City Council Work Session   4/19/2021

and I'll text Councilor Payne unless someone else has done it.

He might be having the same problem I was.

And I just resent

Here it comes.

So we're all here.

I call this 4 p.m.

Ms.

Thomas, would you do the roll call, please?

My video's off.

Mayor Walker?

Present.

Vice Mayor McGill?

Here.

Councillor Hill?

Here.

All right, thank you.

I think Mr. Davidson will cover that for us.

Yep.

Yeah, I just had to...

Unmute myself here.

Brian, you can go ahead and start the presentation for me, please.

Thank you.

So this afternoon, we're going to continue to go through our monthly financial snapshots of the revenues expenses.

This month's report will include our final revenue projection update, as well as discuss the potential steps we've identified to manage this shortfall.

We're going to go over some of the highlights on the following slides, but for more detailed information,

You can find those in the report that was given to Council and is going to be posted online as soon as this meeting is completed, or it may be already.

As always, I wanted a thanks to go out to the revenue team that helps develop these projections.

A lot of hard work goes into this organization.

these reports each month, and this group meets every other week, our Commissioner of Revenue, Treasurer, Director of Economic Development, and staff, City Assessor, Director of Finance, Budget Staff, Senior Manager, all chip in to help work on this, the Director of Parks and Recreation as well.

Hope I captured everybody, but

Let everyone know the work is appreciated.

This first slide, we just like to show the data in a graphic way.

As you can see, we now are showing a current forecast that is slightly better than the forecast we showed you in January of 2021.

We'll go over that in some following slides.

But again, the top line, we're just kind of showing what was projected, what was adopted and then our forecast as we've gone through.

The final row in red is kind of the worst case scenario if things reverted back to essentially stage one.

We haven't really updated that further downturn scenario since it seems really unlikely at this point and things are actually trending in a positive direction, but we didn't want to completely ignore this, but as we've shown this to you and discussed this with you previously, but again, you know, in staff's opinion, this really is a highly unlikely scenario that we really don't need to spend a whole lot of focus on at this point.

Next slide, please.

After reexamining all of the revenue trends and the actuals that we've gotten in over the last couple of months, we made a few changes to our revenue projections from what we shared and discussed with council at our last meeting last month.

We're now projecting revenues will come in at approximately $8.3 million, lower than what our adopted budget amounts are.

That's just slightly more than $1.6 million increase from what we had discussed with you last month.

And we'll go over

Those details in the next few slides here.

But overall, we're looking at a revised projection, as I said, about $8.3 million and or 4.3% less than what was originally adopted.

So

As you can see, we continue to see volatility on a month-to-month in some of our larger economic-driven revenues, such as sales, wheels, and lodging.

But the revenue in these areas has recently been showing a continued improvement in their trends.

We did see a sharp decline back in the November revenues that were collected in December.

However, our receipts that we collected for January, February, March have actually looked better compared to the receipts from the prior months and better than

came in higher than our expected projections.

So therefore, based on the new receipts, we've increased our projections for these three revenues.

And these three revenues come in just over $1.61 million difference.

All the rest of the revenue changes we made only amounted to about $170 total.

It was just a random thing that as we adjusted the revenue, some went up, some went down, and the total net change outside of these was

really only $170.

So as you can see, meals tax, we're looking at a new revision of just shy of $161,000 increase, $124,000 for sales and $250,000 for lodging.

Brian, the lodging numbers don't seem to be correct.

Oops, I got those backwards.

Is the difference correct?

Yeah, the difference is correct.

This initial January forecast number appears to be a typo in that the

January forecast number for lodging should have been 3.298.

So the nine and the two got reversed on that.

It was a transposition of numbers on that.

Okay, thanks.

Thank you.

Yes.

Yeah, it was just on this slide, I transposed the nine and the two when I was typing in that figure.

Sorry about that.

I'll correct the presentation and can resend to everyone.

What I was getting ready to say is the largest increase was in our BPOL revenue.

Our initial projections were about $6.2 million and what we actually collected was closer to $7 million.

This revenue is dependent upon prior year receipts and can be somewhat volatile.

And based at the time of our initial projection, we were really unsure of what the impact of COVID would be on the prior year business receipts.

And they came in better than we had initially anticipated for FYI.

excuse me, calendar year 20.

So we saw an increase in our B poll revenue from what we had initially projected.

And this carried over again as we looked at the 22 budget and allowed us to revise our estimates for the 22 budget as well.

But again, the largest increase of these was B poll.

Just really quick.

I just wanted to, so B poll taxes, they're January to January, right?

Correct.

So it would have been when COVID hit in March of 2021, I mean 2020, a large chunk of 2020 was affected by COVID.

Correct.

Right.

We had initially decreased our estimates by about 25% of what we had initially anticipated.

It was over $2 million.

I don't have that figure.

in front of me right now.

So I think we had initially in the first projection come out with somewhere near $8.3 million for 2021 in the first initial proposed budget.

And then what we adopted was $6.2.

So it was roughly $2.1 million.

of a decrease.

And so we were being conservative because again at that time we just weren't sure exactly what the impact would be on some of these businesses.

And a lot of industries, we have a diverse amount of industries in this area.

And so while some were really hurt and impacted, there were other industries that did do well.

Do we know-

The reduction from last year from 2019 to 2020?

You mean for, so in the calendar for the revenues collected on the fiscal year, so from 20, so you're talking about the difference from what we collected in fiscal year 2020 to what we've collected in fiscal year 2021.

Okay.

And so with that, I actually do have that in front of me.

And that was approximately $1.2 million less.

We had collected just shy of $8.2 million for fiscal year 20.

And we've collected just right around $7 million for fiscal year 20 more.

I would have to.

I don't know if Mr. Divers is on this meeting or not.

I would have to defer to him on that as he is.

And I'm sure we could get a breakdown, but that type of a breakdown wasn't provided to us in the budget office.

Didn't ask for it, to be honest.

But we can provide that to you.

I don't think that would be too difficult for Todd to put together.

Okay, thank you.

Let's see.

So, Brian, you can move on to the next slide.

And so we really talked about all the ones on this slide, the revenues that actually changed from our previous projection to now.

I did want to point out that overall, you know,

You can see we're trending ahead in some of our revenues behind in others as far as our current year-to-date projections based on the current forecast, which is the forecast we're talking about right now with the $8.3 million.

But again, I don't want to give a sense of false security when you look at the bottom line of our year-to-date projections versus our actuals as being, oh, we're ahead by almost $2 million.

Well, as you can see, that's mainly all in the real estate, but

But overall, it's still, you know, $8.3 million below that originally budgeted figure.

Next slide, please, Brian.

And as I talked about, there was several increases and decreases throughout these various categories, and they're all minor changes, you know, 20, 30, $40,000 here or there, sometimes even less.

But all total between all of these categories, it was like 170 something dollars,

So not a whole lot of change here, but again, the overall figure, $8.3 million, which is an improvement from what we had been talking about last month.

So we're trending in the right direction, and hopefully we continue to see that positive trend moving forward.

Next slide.

And again, just one more time visually just to show where we started and kind of how we progressed as we've moved through.

And again, as staff discussed, we really believe that this final further downturn figure is not realistic and we should be focusing more on these other previous figures.

Next slide.

So expenditures and there's a typo on this slide too.

I missed the

It's through March 31st are what the actuals are actually through, not February.

And so we're, again, we're through nine months or approximately 75% away through the fiscal year.

Again, I caution spreading it evenly over the 12 months, but it does give you the general idea.

And as we get closer to the end of the fiscal year, it really does play more into the proper figures of what we're looking at here.

Schools is this is both our contribution to the schools plus our contractual services for maintenance of people transportation.

Healthy families is the one area that you'll see that is substantially above that kind of 75 percent guideline or threshold, if you will.

The main reason for that is because this is reflecting quarterly payments for

the human service nonprofit agencies for all four quarters.

So those payments are completed.

And so that's going to raise those payments or that percentage a little bit.

But as you can see, we're continuing to see some savings up to this point.

If we'll slide to the next slide.

Again, you know, so we've discussed this final slide before, but we wanted to reinforce and discuss the ways that staff is currently is or is proposing to manage this shortfall.

We've talked about the COVID reserve of approximately $6.7 million.

And on top of that, there was also CARES funding

from the first round of federal funding that came through that was previously utilized for some FY21 operating expenses.

That's the $7.6 million.

So as you can see, just between that, that's getting us close to that figure we've discussed.

We have some revenue decreases that should have some corresponding expenditure decreases.

We also have some other areas that have been identified, such as the Departmental Savings

We're nine months in, so we're losing some of the flexibility on the expenditure levers that we can pull should we need to.

A little less flexibility than what we had early in the fiscal year, but we still think that we could be seeing some savings in these areas.

And as we've discussed with the council previously, should we need to use some future funding from the American Rescue Plan allocations?

We could, you know, we are going to be, it appears we will be allowed to use that to fill some of the revenue shortfalls.

We're still waiting on some more final guidance on exactly how we can and when we can use that, but, you know, that would be something we would look at using those, potentially using those funds for as well.

And so, again, the ranges of the, we have listed here,

could potentially cover any of our shortfalls.

And yeah, I don't want us to think, again, I always say, I don't want us to think the work is through, you know, it's an ongoing effort and we're going to continue to require that effort to manage these revenue shortfalls.

And, you know, because this is, we're just looking at really, you know, with the revenue shortfall, that's just one side of the picture.

There's also the expenditures.

And if we are not

You know, we may come in eight, if we come in 8 million short on the revenues, but we still, but we end up going to all the way to the expenditures, we could see even larger gap, final gap, but we'll continue to manage that and make sure that we're staying within our means as we move through the end of the fiscal year.

All right, thank you.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate the opportunity to present to you all today about the Alliance and thank you so much for being

a member of the AARP network.

I wanted to start off with letting you know that you as a community and the Alliance have been named a key community for AARP.

We were chosen out of all the ones in Virginia.

And what that means is more access to resources to address some of the goals.

And I'll end up, I'll circle back around to that, but

There's a benefit to having made this commitment several years ago.

I wanted to give you a slight background on how we got to being a key community.

If you have the report in front of you, this would be summarized on page six.

There were a group of eight agencies that recognized a need to increase

the recognition of seniors and also to be aware of the fact that demographics, we've got more seniors in our community.

They're staying here and the downside is many of their extended family are not here and so that means more support.

There's also an increase in the incidence of dementia.

and on the positive side there's an opportunity for seniors to participate to improve the community so as we looked at that we tried to decide what would be the best way to go about this and the fact that as you all were going to work on a comprehensive plan and other jurisdictions would as well there's a reason for having a collective voice to help improve the quality of life

So if you look on page seven, we made the decision to go with the World Health Organization because they did have a structure and life elements that they outlined, and AARP is the US network for WHO.

And just very quickly, those eight element areas are buildings and outdoor spaces, so parks and rec, transportation, housing, and the support to stay in that housing, social participation,

respect and social inclusion and I think respect is a really key part we often talk about the needs of seniors but there's also a lot of wisdom that comes with that we could gain from our seniors civic participation and employment more and more we're seeing seniors being a part of the employment either they stay longer or they return back to employment

Communication and Information, certainly through COVID we've seen the impact of people who are on the internet and those who aren't and community support and health services and again I think this last year has pointed out a lot of that so the reason for the more thorough report was to sort of give you that background so the first step that AARP asked for was an assessment which makes a lot of sense so we were able to

used the health department's general survey of households and got results from that.

Then we did surveys that were directed at seniors and you all helped cooperate by putting it on your website and helping us distribute.

And then we did focus groups.

That was all analyzed.

And there were a couple of things that people said.

One of them is that this community is a good place to age and they like the quality of life.

However, that being said, there is always needs for improvement.

And the three areas that they identified were that they don't feel socially included in the community.

There's not enough affordable housing.

Didn't need to really tell you that one.

I'm sure you already knew that.

And that transportation is a bigger issue as you're not able to live near services.

So I don't think there's a big surprise with number two and number three.

But number one is probably a good one to bring forward in terms of the social participation.

So after we got done with that, we started to develop an action plan.

Unfortunately, that started in 2020, which meant it was disrupted by COVID.

So now we have about 30 agencies, all are volunteer.

And if you're curious about them, that's listed on page nine.

You and Albemarle County and Fluvanna County are members.

both hospital systems, the health district, region 10, Jaunt, the center at Belvedere, Java, PHA, AHIP, Legal Aid, Justice, CAR.

I mean, there's just a wide variety of members which helps us cover all of those element areas.

And so pages 17 to 25 give you a lot of information on the action plan.

but I would just like to highlight a couple of the key points so that we have time for discussion or questions.

Housing, we were lucky that TJPDC had started a regional housing partnership so Ginger Dillard who's joined us today is the chair for that committee and so we are now participating with the regional housing partnership

and that allows us the opportunity to comment and contribute suggestions to what they are putting together.

But also as you all are creating your comprehensive plan and your affordable housing plan, we'll be looking at that and trying to make sure we always raise up the ways in which seniors might be added to those plans.

Then transportation, we again have been

able to be voted to be a non voting member on the regional transit partnership and Peter Towns, Peter is the from the center is the chair for that committee.

And so Peter has been able to participate in transportation has been a big area of that he's been involved in for a long time.

And then the third area that we chose was social participation and George Worthington is also on the call today.

and he's from DARS, the Department of Aging and Rehab Services and also he's a co-founder of Dementia Friendly and so a couple of the things that we are looking at on that committee is to identify those individuals that are at risk or isolated obviously this last year with COVID points out the need to

know who is it isolated because that is a huge risk area.

We know that people who are having isolation issues are more likely to have cognitive, emotional, and physical health issues.

And so working with Triad and the Sheriff's Department, it's been important to identify those people.

We've also been able to continue to work with

Albemarle Rescue Squad to get information on Java into the rescue squad units so that as they address high utilizers, they are able to share other sources of ways to get support.

And we're hoping to expand this to Charlottesville rescue squad as well, because we think this is a good proactive way to try and help address and maybe decrease over time some of those high utilizers because

Many of the issues are really more around social determinants than they are around healthcare itself.

And then the third area is dementia training to different businesses as hopefully we start to come back and have more things happening in person.

It will be important for retail businesses, restaurants to better understand how they can be supportive of

those with dementia and help them feel included and welcome in those areas.

There are a whole lot of other goals, but obviously we've got to kind of take them a little at a time.

We're all volunteers on this alliance.

We don't have any paid staff.

So each of us bring with us the areas that we would want to be working on anyways and look for support with that.

And so the reason I would point these goals out to you is that this is where we return to your being a key community.

We want to make sure that these goals are in sync with your goals.

because as we talk to AARP about the resources these are resources that your staff can access through Charlottesville they're most likely going to focus on the transportation goals because they'd like to see us be able to make some differences within the next year and given regional transit

and Kat and Jaunt, there's a lot of opportunity to see how we could help support you all, but we're open and always want to make sure that we're choosing goals that are things that are important to your community and that likewise you would see some of these as being important to add in the comprehensive plan as you continue to work on it.

So I my timer when I was trying to time myself.

So I knew how much time I had.

I didn't.

OK, good.

I didn't want to take too much time talking because I wanted a chance to hear from you all.

So I just wanted to also remind you that May will be Older Americans Month.

And so just to be sure that we always keep seniors in in everyone's mind across the whole area.

As you know, the point of the alliance

is to create an age friendly community.

The point being that as we do things that are good for seniors, they're good for the whole community.

It's not just about making it senior friendly.

It's knowing that those things make it friendly for all ages.

It's not an either or, but rather and.

And so we wanna make sure that we support all ages and that with that comes an awareness

that we do have a growing demographic of seniors and we want to make sure that seniors can continue to stay in Charlottesville.

We've had sort of a roller coaster with the demographics where they go up and then I think seniors start to move out of Charlottesville because they can't always find some of these things that they've said are important to them and so we want to help you all be able to keep that wisdom and that

diversity within your community by being able to keep seniors there.

So thank you for your continued commitment to the Charlottesville Area Alliance.

Many of you are new to council and may not have even known you've made that commitment.

And so that's why I appreciate the time today to kind of highlight it with you and see if you have any questions.

And George and Ginger are here to help me answer any of them.

So

Thank you for your presentation.

I was just going to comment.

One thing that really resonated with me is just seeing how well you guys are trying to integrate into both the regional transit partnership and the regional housing partnership because obviously these are priorities that council has outside of just this target

She's a targeted group, but it's just so important that we kind of have that lens and reminder that we need to be looking at it from that angle.

And so I just think any way that we can continue to be integrating with existing groups that are really tackling these issues more holistically and having this voice be heard, I just think it's so important for the region.

So I really recommend that.

And I guess the only questions are, I guess, the next steps was action plan is for 2021 to 2026.

So I guess there's just, it's updated, there's dates again to get

who's tasked out and determined and then just kind of chipping away over the course of that time on these action plans.

Right.

Yes.

Thank you for bringing that up.

Yes.

We were pretty lofty in our plans when we sat down and wrote them in 2019 to 2020.

And then we realized that we needed to spread them out.

And so we're identifying the ones that we're going to first work on and then we're going to keep going from there.

And should we manage to get all of these met, I'm sure they'll

be even newer ones that will come up.

But likewise, that's where we wanted to make sure you all knew about the Alliance.

So as you see issues that are particular to your city, we can integrate them into our plans.

So I see here about delivering trainings per quarter for the dementia friendly at work.

Have you thought about it, like incorporating one have?

Are you working with the Chamber of Commerce and other areas like that to try to get this going?

But also, if there was like some sort of like sticker that people could put on their door saying that we have been trained in this, so that when people are

I'm going to use the downtown mall or barracks road.

Absolutely.

Yes, thank you for that question, Councillor McGill.

So as part of Dementia Friendly Central Virginia, one of our key things is that recognition.

We want to make sure that the businesses we train and restaurants or whatever are able to advertise that to the public.

So we'll be

providing them with a window sticky.

We have those that say We Are Dementia Friendly with the Central Dementia Friendly Central Virginia logo and we will be promoting those businesses on our website as well.

Prior to the pandemic we had been in discussion with the Chamber of Commerce and a number of businesses about providing the training and moving forward but we were

obviously interrupted and we're now picking that up again.

Thank you.

I know that a few years ago, the precursor to the alliance, the 2020 plan, we were working with JPDC to look at that sort of a co-housing program, and it kind of hit some legal bumps in terms of, you know, responsibility for making those matches and things, but that's not to say that it wouldn't be a good goal for us to take up at some point in the future, because I think there's much more

need for that.

And I think as things like accessory dwelling units and are potentially approved within the city, that there's going to be more opportunity to really help

and create a clearinghouse that could help people be matched because we know that often that's going to be the way people are going to find it more affordable is to be able to pair up.

So it's certainly an idea that was explored a few years ago, and I don't think that means it's not a good idea.

Okay.

Are there any other questions or comments?

All right.

Well, thank you all for joining us this afternoon and for the presentation.

Thank you, Mayor Walker.

Great.

Thank you so much.

So thank you to... Can you hear me okay?

So thank you to council for having me today and for Mayor Walker for allowing me to present on the United Way.

So I'm going to talk a little bit about what the United Way is doing in terms of our five-year strategic vision and then get into what we've been doing to support the community and specifically Charlottesville with COVID emergency and recovery efforts.

So Brian, I'm going to have

Have you bring up our presentation.

Excellent.

So the name of our campaign that we're getting ready to launch is called Envision.

It's really about looking to the future of what Charlottesville can be while we work together to look at reducing poverty in our community, working as nonprofit partners and peers toward a common goal.

So if you can advance to the next slide.

So our overarching goal is to eliminate barriers for minority and economically disadvantaged populations and enable them to achieve financial stability and thrive economically.

This may be achieved through coordinated service delivery among our peer agencies and supported by our task force coalitions focused on long term and systems level change.

Through this, we may begin to eliminate a dependency on these services such that individuals can thrive economically and become financially stable.

So that's our stated overall goal, but we have some specific goals within that.

You can advance to the next slide.

So we've really honed in on two specific areas in our work with the United Way, financial stability and school readiness.

We've been doing school readiness in our community for many, many years, but financial stability is becoming really our key focus and sort of bedrock of all the work we're doing.

And within financial stability, really looking at the racial disparities in our community, the systems of racism that have existed, that have created some pretty big income disparities for our local families.

So under our financial stability goal by 2026, our goal is to help lift 1,800 families so they can scale out of poverty, specifically, again, focused on Black families.

This means increasing the annual income of a family to above their survival income threshold of $45,000, and that is taken from the most recent Orange Dot report, 4.0.

So that's a family of three with one adult and two children under the age of 18, one that would be under the age of five and requiring

you know support for an early ed scholarship and attending early ed quality early ed and our second goal around school readiness is by 2026 increase the number of economically disadvantaged kindergartners who pass literacy benchmarks by 10 percent and by 2026 ensure that 76.8 percent of economically disadvantaged kindergartners will meet fall kindergarten pals benchmarks

So those are our two overarching goals.

And to do that, we want to vastly expand our direct services and our partnerships.

So we have our family investment program, which I'll talk a bit about further in the presentation, our Driving Lives Forward program, our early learner scholarships, among other programs that we're running in coordination with our partners that we think are going to provide the types of interventions that allow us to meet these goals.

You can meet to the next slide.

So generally in the planning district, 20% of families fall 200% or less of the federal poverty line.

And 50% of children in the city of Charlottesville are eligible for free and reduced lunch as well prior to COVID.

So we know those numbers are even more dire now.

And 22% of all families in the city earn less than $35,000 per year, 10% less than the survival income I just mentioned of $45,000.

and 54% of those families are black households, while only white 13% are white families.

So again, we see some pretty stark contrast there.

You can advance the next slide.

So this comes directly from orange dot report.

I'm sure many of you've seen this, but this talks about in the planning district families that earn less than the 35,000 a year.

35% are Black families in the planning district.

And if you advance to the next slide, in the city of Charlottesville, again, that number is 54%.

And that really reflects all of the United Way programming.

In fact, many of our programs have levels much higher than 54% accessing.

So like in the early ed scholarship, 70 to 80% are Black families, as an example.

You can advance the next slide.

So what do we do about all this?

We've been working diligently with our partners, nonprofits over the past 18 months, and our financial resiliency task force.

So part of our goal, like I said, is to provide backbone support and leadership.

And together, we've come up with this matrix that you see here.

And it's hard to read.

So if you want to go to the next slide, it kind of zooms in a little bit on the matrix.

But essentially, we break out various levels that are required to basically climb the economic ladder.

So we start with a level zero to one, all the way up to 10, and we look at things like access to capital, which includes credit score, income, what kind of local jobs are available at each income ban, what kind of housing you can afford at each income ban,

what child care you can afford and what type of transportation you might have.

And this was actually developed in partnership with many groups you're familiar with.

So Network to Work was chief among them, working with MACA, Habitat for Humanity, Piedmont Housing Alliance.

I have some other groups listed, but essentially have worked to develop this tool.

And this is some common language that we are now using and common goals.

And what we're looking to do with our Envision campaign is help families around the prevention line.

So families that are

right around 30,000 a year up to about 40,000 a year, that one sort of disaster can really cause a major challenge.

So it could be a car that breaks down and needs a major repair.

It could be one person in the family loses a job.

It could be a major childcare expense that maybe wasn't expected.

So those families are working and they want to get ahead and they are looking to be financially stable, but they need support to kind of stay at that above that prevention line.

And so a lot of the interventions we're looking at, both at UniteAway and in partnership with the nonprofits that I mentioned are going to work to achieve that.

And this, again, will be a goal that we'll be working toward over the next five years.

And then we'll be measuring the data around how families are scaling up those economic ladders.

So together with our partners, we'll be measuring the data combined, not just as United Way and tracking that.

And then we'll be able to provide that back to council and show that information as we gather it.

If you can go to the next slide.

So these are members of the Financial Resiliency Task Force, as I mentioned.

Actually mentioned that Kaki Demick at the very beginning of us meeting helped us kind of think about the matrix and sort of a broader way.

And then all of the individuals you see listed here were really integral on helping us develop the actual matrix that you see here today.

Yolanda Harrell played a pivotal role in the development, for example, thinking about wealth building in the black community, looking at credit and debt ratio.

Again, Claudette Greene, Robert Gray, Wilconscious Capitalist, Sarah Hanks.

So a lot of effort went into developing this and we really think it will be a useful tool for us all moving forward in terms of coordinated service delivery.

Do you want to go to the next slide?

So a little bit about Unina Way, what's been happening since COVID hit.

It had some pretty immediate and intense impacts on the organization.

For example, we had to cancel our Seville Tax Save program with about 24-hour notice.

We lost all of our student volunteers through the Madison House Partnership that we have.

We were involved in doing Building Strong Equitable College Towns, a whole program with TomTom, and that was immediately canceled.

We were not able to do our Spring Community Table.

We had to reshape a lot of our programs.

So our whole early ed scholarship program went dormant for almost three months.

We did continue to provide payments though to our early ed partners to make sure that they could, you know, essentially keep their doors open for when they were able to reopen.

We do a virtual early ed symposium, goes over training and quality for local teachers in our community.

We had to go virtual with that, which changed the amount of attendance that we could have.

and Day of Caring, which was our big sort of day of celebration for volunteering in the community had to limit that to just outdoor opportunities and some virtual opportunities.

So pretty significant impacts.

And then we became really front and center and sort of the immediacy of helping families that were impacted by COVID.

So we did all kinds of things in that space.

We coordinated volunteers for the emergency operations center.

So we had a full-time one of our full-time

Staff members worked there for three months.

We partnered with the Virginia 30-Day Fund to do small business loans or rather grants to local minority businesses and child care centers.

We worked with the Minority Business Alliance and did over $80,000 worth of grants to small minority owned businesses in our community.

We did early ed and family day home grants.

Caring for Community Awards.

So we created a whole award system to celebrate people that were giving back and volunteering in the community during COVID.

We also did a Santa fund for COVID recovery.

So we do Santa fund year round where we do vouchers for families, for their children, for supplies and things that they need, literally just shoes and clothes most often.

But we actually started doing one for COVID.

One of the biggest requests that we get, and I'll show a slide further in the presentation for the city, is internet access, people not having access to internet or hotspots so that they can learn from home.

But sometimes it was paying a utility bill, paying a Comcast bill, sometimes it was even repairing a car so a child could get to a learning center.

And then, of course, we've done all of the CARES Act funding disbursement for the Pathways Program with the city and the county, and then the Rent and Mortgage Assistance Program for both the city and the county.

So a pretty good shift for the United Way over the past 13 months, and we're finally starting to come out of some of these changes here just in the last six weeks or so, but it was significant.

Next slide, please.

When you look at sort of the overall impact, we worked with the Virginia Early Education Foundation with the Ready Regions, which is basically helping different child care providers in our community set up virtual learning centers.

So we put over 1,500,000 back into the community for virtual learning locations.

We did small business support, as I mentioned, the minority business alliance grants and early education grants.

So it was 180,000.

And then emergency assistance to individuals.

So as you can see, we raised our own money for emergency assistance to families impacted by COVID and then through our SURF partnership dispersed over $4 million, which we'll look at that in a minute.

So that was a partnership with the Community Foundation, City of Charlottesville, County of Albemarle, and Charlottesville Community Cares.

And that was in the first eight weeks of the pandemic last spring before families were getting any stimulus support.

Many were being laid off.

It was pretty, pretty dire times.

There was weekends where we'd get over a thousand calls to our helpline for families needing help.

And then of course the rent and mortgage assistance program.

So this kind of goes into sort of some of the requests that we got during the emergency response fund.

Almost 5,000 requests came in in eight weeks, almost 18,000 individuals were supported with over 4 million being awarded back into the community.

The preponderance of that was raised at the community foundation and the United Way to the disbursements.

and partnered with the city and the county on the phone lines and worked with Charlottesville Community Cares to get to all populations in our community, some of which didn't have internet or access to phones, that type of thing, or transportation.

Next slide.

In terms of who was accessing the SURF Fund, this gives you just a little bit of an idea on how by locality, but close to 30% were city of Charlottesville residents.

Albemarle County led with 34%.

Next slide, please.

And then if we look at race and ethnicity in terms of who is accessing resources, you can see black families at 2238 were number one, followed by Latino families.

I will say that these slides, the data is still being refined by the Community Foundation.

So this is just general, close to what we think the data would be.

We did present this to the board of supervisors.

So these are the best numbers we have now, but they'll be providing a full report in the future for more specific data points.

Next slide, please.

So in terms of pathways, we've dispersed on behalf of the city and the county, and this number was, as of a few weeks ago, over 3,500,000, specifically for the city over a million.

And you can sort of see the demographic breakdown

if you take a look in terms of which families were accessing resources.

So in the city, for example, 68% were black families, 14% were white.

And I will mention that as of noon tomorrow, we're actually gonna run a pathways funding for the city.

And so just on a call earlier today with Gretchen and Kaki and Siri from the county, thinking through how we're gonna help families.

And we get about 250 to 300 calls a day on that helpline.

And we suspect the need isn't gonna go away anytime soon.

So we're looking forward to hopefully getting some additional funding into the program, into the Pathways Program, hopefully by mid-May.

Next slide.

So Rent and Mortgage Assistance Program, we did disperse resources for the Thomas Jefferson Planning District as well.

800,000 was the county spend and a little under 300,000 for the city went out and you know that again helped people be prevent people from being evicted a lot of it was rent assistance the ponderance of was rent assistance we had cases where we literally meet on the down in the courthouse square with making sure we were getting payments to families to keep them from being evicted so it was pretty intense throughout the fall and winter

Again, you can see for the city of Charlottesville, 71% were black families and 19% were white families in terms of who is accessing these resources.

Next slide, please.

So as I mentioned, Santa Fund for School Kids, we provide it throughout the entire planning district, but in terms of Charlottesville, those are some demographics on kind of who was accessing the resources.

56% of the money we did were for internet services, 28% were for virtual learning tuition, so helping children that were in virtual learning centers.

and then 16% were electric bills, car insurance, phone service, things of that nature.

We did do 20,000 to the city school system for a supply drive and then another 20,000 to the conscious capitalist group to help them with virtual learning for middle school students.

And so that gives you a pretty good idea of the type of additional needs that were coming in related to children during COVID.

Next slide.

The Early Learner Scholarship Program has been a long-standing program at the United Way.

The city's always been a huge support with that program.

So let's see, overall, we were able to do 30 this past fiscal year.

We were, of course, a little less than we would normally do because of COVID, but 30 families were served, and the average household income is $32,000 for this program.

So it's a pretty vital program.

Childcare can cost anywhere from $11,000 to $12,000 a year.

Most of our families wouldn't be able to access any kind of preschool, let alone quality preschool.

They didn't access the scholarship program.

Next slide.

This is a little bit more about Ready Region.

So again, as I said, we did put a little over 1,400,000 back into the community.

And this gives you sort of an outline of like, what did those monies go to?

So 133 slots were expanded in our community for families.

We did some bonuses to teachers.

We did supplies like desk chairs, office supplies.

And then over 70% were within wait lists for city sites.

And then the other thing that we've been working on as it relates to early ed is our Go to Grow coordinated enrollment.

So it's the first time we've had one website where the city and the county and MACA are all participating.

So families can go to the Go to Grow website and apply for their child to attend preschool.

And it's sort of a one-stop shop.

We have a full-time navigator that's helping families.

And as of today, we have almost 500 applications of families that are using

the GoToGrow site to access early ed so they can figure out what's the best fit for their family in terms of cost and location, transportation.

And soon we'll have a mapping feature we can go on and like pick based on a bunch of different filters the best fit for your child.

So that should be up and running here in the next few weeks as well.

This is the first time we've ever had one unified website.

So really excited about that.

And it wouldn't be possible without our partners, like I said, in the city and the county and with MACA.

I also want to mention our family investment program.

This is one of the clients that we've been working with, and she came through Habitat for Humanities, actually grew up in the city of Charlottesville.

She grew up in West Haven, and she's a recent homeowner.

But this program has really started as a pilot, but it's been very successful.

We basically work with a partner agency over two years.

We provide a $10,000 grant per family.

and the family develops their own financial plan working with a financial counselor.

So there might be things like increasing their income by being able to have some sort of workforce development.

So for example, there might be a CNA looking to get into a nursing program and get their nursing license.

We look at transportation, helping them with down payment on a vehicle with low cost loan.

helping them save for a down payment on a house or, you know, rent assistance, helping with child care scholarships, for example, covering the cost of their training, job training.

We've had at least three people coming out of the program now and every single person that's been able to finish the program has been able to significantly increase their income and their credit.

So it's been a really

And we continue to build on that program and it will be a key part of our five year strategic vision in terms of helping families.

It's a referral program right now.

So as I say, we're mostly working with habitat, but we envision that growing to MACA and PHA network to work among others.

Next slide.

I just wanted to mention that we also just launched the Reimagine CVA website.

So this is a partnership with Thriving Cities, the Equity Center, CNN, United Way, and it's basically a website where you can go now and learn all about the nonprofit sector.

So there's over 200 nonprofits participating now, and it continues to grow.

You can be a small nonprofit with no marketing budget whatsoever, and you can participate.

So it's really open to any nonprofit that wants to be involved.

It's broken into categories, so people that want to learn more about poverty or hunger or health in the community can basically pick by any category and all of the nonprofits that are within that category will pop up and they can volunteer, they can donate, they can get involved, they can learn more.

So I would encourage you to share this information and really looking at it as a tool to get broader engagement with the nonprofit sector.

Next slide.

I also wanted to mention the Inclusive Excellence Framework.

So this is a framework that was brought to the area by the DEI, VP of DEI at the University of Virginia, Kevin MacDonald.

United Way signed on early to use the framework for our own DEI work.

And so we've just developed and completed our plan.

We're working with other organizations that are doing the same.

The city school system, for example, is working on the same plan.

and we just did five grants for other nonprofits that were interested in doing their own inclusive excellence framework.

So this is available now on our website under our equity tab if anybody's interested in taking a look.

But we're talking to many other partners who are thinking about getting into

doing their own DEI work and using this framework.

And it's really made up of sort of five key areas, which is access and success, climate and intergroup relations, education, scholarship, infrastructure and investment in community and partnership.

We mapped our framework to our three-year strategic plan and our five-year vision.

So again, encourage folks to take a look at that plan if you have an opportunity to do so.

Next slide.

So that really concludes my presentation today.

Thank you.

I was just curious a little bit more about just the process that's followed for when you guys, I mean, I just know there was just so much demand and there continues to be a lot of demand and a lot of moving parts when you are doing the disbursements for the Pathways Program.

I'm just kind of curious what that process looks like.

Yeah, so we have one hotline that families can call and we've widely publicized that hotline.

So we're trying to make it as easy and turnkey as we can to call the hotline.

Basically, you have to be in a situation where COVID has impacted you financially.

And so you go through a series of questions.

If you're eligible for the relief, it can be a city resident, county resident, it's for emergency needs.

So it could be rent, utilities.

We've been doing loans, for example, like transportation car loans, that type of thing.

Typically, for the city, at least, we pay vendors, so we don't do like a cash disbursement.

For the county, there is cash disbursement, so it's a slight differentiation.

And once the payments are approved, so there's a team that are taking the calls, and this is with Gretchen Ellis that reviews all of the requests that come in, she would actually approve the request.

Once they're approved, they come over to the United Way for review, and then we go ahead and we disperse the payments to those individuals or to those, you know, third party vendors.

So it could be, you know, rent, mortgage, company, that type of thing.

So that's the really like very high level.

We do meet weekly, the team meets weekly.

So that's Siri and Phyllis from the county and then Gretchen from the city and then our team here at United Way, myself and Ella Jordan and our VP of finance.

And so we kind of review like what's working, what's not working, what changes need to be made or adjusted, what communications need to go out.

So it really is a true partnership and that we've all been doing these meetings now for almost 10 months, almost once a week.

And the disbursements, you know, vary.

Sometimes it's about $200,000 a week.

Thank you.

Just a couple comments, mainly not for you, but just things that came up as you were talking.

So based on the report that we got earlier with our projections coming in a little bit better, even though I know they're not where we hoped they would be, but I hope that we will prioritize making sure that there isn't a break in the pathways funding and that even if it seems like the date may exceed when we get the American Rescue Act, that that is just a fund that we make sure

that there's funds in and that we add to it versus waiting for that.

So whatever that looks like, I hope that is something that we can explore pretty quickly.

I also wanna bring up again what I've been bringing up before with the childcare scholarships.

I think that we need to prioritize.

I talked about this during the Vibrant Communities for the past two years.

But it's just something to see.

It seems to me that when we are still trying to assist families at the lower income levels that we make sure that all the funding that we're going to pour into scholarships that we are sending them through agencies that we're going to hit that targeted income level.

And we know that's not the case.

So again, I'm going to bring that bring that point up.

I am, you know,

kind of interested in how the early education kind of campaign, that 10% benchmark, what's the collaboration with like the home daycare families, which may be different from those early learning centers and how

you all are helping them, you know, because there's the usually minority-owned businesses there, you know, providing at-home daycare, but is there a plan for them to help you meet that benchmark?

I had that question.

And then I think that was it.

I had the pathways making sure that the funding that we, you know,

put it, you know, make sure there's a contribution to that, to pathways from the city as soon as possible so that that's even something that we can talk about this evening.

And because it sounds like if we have to have two readings on it, the allocation that that is going, that's going to push it.

Thank you, Mayor Walker.

Yeah, no, I agree.

I think it's going to be tough, but we have to go three, four weeks.

I mean, we could take calls and people go onto a waitlist, presumably, and that's kind of what we're brainstorming on now and trying to keep staffing in places.

We reduce staffing and then we get the funding.

People are trained.

They already know how to work with families.

We have to bring them back.

They may not be available.

So as much continuity that we can have would be better, obviously.

And yes, we do want to work with the home daycare centers.

And I know you're always a huge advocate for those

individuals and families running those centers, and I am as well.

That's part of the reason we've done all of the funding this year and the grants to try to make sure we're keeping those families afloat and that the centers are strong.

And then to answer the question, it's making sure that they get the same quality training and opportunities as the centers so that they can help meet those benchmarks.

And I know that's something that we're very interested in doing.

I don't have the exact number yet, but it's definitely one of my strategic priorities to make sure we provide that same level of quality training to those home daycare centers so they can provide the same sort of supports to children and meet the benchmarks essentially.

Okay.

Yeah, and just thinking through this, you know, this report, the Orange Dot report, anytime you're reading this stuff, I know that, you know, people question my passion a lot.

And I always enter these meetings and discussions with a sense of urgency.

Because, as you stated, one thing can set a family back.

And it could be, you know, someone think is as simple as a car repair, but it has that kind of domino effect.

It absolutely does.

Families who have already living under constant poverty, it's just hard for them to get out of it.

When car repair is like a mom, then single mom can't get to work.

Single mom doesn't get to work, she can get fired.

And then she, you know, literally, she's living paycheck to paycheck.

It's an immediate issue.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

Are there any other questions?

Comments?

Thank you.

Yep, thank you so much for having me and for the support of the city.

We appreciate you.

So I would just like, I know I already sent one request for other business tonight, but I would like to bring Khaki on to see what those needs are to see if we can, for the pathway funding so that we can discuss that.

That's fine.

We'll just introduce Deputy Chief Emily and she will walk us through.

I asked the mayor and council to allow us to present on all of the work that the city's been doing while a lot of it has been very visual to everyone.

Deputy Chief?

Chief Chip, before we get started, if you don't mind, good afternoon Council and everyone.

Happy to see everyone.

I just want to first say I commend the team for what they've been doing for the last several months, over a year now, and I wanted to acknowledge Chief Felicia's

double, triple duties that she's been doing in full support of all the related activities.

Also, Khaki, Crystal, Brian, and others.

I'm not going to mention everybody, but certainly the budget office as well.

They have been key contributors to the success.

And as we look forward to turn the corner, we're hopeful that we'll get you continued support as we continue moving forward.

Okay.

Thank you, Chief.

And thank you, Mr. Boyles and counsel for taking the time to let us present a summary of what we've done over the last year.

And I think Brian is going to drive the presentation for me.

All right.

So there's a bunch of slides, but I'm going to go through them pretty quickly.

So hopefully

and I can send it out if you all want to look at it a little more closely later.

We'll start with a quick timeline of the events that got us here today about 13 months ago.

We started this whole thing with the new declaration of an outbreak as a global pandemic, followed by the state and then the city manager and then the president.

all declaring states of emergency.

On the 15th of March is when our Regional Emergency Operations Center opened.

The next day is when we actually had our first acknowledged case of COVID in the city of Charlottesville.

The 25th is when we had our first continuity of government ordinance enacted.

And I just wanted to mention that during that response phase, that March through May period was when we were really heavily focused on mitigation.

If you can take your mind back to that time, I know it feels like an eternity ago and also yesterday.

But if you think about it, you know, we were so, it was such a weird time and we were washing every piece of grocery that came in the house and things like that.

So

We were doing that here too and everything we were doing was so focused on mitigation and protection of our personnel and how to transition service delivery models.

so that we could maintain city services, essential services, which we did.

And I'm very proud to say I think we did a good job of that.

And now in the recovery phase, we're still maintaining those medication measures and posture that didn't go away.

It's just been modified to be more reasonable and to meet the conditions where they are.

So the expectation among staff, and I think everyone is pretty aware of this, is that we're creative, we're nimble, flexible, and responsive, and there's definitely still that degree of uncertainty in the world, and we need to be ready to adjust at all times.

So next slide.

So we meet every two weeks.

The COVID incident management team meets every two weeks on a Monday.

Today was our meeting.

And then on the opposite Mondays, we're meeting with just the command staff.

I'm going to run you through the first couple of slides here, the situation update that I provide as part of those meetings at the beginning of each of those meetings.

And it's just a reminder of where we are legally and where we are in terms of our infrastructure.

And so services are being performed.

City Hall is partially opened.

As you all well know, the second reading of the proposal to repeal the ordinance is tonight.

And also the proposal for an update, a six month extension on the continuity of government ordinance is also tonight.

And as you're aware, Albemarle County modified their local ordinance to also align more with the state.

Next.

We typically run through a few slides really quickly just to make sure everybody's caught up on where we are with the disease across the state and across the district.

The total number of cases, that increase has definitely slowed down over the last couple months, as well as the hospitalizations.

Hospitalizations are back where they probably should be at this time of year in terms of hospital

not vacancies, but I can't think of the word, but 87-ish percent is where hospitals are across the state, and that's about where we would see them this time of year anyway.

The seven-day positivity rate, that is starting to come back down, and it crept back up across the state, but it's starting to come back down.

Next slide.

And this is Charlottesville, city of Charlottesville.

We were at 11 two weeks ago at our last meeting.

We were at 11 was our seven day average number of daily cases.

And now we're at nine.

So it's starting to come back down, which is good.

Good trend.

Next.

and our current positivity rate for the Blue Ridge Health District is 2.7.

That is a little bit of an increase from 2.5.

It is trending up.

I will say some of these numbers, I know you all have heard Dr. Bond say this repeatedly and Ryan, it's challenging with the volume of testing that UVA is doing.

Sometimes that tends to skew the numbers a bit.

But in general, we've been hovering in that two to 2.5% for about a month and a half now.

and you can see the trend line.

So this is the slide that gives me hope.

It's the vaccination slide and it's, you know, two weeks ago that people vaccinated with at least one dose was a million less.

So in about two weeks, we've gone up a million on that.

And about 25% of the population is fully vaccinated across the state.

Also, if you look at where we are with Albemarle County and the city of Charlottesville there in the middle, you can see we're,

Our rate per population is actually one of the higher ones in the state.

Kind of hard to believe, I know, because it seemed like it's been very challenging in this area, but I think it's just because we have so many people that want the vaccine that it seemed that way.

I can tell you

from talking to the folks running the sites.

It's definitely slowing down in terms of the demand of people showing up really wanting it.

So I think we're starting to really get solid traction throughout the community in terms of the people that want it are getting it.

So that's good.

Next.

So I wanted to cover some regional coordination, some highlights from the regional coordination.

There's been so much work behind the scenes from city staff that's been there.

We opened on the 15th of March of last year in person, Zimmer Hall.

Over the last year, couple of years, they've done tons of modifications to that building, and now it really functions quite nicely as a

as a Regional Emergency Operations Center for us, and we had a great site there.

We were able to stay very spread out, and there was a unified command there from the city, county, Blue Ridge and UVA, and we added UVA Health as a lead partner in that unified command for the vaccine phase.

Those city staff names there were the folks that were there for that two, three months consistently while juggling other responsibilities, but then there were other

staff members behind the scenes working from home or working remotely or coming periodically.

So around May, mid-May, end of May into June, the regional EOC transitioned to more of a hybrid model and then we went virtual and have remained in a virtual state.

Most of the reason we went hybrid is because public safety and law enforcement focus

intensified.

If you remember a flashback to last summer, the protests and the county statute removal, we were dealing with an emergency within an emergency, essentially.

But those numbers down there are pretty impressive.

156 folks worked there throughout this emergency thus far.

And you can see how many incident action plans and situation reports we did.

Next slide.

So these are some of the highlights of the work that was done at the regional level.

And again, a lot of this was done in coordination with the city.

So I bring it up because, you know, the first one on the list, the JIC, the Joint Information Center.

Brian's team has always been a huge partner and there's still somebody assigned to the JIC and assisting today.

We've been helping Blue Ridge with testing.

The vulnerable population coordination through feeding and housing has been an ongoing effort.

And it's been an ongoing focus of, you know, I don't know that a lot of this was that different than what Kaki and Sue and the folks in our social and human services divisions do on a day-to-day basis anyway, but they were really intensely focused on that.

National Guard coordination was a big element.

We've requested teams throughout the last 13 months.

The long-term care facility and skilled nursing home facilities, we were very fortunate that the county fire department has somebody who's already intimately engaged with those facilities and has a very good relationship.

And so he was able to kind of leverage that relationship and create a system where he checked in with them consistently.

And I

Everybody from the EEOC firmly believes that that played a huge role in keeping us from having a much worse situation like some of the other localities all around us.

And then you can see tons of PPE acquisition and distribution.

We managed a donation center, and by we, I say our partners from the United Way in conjunction with some folks from the EOC, but STAB was gracious enough to donate their gym facility, and we converted that into a big donation center.

We worked with the local funeral homes to develop a fatality management plan.

You know, at that time, we had no idea what we were looking at, so

We were prepared.

Thankfully, we didn't need it.

And now we've moved into the vaccine administration.

That's been where we've been heavily focused.

We've assisted with some after-action reviews, and there's been throughout all of this a ton of tech support in a number of ways.

Undeniably, though, above all, the biggest thing that I think has really been probably, I would say, my personal favorite biggest outcome from this whole COVID experience has been just how great all the relationships have been built and fostered, and it's been great

Just amazing to see how well everybody works together and really has mission focused here.

Next slide.

I wanted to show you guys, I'll run through these super quick.

These were some of the guides that we developed for public safety early on.

and honestly, it was just a sheet with a bunch of QR codes, but behind those QR codes, we could update all of the information in real time and all of the public safety across the city and county and actually all of the other counties were using it as well because they needed that assistance.

They could update their policies and procedures just by that QR code.

And so we put them in all the units and helped us make sure everybody was as safe as possible.

Next slide.

and you can see on this one we had some general, we had one for the law enforcement and we had one for what to do if you're exposed, just a ton of resources and next slide.

We also developed one for health and human services and long-term care facilities and so all of these different QR codes took you to a place that had all that information so for alternate housing we had

you know, lists of hotels and Sue was a big, played a big role in that.

And so all of these were different resources that were available to city staff that were working in the field at that time.

Next slide.

So this is a snapshot of what our current ongoing regional coordination schedule is.

The meetings that we have every two weeks between the city county university and Blue Ridge

the planning sections, the command staff, and also that policy level group meets a couple of times over the two weeks.

Next slide.

This is our current incident management team structure.

It's evolved over time.

It's been a little bit different over the 13 months, but in general, this is what it is today.

Next slide.

Our current strategy and tactics, it is consistently stayed throughout the 13 months to support our employees.

That is the bulleted list under that has looked a little different over the 13 months, but we've always had one of our command emphasis was to support employees.

We continue to support regional efforts and then compliance and enforcement of the governor's orders, the local orders.

Vosh, VDH, and the Department of Labor all modified their postures and their ordinances and their mandates and so we've been nimble and adapted to those as well.

The focus right now though is on that prepare to return to work and also that reconstitution which is FEMA's term for reopening.

Next.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention our command staff.

Our command staff is really the four branches, operations, logistics, planning, and finance admin, but it also includes incident command as well as legal and communications.

And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention all the work they're doing because these guys have really been the behind the scenes.

You know, they don't

everything sort of ends up in their plate, whether it's Brian's team with pushing out information or managing all of the flow of information and adapting all the public meetings and supporting all of these virtual meetings.

It's been an amazing heavy lift that I think is, I know you all have appreciated because you've been on the receiving end of Brian's team's work, but the same is true for legal.

Every single thing we've done internally, we've gotten

you know legal opinion about all of the workforce policies and procedures and Allison Davies has provided that and and Lisa Robertson has provided you know all of the the legal expertise on ordinances and monitor the state and federal guidelines or updates next.

This is just a screenshot of the, there's a very robust internal employee resource page on our intranet for our employees.

If you haven't had a chance to look at it, I know you guys, I think you have access and can.

So please, I encourage you to go through.

You can even see there's updated weekly is the contractor schedule.

So you can even see who's coming into the buildings and when.

Next.

So our operations section, throughout this whole 13 months, this section has been configured a little differently.

Initially, it was really focused on

Public Safety and Social and Human Services, keeping those essential services up and running.

But throughout, it's been focused on people.

And we recently reconfigured it a little bit and broke it into field ops, employee services, and customer services.

And so those are the three branches.

And then we've maintained an infection control division throughout.

That's all that needs to be said on that.

We can keep going.

I know I've got a bunch here.

The people highlights.

So when we look at all the highlights of the work that was done in this arena,

Modifying work so that people can work remotely was a big lift.

COVID testing of city employees, the county heard we were doing that and followed our lead and we're doing it in the same building, the Jessup House downtown.

We had to spin up designated infection control officers in every department and get them trained.

Personal PPE now is not as big of a deal, but at the beginning that was a huge challenge.

And I think you guys remember that, the masking,

policy that has been throughout all stages.

And we've certainly had to be very flexible in terms of our office configurations, our staffing, using strategies such as staggered shifts and cohorting to try to limit that contact within the organization.

And then we've developed protocols for how to communicate with the public and how to begin to have those contacts and interactions again.

and as well as a weekly communication.

Brian's team again has been pushing that out to all employees every week.

And then vaccination is the most recent thing that we've been focused on.

So initially back in early March, we did a survey of all employees to see if these were the choices.

You had five choices to the question, which was, you know, are you interested in getting a vaccine basically?

And

These were the original responses and initially the no response had 407 but through conversation that's gotten down to 37 as you can see.

So that's just a screenshot of what that survey, the feedback we got on that survey.

Next slide.

This is as of Friday.

This is where we are in terms of people that have received at least a first dose.

and actually I think that's even higher now but essentially we have 65% of our workforce has been vaccinated and we know of it.

We have 15 who have actively declined it and it's you have to in our policy you have to tell us you're declining it and then 20%

have yet to let us know or they're undecided or they've not yet disclosed it or they've received it somewhere else and we just don't have their information.

So we expect that total vaccination percentage to be closer to in the 70 to 80 percent range when it's all said and done.

But that's where we are right now.

We've also supported community vaccination events.

You guys have heard about these.

I won't go into any detail, but basically we did all of the school systems, city, county, and private schools, as well as we've been doing a bunch of targeted efforts on recommendations from the policy equity group, which Khaki and Sue are both on regionally.

The planning section has been focused heavily on the development of the incident action plans, the meeting schedules,

coordinating all of our activity, the situational awareness.

A couple of examples of the work they've done is to research and manage the acquisition of new technology, such as the temperature screening kiosks at all the entrances.

They've launched a vaccination and risk assessment tracking tool, which is something that will keep us in compliance with Bosch and DALI moving forward, which is great.

So this is definitely a behind-the-scenes team that you would not have seen the work that they have done, and so it's important to highlight.

These are all of the policies, and it's not all of them, but this is a snapshot of the policies that have gone through the various stages which they've managed this whole process.

And the next slide is an ongoing efforts.

This is what we have pending objectives and tasks that we're

you know, steadily working on right now.

A lot of this came out of, we've been meeting with the lead team.

We met with them a little over two weeks ago, and then we did a follow-up meeting last week, last Wednesday.

Kaki's been leading those meetings to, you know, hear the concerns firsthand and try to address all of them head on.

So that's been a good effort.

And the next slide is very early on, we developed a health survey app internally.

This was done by our IT department.

And it's essentially every morning you get an email and you click it and

answer the questions and it helps us keep an idea of how many people are working remotely and their health status.

It doesn't filter for people that are off on vacation.

So that's why the percentage isn't 100%.

But it's not that everybody's on vacation, but it's just it doesn't have that ability to filter out the folks that aren't working every day.

Logistics, that's led by Mark Zavachar, and it's the major responsibilities there.

Again, some huge behind-the-scenes stuff in terms of research and development of all the new technologies and

and policies related to physical infrastructure.

They're also meeting monthly with a regional team.

There's a group that meets from our logistics team that meets with UVA and the county to kind of look at best practices across the state and nation and talk about how to make those modifications.

And I will tell you

from talking to other localities.

We are certainly one of the leading facilities and one of the leading, in terms of our physical infrastructure, the measures we're taking have been a step ahead of most localities.

So Mark certainly stayed on top of all of that and done a great job of that.

These are some of those, I'm not going to read these, but you can see, and this is not just for city facilities, it's for the schools as well.

So all of the buildings owned by the city, but it's a ton of buildings and a ton of

modifications that have been made over the last 13 months, including some signage that's gone up in a number of spaces or kind of throughout.

These are examples of some of the signs.

Yeah.

And then finally, the finance admin section, Chris Cullinan leads that and procurement and risk management live under that section.

The big responsibility of that section is the cost tracking system for any expenses related to COVID and the management of state and federal reimbursement, as well as emergency procurement policies.

And I think right now the team's

concern are the teams focus a little bit on making sure that we have enough reserve and enough money within this American Rescue Plan money that's coming in to support some of the efforts that we've put in place and make sure that we're funding the next steps of that reconstitution appropriately.

So that's it.

Questions?

Did I take it right to 5.30?

Sorry.

A lot.

It's a lot, and I honestly feel like so much more could have been said of the city staff efforts.

And thanks to all of you, you know, everybody who's been working, trying to figure everything out since March 2020.

And then as we go, you know, with things constantly changing every day.

So I just want to say thank you for all the staff members, which we, you know, said before, but you just can't say it enough because it's a lot and try to figure out how to survive during a pandemic and take care of your own families at the same time.

I will say, I think there's a little bit of optimism.

We're cautiously optimistic, but definitely we feel like we've, I think, you know, all those efforts will pay off.

I think we've done a good job.

I had two quick questions about vaccine percentages of eligible.

Is that...

Of people who have received the vaccinations in our area, is that of eligible people?

So everybody over the age of 16?

Yeah.

Yes, that is of the eligible numbers, not of the general population.

Do we know if that's over 18 or over 16?

That's a great question.

Oh, I was just, yeah.

And then-

Okay.

No, I think the allocation that the

The reason that the health district discourages going other places because it dictates the allocation moving forward.

And the demand was here and still is.

And so that was the discourage, the reason they were doing that.

Thanks a lot.

I just want to echo the thanks.

I just, A, I'm just so, I really am glad you were here today and we could just kind of have a more formal kind of download because it's just in my head just trying to imagine all the pieces and I've even seen more today than I hadn't seen before and so I would love the presentation just to have it and also just give proper thanks to the team but I really like what you brought up like it really reflects the power of collaboration.

both within the organization, but with across the region.

And I'm just, I'm so heartened that a silver lining of all this is really those strengthened relationships.

And so knowing that when other things come our way, that there's already those established relationships and procedures.

And this is just so comprehensive.

There's just so many areas touching this and it's just a behemoth.

And so I just also want to thank you, Emily, for your leadership throughout this process.

Thank you guys for the opportunity.

And Marty and Crystal and Brian and Lisa, several folks in Kaki are on this call and thank you to them as well.

It's certainly a team effort.

Thank you all.

All right.

Are there any other comments or questions?

All right.

All right.

Thank you all so much.

All right.

Okay.

Thank you, Mayor Walker.

We have four people in the audience.

If you'd like to speak to council, please click the raise hand icon in the Zoom webinar.

Okay.

Thank you.

I do.

Pursuant to Section 2.237 of the Virginia Code, I hereby move that City Council closes open meeting and convene in a closed session as authorized by Virginia Code Section 2.23711 for discussion and consideration of prospective candidates for appointment as city attorney.