding us to that obligation >> for for carbon mitigation? Is what you're saying? >> Yes. >> So that's that's something. So the carbon offsets that we use uh give us a

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very high carbon offset. >> Sorry. No, I mean um >> spending the money. >> Yeah. You said we have an obligation to do this. an obligation to whom? >> Can I just can't say it's a question I've considered at great length. Um however

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um it's a wellstated principle of law that we do have to use enterprise funds for costs that are attributable to the enterprise itself. And if the um if we're seeking to offset carbon, there's not some magic number. You offset this much, you're good. You offset this much, you're not. But whatever project we um

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put money to needs to be traceable back to the lack of a better term damage that is done to the environment by our burning of fossil fuels. If it's if it's very high um that we're offsetting the carbon, we're obviously meeting that standard. If it's not, somebody else could potentially have standing to sue

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because they are paying money for this enterprise. as if it's being turned to something that is not actually um arguably meaningfully offsetting or attributable to a cost or damage caused by the utility itself, then they could potentially bring suit on that basis.

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>> So, um basically the way that that money was marketed to people, their expectation is that this is doing a certain amount of carbon offsets. >> So, if we a potential recourse for us is that we change that

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description so that people >> change the objective, >> right? Change the objective where >> right now we're offsetting some significant percentage and we could offset far less. >> Yeah. And we could tell people instead of this money going to buy carbon offsets, it's going towards local

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projects with some different scale of metric. >> And then the other element of it is is the certification, >> right? being able to say for for good, better, or indifferent, the the program we're using today

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identifies a uh is is certified by some standard as far as the offsets that are >> well only if we're advertising carbon offsets. >> I want I want to be clear, I'm not saying there's a marketing kind of risk that we're engaging in false advertising or something like that. Um it's just the principle that enterprise funds need to

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be used for a cost attributable to the enterprise. We have a lot of latitude there to use use the funds and if it's being used to offset a tremendous amount of carbon off in one way of spending the money or it's being used to but the council wants to make a trade-off and spend it locally but you're also

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offsetting a far lesser amount of carbon. As long as it's still tied to the utility and a cost that's attributable to the utility then it's my take that we would be okay from a legal standpoint. >> Okay. And so then so that's what we're looking

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>> but as you can see in the conversation we're having right now we're asking for time >> to to study this issue but in the meantime suggesting that we continue for another year >> and we're not able to just pause for a year.

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>> We could pause but that is also in the rate already. We've already put that into the revenue >> and we can't collect that money, set it aside, spend it next year once we have the project sorted. >> You want to speak to that, Chris?

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>> That appears to be inappropriate. You're collecting for something you haven't done. >> Yeah, that's and even though the even the dollar amount may not seem much, it's still the the practice and the and the legal guidance. That's that's just not a good thing to do. If you I can

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avoid it. >> And and so the the only fix to that would be like today or when is the I know this is the first advertisement. When is it due? Like how much time do we have left to readvertise a different

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rate? >> I'm not sure if they have amended. >> They've made an amendment. We recalculated. Do we have to re >> you have to redo the budget >> if it's reduced? Do we have to >> I don't know. to readvertising, >> but these rates do need to go tax 30 30 days. I

430
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>> I I've not looked into that question of whether we have to readvertise if the council decided to change the uh the rate between this meeting and the next. I can certainly look into that though and give you an answer if that would be helpful. >> Sure. I mean the sorry is this

431
02:02:23.440 --> 02:02:40.480
um not menu item uh agenda item um is this public hearing? >> Yes. Yes. >> I've got it for the first one. Okay. And I would just say um briefly as I understand it, I think it's the question of carbon offsets is a

432
02:02:40.480 --> 02:02:56.159
policy question for city council. Um as I understand it, you know, we are not legally obligated to use BP carbon offsets. We are not legally obligated to have it fall within the um grading metric that BP's offsets use. We are not

433
02:02:56.159 --> 02:03:11.920
legally required to have the account carbon accounting look the same for a local offset versus what BP's offsets would do. So, it really does come down to a policy question for city council of do weigh what on paper BP's offsets say

434
02:03:11.920 --> 02:03:27.199
they're doing versus what would be a lower amount on paper without question for a local offset. Um, and again, where where I'm at is I think the the proper approach would be to not renew the year extension for the BP carbon offsets, and

435
02:03:27.199 --> 02:03:43.920
I do think that would give us um force the city to find alternative local offsets, which I think we would be able to do, but um I think the year delay just kind of allows us to um you know, have a year of not needing to do that.

436
02:03:43.920 --> 02:03:58.960
Um >> that's not the agreement that's been offered. So, I'm just pointing that out. This is not a tactic to avoid making a change. This is to buy us the time to make an informed decision. >> Understood. I just think we would have,

437
02:03:58.960 --> 02:04:13.920
you know, a little bit more urgency to get there. Um, otherwise without an extension. Um, but that's it for questions on my end. And again, would just acknowledge um, you know, since 2019 just on water and and wastewater,

438
02:04:13.920 --> 02:04:32.239
the average yearly bill going up by $600. Just acknowledging that uh absolutely this requires investment and costs are always going up. Um but just important to acknowledge I mean that's a real hit people feel. >> Okay. So there's no other questions or

439
02:04:32.239 --> 02:04:52.400
comments at this time. Don't think there's anyone here for the public hearing but I will open up the public hearing. Anyone not? Yes. >> Yeah. uh Cybo Flynn community climate collaborative obviously I just would like to respond to a couple of what the pieces that I was hearing um around

440
02:04:52.400 --> 02:05:08.719
offsets and around you know our future responsibility and everything carbon offsets the carbon offset market as is well understood I think by most people who are making these decisions it's a voluntary market it's not regulated there is as um as councelor Payne said

441
02:05:08.719 --> 02:05:23.840
there is no we we're not obligated to use BP we're not obligated to use this one particular type of methodology As I mentioned, Vera Cararbon, which um which was the holder of four of the five projects that we funded last year that retired credits on our behalf without

442
02:05:23.840 --> 02:05:39.520
any say so from the office of sustainability. Um they are they have been found to be one of the they are the worst offender for problematic credits. They are not uh they're not for example the American carbon registry has some

443
02:05:39.520 --> 02:05:54.480
kind of slightly more I don't know slightly more like palatable nature-based um offset projects that you can look at but we are subsidizing if we want to talk about vulnerability to you know not actually meeting the purpose of the enterprise funds we have been

444
02:05:54.480 --> 02:06:10.480
funding uh the operational efficiency of expansion of oil fields in Argentina that is that is a fact like that's a fact I can show you all I will be sending you the all of this stuff. But it's just I mean we could decide, you

445
02:06:10.480 --> 02:06:26.800
could decide. I know it's annoying. I know it's tough, but that's $300,000 is what we were seeing. We were told, we were shown um was uh put into weatherization energy efficiency last year. That's how much we're just saying, okay, can we buy ourselves some time for

446
02:06:26.800 --> 02:06:43.920
a whole year? That's the entire amount that we put in last year to weatherization from the enterprise fund. As I understood the the presentation, you could just double that like that. We have the infrastructure. We know that we can pay into existing uh home weatherization groups. We can pay, you

447
02:06:43.920 --> 02:06:59.280
know, LEAP to do this type of stuff. We can there are a lot of Charlottesville gas customers that could benefit from this directly. Um I just it's it's kind of it seems like the obvious thing to do. Um that's yeah, I guess that's all I can say.

448
02:06:59.280 --> 02:07:14.560
>> Thank you. Are there other um public comments at this time? If not, I'll close the public hearing and um we'll um vote on this at the next

449
02:07:14.560 --> 02:07:29.920
meeting. But as the other comments from council to give staff um direction. And I think the big one is that we I don't know if we have to do that with this motion to approve the um

450
02:07:29.920 --> 02:07:47.199
whether we extend the um agreement for another year. Did you need direction on on from us? >> I have a contract coming. I mean, if you're choosing to not do that, then I need that direction. >> Okay. So, if we could just um because we

451
02:07:47.199 --> 02:08:03.119
have other hearings, just kind of go down and let them share your thoughts. Jen, do would you support um the >> Could I before we chat? Is this something that you could know by the end of the week or do you need to know right

452
02:08:03.119 --> 02:08:18.960
now? >> What do you mean >> if we want to sign a contract? >> Yeah, >> I mean, yeah, you'd have to tell me. >> Right. But like by the end of the week or right now? I mean, you have to do it in a meeting. It's a That would be a vote. >> Okay. >> I mean, it's a pol it is a policy

453
02:08:18.960 --> 02:08:34.719
decision. That's really where you are at this moment. This is a crossroads moment is what it should feel like it. Um, if we're not going to extend the carbon offsets, you have to give that direction. As we have brought forward the the utility rates, the assumption

454
02:08:34.719 --> 02:08:50.800
was that we were working with the agreed plan that we would extend for another year. give us the ability to do the work to figure out what good quality local options exist, put a package together as to what we might even recommend on how to deploy those funds. We might even ask

455
02:08:50.800 --> 02:09:08.079
for more funds depending on what those things are. And then if that is the pleasure of this council, that would be the action that we would take going forward. That's the plan that we are working today. Not optional, a commitment.

456
02:09:08.079 --> 02:09:23.760
Jin >> and the piece about still taking a year to find a use but this year doubling the >> the reference to just doubling weatherization. I have no way of knowing

457
02:09:23.760 --> 02:09:38.560
for sure that we can do all that work in a year. So is kind of our option. We either do >> extend a year or don't for a year and we wait until >> the where you are today is what you have directed or authorized is to extend it for another year. >> Right.

458
02:09:38.560 --> 02:09:55.440
>> If you're looking to change that then you have to take that action for me. >> And what would be um I remember seeing there was like a rate um calculator where if you buy one year it's this much money. If you buy five years it's this much money. I I feel

459
02:09:55.440 --> 02:10:12.320
like we are not excited to re-up with BP after the one year. >> We're not even proposing that at this time, >> right? Um I'm just making sure that there wasn't a like rate implic. It's not really that important.

460
02:10:12.320 --> 02:10:27.599
>> Well, I guess that is there any future rate implication by action of signing the agreement? Whatever agreement is about to be signed, is it just this one year? As far as I'm aware, it's one year >> and we can get out of the contract. I

461
02:10:27.599 --> 02:10:43.440
can verify over there. We'll make sure he verifies that there's no commitment. We haven't appreciated that there's a commitment because we sign this regularly. Well, if if we if we don't end up spending the

462
02:10:43.440 --> 02:11:02.239
$300,000, I mean, the vote that we've got to take separate from your decision, the vote that we have to take on rates is I mean, we're not voting on the entire enterprise fund budget. We don't have to approve everything in

463
02:11:02.239 --> 02:11:17.920
that budget. And if it happened that the numbers because we didn't end up spending that $300,000, if it turns out that the enterprise fund turned a little bit of a an added gain that it was perhaps unanticipated, I don't think that that's

464
02:11:17.920 --> 02:11:35.840
a legal problem. No, I mean my my inclination would be uh actually let me ask $300,000 as I recall from the numbers like $20 million worth of gas money something

465
02:11:35.840 --> 02:11:52.239
like that. So we're talking about one one and a half% something like that. >> Um are you referring to if we took the $300,000 out? >> Yeah. uh you know it's 1% of roughly 34 million >> and we've already already charging a

466
02:11:52.239 --> 02:12:10.560
lower rate this coming year on on gas. >> I mean so if we decided we uh that we had so little confidence in BP with that we didn't want to give them another $300,000 of our money. I

467
02:12:10.560 --> 02:12:24.960
mean, as I recall, when we looked at these numbers, maybe it was just in uh independent meetings or something, maybe it wasn't in a public meeting, but we looked at the me at the numbers and decided that it would be

468
02:12:24.960 --> 02:12:41.679
basically so much more. I mean, it would be basically impossible to duplicate the numbers that BP was telling us they were giving us. >> Sure. because I think you maybe you mentioned it basically mean planting a forest this three times the size of the city of

469
02:12:41.679 --> 02:12:56.320
Charlottesville. But if the numbers BP is giving us are bogus, then all bets are off in that respect. And I I'm I'm toying I'm really trying to

470
02:12:56.320 --> 02:13:13.280
figure out how I how I think about it. I will admit that I've always thought that the notion of paying for carbon offsets for something that's happening halfway around the world that we can't personally verify is always a little bit, you know, I I've never I've never been very happy about that. I think I

471
02:13:13.280 --> 02:13:30.480
said so in an earlier meeting, but I if we think that the numbers that BP is giving us uh are are accurate or I suppose another way to look at it is uh if we if we think that they are

472
02:13:30.480 --> 02:13:45.440
not reliable or if we think that the amount of actual benefit to to the the world ecosystem is not in fact all that it's cracked up to be because they're the the energy is going to to more oil

473
02:13:45.440 --> 02:14:00.960
drilling, then that's that's a decision that bothers me a lot more than I was expecting to be bothered before Mrs. Flynn talked about all this stuff. Um, and I don't know,

474
02:14:00.960 --> 02:14:16.880
I'm I'm happy to assume that you are reliable in this respect, and I'm happy to assume that there are in fact some some details and some facts behind all of that. because we're on a a first and second reading basis. I don't know that we need

475
02:14:16.880 --> 02:14:32.880
to resolve the problem tonight. But I will say my inclination is to say if I had a choice between uh sending money to BP for things that I'm not sure that I trust them on versus uh doubling the size of our weatherization budget

476
02:14:32.880 --> 02:14:49.679
locally. My bias would be towards doubling the size of our local weatherization budget. >> Can I clarify? I think the choice is between one more year of BP and not doing a and a year of not doing any kind of carbon offset program or local

477
02:14:49.679 --> 02:15:07.920
investment. >> Um that I suppose that's also an option. So, I think we know where you >> Well, I I I really appreciate that this is probably crazy frustrating for staff

478
02:15:07.920 --> 02:15:23.920
who did their due diligence and talked to us in advance and tried to get where we wanted to be. Um, I think I also was under the impression we were a little more constrained than we actually might be. And if we

479
02:15:23.920 --> 02:15:39.440
can um if we do have the latitude to pause for a year during the year we study instead of spend for a year during the year we study. I would be inclined to

480
02:15:39.440 --> 02:15:59.920
pause. >> Okay. >> Oh yeah. I mean, as I've said and said again tonight, I think um my perspective is to not renew for a year. I think we could easily, you know, we've got partner organizations like LEAP doing work on the ground that could easily

481
02:15:59.920 --> 02:16:15.760
deploy $300,000 um and have some sort of um counting about uh carbon reductions um through the weatherization and energy efficiency work they do. Um that's where I'm at. I

482
02:16:15.760 --> 02:16:32.639
know we we never had a motion related to um the one-year contract extension. I don't even know if we need a motion either tonight or at the next meeting, but right now the only thing on your on your uh agenda is a public hearing on the

483
02:16:32.639 --> 02:16:49.439
ordinance about setting the rates. So, it' be it wouldn't be completely out of order for you to amend and make a motion now. However, I maybe suggest waiting till the next meeting to do so. And is it it's different than the tax rate where we can advertise whatever we want and then charge anything below it. This is advertising for the actual rate.

484
02:16:49.439 --> 02:17:04.880
Correct. >> As I said, I have not delved into this question in any great detail and it's just now the question is just now being presented to me. So I'll be happy to research that in between and get utility staff an answer just as quickly as I can. >> And and just to be clear, the question

485
02:17:04.880 --> 02:17:21.120
is do you have to set this go with this rate or can you lower the rate and adopt it and next one at the next meeting? I I will look into that >> for the lower rate. >> Yes. >> Yep. Okay. Thank you. Um the

486
02:17:21.120 --> 02:17:38.000
>> And again, thank you staff for trying to understand where we were in advance. >> Please pass it on to the next meeting. >> Yeah. Yeah. Because it's I closed the public hearing and it's a I mentioned that it's a first of two readings. >> It sounded like you were wrapping up and

487
02:17:38.000 --> 02:17:54.319
never mind. >> Yeah. Yeah. No, I am going to item number 11 if it's all if we ready. Um public hearing an ordinance to amend the and reordain chapter 31 of the code of Charlottesville

488
02:17:54.319 --> 02:18:10.559
um 1990 as amended to establish a connection fee for new gas service. The first of um two readings. >> All right. So, um, as you all are probably aware,

489
02:18:10.559 --> 02:18:25.679
uh, the we we started a new connection fee for gas, uh, connections and that went active or went live January 1st of, 2025. That was $340 for that that connection fee. Um, what we are

490
02:18:25.679 --> 02:18:46.240
proposing, >> it's not up yet. >> It's not up yet. your >> Remy, do you have a slide deck? There we go. >> Not that >> that was a a graph that I was potentially interested in if somebody

491
02:18:46.240 --> 02:19:05.760
wanted to talk about that. >> Yeah. Well, there we go. All right. Thank you. So for the background um so requests for new gas installations you can see here

492
02:19:05.760 --> 02:19:21.439
they have significantly decreased over the past seven to eight years. Uh this past year we had 95 new requests seven of which were in the city 88 were in the county. Um so that decline has been 75% over the past uh 7 to eight years. Um,

493
02:19:21.439 --> 02:19:35.040
currently, as I said, we offer installation of gas services at $340 up to 150 feet to residential customers if the gas use is for qualifying appliances like furnace or water heater. Uh, generators are not a qualifying

494
02:19:35.040 --> 02:19:51.920
appliance, but uh, as an example. So, what we are proposing, we had a a consultant look at our rate and they found some opportunity costs that we had not included before, mainly labor. And so what we're proposing is that starting

495
02:19:51.920 --> 02:20:08.240
January 1st, 2027, uh we would no longer offer the service line installations at $340 for residential customers. And we would uh have a new connection fee of $1,950 for residential service for up to 150 ft

496
02:20:08.240 --> 02:20:24.720
of installation. Then any service that's longer than 150 ft as it is now, the the um customer would be responsible for paying for that installation cost. Um, so the the connection fee, as I said, it's it's it's a cost of service fee.

497
02:20:24.720 --> 02:20:42.680
It's what it cost us to actually go out and install the line and the meter and all the pertinances involved with that. Um, but again, $1,950 connection fee is what we're we're proposing. And uh, with that, I'll take any questions.

498
02:20:43.280 --> 02:20:58.319
>> Um, Natie Nat. >> Um, no, I'm just happy to see this. I know this was something that we had talked about last year and it seemed unfathomable that $340 captured the extent of the project. >> Uh and this I mean I this feels more in

499
02:20:58.319 --> 02:21:15.920
line with what I would imagine um the the actual labor >> um costs are. So I appreciate that looking into that readjustment. >> Um and that's all I have. Any questions? Thank you, >> Lloy. >> So this is basically the marginal cost,

500
02:21:15.920 --> 02:21:31.600
>> correct? That's that's >> but the full marginal cost as opposed to >> to just >> what it had been right >> to just material. >> Jen no questions. >> U Michael you have any comment? >> No. Likewise I think it's a move in the

501
02:21:31.600 --> 02:21:49.120
right direction but no questions. >> Yeah. >> Y makes sense. I'll open up the public hearing if anyone wants to speak on this. >> Yeah. Okay. Cable plan community collaborative. Um just want to welcome this. This is a good move. Um we raised

502
02:21:49.120 --> 02:22:04.720
this last year when the very small amount of you know additional connection fee was was put up. It just clearly was not going to disincentivize anyone to join into Shardsville Gas really. Um and this is a much needed uh measure so people can actually start to see the

503
02:22:04.720 --> 02:22:22.479
real cost of connecting to fossil fuels in our community. So thank you for this move. >> Thank you. Any other comments? >> Quick question. Um, do we know how many uh hookups were added in the last year

504
02:22:22.479 --> 02:22:37.920
>> just for reference? >> So, it was it was 95 total. Seven were in the city and 88 were in the county. >> Okay. And do you know if they were large scale or small scale, residential or commercial? >> I don't know that off the top of my head, but I imagine most of them are residential.

505
02:22:37.920 --> 02:22:53.520
>> Okay. Thank you. So, I will close uh the public hearing. Um, and this is the first of two hearings. So, we'll vote on this at the next meeting.

506
02:22:53.520 --> 02:23:13.840
>> Does this one go on consent? >> It's fine with me. >> Yeah, >> I think it's pretty pretty simple. >> All right. Thank you. The next item is a resolution to appropriate 2,776,9 and 700 I'm sorry $696

507
02:23:13.840 --> 02:23:30.560
>> Lauren >> I'm sorry I was going to let you finish >> in in additional funding from the Virginia Office of Children Services to support at risk children and families. Um first of two readings Mr. >> Before you do that Mr. Mayor, if I could

508
02:23:30.560 --> 02:23:46.960
have one indulgence, Miss Hild debrand, would you come up? Um, I just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge um Lauren has announced her retirement. So, this is her last rate setting of >> Did you just make that decision?

509
02:23:46.960 --> 02:24:02.800
>> If she hadn't, she would. >> So, just want to acknowledge her service, her dedicated service to the city of Charlottesville. She has been a model strong leader and just wanted to give a chance for you all to share anything that you would like to because

510
02:24:02.800 --> 02:24:19.200
there's only two meetings left because August 1st >> August 1st >> August 1 will be it for her. So >> um just wanted to give you a moment to acknowledge that as well. >> Yes. So um I just like to say is that steady leadership in a position like

511
02:24:19.200 --> 02:24:35.680
this is is is critical. Um I just been to a few conferences. um as you know my in my capacity and and Charlottesville Gas and Utilities is one of those things that you know that it's a shining bright star for um the city

512
02:24:35.680 --> 02:24:50.960
particularly you know after what happened in in Richmond and and I I recall when that happened last January I immediately called Sam he said we good he said we good I recall that so thank

513
02:24:50.960 --> 02:25:06.160
you so much and I hope that you can rejoin retire comment. I It's almost It's one year for me and you're going to be like me. You're going to wish you had done it like you're doing before. So, anyone else like to say anything? >> Thank you so much.

514
02:25:06.160 --> 02:25:23.120
>> Thanks. >> I joked the other day, which I'll say again, that um it's utilities gets beat up a lot because I think there's like this awkward thing where the city has our climate commitment and the natural gas utilities, the fossil fuel infrastructure. But it is funny that uh

515
02:25:23.120 --> 02:25:39.439
I I always think of utilities as our most socialist department because you're a publicly ran um major part of our market and many localities have privately ran ones. And in all seriousness, I think it points to the fact that cities really can run public

516
02:25:39.439 --> 02:25:53.680
infrastructure and have it run extremely professionally, competently, and well over a period of decades, which is what um our utilities have been. You look at Petersburg, Richmond, other peer localities, we haven't had issues with payments, with quality of service. So,

517
02:25:53.680 --> 02:26:09.840
um it's um I don't know, utilities get beat up sometime, but the quality and professionalism service really is I think um the best in Virginia, which I think I've always noticed as a counselor. And it's it's not the most important

518
02:26:09.840 --> 02:26:26.160
thing, but it's certainly not insignificant, which is often leadership, especially in departments like public works, utilities, and government in general, is often very male-dominated. And so I just wanted to to appreciate the fact that um that

519
02:26:26.160 --> 02:26:42.960
seeing you in a leadership position is um is a benefit to other other folks who are either looking to lead or also in in positions. So, um, of I mean up here when I I remember my first meeting when you showed up, I was like, "Cool."

520
02:26:42.960 --> 02:26:59.439
Um, so it's it, you know, little boosts like that really are are helpful. Um, and so I really appreciate you for for your leadership and and dedication to the city. >> And I would just add that the best thing that about you and your job is that you have not been the news.

521
02:26:59.439 --> 02:27:15.680
>> Yeah. I I've often said my my grandfather was a burough engineer of Middle Sex of Matuchen, New Jersey and the county engineer in Middle Sex, New Jersey. Uh Middle Sex County and he used to say if your business is

522
02:27:15.680 --> 02:27:32.280
infrastructure and it's exciting, you're doing it wrong. >> You're doing it right. Thank you. >> Enjoy. Um, Leon, I think. Do you have

523
02:27:32.560 --> 02:27:48.560
>> Chrissy? >> Oh, did I miss one? >> Who's presenting? Chrissy. Leon. >> Leon. >> Nose Ghost. >> I was presenting. I thought I was questions.

524
02:27:48.560 --> 02:28:03.520
>> Um, >> yeah. So, so I'll read it from from this So the uh so what we're asking for uh through the CSA funds which is the children's services act we are asking for more

525
02:28:03.520 --> 02:28:19.040
funds to be allocated to our department um for for several reasons um well but the but the primary uh issue is that um over time over this past year we have increased in costs. So therefore uh we

526
02:28:19.040 --> 02:28:34.479
just we need the money to be allocated to our department. Um you know so I can explain why these costs have increased but it's 2 million uh the 700 uh uh $600,96 but the that's the portion of it the

527
02:28:34.479 --> 02:28:50.399
entire portion that we're asking to be allocated to our department. Um so we do a lot of a lot of those funds are also federal funds. uh the portion uh that would be coming from the city is 423,546. Uh so that would be uh the city's

528
02:28:50.399 --> 02:29:06.080
portion of those funds and then there's also 100 um 100,000 uh $133,147 as well that actually comes from the school system as well. So uh but that together would equal the the total amount of funds that would be going into

529
02:29:06.080 --> 02:29:21.840
our department. Um it is a lot of money. it's a large increase and what we're seeing is that you know over the past 3 years there's been increases. Um last year's increase was similar in size but not to this level but what we're finding

530
02:29:21.840 --> 02:29:37.280
is when you look at the past several years um uh there's been a large increase with regards to children coming into foster care. Um, so three years prior, uh, there were 48 kids in foster care. As of the last time that I got

531
02:29:37.280 --> 02:29:52.960
information, which was like last week, there was like 105 children in foster care. So that number has increased about 100% within the past uh, two years, but this past year since um, this past year, it's been actually stable with regards

532
02:29:52.960 --> 02:30:09.680
to the 105. Um but we're seeing that uh since CO um there's also been just a significant increase in our cases. Um if you look at FY24 compared to FY25 uh there's been an increase in substantiated referrals. Um where in

533
02:30:09.680 --> 02:30:26.319
FY24 there was around 323 referrals that were substantiated. On this uh FY25 there was close to 500 referrals as substantiated. So our case loads have increased. Uh so when you add the increase of foster care and then you add

534
02:30:26.319 --> 02:30:42.960
the um uh special education programs through the school uh which is our largest uh increase is through the special education programs through the schools and then you also look at our prevention services uh that piece where we're uh doing every effort that we can

535
02:30:42.960 --> 02:30:59.280
to try to prevent children from coming into foster care. when you look at that uh those numbers uh in order to do that work um it's costing more. Um uh a big part of the increase in the cost are things such as you know there's an increase in uh mental health uh in the

536
02:30:59.280 --> 02:31:15.760
community. You know there's an increase in uh substance use in the community. There's an increase in domestic violence in the community. There's uh housing issues. Um, you know, at times we have to use these funds to prevent potentially a child from coming into foster care because of what's the issue

537
02:31:15.760 --> 02:31:32.479
at hand is housing. You know, a parent may be able to meet their child's uh social emotional needs, but with regards to if they don't have a place to stay, then you know how we can't have children on the street, you know. Um and then in the absence of a family shelter, you

538
02:31:32.479 --> 02:31:46.880
know, oftentimes it leaves us in situations where we may potentially have to place a family in a hotel, you know, without a a potential plan, you know, and work a plan in order to to um uh ensure that these the family stays

539
02:31:46.880 --> 02:32:02.080
connected. Um so, you know, so there's a lot of complexities around the work that we do. Um really we're we're making every effort we can to keep families stabilized. Um at times foster care is the only other option. Um but one thing

540
02:32:02.080 --> 02:32:17.840
I think um that I would share is that we also lead the state with regards to kinship placements. But even in kinship placements, we're still providing like a financial support um um uh to ensure that these uh family members have what they need in order to meet their loved

541
02:32:17.840 --> 02:32:33.120
ones needs. you know, there's times that we will use these funds for uh purchasing a bed, you know, to to um food to uh transportation for visitation so that they can uh so a child in foster care can see their family. Um it could

542
02:32:33.120 --> 02:32:48.160
be uh uh funding that we use for say a mentor or or for individ a child in the community go out and have mentor support that they may not have that within their home environment. you know, it could be um you know, just a variety of different

543
02:32:48.160 --> 02:33:04.319
uh of needs that present that we utilize these funds to to meet. Um and as time goes on, you know, and we look at uh social economics and poverty, we look at the increase in population, we look at increased housing concerns, um you know,

544
02:33:04.319 --> 02:33:21.040
I can't predict if this number is going to be different or next next fiscal year or or or or get bigger. I mean we work with really complicated situations, complicated families and in lie of the fact that there's also certain things coming down the pipeline like say for

545
02:33:21.040 --> 02:33:37.600
example um SNAP benefits being cut or for example Medicaid work requirement and you know people being disenrolled um um support for our immigrant population. So there's a lot that's going on in social services. um our team members every day we're doing everything we can

546
02:33:37.600 --> 02:33:53.520
to figure out ways to best support families as best as we can. Um the reality is that you know these resources are what we use in order to um try to prevent kids from coming into foster care. Um and one thing too I want you to keep in mind is that you know these

547
02:33:53.520 --> 02:34:09.600
decisions aren't just being made by like say me as a director. Um, when it comes to special education programs, you know, do schools make decisions with regards to can they educate a child in the classroom or do they need to have them in a program that uh actually provides a

548
02:34:09.600 --> 02:34:26.960
higher level of education uh and is that best for the child? So, the schools are making those decisions. We're administering these funds, but we're not making the decisions with regards to if children are placed in special education programs. You know, also when it comes to some of these resources that I talked about with regards to these different

549
02:34:26.960 --> 02:34:43.040
purchases that we do to ensure that uh uh families have say counseling services or or parenting groups or you know those uh when when a social worker gets a case and they do an assessment um and they identify these different uh different resources that could be beneficial to

550
02:34:43.040 --> 02:34:59.520
working with the family, they bring this information to what's called a FAP team. And that FAP team is uh a mixture of different community uh individuals that you know talk about these cases and then they make a decision jointly with regards to if we're going to approve these funds or not. Um so once these

551
02:34:59.520 --> 02:35:16.319
funds get approved then we are working with our vendors to get these services in place. So they're not just driven these decisions aren't just driven through social services. It's a collective decisions by community partners by the school system and we're really administrating these funds. Um but we also are really leaning on these

552
02:35:16.319 --> 02:35:31.680
funds because without this support you know our team members don't have the tool they don't have you know what you know they don't have these uh resources that they need in order to like help stabilize families help them to potentially you know pay a light bill or

553
02:35:31.680 --> 02:35:47.600
or or rent bill to prevent them from being like evicted. So so these are these are the funds in which we're talking about. >> Sorry about that. >> Um questions. >> Um I mean I thank you for explaining everything so clearly. I think with regards to a lot of the concerns you brought up, you're preaching to the

554
02:35:47.600 --> 02:36:03.200
choir here and we're >> sure >> we're um >> there's just a lot of money. >> Yeah, there's a lot going on. I I just mean in terms of like you you're making a case and we're on board. Um but I do have a question about um the funding allocation. Where's this coming from?

555
02:36:03.200 --> 02:36:20.880
>> That's the next >> Oh, sorry. >> Never mind. >> Other questions? >> No, no additional questions. So, this just gets us through the end of the month. >> Yeah, this is for this fiscal for the end of this fiscal year. >> Okay. For sure. >> Um

556
02:36:20.880 --> 02:36:36.240
Yeah. And likewise, I mean, I think pretty straightforward and I'm in supportive of um the actions in front of us this evening. Um and I think it's important for the community to be able to see and hear how much work you all do and the kind of um things behind the scenes that are being impacted. You

557
02:36:36.240 --> 02:36:52.080
touched on this a little bit and I'm sure it's hard to predict, but I think literally just today changes with SNAP and Medicaid are taking effect that I think over 300,000 people in Virginia are anticipated to lose Medicaid and about 50,000 adults are expected to use SNAP. Um, what is kind of the scale of

558
02:36:52.080 --> 02:37:07.439
the impact of that for this kind of >> work that you're anticipating? I mean, >> sure. Yeah, I I mentioned the SNAP benefits because many of the families that we work with are depending on SNAP benefits for for food um is pretty

559
02:37:07.439 --> 02:37:23.439
consistently. Um when we're looking at uh the the changes with regards to work requirements and those things, the reality is that um people will will will be in ineligible, right, over time. Uh the impact of that is is hard to tell

560
02:37:23.439 --> 02:37:41.359
because um it's happening over time. I was just on the news on Friday. We just had an interview um and I shared that um since uh what August of 2025 we had say 30 immigrant families uh lose um SNAP benefits and and leading up to October

561
02:37:41.359 --> 02:37:56.960
of this year we're going to have we're anticipating another eight families. But with regards to um overall scale um it's just hard to to to fully understand. I think uh with the Medicaid piece of it, that's going to be a huge impact with

562
02:37:56.960 --> 02:38:13.200
the annual with the bannual renewals rather than the annual renewals and then the work requirement there and the change in age um in regards to eligibility and some of those changes. So, um, we're just prepared, uh, we're prepared to ensure that, um, we are

563
02:38:13.200 --> 02:38:27.520
available and we're connected with community partners to, uh, help individuals get enrolled, uh, and that they're, uh, have the information that they need to, um, not lose services. But, um, it it right now there's so many changes happening on the state level.

564
02:38:27.520 --> 02:38:45.280
It's like pretty much it's it's like every month there's something different. Um, the guidance hasn't been shared. uh as of June 6, we're supposed to receive some guidance. So, um and then that guidance will be um pushed out on all of our city uh platforms, but um it's just

565
02:38:45.280 --> 02:39:01.439
hard to to fully understand. >> You can send that to us for sure. >> Well, thank you. And again, I'm supportive of this being on the consent agenda for next meeting. >> Yeah. >> Any other questions, comments? >> Thank you, sir. Thank you. And so, are we voting on this now or waiting till

566
02:39:01.439 --> 02:39:18.080
the next item? Consent? Oh, it's his first >> unless is there a reason why we should forfeits it through? >> Well, we can put on the next agenda. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> The next um item on the um agenda is a

567
02:39:18.080 --> 02:39:37.680
resolution to return uh all these big numbers. 1 1,848,424 in general funds and appropriate an additional $423546 to the Children's Services Fund Act is first of um two readings.

568
02:39:37.680 --> 02:39:53.760
>> Uh good evening again, Mr. Mayor, members of council. I'm Chris Cullen and the city's director of finance. And as Mr. Henry alluded to in his comments, uh the previous agenda item and this agenda item are handinand glove with each other. This is actually um a resolution of appropriation to true up the financial relationship between the

569
02:39:53.760 --> 02:40:10.080
general fund and the children's services act fund. Um last year in FY25 the city moved funds from the general fund into the CSA fund for many of the reasons that Mr. Henry talked about just the expected costs um the um the increased case load some of those sorts of things

570
02:40:10.080 --> 02:40:26.080
but the actual costs were lower than what we had uh transferred over. And so what this action, what this resolution does, so those funds are currently residing in the fund balance of the CSA fund. And so this item that you're being asked to consider moves that money back to the general fund. So it's crossing

571
02:40:26.080 --> 02:40:42.399
funds. Um, and then asking for your approval to uh, as the previous item noted, add $423,546 to the CSA fund in the current year to get us to the rest of the fiscal year. and that the remaining balance of that

572
02:40:42.399 --> 02:41:01.359
uh1,848,424 um that is not needed in CSA be returned to the general fund. And so this item, as I mentioned, sort of trs up all of that and actually gets the money that you previously considered in the previous agenda item to where it needs to be.

573
02:41:01.359 --> 02:41:16.319
>> Okay. Any questions on on this? >> No. Likewise, I would be supportive of this on the consent agenda next meeting. >> Yeah. >> I just want to clarify since this is to get us through the end of this fiscal year, are we sure there's not a need to

574
02:41:16.319 --> 02:41:34.880
rush this? >> Not because we know we have the money. >> Okay. >> Good. >> Okay. Thanks. >> Okay. So, it'll be on the consent agenda for June 15th. Um the next item is a

575
02:41:34.880 --> 02:41:49.680
resolution appropriating funding for the federal um transit administration and Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation supporting multiple um CAT um capital projects in the amount of

576
02:41:49.680 --> 02:42:13.600
16,846,24. >> Mr. W. >> Yes, >> it's a lot of money. Uh good afternoon. Uh good evening um mayor, vice mayor, members of council. Um the 16 million um $84624 um is from two fiscal years, fiscal 25

577
02:42:13.600 --> 02:42:30.560
and 26. Um the awards from the Federal Transit Administration um equal $4,716 um 943 and from the Virginia Department of Rail Public Transportation is 11,455 432

578
02:42:30.560 --> 02:42:50.000
u with a local match um uh requirement of 673 $673,849. Um this allows us to uh do our purchases of our um battery electric vehicles um and a number of other vehicles and a number of other capital projects that we're trying to consider. Um one of them

579
02:42:50.000 --> 02:43:06.560
being a major um upgrade to our uh CAT AVL system so our buses will be recognized in a a more efficient way. Um and also support >> AVL >> AVL um the AVL system basically is the um automatic vehicle locator system

580
02:43:06.560 --> 02:43:24.080
>> um that allows um indiv individuals when we put it into the app to to know where they are um and also be uh hopefully move us closer towards real time recognition when you look at your app. >> Thank you. >> So these are all the projects um that we are hopefully getting funded um by um

581
02:43:24.080 --> 02:43:41.120
FTA. um the major components of uh being able to pay for the um battery electric vehicles that should be here at the end of the month. Um so we're coming to you to appropriate this fund so we can actually pay um when they arrive. >> Any questions? >> Nope.

582
02:43:41.120 --> 02:43:58.800
>> Any questions on this? >> One question. So let's get into all the fun climate things today. >> Lots of good investments here. I think you know on the battery electric buses side the investment in the infrastructure I think is the most

583
02:43:58.800 --> 02:44:14.960
important thing because that's that sets the foundation that allows us if and when federal funds are restored um you know that's the foundation to to increase adoption beyond the battery electric buses that we're already planning to purchase. Um but anyway, the

584
02:44:14.960 --> 02:44:32.319
question is so I think everyone recognizes that um federal funding for zero emission buses was cut and we had to pivot our posture from the plan we adopted. I think everyone understands that and the vast majority of the community understands that as well. What

585
02:44:32.319 --> 02:44:48.319
is the reason diesel buses and not hybrid buses as part of that pivot? >> It was a cost um we looked at the cost factors. Uh so if you look at how much it costs for a diesel bus versus a hybrid bus um some also half a million

586
02:44:48.319 --> 02:45:05.040
dollars um more. Um so um when we're going through this exercise remember these are funds from FYI 25 and 26. So that's almost two years ago when we made the uh assertion about potentially buying these vehicles. Um the costs were much cheaper. Um and as we've gone up

587
02:45:05.040 --> 02:45:21.760
we've seen the escalation of costs over 20%. Um, so we just made a a rationale decision about as we may pivot this time to use the lower costs until we can get to a point where hopefully more funding is coming from the federal government when this um this administration changes

588
02:45:21.760 --> 02:45:37.840
hands hopefully in two years that those funds will be um available to us again and we'll offset the cost for getting bus back on track to do our transition plan. >> I know like for all buses the majority of that is not is not covered locally. Is the concern that their their higher

589
02:45:37.840 --> 02:45:54.560
cost would hurt our competitiveness with just funding applications overall or >> Yes. Um uh part of what we're concerned about, what I'm concerned about my team is, uh we have um we're going to be asking the state in fact for a lot of money because

590
02:45:54.560 --> 02:46:11.920
there is a requirement um that we need to do in a significant upgrade to our our maintenance facility to maintain whatever level of um alternative fuel vehicles that we're going to go um to. Um so that is probably we're looking at in in the range of 35 to $40 million. So

591
02:46:11.920 --> 02:46:29.040
that's significant ass. And then we're going to be coupling that with asking for much more funding associated with the the vehicles themselves. At some point in time, they're going to basically say, "Wo." Um, so we need to uh really focus our energy, I believe, in the first couple years of getting the the facility built. Um, and then allow

592
02:46:29.040 --> 02:46:45.760
the the federal money to continue to flow and then we can get back on track. >> And no matter what, our fleet expansion plans will require an upgraded new facility. Correct. So this is just the replacement there. So anything that we're doing for um expansion we have we've taken the liberty of all the

593
02:46:45.760 --> 02:47:00.960
battery electric vehicles that we buying are actually expansion vehicles. They're not a part of the replacement plan. Um so that's a that's a good thing for us in in our category. So we're expanding our our model. Um we're also replacing what is existing. Um so we're still trying to tra stay on track in that

594
02:47:00.960 --> 02:47:18.319
matter. Um, but this allows us to potentially like like I said, you know, uh, feel out what's going on at the federal level and then move quickly when when we have an opportunity to do so. >> Thank you. That's it. >> When do we expect the buses to arrive? >> The battery electric buses uh hopefully

595
02:47:18.319 --> 02:47:35.359
in the next two weeks. Um, so remember we ordered them two years ago. It takes almost two years to get them here. Um, and we ordered the, uh, the three. So, uh, if you can see in the the document, we asked for, um, stuff like 11. But depending on how you look at the funding

596
02:47:35.359 --> 02:47:51.359
model, it's going to be less than that because we asked for a certain amount in, you know, two years ago to to fund this and the vehicles are significantly higher than that. So, we will use the funds and buy as many vehicles as we possibly can. We don't have the ability to go back and ask for more. >> So, that's for the diesels.

597
02:47:51.359 --> 02:48:06.960
>> For the diesels. >> And when would they likely come? So we are So if we So we've talked to um uh Gillick and they've moved us up in the model. So we're anticipating potentially three um well they moved us up in the

598
02:48:06.960 --> 02:48:24.479
model. So we're going to get two more battery electric vehicles next March. And then we're we're hopefully going to get um the first three diesels. if they move us up in the model, it'll be um February or March of 27 um um or 20. If

599
02:48:24.479 --> 02:48:39.600
it's not 27, then they'll be pushed out to 28. But it um so we're we're hopefully getting funded so we can show them we have the money and hopefully we get moved up in the slots. So that's why the there's this rush to to try to get the money in. >> All right.

600
02:48:39.600 --> 02:48:55.680
>> Have the me. >> Yes. >> Okay. Do um do we have a do we have a sense or a quote or some sort of documentation that shows us the diesel versus the hybrid so we know

601
02:48:55.680 --> 02:49:12.560
what we've made the trade-off for? Like you're saying it's much more expensive to do the hybrid, but do we know how much we saved? >> So we have a we have a chart that I can share with council that shows how much we um have allocated. So, we have a a replacement schedule um that basically

602
02:49:12.560 --> 02:49:27.520
all that shows how many buses we can replace per year. Um and we've laid out a scenario whether it's uh diesel, hybrid, or battery electric. We can show you what each one of those costs and what the city's um uh based on the

603
02:49:27.520 --> 02:49:43.840
current um the last order that we made was the uh Washington state contract. We don't know what the new numbers are. So, we're using those numbers as a a means to just show you the the uh the amount uh in difference. Um but we don't know what the new numbers are going to be.

604
02:49:43.840 --> 02:50:00.560
The Virginia state contract, which was uh nullvoy, just went up. Um so, we won't know what the numbers are. They're finishing that. Um hopefully we'll know by end of July. Um and then we'll uh hopefully be able to make our next order

605
02:50:00.560 --> 02:50:15.680
um associated with the amount of money we have available to us. >> Okay. And then thank you. And then the next question is for the BEV pilot, what how do we assess if that's successful? What's the what's the framework for that? >> So we're work we're going to be working

606
02:50:15.680 --> 02:50:32.080
with Gillick and um the Office of Sustainability. Um we're working out a methodologies to track um how many times we use it. um how often um we have to uh how much uh electricity we're using, how how often um um how much range and

607
02:50:32.080 --> 02:50:48.080
mileage we're going to go, how often we have to charge it in in the middle of the day. So, all of those things are being worked out with us and um Office of Sustainability. They're going to help kind of monitor that for us and and work with us. Uh but we are planning to, you know, when we first get the vehicles in hand, we have to do a significant

608
02:50:48.080 --> 02:51:04.640
training program with our with our team. Um, so as we work through that, we'll be working with the the the final details of off sustainability to figure out um, you know, >> what the evaluation is, >> what the evaluation really looks like. >> Great. And that's over a year or how long is that evaluation? >> It's over probably the next two years

609
02:51:04.640 --> 02:51:21.359
and then we'll be able to show you >> two years. Okay. Thank you. Um I know it's only it's been less than a week, but um in Carter last week you mentioned that uh we're awaiting Dominion's

610
02:51:21.359 --> 02:51:37.600
schedule to start doing work for us with the charging and and upgrades. Do we have any news since then? >> Unfortunately, I do not. Um, we're still waiting on So, the the only I mentioned at Carta that the menu was on property

611
02:51:37.600 --> 02:51:53.600
to uh basically lay out where the the the lines will be coming in. So, um they've done their marking um and we're waiting on them. I believe there is a um an agreement that needs to be done to allow them on our property. Um that has

612
02:51:53.600 --> 02:52:10.319
not gone to legal. We have not seen it yet. So that will be the first indication that they're they're ready um to start their process. Um the goal for us is to try to make that happen before se the end of September because if we don't then we're concerned that they're

613
02:52:10.319 --> 02:52:28.160
going to be in the um uh hurricane posture >> and then that will pull resources away from getting this done. Um, so we're eagerly anticipating them sending the the contract our way and then we can give you a better timeline >> before the marking paint washes off.

614
02:52:28.160 --> 02:52:44.080
>> Yes. >> All right. Thank you very much. >> You're welcome. >> Michael, did you have any other questions? >> No, no, just just a comment that I hope in the future. I hope I mean I would be interested in really as as we've pivoted you know the diesel expansion being a

615
02:52:44.080 --> 02:52:59.920
larger part of it to um for council to have the ability to explore could it make sense to have diesel hybrid be a real part of that because um as I understand it our first hybrids sucked and they literally had a faulty part. Um but that's been a long time now. So, I'd

616
02:52:59.920 --> 02:53:14.800
be curious if the current generation of hybrids are as reliable and if there would be potential cost savings on fuel and just again, I mean, given that we've had to pivot, um, is is there a role for hybrid? Um, but, you know, I don't I don't know too much about the the

617
02:53:14.800 --> 02:53:30.880
current generation of hybrid buses. my team and I can prepare something for you in in um maybe in a 221 we have explore um in more detail about this situation, but um we've heard good things about the new the next generation um of uh

618
02:53:30.880 --> 02:53:47.279
hybrids. Um but is there's a cost. They're not much cheaper than the battery electric like a $100,000 difference. It's not a lot. >> Okay. >> Okay. So, um, do we want this on the consent agenda for >> June 15th?

619
02:53:47.279 --> 02:54:02.640
>> Okay. >> Thank you, sir. >> Thank you. >> Um, uh, last opportunity for public, um, input. Anyone else like to speak? >> If not, >> I would just like to make one more small announcement >> that I meant to do at the beginning of

620
02:54:02.640 --> 02:54:18.319
the meeting, which is just to say June is pride month. So, happy Pride everybody. >> Yes. Okay. >> Thank you. Um, is there a motion to adjurnn? >> So moved. >> Second. >> Second. All in favor, please say yes. >> Opposed, please say no.

621
02:54:18.319 --> 02:54:21.560
>> Thank you.