--------- Hello everyone. I'm going to call the Charlottesville City Council meeting to order for March the 2nd, 2026. February is like gone. We had the snowstorm and recovered from that and February was was gone. So, >> I know it's snowing today, but it's going to be 80.
>> I didn't want to say that, Sam. >> No comment. >> So, um, Madame Clerk, would you please call the role? >> Councelor Fleer here. Vice Mayor Asherin >> here. Councelor Payne >> here.
>> Councelor Snook, Mayor Wade >> here. Um councilors, we would need to amend the agenda to add approval of a resolution ratifying trans the transmission of a letter to the Fluana County um planning commission and board of supervisors to the um consent agenda.
Miss Thomas, will you please um read the proposed um resolution? resolution ratifying transmitt of a letter to Fana County Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors regarding the proposed Tanaska plant expansion. Whereas the Charlottesville
City Council is committed to advancing policies that protect public health, safeguard natural resources, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in accordance with the city's adopted goals. And whereas the proposed Tanasca gas plant expansion in Fana County pre sorry
presents potential regional implications related to air quality, climate, and public health. And whereas on February 23rd, 2026, a letter from the Charlottesville City Council was transmitted to Fluana County Planning Commission and the Fluana Board of
Supervisors regarding the proposed Tanaska plant expansion, expressing support for their decisions thus far and respectfully opposing the proposed expansion. And whereas the city council finds it appropriate to formally ratify and affirm the transmitt of the
correspondence as an official act of the city council. Now therefore, be it resolved by the council for the city of Charlottesville that one, the letter dated February 23rd, 2026 to Fuana Fluana Planning Commission and the Fluana Board of Supervisors regarding
the proposed Tanaska plant expansion attached hereto as exhibit A is hereby ratified and affirmed as an official act of the Charlottesville City Council. >> Thank you. Is there a motion um to add the
resolution to the agenda? >> So moved. Second. >> Okay. Um can we please vote? Um we're going to take a a voice vote because I haven't signed in yet. So all in favor, please say yes. >> All oppose, please say no. >> No.
>> Is that just going at the end? Or sorry, that wasn't a real note. Um yes. Um did uh just to clarify, is that going in the end as something we'll need to vote on? That was just voting to add it to the agenda. >> It's added as part of the >> the consent agenda.
>> Consent agenda. Okay, great. >> Okay. And um and I had um talk with some of you about the idea of um lowering the flag to have staff until Friday to honor the life and accomplishments of the Reverend Jesse Jackson. I'm not sure if
now is the if this is the proper the process um to do that. >> I heard you. >> We did get a governor's order for that. >> I'm sorry. >> Governor's order that >> then that's just a matter of staff getting it done. >> Okay. >> We'll make sure they get done. >> All right. So,
>> and can I clarify if we're moving on to the next thing? Um, I just wanted to um kind of take the resolution we just talked about and put it in kind of a clear uh uh language, which is just that Charlottesville City Council sent a
letter to um Fluana um a couple weeks ago saying that um we are hoping that they um deny the expansion of a of a gas plant. And so instead of passing that resolution initially up here, we which felt like litigating in the press, we
wanted to send them a personal letter in advance and this is just a resolution saying, "Hey, we sent that letter." >> Yeah. >> Um thank you for clarifying that. We we want to make sure things done in light
of day. Um is there a motion to approve the agenda um as amended? >> So moved. >> Okay. Is there a second? >> Second. >> All All in favor, please say yes. >> Yes. >> All oppose, please say no. Great. So,
the meeting is divided into three section. The first section is um to discuss presentations that do not require a council vote and then um we will have a close session and then we'll come back at 6:30 for a regular business
meeting. And today we will hear a report um from um the updates of the preparation for the 50th anniversary of the downtown mall. And um Brenda >> and Cliff >> and and Cliff. So good afternoon. For the record, I'm
Brenda Kelly and we're here today to talk to you about the downtown mall and we have many of our partner organizations here. If you have any very specific questions, we can't answer. It's going to be kind of a tag team presentation since this is a multi-ep
departmental effort. So, just a little bit of background on how we got here. Uh, back in 2023 in um in forward thinking that the downtown mall 50th anniversary is this
year, 2026. The city manager at the time asked for a group of stakeholders to take a look at the downtown mall and come up with some recommendations and thoughts on what was going on with the mall. And some general information about the
mall. It's generally anchored by the Ting Pavilion on the east end and the Omni Hotel on the west end. It was built in 1976, hence the 50th anniversary this year. It was repaved in 2008 2009 time frame.
It's listed on both the National and Virginia Registers of Historic Places and it's known as one of the most successful pedestrian malls in the country. >> So, Brenda, tell people it's the most successful.
>> I will I will do that. So, we're going to give you a little overview on what we've been doing pretty much since last summer kind of based on the plan and moving forward. And because it's the downtown mall is a lot of things to different people. It's about
history. We need to address maintenance and safety. There's promotions and marketing going on. Um, a lot of organizations holding special events on the mall, through the mall, around the mall. It's home to businesses and residents. We have lots of visitors come
to the downtown mall and it's a gathering place for everyone and because of that we can't do that all alone. We have to have some partners that help us with all of this. So to give you a little bit of background on what we've accomplished,
we were given the direction last summer to look at launching a downtown mall team. This is an interdep departmental team that looks at all aspects of the mall and has kind of different focuses on what's to be done. That downtown mall
team is in place. It's primarily office of economic development, parks and recreation department, but of course we've got fire department involved. We've got public works involved. We've got neighborhood development services. We've got the communications department.
We've got all sorts of other departments involved. Um Cliff's going to talk to you a little bit about his assessment of what the downtown mall looks like and what it needs. Um we had different pots of line item funding that you all have approved sitting in different
departments. So one of the first things we did is we looked at where the funds are, what the funds were supposed to be used for, and we kind of gathered those all into a better understanding of where those are located and and what they're supposed to do. that helped us to
identify our needs going forward also more collectively at overall what needs to be done and you'll be probably hearing about some of those discussions in your budget discussions that are coming up. Um you've heard a lot about us contracting with the ambassador
services for the downtown mall and the planning for the downtown mall 50th celebrations are in progress. We're also um working on better communication and coordination. I can give you an example of that. We heard from some of the
businesses that they weren't very aware of some of the special events going on that there might be walks or runs coming downtown the mall. So, we've worked very closely with friends. We've put together a one-page event notice um about the
event that goes to friends about a week before the event and they send it out to the businesses. So far, we've heard some very good feedback that the businesses are very happy to receive that. So, this whole team effort is about an enhancing and improving the downtown mall
generally how it looks and how it feels. So, that's what we really want to present to you today. >> All right. In formally, I'm Clifton Dooms on behalf of Parks and Recreation, and I'm going to address some maintenance items that we've uh done and plan to do in the near future for the
downtown mall. So, for me, I've um I've uh inventoried every asset on the downtown mall in preparation for the 50th while also looking into the future of the mall. This means looking at trash cans or trash recepticles, light post, things that are static to the mall in
order to gauge their their quality, what they need as far as repairs and what we need to do to make that happen. So, with that being said, at the same time, we created maintenance standards that will make sure that the mall is looking beautiful and presentable for those who who come to the place or the space. Um
with those those maintenance items I have addressed drinking fountains again ordered trash receptacles to replace them. Just forward thinking um December of 2005 the current trash receptacle is no longer available. And with that being said we uh had a recommendation from the
manufacturer. I put that in front of uh Kate Richardson Jeffer that was brought to the B and we do have a trash receptacle that is replaceable or set to be replaced. We're not going to necessarily replace them immediately, but we wanted to think about the future to doing that. So, from a safety aspect,
the mall did not have the ballards locked. We went and did some fabrication work to make sure that those things were safe and presentable for the public. Um, from friends Greer, um, we uh received some, uh, uplighting on the downtown mall. They sustained a decent
amount of damage over the winter, this past winter specifically. But since then, we went to the fabricator to have those lights placed in brackets that are a little bit more durable and presentable for the patrons of the mall. So, as you can see, we have a good good
solution to the uplights. Tree trimming, the annual tree trimming has been complete on the downtown mall. Um this is a preventative maintenance measure that allows small trees to to flourish and and keep them as you know alive as long as they possibly can be. So it's an important thing um moving
forward tree management plan. There's funding available for this the first portion. Um this is going to allow the fountains on the mall to be interactive but this has again been passed along to public works um been in front of the bar uh parks and recreation as well. And u we're looking forward to getting this
rolling. downtown mall ambassadors, right? Um the these folks are known as the block byblock service. Um they touch on hospitality services on the downtown mall as well as light cleaning and picking up with supplemental work where parks and w leaves off. So the heavy lifting is still done by parks and
recreation in the morning, but these folks are picking up meeting folks uh giving visitor information and being as presentable and out in the forefront to the public as we like. So, as you know, there's two streets that cross the downtown mall. It's
Fourth Street and Second Street, and there's been a lot of repairs over many, many years with some patching going on. So, there's uh plans completed, and we've had some challenges with bidding this project, but just as of last week, we can give you an update that we have
now received three bids and public works folks are reviewing those bids at this time. Our goal is to have any construction work completed before the July 3rd event and hopefully well in advance of that.
>> Bren, it was difficult because it's just too small or project. >> It it the bid was issued three times and there were different aspects at different times what was going on with those. So, to give you a little bit on what
we're thinking moving forward for the 50th anniversary, uh the city partnered with Friends of Charlottesville downtown. Um they were responsible for developing this multi-functional logo that you see at the top in the center of the uh presentation for branding of the
downtown mall. This can also be utilized in the future by taking the 50th off. So, it's a multifunctional logo. Um there's a series of written narratives uh going on about the mall that people can uh respond and give information to. We've got a little bit more information
on that coming up. And Friends is also working on planning a big Friday, July 3rd anniversary event. This will include a formal ceremony, uh lantern parade, a music light show. These things are all being worked on and
not only for the Friday, July 3rd anniversary event, but there are events being planned for all year to make 2026 a big celebration year. >> Yeah. Sam and I was told I don't know a couple of months ago to clear up make
sure we're in town for that day. So >> So this picture in front of you is an idea of the lantern parade that was is being proposed. Um, this lantern parade that you see is was done in Kerry, North Carolina. And right now, Friends is
working very closely with a bunch of folks to make this a very communityinvolved event. So, lantern kits are being provided to the convention and visitors bureau mobile vans um and booths at the farmers market. Um, Friends is working with the
Charlottesville City School art teachers who will be leading lantern making workshops in their classes. Um, the library and many of our um, arts, our cultural arts program folks are planning to host lantern making
workshops. So, through all these venues that are reaching out to the community to get involved, this makes it a very communitywide event that the whole city can participate in. In addition, Friends has done some commercial uh showings on local TV,
Violet Crown, and at the airport. And also, there were local runs uh commercial runs during the Olympics and the Super Bowls, focusing on celebrating 50 years on the Downtown Mall. Freds is working on downtown Mall 50th banners
that will be going on light poles and the elevator shaft at the Market Street parking garage. Those are intended to be put up right after the TomTom Festival when those banners come down. And again, like I said, there's the intent to focus on a full year of events focusing on the
50th anniversary. So some of the other partners involved in all the planning is historic the resources committee album Charlottesville historical society and that recollections we're talking about
with the storytelling. Uh if folks want to tell their stories about what they remember about the downtown mall they can access the friends of Seville website at www.friendsofseville.org
org and share their stories directly on the website. Then those stories will be displayed in the late spring as part of the downtown mall 50th event. And then after the 50th, the survey results will be archived. And the historical society
has um stepped up to the plate to say, "We're going to take part in making sure we can archive all these stories with the Charlottesville Historic Society. The downtown history tours will be starting in April and running through
November. They will regularly be occurring on Saturdays and most of those leave from the downtown mall or from around the downtown mall. As to the convention and visitors bureau, this picture on the right is a picture of the
Virginia 250 mobile museum. This uh ex the mobile museum experience. Uh this mobile museum will be on the downtown mall April 13th through 15th. So, we'll be getting more information
out about that. Um, just so happens that the downtown mall 50th is occurring the same year as the Virginia 250th. So, we're working very closely with conventioner and visitors bureau to make sure we're coordinating
um events. However, they are pre the premier responsibility for coording coordinating the Virginia 250th events. Some more events going on and in addition uh the Charlottesville Arts Groups um is talking about May being
designated as art month. So, you'll be getting more information about that. And with that, we are open for any questions or comments. And again, we have plenty of folks here to answer any questions you might have if Cliff or I can't. >> Sure. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.
Looking forward to to that. Um, Jen, do you have any questions or comments? >> Yeah, thank you for this presentation. That's really helpful and I'm sure it's no small task to audit every garbage can on the mall. So, I appreciate you going
through that. I had a question about the ambassadors as kind of are they doing wayfinding? what what are they finding that they're um I was sorry looking through the slide for what we said like friendly guides and >> sure >> part how how is that working out >> yeah so I can touch on that lightly um
so they're out on the mall positioned making their routes and they're able to assist folks where they need to go right if they don't recall where their car is actually parked or maybe a business needs uh assistance with getting to a bank or a drop deposit box or something like that those folks are out there to
provide those services >> okay so less about like this building used to be an ice cream shop. You know, they're not >> I think we can get there though. >> Do we know how many of them are from Charlottesville? >> Currently, the the manager is from the
area but not specifically from Charlottesville. Um the four that have been hired this time are from the area, but they may not be very educated on the downtown mall. So, we're doing a lot of outreach and trainings with a bunch of our partners. And so we'll get them up
to speed. >> That's great. And my last question about that was like are they who is who who's the overarching manager for them. >> So this is this is the launch. So we all have our hand in it. Right. So everyone's getting this up to speed. Right. And then in the end once we get
to altitude I imagine that I will be the the one who is the keeper of of the program. >> Not imagine he will. >> Oh >> guess what you are. >> Down. Sorry. Yeah. Great. >> Thank you so much. Perfect. >> Thank you, Lloyd.
>> I've I don't have any questions. I've been uh intrigued to see the the ambassador program in particular to to get under underway. Uh I was at the event a couple weeks ago when it was sort of introduced and people were
introduced and was glad to see that at least a couple folks that I've known for a long time are on the crew. And so I can assure people that yes, we got people with some local knowledge who are going to be the ambassadors and that's great. Um just looking forward to the
whole thing. >> Nat, >> hey, thanks. Um I have some questions. Um thanks Jen for that question. Who manages them was one of mine, but one of my other questions about the ambassador team is what is our metric for success?
How do we know it's working? What data are we collecting? What kind of feedback do we have about that? >> I think that's a great question. So, um, in its current format with the maintenance and things that we do on the mall, it hasn't been tracked, right? So,
what we're going to do and what we're seeing are metrics that this company is going to gather and collect and be able to pump put out a report at least monthly to let us know exactly what's going on. This is going to account for their footsteps, trash recepticles dumped, um interactions with businesses,
patrons, and things of that nature so that we all have an understanding of exactly what they do. >> Okay. >> Yep. So, they do have the framework. Um >> yeah, >> as far as the metrics that >> but it's just been a month, so we don't have that yet. >> Not even, right? So, well, yes, it is actually. So, sorry. >> Month and a day. Um okay, that would be
useful to to keep an eye on. Um and I don't know is how is that done? Do you know how that info is collected? Do they >> It's through the smart system, their smart uh system. Um it's internal um information that they have and they they gather. Um each individual who's making
their rounds, they have the capabilities of tracking what they're doing as far as their footsteps and things and it's put into a um put into the program and then punched out as a report. >> Okay. Yeah. I don't want to like big brother them, but do they have like a camera or a little tally or >> Yeah, exactly. It's on on an Apple
device if I'm if I'm correct. And what they do is they can pinpoint the location they're at and it tracks like the GPS location of where that report is coming from. Um, and this we were actually the ones that provided them with the metrics we wanted them to track
and we're hoping at some point in the future. For example, I've heard Mr. Sanders talk about his wife is not always comfortable coming to the downtown mall >> and hopefully, you know, soon that she will be and that will be one of our metrics. >> Right. So it's a long list of metrics
that we pro provided them and expect them to track. Did we and do we have like community survey metrics like before after interactions with? >> We don't. We probably have thoughts of
the businesses and residents and kind of know what some of the ideas were, but we hadn't really thought about doing community surveys because generally when you start with a survey, you have a borderline, but when you do a follow-up
survey, you may not have the same folks responding to that. >> Yeah, it might be like a kind of continuous feedback. >> We could we could think about if there was a way we could do that. >> Um, thank you. And then for the um cross street repair, I know a lot of that
damage is from heavier vehicles like buses and um delivery trucks and that sort of thing. Um so that's kind of an ongoing will be a constant need for repair as long as the intersections are open to vehicles. Um for the celebration weekend
itself, do we have plans to close those intersections? We that would be a special event that we would probably look at closing that. We haven't really thought because we didn't know if there would be construction going on at the same time. We're
intending it will be completed. Um, so we haven't really thought of the the logistics of what the event includes, but because of the lantern parade, that most likely is something that we would work with the police department and public works about with their
recommendation that the street should be closed for that. >> Yeah. Okay. I just if it's if it's the kind of thing where we're asking for a lot of people to be downtown, it might be a safe thing to just even if it's not a specific festival, it's just people downtown to have those blocked. And if
that's a decision we make, I would want the businesses and the bus service to know that as far in advance as possible. >> We will have to file a special events application for that event. So that'll be all addressed with multiple departments. >> Okay. Um that is what I have at the
moment. Thank you. >> Yeah. Michael, you have any questions or comments? >> Um I would second all the questions about the ambassador program. Um, I do think it would be worth trying to have a
community survey or metrics that are internal to the city. Um, I don't want to be too cynical, but they do have a very strong incentive to provide metrics to maintain their contract after the pilot is over. Um, because I just think
it's 600,000 a year. Would we have more impact if 600,000 a year was sent spent promoting um events on the downtown mall or the economic development authority trying to fill vacancies on the pavilion into the mall? Um is it the most impactful use of
600,000 a year? Um a few other questions. Obviously, it's been um a topic in the community for a number of years about whether to uh close the side streets to vehicular
traffic. Is there any um process for even discussing or considering that? >> We at this point we have not been given direction to talk about that. So that would come from somewhere else to tell
us to start looking into that. Um what what would it look like if you know there was a process of even like let's say during the summer for you know series of days or time they were close to vehicular traffic to kind of pilot what that may look like and the impacts
what would initiating that process look like? So if direction came from above us that would of course need to involve probably the police department, public works and the transportation folks. So that we would need to get direction to
involve other folks to start doing that looking into that. >> Well, I would I would advocate that at a minimum we at least try, you know, piloting it. Um obviously it's relatively recent that they were open to vehicular traffic. It's not like it was designed to always be that way and must
be that way in perpetuity. Um related Fourth Street um you know we're approaching the 10-year anniversary of August 12th um the site of a terrorist attack which is integral
part of the history of our community the mall and really our country. Is there any process for um underway to create a more permanent memorial there? >> I am not aware of anything at this time. I can look into it and see if anybody's
thinking about it and get back to you. >> Um well, I would certainly advocate for at least a process to begin exploring that as we approach that 10-year anniversary of that event. Um there's that kind of community memorial that's continued to be there, but obviously
nothing that is um permanent or um as part of the city. Um and the other question you focused on like infrastructure on the mall, which is
super important, makes sense. Um what as part of this anniversary beyond like the 50th anniversary itself is there any discussions around how could we activate the mall more with like community events throughout the year that are activating
the pavilion more days >> we are talking especially with our partner or organizations on how to um create more events to activate them all a little bit more. Uh, for example, for the July 3rd event, Friends is working
with the pavilion folks to get a bigger band than they would normally have on the Friday's event. So, there's a way that we can continue to talk about partnering and creating more activity on the mall. >> Well, I hope we can support events on
the mall. Um, the Seville Puzzle Hunt highlighted, I feel like that's a perfect example of something that builds community but drives traffic to the mall. Um, I see one of the big challenges for the mall is just the vacancies on the pavilion end and the lack of foot traffic there and a lot of days of the year that nothing's
happening at the pavilion. Um, I just see, you know, a lot of potential opportunity there. Um, and then final comment, which is longer term, but it makes me think with this 50th anniversary, the original plans for the mall were much more extensive than what
we ended up building. It was, this was just one part of it, you know, the the mixeduse commercial area. Um, the original designs, it was housing, commercial, and also a public space piece of public architecture that extended beyond where it is now. All of
which is to say, it makes me think, I wonder if there's an opportunity with this 50th anniversary to start a process to get the community involved in visioning the future of the Water Street surface parking lot, which is just massively underutilized and I think could very easily be an extension of the
mall with um housing, retail, you know, courtyard apartments, all kind of things you could envision beyond just a surface parking lot. I know that would be longer term, but it just comes to mind as kind of a huge opportunity to extend the legacy of the mall.
That's it. So, I just had a kind of couple of questions or comments. Um, I'm glad to see the ambassador program up and going. Um, I know that they have been out. I I just happened to be in the lab a couple of weeks ago and I saw one of them just
peep their head in there just to speak to the workers there, you know, just kind of getting out being being aware and um so that was great to see that and I'm looking forward to to seeing the impact of that. U Mr. the dooms. I'm wondering like as you did your um
inventory, was there anything that um that was unusual that you're like, hm, that's interesting, you know, as you did, you know, as you went up and down the mall and um doing the inventory. >> Um not necessarily. So, um I thought that a lot of the things that were made
of steel um have obviously rusted and, you know, degraded over the years. So for me it's looking at alternatives to what we do as far as um snow removal or management. So looking at options uh with public works and my boss or superiors of course on on brining the
mall, right? And trying to limit the damage to those assets um for years to come. >> Yeah. Um something that you you you all showed in the films is the the big black pots of um like sometimes there are plants and things in there. Who's
responsible for determining what goes in there? >> I'm going to have to defer that question to to Katie Lockheart, but um making that determination is going to be an internal thing with parks and recreation landscape manager specifically, Rob Math.
>> Um and um the last thing is I think one of the big selling points of the mall and that's um the the trees and um I never knew exactly how many it was. So it's nine. I bet you Steve knows Steve Gains knows
the name of each one and the background. I've done the tour with him and he's amazing with knowing the the background of the trees and the health of the trees. Um and um there's one other thing. Oh, um one of the one of the fixtures on the mall that that been down
by the post office, we may have known the gentleman. He he he passed away and so I just kind of want to acknowledge him. He is always very friendly. So, um he um um passed away a I think late last week. So, I just want to acknowledge
that. >> Um let me see if there's anything else. I think that's I know what it was. Um Lord, um I think you were with me when we we talk about the success of this mall. when we went to Champagne Orbana,
they actually had a downtown mall >> and um they opened it back up, you know, because it wasn't I think the business owners complain and you know um >> it wasn't working. >> Wasn't working. So, and it's happened a lot. And so, um so, you know, what we
have here is is real special. We need to but it takes work to to to keep it that way. and we're glad that we're taking these efforts to to do it because it's it's um something unique um the length of it and um so you know I'm glad we're taking these steps. So if
I could just build on that a little bit I I always like to bring up the fact that you know in the there were an awful lot of places that went decided in the early '7s late 60s early 70s that downtown malls pedestrian malls were
cool. And I think there are a lot of places that thought all we have to do is to create a downtown mall and poof it happens. When in fact it only happens when the city continues to invest in it. When the
city invests money, when it invests time, invests attention. Uh and we have invested or just to take an obvious example, we invested a lot of money in making sure that the hotel got up and going. one point we owned the hotel. Uh
we invested money in the pavilion. We've invested money in re-bricking the mall. We've invested every year we invest money in it. And so uh it's important that we recognize we won't have a downtown mall if we don't have civic investment in it and the the city's
investment in it. If the $600,000 a year a part of the ambassador program is part of that investment, that's not to say that I'm committed to the notion that it is the best investment, but it's an important investment. And if if it's not the best investment, let's find what the
best investment is, but let's not shy away from it because it involves spending money. It's important to all of us. Yeah. >> And that actually made me made me think it didn't end up happening, but like places like Oldtown Alexandria have proposed like business improvement
districts to have a um permanent revenue stream for improvements. Is is that something that's been discussed or looked at or at this point would seem to even have interest from businesses in terms of pursuing something like that? >> So, we are having some of those discussions internally and we're
actually working on a report that might make further recommendations of bigger picture things. So I think that will be coming out in the future of is there a way we can look into things like that. >> Thank you. And there have been active discussions of that a number of times in
the past. Uh and I was involved in some of them because I'm you know you know my law office is in a building that is within the downtown mall area. It doesn't front on the mall. as fronts on Market Street, but we were within the district that would have been subject to
that additional tax. U and I I think it's fair to say that it never quite got fully off the ground. The proposal never really got crystallized. Uh but yes, there has been discussion of it. There was discussion uh about 15 years ago.
There was discussion, I know, when the whole thing got started way back when. Um, at this point we've we've chosen to have the city as a whole invest in it. Uh, but no reason that we couldn't adopt a different formulation.
>> Great. Other questions or comments? That's going to be a a busy year. I'm looking looking forward to it and promoting. You might hear me a little bit more because I just became chair of the visitors bureau's um board. So, I'm looking forward to working with them and
being able to promote this community and the great things that we have to offer um to bring people in to let them know and I always suggest that they stay another night and have another meal. It's that right. >> Well, and I have one more question
actually. You you actually just reminded me of this. the So, it's my understanding as well that the ambassadors um are not um tasked with or skilled and trained in working to help get our
neighbors who are currently living on the mall or transitive on the mall into housing. That whole program is is not under that ambassador purview, right? >> That would be correct. And so do is your program connected to the programs that will that are working on that or is it
just something entirely separate? So we'll probably need to be working on that more. We're talking about the citywide anchor team. There may be some resources that address folks on the downtown mall. As you know, Mr. Sanders
has this big list bigger plan to address the the homelessness issue. Um so right now this actual company does do that in other places but with our specific work goals and contract they have been
advised not to address that. They of course interact friendly, whatever they need to do, but if there are any specific issues, they are to contact the police department at this point. Um, if we do get additional resources just for
the downtown mall, then they will be trained on who to connect with with that, but that's that's their instructions at this time. >> Thanks for clarifying that. Appreciate >> that's all. >> Okay, thank you, Sam. Any other questions, comments?
Thank you all so much. This is great. Looking forward to to this year and continue to to move forward. Appreciate you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> So Sam, is that all we had for for this? >> That's all for today. >> So um we're going to be read into close
session. Um and we will be back what seems like um a whole day, two hours almost um before we come back for a business meeting. Um um Natie, will you read us in?
>> Yes. Thank you so much. >> Pursuant to section 2.2-3712 of the Virginia Code, I move that this city council close this open meeting and convene in closed session as authorized by the Virginia Freedom of Information Act as follows.
>> One, pursuant to Virginia Code section 2.2-3711A1 2-3711A1 for discussion and consideration of prospective candidates to be appointed to the following boards and/or committees. A Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority Board. >> Um, can I get a second for that?
>> Second. >> Um, all in favor, please say yes. >> All oppose, please say no. >> Great. We'll be back at 6:30. Thank you. Part: 2
to go to sleep over this. So, who is the kid? She is gone for >> Thursday virtually or you be too far away you just for the work session because India
Well, I'm here's the catch. The plane flies through Abu Dhabi. >> That airport is closed. >> I don't know if I'm going to India or not. >> I I was trying to find out. I bought the
ticket through Expedia >> and I have no idea how that's going to work. I'll call the Charlottesville regular business meeting back to order. Um, Madame Vice um, Mayor, would you please read us out of um, close session,
please? >> Certainly. I move that this council certify by a recorded vote that to the best of each council member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and identified in the motion convening the closed session were
heard, discussed or considered in the closed session. >> Is there a second? >> I'll second it. >> Okay, so we um will vote. Um is everyone >> I'm not signed on yet. >> Okay. All in favor, please say yes. Yes.
>> All post, please say no. Um the motion passes. We're back in regular session. The next item we have on the agenda is um a moment of silence. And as we have the moment of silence, I mentioned is at the 4:00 meeting, we had a resident um
that um was a regular on the downtown mall near the post office that um that um passed away within the last week. So we can um consider that and others as doing a moment of silence. >> Thank you. Are there any announcements?
>> I have two. >> Okay. Uh the first is that uh it's a new month which means it's a new neighborhood for the monthly neighborhood walks that the bike and pedestrian advisory committee uh host along with some help from the historical resources committee. Uh this month uh
the walk will be this Sunday, March 8th, and the neighborhood will be the Meadows. So, uh, the walk will be meeting at 10:00 a.m. on Sunday the 8th at the Best Buy, and then we'll loop through that neighborhood, which is, um, uh, has some city county interplay
there. So, um, you'll you'll have some good conversations and check out some cool stuff. There's also a park that's going to go in and some new crosswalk and, um, uh, street improvements. So, it'll be cool to see those. They haven't gotten started yet, but, you'll see where those are going to go. >> So, before you move on, um, 10 10:00
a.m. That's a little bit earlier than it's usually. Is that correct? >> Oh, >> um they've been at 10:00 a.m. so far this year. Um it might switch in the summer. >> Okay. Maybe under some time, >> some other times it's been in the afternoon. >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> But um I'll be sure to announce that
when and if the time changes. >> Um I also have um an announcement for the My Help List student contest. Uh, Virginia students K through 12 are encouraged to participate in the upcoming My Help List contest, which
starts uh Monday, March 9th, and lasts through Friday, April 17th. The contest was created by um our local trailblazer, Alex Xan. Students from Charlottesville, Almoro, and the surrounding counties, including homeschoolers, are eligible to write in 150 words or less why it's
important to help others and list five things they have done or can do to help someone. There will be four winners chosen from um different grade sections uh to receive a cash prize of $100 at a gathering in their honor. Letters can be
mailed or dropped off at Jones Heating and Air Plumbing Electrical at 633 Rose Hill Drive. Um and then there's um some great local sponsors who are helping contribute. The contest is in honor of Virginia Gatewood. >> Yeah, thank you. Alexand always has, you
know, a lot of great um things that's going on in the community. never he's never slows down. He's doing some great things. Um we're now at for proclamations and um recognitions and I would like to have a proclamation for the American Red Cross month. Um whereas
during the month of March, we recognize the selfless contribution of volunteers and supporters um who give their time, resources, and compassion to further the American Red Cross mission to prevent and alleviate human suffering in the
face of emergencies. And whereas American Red Cross is synonymous with helping people in crisis and has been doing so for more than 140 years, this um generous spirit is woven into the fabric of our community and advances of
humanitarian legacy of the American Red Cross founder Clara Barton who nobly dedicated herself to alleviating suffering. And whereas kind-hearted individuals in our community exemplify Barton's commitment as they step up
through the American Red Cross of Central Virginia to provide um to to provide a beacon of hope in our neighborhoods in need. And whereas American Red Cross continues to embody the values of humanity, impartiality,
ne neutrality, independence, volunteer service, unity, and universally promoting a a world where people um are cared for and protected no matter their circumstances. Nefor um therefore with a selfless self
selfless contribution making a life saving difference to people in the darkest hours in in 2025 at at least um 141 local Red Cross volunteers provided 23 families um with shelter, food, and comfort after a
crisis. Hosted 59 blood drives. Collected 16 uh 116 uh 117 units of life-saving blood, provided 33 support services to aid
military families through the unique um challenges of service, and provided 2,237 local um individual with first aid and CPR and um AED and other life-saving training. Therefore, therefore, be proclaimed that the city of
Charlottesville Council recognizes March 2026 as American Red Cross Month, and we encourage all community members to join in this noble human humanitarian efforts to strengthen and uplift the
community. Signed um March 2nd, 2026 by Mayor Juan Diego Wade. And I think we have some people here today. say thank you on behalf of the American Red Cross. As Mayor Wade shared, our mission is to prevent and alleviate human suffering in the face of
emergencies. And we do that by mobilizing the power of volunteers and the generosity of donors. The American Red Cross is only as strong as the community and the volunteers that support it. So without your support, we wouldn't be here. So thank you.
>> Thank you. Thank you so much. WE'RE NOW at the opportunity for the first time for um community matters. We have um eight um slots for pre-registered speakers. Only seven signed up, but we have slots for nine additional speakers. And
the first speaker will be Jackie um Tim Timkins. Tim Kins. Yeah. Start the timer. >> Yes. >> Oh, okay. >> Hi, my name is Jackie Tempin. I'm a business owner in the city. Um, many of
you have heard from me before um about girls sports and the fact that there is inequitable access to programming um in this community and other communities. Um but before you right now is the opportunity um to invest in equitable access to sports um by funding parks and
recrecks um request for specifically two positions that I know that they're looking for in the operating budget. Um an inclusion coordinator as well as somebody to manage uh the uh summer camps and uh connect sites. Um inclusion is so so important. Um it's not just
girls, it's people with all different kinds of needs. Um, as you a lot of you may know, the adaptive programs are constantly there's a wait list for them. Um, and not just that, there's plenty of opportunities for kids to actually be incorporated into other programs as well if they had a little bit more support.
Um, so they definitely need somebody to help um, organize all that. Um, and the second thing is those the summer camp program and the connect sites. Um, I was completely gobsmacked to learn that the connect sites provide free dinners to kids. Um, I don't know if people here
know that, but you can get a free meal. You can show up. Um, and right now a lot of the schools are the only ones that are feeding kids. Oh, sorry. >> Oh, I just got overcome. Um, and it's really sad that these kids
just had multiple weeks of no food while schools were closed during the blizzard and they really need the support. They really need the help. And so, um, if there were more program sites open, the people who run it are absolutely
wonderful. And, um, a lot of the women make their own food to bring in, and there's also a lot of grants from the city, um, from different programs that fund it. Um, so, um, it would be really great, uh, to be able to expand the program for other people, um, and things like that. Um, and the success of the
playground, too, um, up in Pen Park is huge. Um right now they're focusing on uh summer camps too. Um there's a big need. There's currently no space for summer camp this summer yet because of the problem um with the school. So um we
could really really use your help um feeding kids and helping kids feel included. Thank you. >> Thank you so much. WE APPRECIATE um Miss um Shannon Gillicanin. >> Hi. Uh my name is Jessica Taylor. I am the bargaining chair for the
Charlottesville Education Association speaking in a joint statement for Shannon, our president who has lost her voice. Uh tonight the city schools will present a budget that includes a significant raise for our support staff.
CA spent the fall bargaining on behalf of over 200 employees, our custodians, nutrition and safety staff, office staff, and instructional assistants to get to this place. We'd like to give you a glimpse of what it means to be a
support staff for the schools. CA spent the last year listening to the staff members in this bargaining unit to hear their stories of what it's like to work at their current wages, how hard it is to make ends meet, how they choose between which bills to pay and what
groceries to buy. Most support staff work additional jobs for 16 to 20 hours a week. We need you to understand that the same people who serve our children lunch sometimes cannot afford to feed their own families.
Shannon's assistant has worked for the division for a decade in various roles from afterchool care to a nutrition manager to an instructional assistant. After a decade, she barely makes $30,000 a year.
This is the person who works one-on-one with a refugee student to help her learn the alphabet. She provides accommodations for students with special needs and encourages and supports their kids in a way that makes them feel successful every day. In a classroom
that's typically full of over 20 kindergarteners, many of whom are learning English, she is essential. The custodians who the city and schools lauded as heroes during the snowstorm, one of whom even broke his arm while shoveling
is essential. They need to be compensated accordingly. This new contract will provide staff with a 9% raise and a step increase each year. It provides a stipen for continuing their education and degrees they earn, as well as longevity pay for
the years of service they provide to our students. It's not perfect, but it's a step in the right direction. There's more work to be done to make both our city and schools a place that is equitable for its employees to live and work. We are counting on you to fully
fund the city schools budget so our support staff can make a living wage. Thank you. >> Thank you. I'm Susan McCully and I'm a property owner in the city. I'm also part of a local organization called Keep Going
Together, which is working to reduce harm and suffering in Charlottesville. When folks come to our organization, we ask them to get a clear get clear on what matters to them, identify their unique skills, and then take action.
So, as your friendly local organizer, I say, well done. You have made clear what matters to you by passing the resolution regarding immigration enforcement actions and the letter to the Virginia congressional delegation and statewide
leaders. Your reiteration of the city's commitment to civil rights, due process, and community trust is a very good thing. Given the weak response of other local institutions reported in the recent Seville Weekly article, yours is sadly a
precious, preciously rare one. So, excellent. Thank you for that. Now, as a governmental body, you have a number of skills and abilities. In keep going together, we call them superpowers,
and council has many. You have the ability to advocate for action from state and federal officials, to communicate plans clearly to ensure preparedness and trust, and direct resources to those who need them most.
Now that you've passed the resolution, it's time to put your power into action. We encourage you to make a statement regarding the city's plans, policies, and procedures around ICE actions. We encourage you to urge Governor Sta Spanberger's administration to join
other states that are challenging white right-wing extremism and lawlessness. We encourage you to follow the lead of New Jersey Governor Mikey Cheryl's executive order banning ICE from undertaking operations on state property
by prohibiting ICE operations on city property. As I said at the last meeting, the Latino and immigrant community has been intensely impacted by federal actions and they need support. Sin Beretes and
Fua Latina ask for funding for legal representation for immigrants including habius corpus petitions, funding for financial assistance for those who have been unable to work and funding for mental health services to address widpread trauma.
Federal actions directed at any marginalized group impact us all. At Keep Going Together, we know that a unified community response is essential. So, we identify needs, assess how our skills and abilities can help, and we take action. We ask you to join us.
Please take action now. >> Thank you, Alicia. >> Good evening. My name is Alicia Lenahan. I live in County. >> I'll begin by echoing Susan McCauy's thanks for passing the resolution and for communicating your principles and concerns with our state and federal
delegations. Clearly articulated standards along with transparent and accessible accountability mechanisms will help ensure public safety. Today, we're calling on you to communicate regularly, clearly, and preemptively.
Because in this environment, truth doesn't just get lost. It gets edited and it gets branded. The struggle we see playing out hourly is one of perception, timing, and morale. You have the ability to take control of the narrative.
Accurate information is power. We don't know when or why a federal presence will materialize in Charlottesville. It may be immigration or a protest or election interference. The community needs to know that today's Charlottesville Police Department,
Alamar County Police Department, UVA Police Department, and State Police work together and are good at managing large events. We need to know that they plan meticulously and develop comprehensive response strategies.
Your communications plan can include formal statements as well as direct messages to those who are most likely to be affected by federal action. You have the law on your side. You have the facts on your side. By keeping the community informed, you will defang the strategy
used by the administration that keeps people angry, disgusted, and distrustful. Listen to John Adams, and I paraphrase here. Facts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our prejudices, hatreds, or hot button issues, they cannot alter
the state of facts and evidence. Say what you're going to do and follow through. Being transparent and consistent are essential elements during these uncertain times. Echoing Susan again, advocate for action from state
and federal officials. Communicate plans clearly to ensure preparedness and trust and direct resources to those who need them most. Together, we can get through this. Thank you. >> Thank you,
Mark Dennison. Good evening, council. >> Good evening. >> I'm Mark Dennis. I am the chair of the parks and wreck advisory board, many of whom are here with me tonight. Um, and today I'm here to follow up on this
letter that was sent to you um, a few days ago um, about the department's budget requests. In 2025, the city council approved parks and reccks master plan representing a commitment to the community. In it, the
residents told us that they wanted what they wanted, clean parks, maintained trails, and inclusive programming. Right now, the department is trying to keep that commitment with stretched resources, and they've found creative solutions, but they've hit a wall.
These four positions that they've requested are critical pieces to the puzzle. A custodial maintenance worker to keep our parks and facilities clean. A trail maintenance worker because the trails are the community's top priority and the city has over 30 miles to
maintain and more to come. an inclusion coordinator to ensure adaptive and inclusive programming year round and a CSA to support the connect sites after school programs and summer camp. To the point on summer camps, uh Jackie
mentioned this earlier, but the department is currently working to avoid a crisis and needs your help right now. For years, families have counted on Parks and Wreck for safe and affordable summer camps. But this year, due to the school reconfiguration, they have no
sight um no home for these camps. At least 125 elementary age kids are waiting to know where they'll spend their summer. We know that solutions exist within this community and we need counsel to help us find them. whether that's a school
building, a community center, or a partner who can step up. So, tonight I'm coming to you with two requests, but these aren't separate issues. They're both about whether the city is going to support the commitments it's made. So, approve the department's budget
requests so they can keep delivering on this master plan and help us find a temporary home for summer camp. I know budgets are tight and there's important priorities throughout the city, but parks and wreck is not competing with those priorities. We are
complimenting them. Healthy communities need safe spaces, trails, and recreation programs for kids and especially during the summer. As for the board, we remain committed to amplifying the voice of the community
while ensuring the parks department is able to deliver. Thank you. >> Thank you, M. Graford. >> Before I begin, I want to present something to council. Give it to Mr. Okay. Good evening. C Good evening,
mayor and council members. My name is Janata Bradford. I am the founder of Mahogany and Friends Foundation, a Charlottesville-based nonprofit building financial stability across generations. We equip children, teens, and caregivers with the tools and confidence needed to
build long-term economic security. Our work focuses on three core areas. Youth financial education before first employment, structure savings and decision-making skills, and caregiver financial coaching to reduce financial
stress at home. At Charlottesville Middle School, we are positioned to deliver structured afterchool financial stability programming during what we believe is a critical window before young people enter the workforce and begin making independent financial
decisions. We have also served youth through the Boys and Girls Club and have partnered for the past two years with University of Virginia's Starill Pathways program to deliver financial education courses to local students. In addition, we provide financial workshops
and one-on-one coaching for caregivers through community partnerships. To date, without municipal funding, we have served over 125 Charlottesville residents, including more than 100 youth. Our measurable outcomes show
financial knowledge increasing from 42% to over 90%. And student confidence increasing from 22% to 88%. Beyond the data, we're seeing real behavioral change. One high school student who initially had no interest in finance is
now exploring internships with a financial advisor after participating in our programming. A parent recently shared that after a workshop, her child came home asking to open a savings account and their family is now having regular budgeting and budgeting
conversations. That is generational impact. Our work aligns directly with the city's strategic outcome areas of economic prosperity, education, and public safety. We strengthen work for work workforce readiness before first
employment. We reinforce educational outcomes through structured after-school programming and we help reduce financial stress and Alice households before crisis intervention is needed for FY27. We are prepared to serve over 200
Charlottesville residents through confirmed school and community partnerships. We are committed to partnering with the city of Charlottesville to continue building financial stability futures for our youth and families. We have already begun this work in our community. With
the city's partnership, we can build a financially resilient Charlottesville where our youth are prepared, our families are stable, and prevention replaces crisis. Thank you for your time and leadership. Thank you, >> uh, Lisa.
Um, Catalo, >> yes. Uh, I wanted to share a little bit about snow on the sidewalks after a storm. And I live on Sherry Avenue and I live right on the curve
where when the city snow plow comes and moves it off the 6 in off the road. I got about three or four feet on that sidewalk. But I'm going to tell you something else. I had after this last snowstorm, I had three or four young men barely out
of high school came to my house with pickaxe and busted all that up community volunteers. >> Yeah. >> And I called down to city hall in tears.
I said, you know, 24 hours, you know, I'm not too strong. This it's not fluff. this is not nice. >> And I said, you know, I'm not trying to get in trouble for this. She Oh, it's okay. It's okay. And she gave me United Way number. I called United Way. And
those guys were just on their way out. >> Yeah. >> And um then later the city hall called me back, wanted to make sure. I said, "Oh, yes. United Way's been out here." >> And so I was walking later and of course I was walking in the road cuz my
neighbor hadn't touched his yet. and he rushed out and he said, "Oh, ma'am, I'm so sorry. You know, I haven't touched my sidewalk. I'll get it." But then he told me why it' been several days since the sidewalk hadn't been touched. He works at the University Hospital
>> and he was there when the snowstorm came and he couldn't leave. >> Yeah. >> He couldn't leave for three or four days. He stayed up there and then I think it was the city came out and helped a few and and got him and I was glad to see him get the help that he deserved too. He was at the hospital for
three or four days straight. >> But I know it's a stressful time for the city pedestrians and people driving and those roads got to be cleared to get people back and forth. But I just want to thank United Way, those young men that came and helped me and that was
work work. That's not easy work. That was >> Yes, >> that was and and mine was I know that was the second house they did. >> Yeah. >> And it took them several hours to get that stuff done. >> But I just want to thank those young men, United Way in the city and everybody pulling together.
>> Thank Thank you so much. It was UM >> YOU KNOW when somebody does something wrong >> Yeah. >> it's on the front page. >> Yes. >> But these young men 19, 20, 21 could have been at home playing doing whatever. >> Yes. and yet they walked out and said,
"Hey, let's register. Let's go help our neighbors." You know, >> thank you. Thank you for um spotlighting so much of the positivity that goes on in this community. I want to thank Sam and his staff for coordinating with um the United Way to to initiate that. It was a unique
>> a unique storm. So, >> can I add something? >> Yeah. I just want to say within I guess it was Monday morning I guess was when I got this email saying we got all these the problems shoveling the walk. Uh and so my I'm not trying to
claim credit here. I'm trying to give credit to I I sent an email to Mr. Sanders and among others to Misty Graves. And within a half an hour, I got an email back from Misty Graves saying she had just been in touch with the folks at
the United Way and they were going to try to get something set up. And by noon that day, there was already a program launched. And so, look at Misty Graves and Department of Human Services, I guess, is official title. uh look at to
the United Way people who jumped on it right away as well as the volunteers who then came out. So a lot of credit to go around. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. Thank you for coming out to let us know about that. So we have the opportunity for nine additional speakers. Um
Bellamy Good evening, Mr. Mayor. Uh members of council, >> um I'm speaking uh as a member of Bennett's Village and in a supporting role uh as a member of the Schultz Parks Foundation. Um just echoing our executive director um in a letter that
was previously sent to you. I write today in support of Schulz Parks and Recreation's budget request for new inclusion coordinator. As as we as Ben's village know, there are many barriers to play and recreation in our community.
Having a position dedicated to addressing and supporting all inclusion requests that come into parks and recreation across all program areas could have a profoundly powerful impact on the ability of individuals and families to participate in the benefits
that parks recreation provides for programs and spaces. This position would be well suited to support the ADA assessment happening across city parks to identify gaps in accessibility and inclusion. We welcome additional city
staffing to collaborate with as we work to ensure that everyone in our community uh has accessible and welcoming places to play. Um that's on that topic. Another topic uh speaking in uh support
of our uh school staff. Um I am a strong supporter of our public schools. Um have relationships with some of the a lot of the support staff um and understand the impact that uh the the situation most recently with
funding um has caused uh to them. I also recognize that I believe we have a $10 million surplus. Um it's also my understanding that to cover um the funding for the support staff will be about $200 uh,000. That's about 2% of
that uh surplus funding. These are are our are part of our backbone of our public schools and our uh and our education here uh in the community, but they are also often overlooked. This is an opportunity for us to support them
strongly as they support our kids and our families within our community. And I hope that you all will vote uh positively to provide the funding that they so desperately need and deserve. Thank you. >> Thank you, Mr. Brown. Anyone over here like to speak?
>> Anyone over here like Yes, ma'am. Hi, my name is Caroline Allison. Uh, I live in the county. Um, I'm a current online Masters of Social Work student at BCU. Um, >> hey, Carly. >> Yeah. >> Taught a Sunday school class growing up.
>> Go back. We go back. Um, and as part of my program, I previously interned at Tall Oaks Elementary in the city schools or Johnson as I knew it at the time. and I currently intern at UVA hospital. Um I've come here just to state my emphatic
support for the city's official stance on um the activity or potential activity of the immigration and customs enforcement agency in the city. Both in working in the school setting and the hospital setting, I've seen the fear
surrounding current immigration policies in this country. I know you all have seen it as well with frequent protests and the recent school walkouts at Charlesville High School and Almor High School. At Tall Oaks, I worked with many wonderful refugee families that
reinforced to me the value of having cultural diversity in our community. And in my time at the hospital, I've worked with many, several undocumented patients that come from hours away to receive life-saving care, as UVA is one of the few hospitals in the state that accepts
undocumented patients for services not including emergency care. I say all of this to highlight how Charlottesville is a rich blend of locals, immigrants, students, and refugees. And I firmly believe it is our
duty to protect that community in its entirety as much as we are able. I know that this issue goes beyond the local and even state levels. And I know that often times these decisions can be out of our hands as it were. But I find
comfort in knowing that this city that I have lived in and loved for 24 years is doing what is necessary to protect its residents and guests regardless of immigration status. Thank you. Thank you.
They grow up. I tell you. So, um, anyone in the center? Peter. Good evening, council and members of the public. I'm Peter Krebs from the Pedmont Environmental Council. We protect and preserve the soils and waters of the Virginia Piedmont while building strong,
healthy communities. I'm here tonight to invite everybody to attend the active mobility summit which is taking place this Thursday and Friday at the Wolf Factory. There are two sessions. One on uh Thursday evening starting at 5:30
that'll have a keynote speaker from Rono who's going to talk about how Rono has really centered their economic development approach on access to the outdoors and healthy communities. and we will be talking about things that are happening in the community, things that
we can look forward to in 2026. And we're going to crown a community champion. I know who it is, but I can't reveal it. You'll you'll have to come to find out. They're a well-known individual, welldeserving. Then on Friday morning, we're going to
reconvene and focus a little bit more on the big picture. Uh we're very excited to announce right now for the first time that uh Adam Spamberger, the first gentleman of Virginia, will open the session for us. We'll have more Commonwealth perspective followed by uh
leaders from around the state talking about as Pete Ashelman will do talk about how different areas are are doing a great job of connecting communities and getting people outside. There will be lots of opportunities to learn about
ways to get involved. There'll be lots of sharing and celebrating. There'll be free food and drinks. So, please come. So, that's this Thursday and Friday at the Wolf Factory. And you can learn more by going to pcva.org/mobility.
I have flyers and I hope to see you all there. >> Thank you. Anyone over here like to speak? Yes, Miss Parker. >> Um, good evening. Um, >> good evening, >> council. >> Um, I have a question. Um, so we was
presented the budget. So, I was we was presented the budget. I would like to have an understanding of who will be um paying for the SRO's to be in the school system. And also um I've noticed human trafficking. I've noticed we having
traffickers here in the city of Charlottesville and I'm not noticing that there are a lot of more young ladies going missing. some may come home but it's been um right much of that and as I've been watching different um things on crime radar I have been
noticing a pattern for the last few months and um a a person came to me yesterday and they're being followed and it's a child and she's uh 14 years old and I've seen this car before but I'm not quite sure.
I'm I'm I'm assuming, but I don't want to assume. But when a child continues to come to me and that's close to home and it's something that has been on my heart and I've heard data for everything else but human trafficking. So that's
something that needs to be start looking at here in Charlesville because it's here. You know, I understand we're dealing with ICE and but that could be a possibility of that way too that they can come through different ways. is not just necessarily what we see, but I
definitely know that that's a priority that needs to be taken care of. And I also want to reiterate um what um Bellamy said about the school staffing, which was an honor and a privilege to meet with them yesterday, you know, dealing with the concerns in the school
system. Um we definitely need them paid because uh Charlottesville right now and our children in literacy, we are at the lowest po um po of the podium toll. So we need to have those um teachers in there paid so that we can have proper services for our children so they can uh
learn. We want our kids to be successful. Not do we only want them successful but we don't want them to uh our children especially our black and brown young men in um school to prison pipeline cuz as we putting them in school to prison pipeline or even just um juvenile system
or even coming into contact with the law enforcement that's a hindrance to them children. with no services being in Charlottesville for that type of um uh don't have no services for those children in that type of atmosphere, but we don't want to have them in that atmosphere. We want them to continue to
strive and be somebody in um the community. So, I'm asking you that you also uh provide the um school with more funding because those students definitely need it and they may need to create own programs for themselves if they feel that they can um achieve what
it is that they would like to see. Thank you, M. >> Miss Parker, um before you leave, uh and you may already done this, but if you see a car following the child, call the police, call 911. Don't like >> But it wasn't following I didn't see it following the child. The child came to
me with it, but I have seen this car >> myself just in the community. But when the child explained to me, so now, you know, I'm bringing it forward to the public to let them know that this is definitely a problem now, you know, and
if anyone sees these things because you don't really it's not obvious how they do it. if you you have to actually study, you know, and have an understanding what human trafficking is and how they go about it because there's been quite a few abductions here in the
city of Charlottesville since I want to say November. >> Thank you. >> So, yeah, it's it's definitely you have to be definitely eyes on. Yeah. >> To actually have an understanding. >> Thank you so much, >> Miss Joules in the back. Miss J.
>> Good evening, Mayor Wade and Council. >> Good evening. >> I'm going to keep this really short this evening. Um, I'm Latricia GS and I'm the executive director of FAR, the public housing association of residents. Um, I'm coming before you because, as you know, we need more housing, but we
cannot solve one problem by creating another. Luxury student housing and vulnerable neighborhoods accelerates displacement. The zoning ordinance left gaps in core neighborhood protections. Those gaps need to be closed. Um and so as we've been asking for months um part
of the things we've been asking limited limit student housing to appropriate corridors uh rely on on um require onsite deeply affordable units or better uh contributions of inloo fees um and expand rental assistance to keep uh
families housed. And as we I heard a few weeks ago and it's once again has been ruminating in my mind about hope is not a strategy. So I continue to say that yes, I know that and we need action. Uh so that's it for this evening and I thank y'all for listening.
I think we're over here. No, sorry. Back over here. Anyone else over here like to speak? We have um how many more? Three. Four more. Um >> four more. Anyone over here? Will you
Lena? >> Good evening, council. I'm here to also talk about the SRO's. For those who don't know what that is, it means the police in our city schools. Um, since it's budget time of year, I'm going to tie it in to the budget because
there are a lot of different parts to this. Um, and as a former member of the disproportionate minority contact and juvenile justice system task force, I'm well aware of how police in schools can lead to the schoolto prison pipeline.
There's wellestablished data on it. I have read it. I'm not going to try to communicate it to you. There are others who are well more well-versed in that. What I am going to talk to you about is um the the the funding and the school
board and how this comes to you, right? And so um for one, police officers get a high rate of pay because they're doing dangerous work, right? They retire early that that doesn't seem like it's hanging
out at the schools, right? Um, next it's uh apparently the they they found the money for it, right? So, they don't even have to ask to come to you to get extra funding for it. And this is the second time that the police have found money. I
think the benevolent association uh put forward the money for the flock cameras, but then the police already had enough money somewhere in their budget that they didn't have to come ask you. They did talk to you about it, but they didn't have to. seems to me like they have a bloated budget where whenever they want to do something and not ask
counsel about it, they already have the funding for it. And I'm all for, you know, them doing serious detective work, but honestly, I'm hearing about these missing women from a member of our community. So, I think you should take a much closer look at how the police is
spending the m money that they have and and uh and this this oh, we have extra money. It kind of gets to um them bypassing oversight by city council because they can just fund it themselves
so they don't have to ask you about it. Um and I also want to talk about how the school board took their vote on this. Apparently it was at a meeting where it wasn't supposed to come up. It wasn't on the agenda. Um they did community
engagement after the fact after they had already passed it. Um, and so this is exactly the kind of thing where council oversight would be very important and uh, so I ask you to look at that more closely. Thank you. >> Thank you.
Anyone over here like to speak? Anyone else like to speak? We have another opportunity at the end of the meeting. Okay, I'll close the public comment at at this time. And we will now um have the consent agenda read.
Consent agenda number two, January 5th, regular and organizational meeting minutes. Number three, resolution appropriating $198,910 in additional Virginia Department of Transportation funds for construction engineering and inspection
on the project bundle of 10th and Grady UPC 1113916 Montichello second UPC 1113917 and Preston Harris UPC 1113918 second reading four resolution of appropriation
to amend the FY26 Six budget 10,100 I'm sorry 10 million $1,87549 second reading. Five resolution to grant $125,000 for a small business energy efficiency
incentive program. One of two readings. Six, a resolution for compromise of claim water and wastewater leak credit of $20,7705 for Tiger Fuel Company.
>> Okay. Um, is there a motion to approve the consent agenda? >> So moved. >> Okay. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Second. Okay. Is everyone signed in?
Okay. We can vote. um electronically. Okay, the motion passes. Um 5 to zero. The consent agenda has been passed. Um we will now go to the city manager's um report. >> Good evening, council and members of the
public. Um I have three individuals over here in the gallery who all have comments, so I get to share the wealth. I don't have to do all this by myself anymore. So, um, we'll let them all go. James, you can go first and move on down the line. >> All right. Good evening, Mayor Wayne, members of council. Uh, I am pleased to
report today that, uh, the, uh, payment kiosks in the two parking garages are now up and operational. >> So, now there's more than one way for folks to uh, pay for their uh, parking and uh, use the new parking system.
Thank you. Yes. Um, >> it's good news. >> Yeah. Happy to take any questions on that, but it's pretty straightforward. >> Yep. >> All right. I have a couple of uh quick updates for you. >> Um, one is uh Mr. Sanders had mentioned
it in the last meeting about the pothole blitz. We're about halfway through that at this time. Uh it is running until March 13th and we have as of this morning had uh 67 potholes reported to us, but we know there's far more out
there. So we're looking to uh the public to help us identify those so we can go out and fix them. Uh you can report those on my Seville app or you can call 434-9703830. The second item, uh, want to let everybody know that, uh, it is fix a
leak month. So, water leaks, uh, even a single water leak can contribute 10,000 gallons of wasted water. So, that that really hits people in the the pocketbooks. So, we're asking that, uh, people check their uh their fixtures.
Um, we have a uh toilet leak detection tablets as well as universal flappers available for people uh that could be picked up at the office of utility billing. Uh we're also doing a scavenger hunt and those are due by April 13th and
there is a prize. Uh and there's several other events uh that you can find at our website. It is www.sharlottville.gov/ GV/Fixal leak and fix a leak is no spaces or
underscores just all one word. >> The scavenger hunt is related to fix a leak or a separate item. Okay, >> that that is related to water water savings. >> Got it. Thank you. >> Good evening council and members of the public. I see Chief Thomas in the
audience and I know he would want me to share with you that this Wednesday uh CFD is having a town hall for their strategic planning. Um, this is really designed for community members, stakeholders, and department personnel
to uh really come together and learn about their strategic planning process and for everyone to provide direct input on priorities, service delivery, and community risk reduction efforts. This will be held this Wednesday, March the
4th, from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at City Space, just 100th Street Northeast. Thank you. >> All right. So, again, I'm very excited the fact that I have that much help over there to get uh more work done. So,
thank you all for your uh items. I would like to respond to the question regards to SRO's just for clearing out the the situation. Um the cost of assigning two officers to schools is not a budgeted increase because it's using vacancies.
So, there is no reason for a budget increase or request. uh the individual officers that are being assigned to schools was uh the result of there being two positions that had not been filled. Uh and Chief Kas is using those vacancies to address this particular detail.
Uh I have two items that just to quickly share that I'll be later making the proposed budget uh presentation. But on March 5th, we have a budget work session uh focused on revenue and expenses expenditures. and on March 12th, a work session on outside agencies and
nonprofits. Both of those are from 6:00 to 8:00 PM at city space. So, just making that information available to you as those uh events will happen before the next council meeting. That is my report. >> Thank you. We're now um at um the action items. The first item is the ordinance
amending section 2-42 of the city code concerning special meetings of the city council. This is the first of two readings. Mr. Maddox. >> Good evening, councilors. John Maddox from the city attorney's office. Um,
this is a fairly easy item. Uh, section 2-42 of the city code. Um, hasn't been amended since 1976 along with a lot of provisions of our city code, which as we talked about is something my office is starting to take on. and where we see deficiencies, we're
going to be bringing these uh items to you over I'm thinking probably the next six months to a year um nearly every meeting if we can. Hopefully, it'll be something that we're fixing every time. The section 2-42 of the city code currently includes language stating that special meetings may be held without
notice if all members of council attend and unanimously consent to the business that's transacted. Now, it appears this provision was uh it was intended to address kind of internal notice issues. We want to make sure that all the council members had notice of the special meeting. However, it could also
be read to imply that public notice is not required, which is inconsistent with the Freedom of Information Act and well, a lot of other applicable state law. And so the idea with this, the proposed amendment removes that ambiguity by eliminating the no notice language
entirely and expressly aligns the city code with the state requirements, but it still preserves the principle that internal notice defects do not invalidate council action when all members are present and consent to proceed. So I'm starting white with y'all on these kinds of changes. This is
a real easy one. Um so my office has evaluated and we recommend that you adopt the ordinance. You know it clarifies procedures for calling uh special meetings. It aligns the code with requirements of state law and it eliminates the uh potentially confusing or outdated language. It still preserves
your uh practices and ensuring continued compliance and public notice and open meeting obligations. So unless you have any further questions, I will be quiet now. >> Okay. Thank you. Um any questions or comments um on this?
>> I just wanted to mention that uh Mr. Maddox has told us that he's going to be going through the code and finding all kinds of anacronisms so much. And so we may be getting a lot of these over the next next few months and years. So >> appreciate it. And since the code is
old, but the Freedom of Information Act was after several sections of the code, there's probably going to be several instances where that's a conflict. >> I've got some fun ones next meeting. Just wait. You're ready. >> Okay. So, if there's no other questions or comments, is there a motion or would
you prefer a second reading? Um, it it's it's purely up to y'all. I don't think this is a very controversial item, so I don't see the need for a second reading, but that's certainly within your discretion. >> I move that city council adopt the
ordinance amending section 2-42 of the code of the city of Charlottesville concerning special meetings of city council with the uh I further move that city council wave the requirement for a second reading of this ordinance and that this ordinance take effect immediately upon adoption.
>> Great. Is there a second? >> Second. Okay, we can vote. The motion passes 5 to zero. Thank you, sir. >> Thank you. >> The next item is um a resolution designating property as a revitalization
area for West Haven redevelopment. Mr. Freeze. All right. Good evening, Mayor Wade, members of council. Uh so the item before you this evening is uh to designate a revitalization area for the West Haven uh site, public
housing site. As you all are aware and received a presentation on this at your last meeting, the uh the site is being prepared for eventual redevelopment. And as part of that uh application, they're as part of that project, they're going to be seeking uh low-income housing tax
credit funding to support that project. Something that supports receiving that low-income housing tax credit uh designation is designation as a revitalization area by the city. Something that the council has done for some of the other CRA projects in the
past. I believe uh John Sales is is online to help answer any other questions you may have. Um but I'm also available if you'll have any questions on that topic. >> Yeah. Um, any questions or comments on that?
>> I know we've adopted similar resolutions for basically every LITC project. >> Yep. >> Yeah. >> And they're all true. >> Yes. Yes. >> Yes. >> I know there's several hoops to jump through to get LITC funding. So, this is an added layer to that.
This is uh covered in the packet. We've discussed it before, but just for the community who may be watching, is there anyone who could go over kind of LITC applications due this March? Kind of what the rough timeline and next steps will be
after this. >> Yes, good good evening everyone. Uh yes, the LTC application is due in in March and then we should receive an answer around June or July on whether we've received that Latte funding. Uh and from
that point on we'll be working to finalize everything. So get final HUD approvals, get final city approvals uh around um um from NDS um and then get final approvals from our all other financers and grants. Uh and so we
probably have about a year and a half before any construction would start. Um, and of course the relocation of residents and so it's uh this is just one of the hurdles to get to the application process. Uh, but it's at
least another year and a half before uh dirt gets moved or buildings. Mhm. So again, optimistic timeline, a year and a half before construction begins for the first phase and then it's planned to be at least two phases. Correct?
>> Uh it's planned to be at least two phases. The first phase includes two apartment buildings and so the construction timeline for that uh phase is about 24 months. >> Thank you. So, if there are no other questions or
comments, um, is there a motion? >> And this doesn't have to do a second reading anyway, so we can just move forward with that. I move to adopt the attached resolution to approve designating the West Haven development as a revitalization area for the project. >> Second.
>> Second. Okay, we can vote on this. Is it me? Mine didn't come up yet? >> Yes. Yes. The motion passes. Um what? Five to to zero. Um thank you. You have the next item which is a financial resolution support supporting the West
Haven West Haven development. >> Thank you, mayor. Uh yes, this is uh uh similar to the last one. This is something that council has done a number of times for previous projects again to add additional uh support, additional points, if you will, into a low-inccome
housing tax credit application uh for the West Haven property. Uh in this case, what council is being asked is to is to essentially affirm the uh funding that was previous previously designated in your FY25 um budget when the uh city council
allocated $15 million towards this project over three years within the capital improvement program. Those were FY26, FY27, and FY28. 5 million in each year. the um this this uh funding commitment
uh doesn't represent it's not a formal agreement. It's not a financing agreement. That's something that we do later in the process after they've actually secured LITC and other other funding sources. Um but it does uh it does offer a um it does formalize the uh
indication from council that you will provide this funding and again as I noted is a critical component of that application. Um I also will note that at the time that you guys originally at the time that council originally uh allocated the $15 million towards this
project it was for the entirety of the West Haven project. But as was discussed at your last meeting, at this point in time, we're anticipating that $15 million will cover phase one, which is the two multif family pro buildings proposed as part of that plan, and that
there will be uh separate funding put together for phase two, which is the townhouse component of that um site plan. And again, both myself and Mr. Sales are available to answer any questions. >> Any questions?
>> Quick question. Um, we got the presentation. Um, I know there's still feedback from residents happening. How when does the design itself need to be finalized? No more, you know, changes other than surprises.
So, a lot of the design aspect uh must be s must be um solid before the application is submitted. Uh because there's scoring around uh like um porches and patios and selections on windows
um and siding, roofing. Uh and so there's a a lot of different things um that are really going into the initial design and application process that's really baked in. uh and so it's really hard to change. Um but then there are
certain things that you can change uh that are a lot smaller. Um but a lot of the design is is baked in based upon the application submission. >> Okay. Thanks. >> Um any other questions or comments? I
believe that we've already in last year's in the budget we passed just I guess this time last year we put $5 million in the CIP for it and there's another five for this year the current budget. >> Yep. >> And the other 5 million out of the 15
million is in the budget for the following fiscal year. >> That is correct. >> So we've already got the money budgeted in a sense. >> That is correct. >> Okay. So, um we recently had discussion for um Kendallwood on um the number of
units, you know, that we had agreed upon. I know that you said this wasn't a formal agreement. Um I don't know if this is for you or John or do we is that set in stone or we still in a um kind of um still planning stages of you
know what the makeups of the units going to be and things like that? in West Haven. Well, as was noted, the the uh the design is kind of up aspect of their application for the low-inccome housing tax credits. >> So, yeah, the the number of units is is
going to be to a large extent locked in at the point of this application. John, would you would you say that's correct? >> Yes, I would say that's correct. Then I'll also just add that residents have worked on uh on the site and uh the density and what the site looks like and
fit those uh for at least the last two and a half years. Uh and that's been a lot of compromising to get to that. So I I think the numbers is pretty set and firm. >> Good. >> How many how many units are there there now?
>> 100 Yep. >> 126 units there currently. And we're talking about going to 266. >> 266. >> So more than doubling it in size. >> Yep. And I believe uh Mr. Sales, you said there was a that I believe last we
spoke, you had indicated that the number we had might be wrong and that there were actually more units than what we showed in the staff report. We have 26. >> I was I was off by six. It's actually going to be at the end of it 274 units. So 146 in the first phase. There was six
units in the senior building that was missing. Okay, >> good. >> Okay, >> so this one we can um approve this tonight. Is there a motion to approve if there's no other questions? >> I make a motion to adopt the attached resolution supporting a $15 million
grant to CRA to complete phase one of the project. Okay, >> second. >> Second. Thank you. Thank you. The next item, oh, the motion passes 5
to zero. Thank you. The next item on agenda is general business. Um it's um the school board adopted um budget in for FY 27 and Dr. Gurley will present Good evening.
>> Good evening. Tag team. >> I will be accompanied by Miss Torres who will um get us started. >> Good evening. >> Good evening. >> Good evening. Uh Mayor Wade, city council, Mr. Sanders. Thank you for the opportunity to present this evening.
This proposed budget is the result of rigorous collaborative effort between our stakeholders and central administration reflecting the shared priorities of our schools and community. Our current strategic plan serves as
both our road map and our blueprint providing a disciplined framework for every budgetary decision we make. We are incredibly proud of this work and the progress that we've achieved which we monitor closely through a dedicated data
dashboard to ensure transparency and accountability. This plan centers on four key pillars. Increasing our academic achievement, providing a culture of safety and wellness, supporting our staff, and ensuring
effective and efficient operations. These focus areas work in tandem to maintain high expectations for all students and to ensure that they graduate truly life ready. As Dr. Gurley, our superintendent, often
reminds us, the most important day in a student's life is the day after graduation. This budget is our commitment to ensuring the success to ensuring their success the moment that they leave our halls.
To understand to understand the scope of this budget a little bit better, we must look at the people that it serves. Our district is a vibrant community of 4,376 students across 11 schools supported by
a dedicated team of 914 staff members, including 57 classroom teachers. We are incredibly proud of our 86.2% 2% staff retention rate, a testament to our supportive culture and the fact that our
teachers bring an average of over 14 years of experience to their classrooms. Our diversity is one of our greatest strengths. With 40 different languages spoken in our homes, we remain committed
to personalized learning, maintaining an average kindergarten through third grade class size of just 14 students, which provides the foundation for our 86.9% graduation rate. These aren't just
statistics. They are the daily lives of the families we serve. Now, I'd like to turn the rest of the presentation over to Dr. Gurley, our superintendent. >> All right. >> Thank you. >> And I want to make sure we is our presentation being um broadcast just cuz
I don't see it and I want to make sure that I'm speaking along the presentation. >> I don't see that we received >> Oh, we sent to Who? >> I don't see it in my email or in
>> All right, we can get it to >> Okay. >> Yeah, I saw a note from Doc Miss backer. >> Yeah. All right, I'll continue. I'll continue on. All right. Good afternoon. >> Um, so uniquely CCS is what the slide
says. Within 43 within, um, we have 4,300 students within our 10 square miles and we are a very unique city. um as Miss Torres stated um with so much diversity on one hand and a lot of
economic disparities on the other that makes the needs unique and for that reason we think outside the box. Every group of students uh needs something specific and we do meet those needs very
specifically. If a if a student is not reading at grade level, we ensure that we provide those supports. If a student requires English language learner services, we support them even after they have tested
out of our English language learner program. If you are high achieving, we have an a vast array of AP and dual enrollment um course offerings for all
students. We have career pathways meant to get them on the road that they want to be on for the day after graduation. We will always do what's right for our students and that requires an
investment. our achievements. There's so much to celebrate within Charlottesville City Schools. The achievements you see on the screen scratch at the surface of what's happening across our school community.
from expanding our AP programming to removing barriers to earning college credits through the ADV universal certificate of general studies in collaboration with PVCC PVCC. We are ensuring that all students have
access to college opportunities. um we are we ensure that all students have access to college opportunities um whenever that is their chosen path. We also recognize that school that the
school is a hub for essential needs. Through our school community model, we are serving as the conduit connecting students and families with critical resources and supports. If you've driven
down Cherry Avenue um or 9inth Street, you've seen that we are nearing the completion of a beautiful and innovative middle school modernization project. And we know that
the pathways chosen do not and we know that the pathway students choose don't just begin at high school. They start much much earlier. And with an innovative learning grant, our students will begin career exploration in the
fields that extend beyond the traditional college required professions. Lastly, our students and we're on the achievement slot. And lastly, our students are excellent in the classroom
and they are equally outstanding in athletics. Recently, we celebrated our tennis teams along with standout athletes Elena Pierce and Sam Palmer for their state championship wins. Next
slide, please. So about our budget priorities um if down at the bottom and we've presented this to council and workshops the um at the bottom in the bottom area you see that our budget priorities were
student support achievement and well-being and early childhood education and we have connected them with our strategic plan goals which you see at the top. Um also we have um we had a
strategic we had a budget priority of staff compensation and retention uh which you see throughout our presentation which aligns with our strategic plan. And lastly we um prioritize our um facilities maintenance
and capital improvement projects um which directly correlates with our strategic plan goals. Next slide please. Since the presentation of this Since the presentation of this slide back in February on the 9th during the joint
session with the city um city council and the school board, Miss Hoover um has done some double-checking of the numbers reconciling and validating the data for support staff uh based on the tentative agreement and there was a reduction of
316 $16,000 due to the due to the due to termination, retirements, and transitions promote and promotions within staff. Um the total increase for
the personnel cost you see here is 1,631 66 $1,631,00068. Next slide, please. um the nondiscretionary cost since this presentation since the presentation of this slide back on the 9th of February
um Miss Hoover and Miss Hamill verified the city contract increases. The city revised the transition um the I'm sorry, the city revised the transportation um figure down $107,000
um because of reduced because of reduction in U French benefits rates. This reflects the collaborative efforts between the schools and the city to thoroughly review and validate all figures, ensuring that the most accurate
budget estimates and identifying any possible reductions based on previously identified information. Um this ma this means our um total increase for city contracts is $362,847.
Next slide please. Um we've presented this slide and since our last meeting um we do not have any increases in this slide. It remains the same. Next slide please.
Um the summary of our FY27 budget changes. Um because of the reduction in personnel cost and contracts from the city, which I previously pointed out those changes since February, the
request from the city is less $423,88 than um our previous meeting. In order to balance the budget, the schools um the school is the school system is requesting a $2 million 569,771
um increase from the city in local appropriation to support uh to support the education of Charlesville City Schools. Next slide, please. the um the overall proposed FY27
um budget is 23,377,481. This is an increase of $4,76,114 over the current year's budget. That concludes our budget presentation and I welcome any questions you may have
at this time. >> Thank you. Um we've had a few work sessions with you but you know there may be some some questions and things have come up. So, um, does council have any questions for
the school board on the state revenue? Is that uh reflective of where the current uh draft, state, senate or house budget are or is that
reflective of the uh un amended uh budget from Ynan? It's reflective of the governor's proposed budget. >> Okay. >> Do we know what that number, again, it's in flux because it hasn't passed. Do we
know what that number would look like um with either the current draft state senate budget or House of Delegates budget? >> No, we don't have any we don't have any official um we don't have anything official at the state level.
>> Is that state revenue loss number? I'm I've already forgot the the acronyms. LCA. >> Yes, I did. There's one with a Q. Um uh is that what that number is? So, it's a couple years. Yes,
>> it's tracking a couple years later. Anyway, >> yes, but keep in mind that um also what is what's compounding we talked about this in one of the work sessions that also what did is not working to our advantage with the LCI change is that we
had a reduction in the ADM. So our enrollment average daily um membership um that number um our enrollment number um went down. So that's what negatively impacted our um revenue also with the
LCI changing plus the ADM dropping. >> Okay. >> And that's um and remember the enrollment shift is in alignment with what we're seeing at the state level. There's a drop in um K12 enrollment at
um at the state level. >> Did you have any other questions? Um, one other so when you know the city negotiated our collective bargaining agreements uh a
component of that obviously is pay scale and uh adjusting pay scale throughout the organization um in alignment with agreements that have been made. So is the agreement you've reached with this collective bargaining
agreement is that reflective of the pay scale you want throughout the organization? >> If I am hearing you correctly, if I'm understanding your um your question correctly, so what we have negotiated
with CA is that is that the pay skills that we want for our support staff? I'm not Yeah. So I guess you know an example for the the city would be when you know we
reached correct me if I'm wrong but um you know when we reached an agreement for example with ATU on bus drivers when the bus drivers starting wage was increased the pay scale adjusted along with it. So yes management um pay had a kind of commensurate increase. Is that
agreement reflective of where you want the full pay scale impacts to be throughout the organization? So the the work that's done within the collective bargaining is reflective um that's reflective of the support staff. So
keeping in mind that um our licensed staff, we did that work last school year. Um this work is with our support staff. And so um the work we've done over the last two years, we did we had done a um a co a
compensation study like the year prior and so it is creating um somewhat of a imbalance um particularly let's just take in consider um let's use for example like our assistant principles um
it's making it's it's compressing that um so right Now it it's not um it's probably not as attractive to move from um from a license so being on the teacher scale to
moving to an assistant principal because in some instances it's a pay decrease. Um and so we've not done we've not done any work to that scale. So what's reflective what's reflective in um this bar what's reflective in this budget is
just 3% for an administrative administration and so the um the licensed personnel scale is it's kind of leaving the administrative pay scale. So, um, assistant principles, coordinators, um, because when you when
you switch scales, particle, which is 200, and when you go to a 260 pay scale, your hourly rate goes down. Um, so if there's a little bit of work that's going to need to happen over time. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Um, no that that's helpful because
you know obviously the point is you know I just want to try to understand what the full uh cost and implications are going to be so we can plan seriously for you know how to get to where we want to go. I'm thinking with the city when we did our wage and compensation study which ended up aligning with collective
bargaining when we raised you know starting wages as we needed to do and we're very behind on the total organization impact was tens of millions of dollars and we needed multiple years to really phase in that cost. So I want to understand are we going to be in a situation like that where the total cost
is really tens of millions of dollars and if so we've got to really get serious about planning how we're going to get there. Well, I mean I I will say the the work that's happening here, I think you heard Miss Taylor say earlier. Um I mean that's much needed work for
our support staff. Um and so that's the work that's being pri that's the work that's being prioritized at this moment. Um but uh most certainly we will have to come back to the table and have conversations with the school board um
about um es especially um addressing some what's happening at the bottom of the administrative pay scale. Um because we've had some very um good teachers who've interviewed for some assistant principal positions who um I mean we've
seen in the last year who've we had to go through five people to get one um because um it doesn't cross over well now. >> Thank you. >> Other questions? One question I um I've heard between
budget presentations a few weeks ago and then comment tonight different answers about how much the uh fully funding the the contract for support staff adds to the budget. How
much has has that added to the budget? Um it's the slide. Um >> heard somebody today mention something like 200 some thousand. >> It's 2.7 million. >> That was the marginal contractual difference. The 1.58
1.058 is the actual >> it's the slide. If you want to put the slide up for Mr. um Snook, it's the first line. Go back one. >> You you passed it. Go. Keep going. Right there.
>> I believe Miss Torres has the clicker. >> The second >> the second slide. I mean the second line. >> So which one? Which which >> that was it. >> Yeah. Which group are you looking for? >> Well, apparently it it was uh the second line. Somebody had mentioned something
or maybe I just wrote it down wrong suggesting a number in the the $200 and some thousand range earlier tonight. That took me by surprise. No, that that number um I mean it's that that number roughly to say.
>> Okay, >> that's what he said. >> Is that it? >> That's it. >> All right, great question. >> Oh, you're welcome >> for a second. >> Um >> No, sorry. That was >> No, we're just getting started. I'm
kidding. Um, so I love the rapid fire. >> Um, so we had originally gotten a $6 million request that came down to 2.9 and now we're at 2 >> five 2.6. >> Yes.
>> 56. Um, so that's definitely u more with the um collective bargaining funded which is um I know what we were hoping. Um but that is a significant step down and I the explanation we got for the savings the the original first cut was
it was um Walker getting uh reconfigured and so there was some vacancy savings because positions were being cut that sort of thing. >> Yes. >> And so um I'm wondering why that wasn't factored into the first presentation. Was it because we weren't sure of the Walker timeline? Was it something else?
Was it just >> So if this may be um right before your time. So the um first meeting that we have um in the budget process now did not exist until um um Mr. Sanders came
on board and the board um our school board really wanted us to start this process earlier. And so in the initial part of this when we're doing when we're doing this budget process, we don't know
what state revenues look like. Um when we first started this process, when you got the $6 million, um we we are still working through um VRS numbers. Um when we first start this process, we are
looking at like all of the budget request. Um and what happens between that first meeting? Is the first meeting November or December? November. >> December. >> December. What happens between that December meeting and right now is we are
going we are combing the budget request. We um we are generally looking at what those requests are. But by time we meet it's still too early to like make those finite decisions about like what we're
going to keep in and what we're going to um what we're going to keep in and what we're going to move out. So some of those things um we do some repurposing of positions and things on that end. I mean it's really about being good
stewards and not transferring the cost on to the to the public. Um, and so there is a um there was a um in that first presentation there was the bonus for Walker which you're referring to the
that that was baked in um and so a lot of things changed between now and then and um with the priority of um so you know it said um compensation so like how can we make um the the collective
bargaining ing work, how can we make the compensation for administrative staff? Um, you know, you see the um the benefits component of it. So, we go through a lot of iterations and a and there's a lot of meetings um to get to
where we can we can balance the budget and and bring you all something that we feel okay with. So, hopefully did I get all your >> Yeah, thank you. >> thoughts. Okay. Um
yeah, I just this I appreciate the meetings that we've had leading up to this um both the public ones and the individual conversations I've had with um teachers and schoolboard members so that we know kind of what all the
different pieces are and the um the budget request side with all the different positions noted. Um there was a lot of good stuff on there and so um it was good getting to um see the thoughtfulness and the specificity of how these are going to be um beneficial
for students and um the programs that we're trying to implement. >> Yeah. Thank you. >> Miss Jyn, >> um thank you for putting this together again and again and again. Um that's
very helpful. what um how with the conversations with the budget and just because I'm I'm my question was similar to Natalie's about how the number fluctuates so much >> um because we get it so we get it so
late in the process like you know we're given the 2.5 but how the sausage is being made is not you know our purview but does the city um Do is the city part of those discussions in those early days or it always comes this late or not late
but you know where do we jump in? Usually >> I think the process has evolved. Um you know Miss Hamill and Mr. Sanders are um I mean they have been very good um collaborative thought partners um with
us. Um I think we we do um I think we do a great job of saying the main thing is the main thing. So we are trying to get to the finish line and we want you all to be able to meet us where we are so that we can fulfill the needs of the
school division, you know, ensuring that we are meeting our student needs. And so, um, I think that they always will say I hopefully they will say that they always see the direction that we're going. Um, you know, the the goal is to
never um, you know, I don't want to promise something to our stakeholders that we can't deliver. Um, and so I'm always saying, hey, the number is actually going to be higher. And we've had years where it's been like that. um prior to you coming on count council,
you know, the number looks like it's going to be a little higher. Um or we get to say like, hey, I think we're really going to be able to bring that number down. Um and we have regular check-ins. Uh uh Mr. Sanders and I meet, Miss Hamill and Miss Hoover meet. Um and
so I think we just we're just great collaborators throughout this process. And yes, and then we get close to this meeting and you're seeing the you're seeing the new number. And yes, >> does when you're talking about that number that's going down, is that from
the percent that we automatically a lot is that >> I think it's is it 40% >> the real estate assessment >> of the real estate assessment. Is that where you're starting or >> Yeah. And I think we've always been a higher than that number. >> Yes, you have. >> Um and I think you know u if Mr. Meyer
were if he were standing at the podium, he would say that we need to look at doing something different um with that. Um but yes, we've we've just um we've been higher than that number. Um we've been higher than that number. >> And then one one last question. Sure.
just thinking about having um advocates for parks here. Is there another um besides the state and the city, is there another funding source like a foundation or anything that supports
this kind this kind of large number big work or is that really it? I mean mostly it's you all um and you all have seen that in the slide that you know you all are a big part of where our money comes from. We do have some we have we are
fortunate enough that we do have some private donors um and that takes care of some of those um smaller programmatic things u but I mean you all are it. >> Thank you for explaining that. Appreciate it. >> We're that foundation.
>> We're the found like it seems like If anyone wants to give the schools, this is the public announcement. >> Great. Thank you. >> Thank you. Said Jen. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. Yeah. Um 16 years of doing
that, I feel you understand where you're coming from. So, >> yeah. So, um, >> and I I do want to say before I sit down, I heard the parks and recck conversation earlier and and so just to this is an interesting year um with
reconfiguration and and so I know that um the I know that parks and rec I mean they provide a vital um service to our community um particularly our summer programming and um with that said um you know what
happens this summer is it's really hard on all all fronts. Um I know that um they are looking for space. Um and I know that space is is definitely a premium this summer. We are displacing our middle school programming and that
will be at Ktech. Um this summer we're going to try to squeeze our middle school summer school programming into K-tech. Um, and we have lighting projects going on and um, we can't put fifth grade classrooms and prek classrooms. So, buildings are are are
like doing these puzzle pieces. Uh, and so, I mean, I'm going to still work with Mr. standards and and being a thought partner. But um we recognize that this summer is a summer that will look um a lot different than it has historically
because we always try to be good collaborators definitely on space because the parks and rec provides a vital service to our community. Uh but we recognize that it is hard. Um so I think the thing people are feeling about this summer it's real. Um but we have
reduced what elementary school looks like uh for summer school and um everything's being everything's being scaled down. Um but it's it's definitely noted. >> Is that something you see as a permanent thing or just a one year thing? >> It's just this summer. Like I said, it's
just this summer. Um it's just because of the reconfiguration and it's it's like we have to get the prek kiddos squared away with the Walker building and then every single building is going to do some shifting. Sure.
>> Um and then we had to reduce the size of our elementary um our elementary um summer school program. It's our elementary program is so small that it's basically the equivalent of four students per grade from each school. Um
there four slots for each for each school per grade. That's how small it will be this summer. Um and so >> as opposed to how many? Um so we will only have 125 students total for
elementary school and that number um has definitely we've um offered that to as much as up to 200 students. Um so it is significantly um is significantly less. I also do want to just note um that
while um you know the daily breakfast lunch service was interrupted during the snowstorm, there was a contingent of volunteers and schoolboard members who still came out on some of the days to provide lunches. >> Oh yes. >> And though it wasn't normal service, I do want to just give them a shout out
for helping fill in that gap. >> Absolutely. Thank you. >> And I believe Dr. Gurley was there every day. >> Yep. I was there every day. Yep. And and it was we we served a lot of folks. Our school board members um volunteered. Um we had staff we had school staff um
drive from Orange um you know to come here and serve meals during the closure. So we think it was uh very effective and we >> most certainly met the needs of u many of our students and their families. >> And I know it wasn't 100% coverage but I didn't want that to go unrecognized. I
appreciate that effort. We appreciate what y'all do every day um and your main part of what makes this city special and we look forward to the discussion, the debate that we will have as council and hearing from the public
over the next I don't know six weeks or so and um thank you so much. >> Yeah. Prioritize the schools. Thank you. >> Yes. Yes. >> Um Mr. Sanders is um now the the city's um
budget No pictures, just teasing. Just teas. >> All right. Uh, so I have a lot to go over, so just get comfortable. Um, just want to start off with, uh, good evening, mayor, counselors, members of the public. Uh, tonight we engage in an
important discussion about the people's work as it has been entrusted to uh, to us on their behalf. uh we have an awesome responsibility to do what we can to serve them well, meet their needs and and reflect their values in the work that we do. I do want to start by thanking the team who support
me in standing here. The the budget is the result of a budget team who has been working since August of last year. They and the revenue team have managed a number of considerations needed to prepare the guard rails used to make the many decisions that are required. Our lead team, which is our directors of 10
city offices, 12 departments, and six constitutional offices, have all worked with their teams to produce budgets and generate requests to support their work and service to the public. And I want to also recognize the advisory boards and commissions who weighed in with their recommendations as designed. This too is
public engagement as they serve to provide perspectives that staff rely on. And for those who participated in the city manager's budget series in January, I thank you for joining us and for participating in that process. Over three nights, you experience the challenge of local government budgeting.
I decided to share that experience with you uh with the return to my favorite board game, Monopoly. Uh that is a version of participatory budgeting. And we will share the results again tonight because I promised to make sure that we reflected on that as we put this city's budget together this year.
And lastly, a special thanks to my friend in the back, Chrissy Hamill, uh, who led the Office of Budget and Grants Management team through this process. Uh, Brian, Lauren, Taylor, thank you as well for sharing your long days, nights, and weekends for this budget because
that's what it requires. So, this is what we're going to do this evening. We have five different areas of this presentation that I'm going to walk you through. We'll start at the top with vision and planning because everything starts there. It should be where we always begin our process for determining how we would expend any resources
available to us. Then we'll go into breaking down the budget. We'll make this a heavy topic uh and accessible for those that are interested, councelor Flesher, because this is your first time. It's your fault that this is a long No, I'm just I'm going to go into a little more detail for your benefit. But
I also just appreciate the moment that this could be the first time that someone engages with the conversation about the city budget. So my goal is to not short change them. So, I'm going to take a few moments to go through a whole bunch of slides tonight and then we'll talk about uh the proposed budget. So, I
will not bury the lead. I will let you know where we stand and what has been balanced and presented to you this evening. And then we'll talk about what's next. And that's just a quick look at what the next steps are in regards to getting to the budget being adopted on April 9th. So when we start
with vision and planning and we talk about what was we look at our last plan was developed uh in for FY18 through 2018 through 2020 and we moved the plan forward two additional years because we just were not in the right state at that
time to begin a uh strategic planning process because we had a lot of movement going on in my office specifically but as well as other parts of this organization. So, we were able to get through a five-year period with that plan plus an additional two years to be
able to keep the organization moving. In uh in 2022, we initiated a new strategic planning process. And in August of 2023, council adopted a new framework anchored with a set of strategic outcome areas and a commitment to Jedi, justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion that
has served as our roadmap since what is in that is where we are today. We are in the third year of what I've identified as a three-year plan that aligns with my tenure as city manager. So from FY23 to FY26, this has been a period of um this
has been a period I should say FY24 through FY26, this has been a period of major major organizational shifts and frankly a period of the fire hose being on full blast with little relief. And that is until we slowed down, reset, and that is what we're doing right now. What
could be for us is a five-year plan that comes next and will be a tool to galvanize the team and produce a renewed effort to engage with the public in serving their needs. And a closeout report on the three prior years will be released this summer. Jen Hendrick, the news uh the city's first chief strategy
officer will present to council this summer a preview of her work to build in the confidence the that this government is going through in trying to measure, assess, and report on its work. A strategic plan is a result of consciously capturing where do you want to go, how do you get there, and what
are you doing to make it happen and most importantly by when. There are component parts of this process. So, I'll just run through those very quickly. A mission. That is the mission of the city of Charlottesville and our process of moving from a three-year plan to a 5-year plan. We're keeping it. We think
it says exactly what it needs to say. Vision. We all have started to say this on a regular basis to be a place where everyone thrives and I always add emphasis on everyone and that means that it's that much harder for us to achieve it. Our values, these are the values
that we highlight for our staff and we ask them to model on a daily basis. All new employees when they go through orientation today, they hear from me or one of my standins and we make sure that we put this slide up and we say to them, "Welcome to the city. This is what we need you to do.
We have a commitment to community prosperity. We made a shift to that just in this current state of the climate and the relationship that we have with the federal government. Equity by another name still focuses on the idea that outcomesbased work is disrupting the status quo. And that's really what this
is all about. We have nine strategic outcome areas. You all know that I have had a weird relationship with this list of nine saying that it's too many, too many, too many. However, you have said it's okay, Sam. you can get through that. So, we have tried to press on. And
this is also where I stop and always remind you all that we are a community that punches above its weight class. And I like the way that sounds. So, that's the reason why I keep saying it. And ultimately, what it just means is that we really have a commitment to a variety of things and we just have to figure out
how best to address and approach them. So, as I pointed out to you, there's a three-year plan that we are wrapping up now. That three-year plan, I framed it around my comments to you as each year I produce the work plan and each year I've come up with a theme for the work plan. The first year was strength and
stability. Next was communication, coordination, and collaboration. And this current year is about implementing our plans. The goal that I see is that we want to make sure that we are being responsive to the needs that the community has identified. We are responsive to your request and how we
get this work done and what specifically we get done. and I have a responsibility to make sure that this team has everything that they need to do the job to the best of their ability. That is a lot to balance, but we've been doing well in that space and we'll continue to do that. And we're shifting into a five-year plan next. And it's going to
be framed around the idea of five strategic goals that we asked you all to take a look at in January. And you successfully reduce what I wanted you to focus on. So now we're going to actually shift everything in our new strategic plan to focus on those five strategic goals. and organizational excellence is
how we do it. So that now means that I don't have a list of nine anymore. I have a list of seven. So I thank you for your cooperation in getting me to a shorter list. And and with that, we will focus on elevating the conversation to these five goals and we'll do our best to make
sure that we achieve those goals or come very close to them by the end of our next 5-year period. So now I'll shift to talk about the economic outlook because in order for us to figure out how to do the things that we need to do, we always have to take take stock at where we are in our region
in this area with what's going on around us. So this is a slide that we've used to just kind of give a quick snapshot of Charlottesville by the numbers. Our general fund budget this year is a little over $265 million. Our 10.2 square miles is who we are, what we got, and it won't be changing. Uh 2.6% 6% is
our unemployment rate. That continues to track better than the state and better than the national average. And that's what you want the result to be. And we've been using the ter the number of 51,743 residents, but we just recently heard that the Welding Cooper Center has updated their uh methodology and that
number has dropped back down to more like 46,000 or so. So, I have a meeting on my calendar to have some conversation with some folks because I like a bigger number than that. So, we'll see what comes out of that. And then I also wanted to share a few slides from the
recent uh state of the chamber state of the community that the chamber put on. I was one of the speakers but Hamilton Lumbard has become a very interesting feature of this particular process. And I have three slides from his presentation that I lifted but I'm still giving him credit for uh that I wanted to just share with you that this is just
a reminder of where we are in our community as it relates to economics. and the economics all feed into how this city government operates, where the money comes from, and how it can go out. Which is why we want to frame the conversation around that. When you look at this wage distribution chart, what
you see is in the middle, you see a gap. You see it drop dramatically to the number of people who earn anywhere from 50 to $100,000. That's our middle income population. And what's most important about that is the middle income population are the people who have disposable incomes. and they're the ones
that are spending the money in places that we actually get access to so that we can use it to take care of various needs. That is hard for a community like this where there's a missing middle and that missing middle is where we also find that there are limits to the resources that we're going to have
access to as time goes on unless we turn that around. What we also see is that when you look at the red marks on this particular part of the map, all centered on the eastern seabboard for the most part, these are the highest uh income, the median values
are the highest in these areas. And I put a circle around where Charlottesville is because we are one of the highest and that in itself speaks to the challenge that that exists for those that are living in our community and trying to manage when things are that tight and that difficult. And then
lastly, the the slide that I also took note of is that the left side of this chart is in 2010, there was a smaller conglomeration of where our people actually reside uh because they had to move outside of the city to be able to afford. And in 2023, that range got a
lot bigger. So, individuals are now traveling farther and farther in, and it's getting that much harder for them because they have to go farther in order to maintain affordability. I will offer that as people move out, it complicates how we serve because they are not here in the community and able to connect
fully and they also may have to continue to move because they're trying to stay in a place that they can actually thrive >> and traffic >> and it creates traffic. So now we'll break down the budget and in breaking down the budget there are a couple of key parts. The general fund is what
we're going to focus on tonight. That's where most of the conversation goes. We have enterprise funds and those are self-generated funds where they're putting revenue in therefore they're taking the uh expenses out. We have a capital improvement plan that we'll spend a little time talking about and then there are other funds where money
is constantly moving. I am a very much a person who very much appreciates the idea of discipline. So I always start with framing the conversation about a budget that it is a plan of how you will spend and save over a period of time. And I always point out how important saving is because there's always going to be a rainy day and you have to plan
for it. Uh I think what we got to make sure that we do is that we don't attempt to spend everything that we have because we don't know when something's around the corner. Balancing the budget is my responsibility. It is the chief responsibility that I would say as the city manager. I was laughing with uh
councelor Fleer that this is my big night because I get to come and bring to you how hard it has been to balance a budget. But the balance, the budget is balanced and there are only two ways that we could do that. Increasing revenue and decreasing expenses. Those are the only two choices and I've looked under every seat cushion trying to find
an alternative and there isn't one. Those are the two things that you have to do. So where does our re revenue come from? It comes from property taxes and various other taxes that we have. Comes from inter intergovernmental arrangements uh fee for services, federal and state
funds as well. Those are the things that we have to spend a lot of time tracking. That's what the revenue team does on a regular basis. They're constantly taking a look at how are the numbers shifting over the course of the year. These are our current tax rates. Uh 98 cents on
real estate, 7% on meals tax, 9% on lodging, and $4.40 for every hundred on personal property tax. Our assessments based on the work that was done by the assessor's office and our assessor David Milton recently shared that report with us. Our average
uh value of residential property in 2026 is $548,800. That is big. That is big for a lot of people. Uh that also reflects a residential assessment increase of four 4.27% combined with commercial that is 3.42%.
And all that means is it just gets that much harder for those to be able to pay their tax bill. We also get uh revenue sharing funds from the county and we thank them for their big check that they have to write to us and we don't spend a whole lot of time talking about it because not
everybody likes it, but we get the money and I make sure that we spend it wisely. So 20 a little over $20 million is what we received as a part of that relationship. It's part of the 1982 agreement, which is why we don't really talk about it that much because it's been around for a long time and there
are only three ways for it to go away and we're not going to talk about that. So, the city manager's proposed budget is where I'm going to focus right now. And what I'll also say to the members of the public is the budget book as is in front of council today is 389 whopping
pages of a lot of information. If you don't have anything to do with your time and you want to figure out how to go to sleep, pick up the book. It'll put you to sleep. I promise you. But there's a lot of great information in there. And if you really want to engage with the budget, then you can start thumbming through it. But I'll tell you that there
are 11 pages and it's an executive summary written by myself worked on with uh our budget director. Uh that is the uh a way for you to just take a look at this is the highlight of the proposed budget. So if you spend time reading that 11-page document, you get a good
sense of what's going on in the 389 pages. So our total proposed FY27 revenues are $531 million. That is a lot of money. And most people don't hear that number. they might actually begin to hear it a little more often than they have in the
past because we usually focus on the uh general fund budget which is in the 200 range. But that 531 adds in our utility uh services that we run and operate ourselves and a whole bunch of other dollars that are more earmarked and a little more directive and and specific
in how they're used. But the budget that this local government is managing is 531778,435. And then we spend all the money on all these things with the city government operations taking almost half of that. But we also, as you just heard from the superintendent, 129,000 129 million, I
wish it were that small. $129 million goes to city school expenditures. And then we also have utility operations, debt service, and uh capital projects. our budget drivers. These are the things that really really uh take up a lot of time, attention and resources. The way
that we've started to define this term of what is a budget driver, they are the top allocation of financial resources. It does not equate to importance. It just means that it's a priority. Therefore, we spend more time and attention there and in most cases, we end up spending more money there.
And here we go with the city manager's budget forum results. I wanted to start there and just kind of frame how the numbers actually ended up working out. But we had uh 10 different stations around the room in three different locations back in mid-March uh mid January I should say. And we gave uh the
public the nine uh strategic outcome areas and the commitment that council has as a part of its strategic framework and asked them to spend $10,000 in monopoly money wherever they thought it was important or was a priority for them or they felt that additional funds would
be needed to do more things. And out of the results of that came out with education at the top which I know that the members of our school board who were present probably stuffed the box a little bit but they actually appreciated seeing that result. uh public safety came in second, transportation in third,
and housing in fourth. So I want you to remember those four as we go through the rest of this presentation. So then the FY27 proposed budget highlights the general fund totals 2771 277,175,674.
That is 11.9 million in growth over the prior year. That is just reassessments and tax results and um various other revenues that come in that produced an additional 11.9 million over last year. It's 4 and a.5% growth. Our capital
improvement program for this uh proposed FY27 is $47 million and the 5-year CIP is $196 million of which 147 million is eligible to be uh funded by bonds. It's important for us to think about that as
well because that's a good split of cash versus debt so that we would not be able to do things if we had to rely on more cash. Uh debt service is $20 million. Uh so we have a lot of work that we need to do. That last bullet on the right side about department budget cuts over the
course of trying to pull this budget together and yes it was hard and the mayor asked me uh this is my third budget that I presented. He said which one is the hardest? This one. Why? because I'm doing it right now. That's why it's the the most difficult one. I'll I'll move past it and probably
won't call this one the hardest one after we get ready to start working on next year. And Miss Ham is probably nodding her head in the back because we already know that there's some challenges coming. But what we had to do in this process is I did have to return to the departments and ask for budget cuts in order to make numbers work because as we tried to get the numbers
to come together, they just didn't do it. So for that, we did have a few departments who were able to go back into their budgets and make a few revisions and those revisions produced another $500,000 that we were able to deploy differently. All right. So in managing our workforce
allocations, we've converted some vacancies to new uses. We've converted temps and lump sums to permanent positions. We've defined some lump sum allocations for accurate budgeting. and we currently have 1123 city employees. There were only five new positions added
to this budget. There were a number more of requests and you've heard about some of those this evening, but the five that were able to make the cut was a part-time recovery court officer, which is a mandate that we had not been able to fill prior. The Commonwealth attorney has an additional staff attorney, but
that staff attorney was a result of mostly offset by changes to their base budget. uh tax relief specialists to continue to work on our tax relief program specifically because as we have had challenges and the need has grown, we have had more work that now requires
an additional set of hands to manage it. And human services department is absorbing uh two licensed clinicians that currently support the anchor team, but they were a part of the pilot. So those two individuals that have been working with them were funded on one-time resources as a part of the
pilot. So we're now realizing the expense by bringing them on board. So you see that is not very much different in what we're currently doing in the way of operations, but four and a half people is all that we were able to add to this year's budget, to this proposed budget.
This is uh a few highlights of our um budgeting for the tax relief programs. Uh these all came from the commissioner of revenue. The dollar amounts that you see there are the dollar amounts in each of those categories that he requested that have been budgeted. they are included in this budget. And then the
projected beneficiary numbers just shows you how many people that we are able to interrupt the challenges that they face as it comes to paying rent in some instances and taxes in others. And transforming transit, that's one of the big highlights of the budget this
year. There's a $2.2 million increase as you see on the right hand side. This is the commitment that council indicated that they want me to figure out how do we make it fit into the budget. So $2.2 2 million and that is adding 10 drivers, adding support personnel to support their efforts to be deployed, keeping
zero fair so that riders can just get on the bus and go wherever they need to go and uh absorbing the impacts of the collective bargaining agreement which is an additional $354,000 for the next year. So the cap budget uh is little over that $9 million of the city share
and county share local. That's the split. But again, uh just thinking about what the conversation has been around transit, we want to optimize this system and service. And in order to do that, we were able to work to through the consultants that we've been working with
to update what it requires to reach optimization. And that is 40 additional drivers to reach the peak of what it is that we would like to offer. And for that, what we would get is more 15-minute service in a lot of places and 30 minute services, 30 minute service
everywhere else. and we can discontinue allowing 60 and 75 minute service to be a part of the system which has gone on for way too long. The four-year plan is really focused on increasing frequency, reliability, to raise our ridership levels to secure more funding and to
achieve optimization, but 40 new drivers and support personnel and all the other expanded costs that come with that cannot be absorbed in one year. And it is why I pitched to council a four-year plan. So I'm already and Miss Hamill is already aware that for each of the next
three years we will be prioritizing what is the impact for transit transforming transit as a part of each of those budgets >> because that would include not just drivers but also buses. >> That's right. And we've got the application for an expanded home
facility which would include more space and more mechanical like >> so this is the focus on what we can do just in this next year and each year it will look this chart will look a little bit different each time over the next three years. There'll be different things that we mean there might be more
in the way of um buses that we need to buy and other things that we need to do and fewer uh staff but there probably always there will always be a driver line increase in drivers. 10 drivers is actually a reach for us. We have not actually been able to uh have that many
drivers of uh that many vacancies at one time and then try to fill them in this market. I am concerned about the idea that we might not be able to actually recruit 10 drivers by the time we're at I'm at this podium presenting next year's budget. But the goal will be that we're going to try really hard. Uh and
this is really the first effort of trying to see if 40 new drivers is what we need then we can pretty much plan 10 10 10 over the next four years. >> Do you want questions now or do you want them at the end? >> Um let's hold them. >> Okay. >> Because I might be able to answer. >> I can sense you're on a roll and so I don't
>> Yes. Yes. Yes. Mess with my flow. All right. So, supporting our schools. You just heard from the superintendent. I definitely wanted to make sure that I shared with you the update on what we uh have processed over the course of the past few months. Uh, as you heard, the original ask, and you were all ask questions about that was $6.4 million.
We start the process with the school board and the superintendent giving us the number. We don't give them a number. They give us the number first. And the goal is to not interfere with their planning and their recommendation as to what their needs are or identification what their needs are. I do start with
the formula. That is the difference in how we put the budgets together because when I got here and I asked the questions about how do we come up with the number for schools and the answer was well we have a formula. It was an agreed upon approach to being able to identify how do we increase funds to the
school system and it is 40% of the increased uh real estate assessment is what we allocate to schools. So what I did in receiving the number from Miss Hamill that was roughly $1.5 million. I thought about some of the conversations that the superintendent and I had and I
added to that and came up with the number that I gave to her to plug into the budget because as we started preparing the budget, we had a double-digit gap. So, the goal was to try to figure out how can we mitigate that gap and put the budget together and get it to balance because all of that
was the expectation. So, the number that I gave to the superintendent was $2 million. And that in itself proved to be untenable because 6.4 4 was the number that they started with and two was the number that I started with. So that means the gap was pretty big. Over the
course of the conversations that you all had with the school board and you were able to work through that and they too were able to go back and look, we got that number down to $2.9 million and it has since now dropped to $2.56 million. So that is the number that is baked into this budget. So if the budget goes
through as prepared at this time, $2.569 million is what goes to the school system as their local match. We also >> additional 2.5 >> additional that's correct. An additional 2.569 million. Uh we have also uh continued uh made sure that there were
no changes because a part of this process is that we're not just looking at operating support. We revisit the CIP every single year. Even though we produce a 5-year CIP, we have to shore up that year CIP. And in that process, sometimes we make adjustments. Well, I'm just pointing out to you here that we
did not make adjustments to the capital improvement initiatives line or the maintenance and improvements line as well. So that 1.4 million and 1.3 million per year for the next 5 years is maintained. And there is a CIP adjustment for the design and pre-construction of the prek center,
which is now officially confirmed to be back at Walker. it will occur at Walker uh because the Oakland property is not uh available to us to be able to do what we would like to do there. So, our capital uh development division is back now working on activating a prek center
at Walker and we made adjustments to put design funds earlier but we have not increased the amount of money that has been prior allocated. Then affordable housing is another one of our big categories. So, transit, schools, and affordable housing. Uh we
have $1.5 million in FY27. Uh some of those funds as you just heard about is West Haven. So $5 million over three conse $5 million a year for three consecutive years. We have $1.7 million total allocated for Friendship Court phase three and infrastructure
improvements. You just approved $700,000 added to 501 Cherry, which we added to the FY28 CIP because that is when they needed it. And we anticipate roughly $500,000 for HUD entitlements. We won't know that until late May, early June when we hear from HUD and we pray that
they don't make changes to the program because that number might go down. Uh and we have an interest payment act for acquisition of the Carlton mobile home park which is spread out over five years. So small payments and then a big balloon at the end. That is still the case. uh Miss Hamill made some
adjustments based on getting additional information in regards to that um the amortization schedule on that particular and then our housing program funding remains level. So, we did not make any changes to the calf and hops programs or the cisrap program, our supplemental
rental assistance program, which receives $900,000 a year and is managed by CRA. And we have ongoing supports that continue through this budget for BAT, the Blue Ridge Area Coalition for the Homeless. That's $250,000 focused on
capacity building, $500,000 for the support of a low barrier homeless services center, which we have been talking about and will continue to talk about and more details to come shortly. And uh continue to maintain a revenue and that should say revenue replacement, not revenue revenue uh for the Salvation
Army if the thrift store were to convert to a shelter at some point because that conversation is still open. >> So that's a bookmark. >> That's a bookmark. >> Thank you. Yes. Uh protecting our community. So that's public safety. So we have added $646,000 for ACRJ's debt
service for the jail renovation. I've mentioned already the absorption of the two additional anchor staff members. We have additional seats added for Kip. Councelor Payne, you you really put me on the spot at their event and said we need to put more money into the program. So I did. Uh and we have additional
opportunities to support uh programming work in our human services space with the restructuring and adding human services uh within our public safety programming uh and under the watchful eye of Mr. Roman. And we had operational increases across each of these
organizations. We absorbed those increases. So we did not send back any um any reductions on the request that they all pose for the services the important services they provide. Investing in the community. The vibrant community fund continues to receive $2.3
million. We received 66 applications requesting over $5 million. So that you see it's never enough money to do all the things. Uh 22 of the other applications that came in are in the uh cl I almost said climate the culture uh
and arts space and those are now in my office uh to be uh awarded funding out of the quality of life fund which is a onetime fund that I continue to manage. Uh we have maintained a million dollars for the pathways fund, but I will point out that we were able to make a slight
increase in direct aid. Uh we were able to cut down on some of the operating expenses because that $1 million is not direct aid only. It is the team who um operate the program as well as the direct aid. So we were able to add a little bit uh of funding to go out uh to
touch individuals who need that assistance. And then I just again highlight for you the bike pad infrastructure that appears in this budget because we are continuing to work on uh converting urgent infrastructure to quick bills work uh with Ben Chambers. New sidewalks has been prioritized with big numbers across the
5-year CIP which you'll see when we get into that space. Uh, and we have added a rightaway acquisition line because we're going to continue to press on Dominion to move poles and take away some of our ADA barriers that are around the city and we need to be able to get the rightway in order for them to have a
place to move the pole. Tax relief because we know that people are having difficulties. We've been running a tax relief program for quite for a little while now. I did a five-year snapshot on the relief programming just to kind of show you this is this is what we've been able to
do over that five-year period for rent relief. 1127 individuals have received assistance. Those are not unique individuals. That's over the 5-year period in total, but $741,000 went out in the in aid in that manner. Uh $7.2
million went out for tax relief for elderly and disabled individuals. The CHAP program has spent $4.8 million. Uh, and then our disabled veterans and surviving spouse tax exemption has been $92,000. And I'll just point out at the bottom there that our real estate tax relief
average amount is $3,800 and the CHAP grants range from a,000 to $2,500 based on income. And that is providing direct relief to individuals who are having trouble in what we have already established is um a a challenging uh
market for affordability. So, we continue our work in enriching our community. We have $500,000 in our CIP to remove access barriers and assets uh at our existing assets and parks. There's $500,000 a year over the five-year CIP to implement the parks
master plan. That is nowhere near what it's going to take. Uh we're going to continue to work with our team to identify at what stage is capacity going to meet resources that we have and we may have to make some changes there. You heard from the parks and recreck advisory board members who have been
focused on this issue. And while this budget does not reflect a lot in that space, we do believe that we will be able to go back over the next few years and and really magnify those numbers based on what things we can actually accomplish and get those things done because that that mark um the master
plan was, if I'm remembering correctly, $70 million or am I thinking or is it more? I don't remember. >> I believe it was 78 million. $78 million to implement the plan as designed. And again, that's not something we can do in one year. That's going to be more than
five years, I would even say, uh, based on where other things are also being situated in the course of budgeting. So, we have to continue to work to identify what makes sense. Uh, we're adding $140,000 to your uh, strategic initiatives fund. So, remember that. Um,
each year my goal is to take whatever the balance is, which right now is $360,000, add another $140,000 to give you a $500,000 discretionary fund because when you have your work session on March 12th, you're going to be tempted to make
changes to the vibrant community fund results. And this is where you make changes from your fund and only your fund. Uh, so we'll have to go through that process. and that will begin uh in July, the same as when the vibrant community funds are released. And then I
identify some additional work that's been done in supporting school playgrounds, which are not just for schools, but also for the community as our campuses are open, and downtown mall infrastructure uh as well as the tree management plan. Each have line items in our CIP
as I pointed out earlier in our op intergovernmental space. These are multi-jurisdictional agreements, state mandates, and critical services. They all had operational increases. This identifies what those are, and they vary from a variety of reasons, but most of
them are based on changes to salaries uh compensation packages for their staff. As it regards to the SPCA, we have a new agreement that went into effect last year. We went from $13 per capita to $16 per capita. That's part of the negotiated transition, so we knew that
that was coming. Uh, and then we have increases for shifting one of our programs that was in human services to OAR. So, a big part of that $100,000 increase is just moving money from one place to another. Our fundamental category, these are
organizations that have been designated by the city manager to provide a unique unduplicated service to the residents of the city of Charlottesville. Uh, two of those have been increased dramatically, CRA and FAR. CRA moved from $137,000 a year to $300,000 a year and far from
$66,000 a year to $125,000 a year. Neither of those numbers match what they requested, but both of those numbers indicate the seriousness in which the city is working to try to support organizations that are working hard for certain populations in our community who struggle. And this is an acknowledgement
and a recognition of the work that they're trying to do. So the goal is to just make sure that we can continue to beef up the relationship and therefore reach more people. And then the Jefferson school item there is just the continued support. The only request that they make is funding to cover their rent
allocation because they're able to receive funds for other things and it doesn't cover that particular item. So the adjustment just reflects the increase in the rent that they have uh because there's a rider that changes each year. Employee benefits. It's a very expensive uh
aspect of our budget. Our total cost of our healthcare benefits is $22.7 million and our pension plan is $17.9 million. Those are big numbers. $1.6 million increase for health care and a $2 million uh uh $2 million budget savings
on our pension plan is is really how we were able to mitigate some of the impacts there. But just pointing out that these are very very expensive propositions as it relates to managing the workforce. in our compensation. Uh, this budget includes a 2% step increase and a 2% pay
scale adjustment for unaffiliated workforce. Unaffiliated, and I've had people ask me, "What does unaffiliated mean?" That means you're not a part of a union. You're not represented by a union. You're not in a collective bargaining contract. So, that's everybody else. So, there's a 4% increase coming to those individuals.
And we have a 1% retiree code baked into this budget as well. And our collective bargaining contracts are reflected here. They are not the same. That is what collective bargaining means. When you have multiple contracts, they each come to the table and they negotiate for the things that they prioritize. And the
result is that it is not exactly the same because what they need and want are not always the same. So our CFD pay scale will change with a request to uh also align their anniversary date which comes at a 2.9% increase and a step increase of 2%. Police will get a 4%
increase related to their anniversary date realignment and a 3% step increase. Our transit drivers will get anywhere from 3 to 5% based on the position. That's all related to the contract that they signed as well and a 2% increase for operators. And then our public works, parks and wreck, utilities, and a
few of our uh personnel that were in the police and fire department will receive a 2% increase as relates to their contract through the Teamsters Union. And I wanted to just provide you just a detail little detail as to where we are with collective bargaining. Having four
contracts is quite a pickle that you have put us in with uh having us have this many contracts to manage. We're in a perpetual state of constantly negotiating. That is the reality. We finish one and we move to the next one and sometimes we have two at the same time. That is how we have to work. We've
had we've had to add additional staff and we continue to maintain outside help just to keep all the balls in the air. But I just wanted to point out to you where we are with each of the current four unions that we have. The fire department, we did a wage reopener, so we only talked about wages for the next
fiscal year. That new contract has been signed. I just signed it actually last week and it goes into effect in July. Labor and trades contract, we're in year two of four, and they will negotiate a new contract that will start in FY29. So, we'll start that process in FY28.
The police department uh has reached a new three-year contract for FY27 through 29. It was a bit of a hill to climb, but we got it done. And I'm waiting the contract now so that I can sign it. And I hope they hurry up and bring it to me. So, I hope they're listening.
>> And our transit contract, uh, we're in year three of three, so we'll be negotiating a new contract with them next year that will start FY28. our policies as it relates to the management of our resources. Uh we have uh policies that have been adopted. We
have been following these policies for quite some time. And what I'd just like to simply say is that while some may look at these as conservative, I look at it as a pragmatic approach to making sure that we are disciplined in our work and that we hold on to what makes us look attractive to the rating agencies
who set our bond uh rating. We are AAA for a reason and this is a big reason. Uh we're AAA as well because we are continuing to find ways to do things with other resources and not go over the cliff. And I keep reminding us over and over that we're on a runway and we're
flying a jumbo jet. Our runway is shorter than we think it is. So we have to constantly revisit that and I will continue to press on that with the truth about what I see and I'll talk to you a little bit about that later as well. Also within our management priorities, we transfer big numbers and a lot of
numbers to from our general fund to other purposes. $15.8 million to debt service. That's based on decisions that we've made on how we finance various improvement projects that we're working on. It requires $15 million in cash right out of the general fund off the top. $8.4 million to the capital
improvement program because that is going to help us pay for the work that we've identified in the capital improvement program for that next year. And then we have other funds uh for services that we provide through human services, social services, and the children's services act, which are all
policy related mandates through the state. This is our capital improvement program over the next five years. It's $196 million. Uh we highlighted for you the top three, education, transportation, and affordable housing. You've heard those before. Uh so $55 million for
education, $50 million for transportation, and $41 million for affordable housing. If anyone is in those areas and they feel like that is what they want to understand, are we serious about those things? Clearly, this slide shows that we are. And our revenue sharing number that we
also received our update from the county is $21.8 million. So, I'm sure they're happy to give us another $1.7 million on top of what they've been giving us. So, 8.5% higher and we will receive that in January of next year. And again, we thank you.
This budget proposes a tax rate increase of two pennies on the real estate tax. That is necessary to balance all the things that I just went through and being able to make those things happen and meet the priorities that were identified for us for this cycle. With that two cent increase on the real
estate tax, our general fund rises to $279 million. That's an additional $2.4 million in new revenue, 14 million total in revenue growth. Prior it was 11 million. So that's represents a 5.4% increase and the basis for that increase
at two pennies on the real estate is the deeper transit investments, the school's local match at the higher number than budgeted and the collective bargaining impacts that we are also having to absorb. So this is how the money breaks down. When you look at what the general fund
revenues are, local taxes is the largest source of where those funds come from. And then when you look at the expenses, they're going out in so many different ways. The largest being local contribution to schools, public safety, and healthy families and community.
So, the budget is balanced because it has to be. That's what the charter says. I must balance the budget. So, Miss Hamill lost some sleep. I wanted to pull out the little hair that I have, but we were able to get the number to balance so that we could come before you and present to you a balanced budget. I also
just want to touch on a couple of things and we're wrapping up at this moment. Uh, ARPA is the program where we received funds that were related to COVID. We are still, bless you, dealing with the funds. Uh, we received $19.6 million. Uh, actually $20 million and we've spent so far 19.6 million. There
remains $600,000 that is already encumbered across different programming activities that we have uh still with the with this city government. They all have to be expended by December 31st or we have to send them back. And Sam doesn't send money back to the federal government. So, everybody's been warned.
they must spend the money. And we have also earned $1.9 million in interest. So those are funds that we will be able to spend for other things. And we also have the conversation about surplus. Yes, we do have a surplus. Uh we've continued to have a surplus because the surplus that
we generated out of our last budget, I begged for us to hold on to those funds because we knew that the administration was changing in DC and we did not know what the volatility was going to bring to us. I would venture to say that we still don't know. Uh but what we have done is we have started to use those
funds. Uh came before you a couple of times this summer and also came back and spent we spent a little over $6 million acquiring 2,000 holiday drive. Just pointing out to you that there are other uh opportunities to spend those funds. They're one-time use. That's always the
reminder about surplus. The suggestion to use onetime money for a recurring expense means you're only taking care of it today and you're not thinking about it tomorrow even though you know you owe the deal the bill. So the goal is for us to never put ourselves in a place that we are
structurally imbalanced on being able to afford our debt. These are some of the things that we've been able to do with surplus. It is not that the money is lost. It is yours to spend. every decision will come before you and I plan to come to you in the next meeting. It's been a big chunk because there are a lot
of things that still need to be addressed. Uh so I point that out to you as well that the surplus is there. It is being used. Uh but it does not address the matters that have led us to this point of having to adjust the real estate tax rate.
And because I am who I am and I love to tell you the truth and I think you need to know that and I think you've come to like it anyway. The going concerns that I have. So this is what keeps me up at night. Federal politics and the potential for punishment, I think it's real for a variety of reasons. The state
budget reconciliation means that it's going to be challenged to deliver everything because there are so many things that are being discussed. Our local stresses is that our local revenue may have a little volatility in it. We experienced that for three months out of the year last year when we were worried that we were going to have decreased revenues and find ourselves in a real
imbalance, but they bounced back. So we hope that that will continue. But I just pointed out because it happened in this current fiscal year. We have deep operational investments through collective bargaining. That is a choice. That is a decision. I'm not judging. It just means that we can't do other things and we're going to have to reconcile
those. And we have sustained policy pressures. Statewide collective bargaining is going to still bring a change. Even though we're ahead of the game, we have four contracts, the ability for two more. The changes that are being proposed could actually change how we even do it and how we've actually adjusted to being able to do it. and
therefore it could come at additional cost. Zoning changes, loss of local land use controls, those are things that I'm a little concerned about, but we're going to have to see how that shakes out. Funding gaps for transportation, we do not see that the federal government has decided to put transportation at a
high level to drop money into that bucket like they normally do when there is a Republican administration in place. Uh, and that means that the state is not going to have a whole lot of money either, but our transportation needs, as we've discussed this evening, are big, and we would like to get whatever resources we can from others. Homeless
interventions are expensive. They are definitely needed. We all know that this community has been wrestling with this issue for a long time and therefore we have to be able to make funds available to address it. And we just need more and more housing and we know that. And then of course my cute statement there, the
length of our financial runway is what it is, but we have a jumbo jet. So we've got to figure out how do we make this work. What's next is a series of work sessions. We will unpack the budget that I just presented to you. Miss Hamill will take you through step by step and
I'll just be there watching and we'll get through the process of making sure that you understand, can ask questions if there are changes that you would like to propose. Because the budget is balanced, that means for every increase, there must be a decrease. And where does that come from? So there are
adjustments that we have to make in order for us to be able to do this. And we will start with revenues and expend expenditures as the focus of the work session this Thursday, March 5th, 6 p.m. in city space. Budget adoption is scheduled for April
9th. And I will take any questions. Sam, before we go on, as we are getting questions, if you can go back to the slide and just maybe have that one up until someone wants to change where you mentioned the 2% increase and where the
funding or the the primary reasons for just >> where it goes >> um for the public, that one. >> So, um um you you're right. There's a lot to unpack there. Yeah. Um, are there
questions or comments? You can just just chime in. >> Scroll back up. Um, do you mind if I start? >> No, please. >> Thanks. Um so for the transit um plan uh over the next
four years you said it was tough to get drivers um even if we allocate that for them in the budget the hiring process is not always as easy as we want it to be. How >> and I say that's market driven. >> Yeah. So, how do we how do we advertise?
What are the folks comp what are the positions that we're competing with to attract the drivers? >> I think the reality is is that we are in a in a community of what roughly 160 75,000 people and we have five transit systems. That's our problem. There's
just too many people driving buses for other reasons that we haven't been able to uh address it in a in a different manner. So that just means that if we put 10 spots on the street, chances are that we're not just going to be advertising for those 10 spots. We have
our own attrition that we have to work through from having lost drivers as well. So then it becomes more like 13 14 drivers as well because there's there's still turnover that is occurring naturally. Uh, and I just feel like that's part of the challenge as to why I would not come to you and say we should
add 15 or 20 drivers because we're not going to deliver that >> and we've spent that money that year holding it in reserve for something that won't be delivered when we use that same money for something else that we could. >> There's opportunity cost and not filling those positions. >> Yes. >> And how do we other than this meeting
right here where we're talking about it? How do we advertise these roles? >> So, we advertise our normal means is our HR department puts it in a lot of different places. We post in different areas and different uh resources based on the type of job. So we have various national groups and uh various local
means that we would use for transit drivers. I'm sure we probably used the more traditional because those are more local based. Uh and then of course there's a process they have to go through. They have to test and pass all of those types of things. So just because you want to drive a bus doesn't necessarily mean that you can't. Yeah,
>> Sam, I I could add on to that that we do I believe we do TV spots, we do radio ads, and we've got wraps on the buses. Even right now, you'll see >> wraps on the buses for that. >> Yeah. I don't think it's a matter of a recruitment issue. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Just curious how we how we get the
message out. Um and then again that 40 additional driver over the next several years does that's when we say that we all this is for the public it's also admin requirements and
mechanics requirements and additional buses and so that budget expenders not just drivers it's all the supporting >> because the way to look at that is for every there's a grouping of drivers that need a supervisor available to them. So that's why you can't just say we're
going to add 10 drivers because adding 10 drivers means you got to add a supervisor somewhere in that mix and we don't have that supervisor sitting and waiting. So for every one of these big steps forward, we've got to plan for all the other things that have to be done. And if we're going to have that many drivers, that also means we're going to
have more buses on the road. Well, buses break down, so we got to have more mechanics to put them back on the road. So it it's there's a cycle that's being fed by the choice to advance the volume of drivers that we have in place and all we're saying is that we recognize that that's going to take time and it's expensive. So we have to be able to
manage that and smooth out the impacts of it. >> And then bus wear and tear on the road as well. Yeah, there's all these ripple effects. Um for skipping down to the right ofway acquisition for Dominion Pole relocations. Um, just to clarify,
so if we say, "Hey, here's the land." They will move the pole or they're responsible for moving the pole. So, all we have to do is make sure that there's space to move the pole too. >> Yes, they're they I think we've identified 200 polls in the city that we want to relocate. We're going to do that
over time. Uh, that's not something that can be done very quickly, but what we have found in some of the conversations with them is they didn't have a place to put the pole other than where they put it. And if we don't have rightaway adjacent to that, then they can't move it. So part of the strategy here for public works was to add additional
resources so that we could acquire rightway so that then we can say you can move it here, please move it. >> And something I learned at some point during our discussions and again share with the public is you can't just move one because then the weight of the lines pulling pulls the poles out of order. So
you have to shift the whole line. So it's better weighted >> and and actually because there's more than one line. It's a pole that may be owned by Dominion, but it has three or four different service providers on that pole. Dominion can't move those lines. They have to move their lines. So,
sometimes it's about the order of moving the lines that are attached to the pole, leaving Dominion last so that they can ultimately move the pole and put a new one in place. >> Yeah. Okay. Cool. >> So, there's again there's a cycle involved in that process and that's what makes it a little more complicated.
>> Great. Um for the fundamental agencies uh CRA FAR and Jeff school do we see their budgets in more depth or does your department just review that and we just >> everyone submits through our process. So they fill out uh a grant basically a
grant application is what it amounts to and in it they're requesting their resource uh resources for the various programming and they indicate to us what some of their funding is. We don't get audited budgets or anything like that, but I'm kind of working towards that. >> And does that just go through the grants
and budget office? >> Yes. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> Um, >> and human services. Our human services team works in partnership with our budget and grants team. >> Okay. Um, and then, sorry, I'm jumping all
over the place a little bit. Um um one of the the concerns that Michael's brought up a couple times is um how the state budget gets finalized after hours. Um but let's say the state
budget gets finalized and we just get a huge pile of money. Um what >> you're more optimistic than I am, but okay. Well, I'm just let's go there. >> This is a hypothetical just for process process questions. Um at that point, we
could amend our budget. >> You could amend your budget, but we would have adopted the budget before you're likely to know what that pile of money is. So currently what's available to you without any changes is that you could actually direct us to work with the city attorney to coordinate the
language that would allow for you to claw back any amount of funds that the state giving a larger amount than expected would actually cause an increase so that that money could come back to the city budget. We haven't done that. >> Sure. >> But we would have to we could >> but even after we we pass the budget, we
can always amend >> we could always amend the budget. Yes. I mean really you don't amend the budget unless you have a significant reason for amending it but it is a simple act by this body >> right if it's a couple bucks but if it is yeah a big pile >> right all you're doing is giving us the authority to recognize the additional
funds and appropriate it for use so that's the reason for that would be the reason for it >> basically I'm just asking to see like how what is our response capability to to that >> and we have looked into the issue of what it would take to move the the budget period I have heard back from
some staff. We're still working through others just to make sure we're not missing anything and we can provide that to you very shortly. Uh it it is not impossible there. There's nothing to say that we couldn't do it, but it will cause changes. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> All right. I've got some more specific. I already was starting to look at some
line items, but I'll save those for >> That's what your work sessions are for. So, hold them and bring them to each one of those. And if they don't get answered in those, the last work session is meant to catch anything that we didn't touch. >> Okay. I appreciate it. Thank you. Michael, do you have anything at this time?
>> If you could go back to the um transit slide. >> I don't remember where it was. So, let's see if I can find it. We're going to sleep well tonight cuz this has kept me up. >> I just
Yep. Uh, I know one of the requests from Impact this year was to have the city um show the scenario for what it would look like to hire 15 drivers a year versus 10 just
to show what that would look like. Um, so we're I mean we're kind of close to what that would look like here. Essentially, it would be at about a little over $400,000 to this number. >> Maybe because I don't know what five additional drivers would do to the
support staff item below. We have we didn't have that kind of conversation with the CAT team. So, I would wonder how many more positions would need to be added. So, that would drive it up depending on what that came out to be. >> So, at a minimum a little over $400,000,
potentially more annually, right? Um, I just know that was one of their requests and you know, we're pretty close. >> As you said, there may be a little bit more to look at, but >> and we can still do that and make that available to you. Um, it's not impossible for us to run those numbers, but we would need time for the team to do that.
>> Sure. Um, another question when at the beginning you talked about departmental requests. When departments are submitting their requests to get incorporated into our draft budget, are they just submitting
what their budget was last year and then anything additional on top of it and we assume the budget they had last year is a given or do we say to them kind of start from zero and kind of build up when you submit justifying your budget?
So we don't do zerobased budgeting kind of like we could do zerobased budgeting everybody starts at zero rebuild your budget. We don't do that. Um we have relied on the departments to put together their budgets and give us real numbers. Uh we have uh each of the
past years that I've been here which is now it'll be five in July. Uh we have dug deep and we've gone deeper each time. We found different approaches to going back in and as I identified, we went back to some of the larger departments and they surfaced savings. Um, but when they surface savings, we
don't just take the surfaced savings and just go with it. We still want to understand what it is that they're cutting because in some cases they might be cutting something that we might say, "No, no, no, no, you've got to do that." Um, but what we are doing is we are taking a closer look. We are using our um year-end results looking at the
variances and questioning why are line items still showing money in those pots over multiple years. If we can get an explanation then we don't really adjust but so much but in some cases I have cut budgets uh cut budgets and said to the director I need you to figure it out.
Uh, and we will continue to do that because of course everything that I can do in that space makes it less likely that I have to come to you and ask for a tax increase. >> And um, with schools, I would be interested in at least seeing the
scenario of what the state funding looks like assuming the state senate's budget and the house budget. um because both of them compared to Yncan's budget amend it to add uh hundreds of millions of dollars in additional school funding
statewide. I don't know how that filters locally, but I would just be interested in seeing that. Um, and then I would really like to get clarity on if in the current collective bargaining agreement, are the schools going to consider that
contract agreed to for support staff to keep the wage pay scale for where it is organizationwide? Or is it going to be followed by an organizationalwide adjustment and pay scale in line with that? because I just
want to understand what we're planning for because that's a difference. I don't know if I'm making sense there, but that's a potential difference. >> No, I got it. I understand that. >> I mean, that's millions and millions of dollars. >> It is the the first part of that um is some analysis that I don't know if we
have enough of the details. We'll have to try to see if we can put our hands on it and and do something to to kind of estimate what percentage we might get based on what the numbers were last year and what percentage schools got, but that's going to take a little time. But I think we could probably figure out
something to do there. As it relates to your question about the the contract, I don't want to speak about it on behalf of the schools because they have to figure out that for themselves. I can speak to it from what it has been for us because we're now deep into this. It is
a reset. When the contracts are set, you're changing the dynamic. It's a structural change to how your organization operates. You now have two classes of people. You have affiliated and unaffiliated, and not everybody understands that. So, we've been trying to teach and explain and help people understand that. We have a policies and
procedures manual that governs all of them, but then they have contracts that change certain things. So it does make it complicated in the work of managing people when you have those two different environments at the same time. Uh but when you make the agreements and you
make the agreements that bring forward significant pay increases, you are changing the organization globally, not just that one contract. That one contract is setting the floor for that particular body of your staff. The rest
of the staff is watching, wondering, and wanting. So, they're going to come at some point when it's their turn to negotiate. And if they're not in the bargaining unit, then those are the ones that are going to give you the kind of responses you don't like on your employee survey. >> So, it does change everything that you
do and it all comes at a cost because you are shifting the salaries up and everything about benefits goes up with that because it's all pretty much triggered by salaries. >> Definitely. Yeah. And I just want to have a sense of >> it's a reset, >> you know, the scale of that.
>> It is. Um I I'll also just foreshadow future conversation for you that going concern list. One of the references about collective bargaining impacts. We have to have a serious conversation about it. I knew that we were going to be finding ourselves there. Depending on what happened once we got all four of these contracts. I wondered if we were
going to end up with six or not. I was very worried about if we had six and how they all came together, what that would cost. Uh but the changes that have made been made on the school side, every change that they made is going to come at an added cost on our side too. So we can't just look at their expense and
think everything is okay because they're going to cover it. That isn't how it's worked out. They've come to you each year for an increase. So our budget is going to reflect that. So it's their contracts plus our contracts that we have to prioritize. And um you know I know we're not going
to get it adjusted for this budget cycle. Um but yeah I mean I think you know when we have to make a decision in an incomplete information environment just always leads to worse decisions in terms of in many localities Richmond
throughout the state it's more common that they adopt their local budget after the state budget. Um, and I know that we can always amend the budget, but I don't know if I've ever seen a locality, not in economic distress, claw back money
just as a political reality. >> And even if it's just imperfect environment, um, imperfect information environment. Um, >> but yeah, a lot a lot to process. Um, and I would just say difficult as it is, whenever I hear these presentations, I
still think um, we're very fortunate. Many localities in Virginia have had their main employer leave or seeing population decline, their budgets decline. So, you know, as you highlighted, we have huge problems with economic inequality and economic
mobility, but at least we have a tax base that's not collapsing. So, um they're difficult problems, but still good problems to have. And as you highlighted, I think um we spend second
most per pupil on schools. We spend the highest per capita on affordable housing in the state. Our social services spending is some of that highest per capita in the state. We spend more on housing outright than Lowden County, even though their budget is $5 billion. Um, and some of people might say that's
a negative thing, but I think for all those things, it's because our community values trying to take these issues on and not just kicking the can to the state or federal government. So again, they're positive problems to have, but I appreciate that it makes it very difficult for you every year.
>> Y characteristics of punching above one's weight limits. >> Jyn, yeah. >> Can you remind us the last time that we raised the tax rate on real estate? It was two >> two years ago.
>> Yeah. Two years ago you raised all four. >> That was my first budget. >> Fine. >> And then >> but that was the first time property personal property tax had been raised in 10 years. >> In a while. Yeah. >> Personal property, not real estate. Right. >> Okay.
>> Um and um is this um is this already available online? The whole book? >> Uh it is posted now. >> Oh, okay. Great. >> Yes. >> And are there any um I know we get
calculators to kind of play with the numbers, but are those also available? >> Oh, yeah. They will be >> under the work budget work session section, that calculator that we sent you for the tax raises on there. >> Oh, that's fantastic. That's very helpful. Just for the public, it allows you to
>> put in your personal numbers and see what the tax rate >> uh implications are. Yeah. >> Which you'll be paying differently. So, that was very helpful. Um, and then on the bike ped, they were kind of grouped together as a um as an item, but I don't
know if it got a number to it. It's it was Yeah. Can you kind of >> They're just identified. They're they're in the CIP in different ways. >> Okay. >> So, that was just me just capturing it just to speak to the idea that we have identified bike pad. >> Those were the line items that I have. >> That was Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, we'll
save this. Save this. Okay. Great. Got it. >> We know. We can talk about that a little bit. I was trying to make sure I said something to each of you about what you wanted. So, >> see yourself in the budget. Love Sam. >> That's right. >> Um, yeah, this is um, thank you for going
over it in detail. I very much appreciate this. This is making a lot more sense and um, yeah, we have some work to do, but you've already done all that work. Thank you. So, I don't have any other questions. >> Yeah, Lloy got nothing right now.
>> Yeah. Yeah, I think we'll be getting we're getting nice and cozy over the next >> four Thursdays. Um and and um thank you. >> Can we put that slide up real quick, just the the schedule, so if anyone's
tuned in, they can get a quick snapshot at where they can find us to talk about the budget. >> And this will also be posted, my presentation will be posted if it's not already posted. and this budget timeline is a separate item so that people can pull that down if they need to as well.
>> Thank you. >> Okay. >> Thank you, sir. >> Thank you. >> Um so this is definitely not the last um we're now at the opportunity for community matters. you certainly can speak on the budget, but um
there'll be um you know, I think at each of our work sessions there's opportunity at the end of the each session for public input as well. But um would anyone like to from the public like to speak on this?
If not, um can I get a motion to adjurnn? >> So move. >> Second. >> All in favor, please say yes. >> All oppose, please say no. Thank you.