City Council Work Session   5/17/2021

Music Music Music

Thank you.

All right, thank you all for joining us.

I will call this meeting to order.

Ms.

Mayor Walker?

Present.

Vice Mayor McGill?

Here.

Councillor Hill?

I'm here.

Thank you.

Brian, if you could go ahead and pull up the slideshow for me.

Great.

Okay, so this afternoon we're going to continue to provide council with our monthly snapshot of revenues and expenses for the general fund and the utility funds.

This is going to be our next last monthly update for the fiscal year with our final report to come next month.

The following slides, we're just going to go over some of the highlights and again more detailed information can be found in the report that was given to city council and is, as always, is posted on our budget website.

Next slide please.

So as we're going through, again, as always, I want to send out a thank you to our revenue team that helps us develop these projections and works to put together these numbers with us.

And we meet every week, consists of several staff across all across the city.

And so again, thank you to them.

This first slide we're just presenting the data graphically shows the initial decline in our revenue projections as we were talking in January about 9.9 and then a slight increase in our projections as we showed you this past month.

Again, the top line here shows the budget that was adopted.

Next is our revised forecast we came to council with in January and the blue line here is our current revision.

based upon the current conditions and what we're seeing in terms of revenues, things are trending in a positive direction.

And so we've removed that further downturn scenario as it seems very unlikely at this point that we would ever revert back into this worst case scenario.

So these are the three scenarios that we have been talking with council about.

Next slide, please.

The revenue forecast that we're going to be talking about this month have not changed from what was presented to Council at our last meeting.

As a reminder, based upon the revisions from last month, we're now projecting our revenues will come in approximately $8.3 million lower than the FY21 budget amounts, which is about a $1.6 million increase from what we have been showing as part of our January

Forecast.

Again, overall, you know, that revised projection of approximately $8.3 million is 4.3, 4.4 percent decrease from what the original adopted budget was.

And as always, we continue to monitor our revenues as we progress through the final couple months of the fiscal year.

And as next month is our final report, should it be warranted, we can come back with any final revisions to these projections when we come before you next month.

So we continue to see some volatility month to month in some of our larger economic driven revenues, such as sales, meals and lodging.

But what we are seeing is a more sustained positive trend in these areas.

Receipts collected for January, February and March look much better compared to prior months.

And therefore, based on those new receipts, we increased those projections in our last revision.

And this past month, our collections again, they slightly exceeded our projections.

So we're continuing to see that positive trend in some of these economic-based revenues.

The biggest jump on this slide, obviously, between the two forecasts was our BPOL revenue.

This revenue source is dependent upon prior year receipts, and at the time of our initial projections, we were still unsure exactly how everything would fall out in the area of the business receipts, so we were conservative in our projections.

So when we saw what was actually coming in, we were able to increase those by $775,000 above what we had initially projected.

And even since then, we're now almost $255,000 above what we had shown you this past month.

Now, we don't expect to see any significant amount more collected in this revenue area for the rest of 2021.

But again, it was a positive trend in the economic revenues that we've been seeing across the city.

And so I wanted to point that out.

As I mentioned, we're running ahead of projections in some areas, most notably real estate.

But again, I don't want to give this sense of false security because overall we're still projecting a decrease, you know, $8.3 million below our original figures.

And this is just one side of the picture with expenditures to also be considered.

Next slide, please.

And again, these are some of our other categories, some of the larger miscellaneous revenues that we've collected into these categories.

But again, just shy of just above $8.3 million for the decrease.

And as we move to the expenditure side, one thing I wanted to point out is there are a couple items where the decrease in revenues does correspond to a decrease in expenditures, such as the meals tax decrease relating to the portion that's transferred to debt service and the

excuse me, the amount for our mall vending permits that would be transferred to the CFP.

As those come in as less on the revenue side, there's a corresponding decrease on the expenditure side as well.

Next slide, please.

Okay, as for the expenditures, as we begin to look at the expenditures, just as a point of reference, we're through 10 months or 83% of the fiscal year.

But again, as I sound like a broken record, and I caution each month, we don't spread these out evenly over 12 months.

But as we're getting closer and closer to the end of the fiscal year, it's starting to even out a little bit more.

But as a general idea, if you use the 83% figure, it'll give you a general baseline to look at.

I know a lot of this information and presentation is repeated.

over and over again month after month.

But as we move forward and things begin to normalize a bit more, we anticipate potentially exploring the option of presenting this as a written report on a monthly basis and then coming in front of council on a quarterly basis or if there is any significant developments on either the revenue or expenditure side in any given month.

But again, we'll discuss this more with council once things begin to normalize a bit more on the expenditure and revenue side and operations begin to flow more as we

whatever the new normal looks like.

In looking at our expenditures, schools are showing both, again, the contribution to schools and our school's contracts for maintenance and school pupil.

Healthy families, again, that's

One is showing almost 90 or 92% due to the actual reflecting all the payments for several of the outside agencies, the human service outside agencies.

Also, this category includes rent and tax relief programs, including CHAP and

and our other tax and rent relief programs.

And the actuals there are actually close to 90% as well because we've now expended the majority of those funds and made all those payments with a few corrections left to be made.

But again, the majority of that has been done as well.

Non-departmental activities, these are transfers and

those sort of things.

And we've made the majority of these transfers to DSS transit debt, a lot of these things, but there's still some one-time payments in there.

And the biggest piece that hasn't been expended yet is the COVID reserve of the 6.7 that we set aside.

Next slide.

So we've discussed this final slide many times, but again, it's just here to reinforce that we're continuing to meet and look at this and follow these trends, both on the expenditure and the revenue side to get the entire picture.

And these are some of the things that we've looked at.

And again, you know, as we've talked before, expenses or revenues is just one side of the picture.

You also need to look at the expenditure side.

and that balancing act between the two.

So we're not, you know, as we get closer to the end of the fiscal year, it's not a, oh, we're 8.3 behind or we're 8.3 ahead.

It's we need to get that whole picture.

There's a lot of approvals and a lot of other things on both the expenditure and revenue side that happen, you know, as we do the year end closeout.

But again, wanted to point out some of these things that we've been looking at and, you know,

The last bullet, the American Rescue Plan funds, as we discussed with council previously, should we need some of these funds to cover, remaining shortfall, not covered by any of the other means mentioned here.

We know this figures around the November, December, January timeframe towards the end of the year.

And we're currently working to come up with some estimates, but nothing can be finalized until later in the year.

And we'll be discussing that with council as we move through the year.

All right.

Thank you.

Not at this time.

I don't have any questions.

Appreciate the update.

All right.

Good afternoon, Council.

How's it going?

I'm used to speaking after six, so I had to say afternoon instead of evening.

So today I'll be giving an update on the CISFRAP program.

CRHA is the administrator of the program for the city.

We have been administering it since 2018.

We currently have 70 families that are enrolled in the program.

Two of those families are searching for homes in the city of Charlottesville, and 68 of them are already housed, with 36 of them living in the city and 32 living in the county but working in the city.

We currently have 122 families on our wait list, which is currently closed.

We did not process any new families in 2020, and that was due to COVID, the pandemic.

The increase in rent caused CRHA to make larger rental payments to landlords instead of the tenants paying due to the rent obligation being 30% of the income.

So if the income goes down or goes up,

the rental amount that CRJ pays increases or decreases.

And there were a lot of increases in what CRJ's obligation was.

Of the 68 families that are housed, 26 of them participate in a self-sufficiency program.

35 were previously homeless and seven were on the HCV wait list.

For AMI levels, the CISRAP program has a limit of 60% AMI, so all the families are below 60%, with 58 of them being 30% AMI or lower.

In that number, the issue is

A majority of those families are working.

So they're working, but just not earning enough wages to pay for their housing.

So 51% are fully employed or receiving SSI.

51 of the 58.

So it's a large number.

There's just not enough housing that individuals can afford in the community.

and 10% of those families that are housed are 50% AMI or lower and all 10 of them are also working full-time just not sustaining wages to live in the community.

So that's where we are in the program.

We do plan on opening up the program to more participants this year because there was an increase in funding and we have leveled out to where we are

now within a couple thousand dollars paying about the same we were paying as before COVID.

So we are gonna be open that up.

But there's some questions we do need to figure out like time limit of assistance.

So there aren't any guidelines on how long someone can be assisted in the program.

But without adding a whole lot of new funding, you're always gonna be assisting the same families.

like the federal government has got to where they've added dollars to help more families.

The city will at some point need to add more dollars to help more families or put term limits to your assistance.

So that's a conversation that I think should start to happen because we have been doing a program for a couple of years.

We do need to figure out what what those regulations are.

And another recommendation for conversation is around fair market rents.

So right now we cap them based upon the HCV level, which is 110% of the fair market rent.

That really limits where individuals can rent in the city to where they have to go to the county.

And normally they are in the same communities.

So

In HCV program, we probably have 40 or 50 families in one housing community, just because that is typically a low rent community.

And it's like that in most of the community.

So we really want to put members, low income individuals in all sectors of the community.

We really need to do some work around the fair market rents.

And we ran into that issue and Mayor Walker brought me into that conversation around the assistance that the city provided at the beginning of the pandemic.

A lot of families were renting places that were above the 110%, so they were unable to get further assistance from other sources.

So that's a conversation that we need to have around whether that should be increased to help more families stay in a community where they work and where they want to call home, they just can't find housing.

And a couple other things.

Budgeting for rent increases.

That's something we need to keep on the table.

With the HCV program, we do budget for increases.

We have not budgeted for increases with this program.

But the landlords do get increases.

So we just have to be mindful of budgeting for that and creating incentives or security deposit assistance around this program.

So we did that for the HCV program and it was very successful with getting individuals leased up because we provided security deposits.

that was then forgivable and it went back to the tenant once they moved out.

Or we provided a one-time bonus for new landlords that wanted to lease up in the city.

It was a $500 bonus, which we were able to get some new landlords to bring some new units to the program, which is always a good thing.

So that is all I have.

Well, thank you for the update.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Sales.

I'm just looking at the tiers and then the minimums.

Well, we weren't meeting the minimums based upon not being able to provide enough assistance.

So the goal was to provide assistance to 100 people with the money.

We were unable to provide assistance to 100 people.

So it's impossible to meet any of the tiers if we can't provide assistance to 100 people.

The money just didn't go far enough.

So when you have, let's say you projected that you're only going to pay 500 bucks of someone's rent for the year.

Well,

March happened and they lost income.

Let's say they were unemployed.

So what was only a $500 obligation to the housing authority then became a $1,200 obligation.

So due to that gap, less families, we could assist less families because we had to give more money to families that did get assistance.

So we couldn't meet any, we couldn't meet them, couldn't meet the obligations.

But if you look at the families we did assist, I mean, a majority of them were homeless in the second category, which was self-sufficiency.

The very last one was HCV lists.

So less of them came from the HCV program and more of them went to assisting families that were already connected to other forms of assistance like PVCC and then helping families that were homeless.

So a majority of it did go to the categories that the council was prioritizing, but without additional funding, it's impossible to meet those goals because we only assisted 68 and the goal was 100.

And then I see that the annual funding committed versus 12 months spent today.

I'm just curious what how much money is actually in in that account right now.

At one point we were ahead of it, I thought, when we were we had these conversations in the past year.

So I'm just trying to understand where we are now.

That's fine.

And we actually don't house the money.

The city houses the money.

We draw down based upon our need.

So we project three months based upon what we are sending out to landlords, and then we draw that down.

I believe what was allocated that year was $750,000.

So of that, the housing authority does receive 7.5% as an admin fee, which is still below what the traditional

My question is what dollar amount is available to draw from right now?

So my question, I think the time limit on assistance question

will have to discuss when we explore what the city funds.

It's hard to talk about a timeline because the families are not moving out of these levels of poverty where they need the assistance.

But if we're not going to add more funding to the program, then I think we do have to explore how long can

one set of families receive funding when the need is so great in the community.

And I've been saying that for the past few years that that is a discussion that we should have.

But I think

It's going to be hard for any of us to rationalize moving families out of receiving that funding when they just can't afford it.

But what would be your recommendation?

Because if this is something that we can resolve, because we are also going to vote tonight on the consent agenda,

this program is on there tonight.

My recommendation for to serve families, more families in the city will be 125%

of the fair market rents and Counselor Hill for the amount that's remaining that the city should be holding is $59,064.80.

So 125% and since we are talking about doing this to keep families in the city limits, then it would still be the 110% for Elmar County?

I would say 125 for the city and even pushing it.

So where they're staying in the county is traditionally low income communities.

So they're not even reaching the 110% anyway.

They're typically staying in the same communities.

I'm not going to name them, but they're typically staying in the same lower income communities.

So they're not even reaching 100% FMR anyway.

Yep.

That's what I would recommend.

And if you want to...

So, Mr. Bowles, could you...

Okay.

We can discuss it then.

Is that okay with everybody?

Let's see.

And in terms of the amount, is it at the $700,000 because of the amount?

Are we holding just the reserve amount each year?

I don't have that 630 agenda item up.

Is it the $900,000?

No?

Okay.

When this program was created, there was some conversation of what is the correct reserve amount.

Those conversations were had in the HACC.

And so during that time, it was figuring out what amount to hold and where to place it in between housing program originally leaving a new one coming in, which was myself.

And there were

Where that reserve went, no one knows.

It was actually spent.

It wasn't actually held.

Some of it was actually spent to meet the obligation of the program.

Okay.

No, we will have access to a portion of it because I believe they're correcting the reserve issue.

Okay.

All right, I have my question for 630 because I think, I mean, I don't know if this is the year for us to correct the reserve issue that way.

with the need being so great.

That was the question that I had, so I'll ask that later when we have the next meeting.

I would say so.

Neither one of them are currently

Well, I honestly don't know.

So the question is, the city based the program based upon the HUD program and the HUD program allows it to be spent based upon your obligation of admin money.

But they give you an incentive when you do it.

So last year, they actually gave us, I believe it was like 50,000 and some change to actually create a program if we wanted to and we chose to.

But it was an additional pot of money.

For this, it would need to be either adding money or reprogramming the money that's already there.

So like if we weren't going to go with the reserve program, putting money back in the reserve, maybe it's creating this incentive program or if there's additional money, adding money to it.

We use 50,000 and we had over 300 something vouchers.

I would say we

This program could probably just use $15,000 or $20,000 and still have the same impact that our program had with the larger grant because you have to look at it, you're not going to be leasing up as many vouchers as we were leasing up.

We leased up over 100 vouchers.

Okay, go ahead.

But we are going to be increasing because we had money that we didn't spend.

So we stopped leasing up in order to make sure if there was another bump in

unemployment and individuals had to come in and change their income again.

We could still make those payments without having to come to the city because we were going to be delinquent to the landlords that we owe money to.

So we stopped.

So we'll have money to lease up additional families.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you.

All right.

I guess if everybody can think about that one.

I mean, if we have to add new monies, then that may be a challenge.

And then I would need to know more about the reprogramming, the current funding.

in terms of how many potential households that would decrease that could receive the rental assistance.

Just to give you a number, if you were talking about 20,000, you're talking about not assisting three families and being able to provide security deposit and or incentive bonus for 25.

Okay.

All right.

Are there any other questions?

All right.

Next up, we have the Youth Council presentation.

I'm here.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Council, and City Manager.

I'm here filling in for Daniel Fairley, who excitingly got married on Saturday.

So he is off enjoying married life.

and so I have the privilege and pleasure of introducing Youth Council before he left.

You know, I've heard a lot about Youth Council and I asked him specifically since I was filling in for the introduction what it is that he specifically enjoys about his work with Youth Council and he said that they are a dedicated group of young folks who have demonstrated awareness of their racial identity and their ability to use their privilege to make the world

a better place, and they've been intentional about that.

He's very proud of them for making it through this incredibly difficult school year and continue to engage with youth council initiatives and launch this research project.

So he's very extremely proud of them and is excited for those folks who are going off to college in the fall.

Thanks, Misty.

Good afternoon, everyone.

I'm just going to keep my camera off.

I'm in the car and the reception is not that great.

So I think it will work better this way.

Thank you for inviting us to present.

I'm just going to talk very briefly about the Youth Action Lab.

My name is Dr. Kimberly Dickerson.

I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Curry School, no longer Curry, but the School of Education and Human Development and also the Equity Center, where I lead an initiative called the Youth Action Lab.

and our goal is to teach local youth social science research skills so that they can use their research findings to improve our community and make it more equitable.

And we've had the pleasure this year of partnering all year since the fall with Youth Council and I would agree with Daniel, this is definitely a dedicated group and it has been a pleasure to work with them.

Hi, everyone.

Thank you so much for having us.

I just want to give a quick introduction.

Dr. Dickerson covered a lot of what YPAR youth participatory action research is.

But these I'm a fourth year at UVA and watching, you know, junior and senior in high school, I've been so impressed by all of their work.

And getting to facilitate this has been a great end to my college career.

Okay.

Hi, my name is Sabrina and you can go to the next slide.

I'm a senior and I will be going to UVA next year.

So we wanted to look at the schools because it impacted all of us as students and we are looking for patterns in the school system that we thought presented a problem and one of them that we decided to research about was that families pull their children out of Walker Elementary and Buford Middle for middle school and then they send them back to CHS for high school.

and they normally go to the private schools in the Charlottesville area.

Next slide, please.

So just a little bit about background about the two schools.

They were originally two junior high schools where Walker had predominantly white and more affluent students and Buford served predominantly black from less affluent families.

And they had different reputations despite equal funding and resources that those reputations still exist today.

and that was obviously pointing to segregation within the Charlottesville city school system so in 1988 they were paired where Walker had fifth and sixth grade and Buford now has seventh and eighth grade and this was the original start of the trend where then white and more affluent parents began sending real children to private schools during this time.

Next slide please.

and in these two charts we just have pie charts of the demographics of Walker and Buford and in both it's important to note that the two most apparent races are white and black and they're roughly the same.

Next slide please.

And then these are two charts of the demographics of Tandem and Village, two of the private schools that we looked at where Tandem

being 75% white and Village being 93% white.

So showing a lack of diversity at the private schools.

Next slide, please.

So then we wanted to form a research question that would direct how we conducted this research.

And it was the main one was, why are families pulling their children out of Walker and Buford?

And we had some sub questions to go along with that, which are, how do students leaving impact both the students who leave and the students who stay?

What is the magnitude of the problem?

How many people is it affecting and to what extent?

What has already been done to try to address the issue?

And how does Charlottesville's history continue to impact the situation?

Next slide, please.

So we first sent out a survey to high school students in the Charlottesville area through our social media platforms offering a chance to win one of six Amazon gift cards.

that yielded us getting 76 responses from both public and private school students.

In the survey, there were multiple choice and open-ended questions about the students' middle school experiences and their perceptions about the middle schools, both the public and private.

And then we conducted interviews.

We interviewed a teacher, school board member, and a guidance counselor, which allowed us to gather opinions from prominent and involved community members that had been involved in the Charlottesville school system and just the area.

So they had a lot of knowledge and experience on the topic.

And the last thing we did was look for themes and patterns in both the survey and interview responses to see if we can find

recurrent themes and general data points that would help us answer our research question.

All right, so I will take over here and I'm Caroline and I am a junior also at Charlottesville High School.

So one of our main overarching questions was why are people choosing public school or why are they choosing private school?

So a lot of the students who went to public school said they went there basically because it was the public school, it was where they were zoned or because it didn't cost anything.

Although several students said that they chose public schools either because of their diversity or because

They felt morally opposed to going to private schools.

One student articulated that they felt they could have a better education at Beaverton Walker than at any of the private schools in the area, and they could have that education for free.

On the other side, many of the students who went to private school went there for a variety of reasons, including academics and class size and

for village school and field school.

Some people mentioned the fact that the schools were single sex, but they were also motivated by the public school reputation, specifically that the public middle schools are seen as, as one student put it, kind of sketchy.

And regardless of whether the school was public or private, a lot of people traveled in groups of their friends and likely by extension, their socioeconomic status.

Next slide, please.

So another question was, what is the impact of people choosing to go to these different schools?

So overall, socially, Buford students felt that they were more prepared and then academically less prepared.

They felt that maybe private schools with smaller class sizes had a little bit of an edge up in learning.

So schools such as Peabody and Village people mentioned over and over for having a reputation of academic preparedness.

But as was mentioned earlier, they also have an extreme lack of diversity, especially village school.

Within Buford and Walker and public schools in general, some students mentioned tracking of segregated classes, but as one student said, this is reflective of a lot of broader societal injustices and not necessarily something that is directly a problem at Buford because of Buford.

But overall,

Many students said Buford especially has a bad reputation and unfortunately the students who go there are aware of this.

One student said it has a really awful reputation that I don't feel it deserves.

Next slide, please.

So we did have a few limitations in our survey.

As you can see from the chart, the majority of respondents were white and because we were reaching out on social media, most people had a connection with a council member.

So we did have a limited sample size.

All righty.

Hi, everyone.

My name is Margaret Ann.

I am a senior at Charlottesville High School and I'll be going to Kenyon College next year.

The conclusions that we concluded from our research, the largest and most common one was that overall Charlottesville has really wonderful public middle schools that offer a competitive and comparative education to the area's private schools.

However, parents are still taking their kids out for grades five through eight, seven through eight, what have you, taking them out, sending them to private middle schools, and then most of the time bringing them back to CHS for high school.

And these parents or kids, whoever initiates the situation, they're leaving for reasons most often based on a false reputation that was previously mentioned by Caroline.

and the students that remain at Buford, two of the students at U City Council tonight went to Buford, Charlottesville Public Schools, two of us went to the area's private schools.

So students that remain at Buford and Walker feel left out.

They wonder, you know, you wonder what you're missing, you wonder what's different about between you and your peers.

And although eventually they do realize that you don't miss anything as

come graduation, you are just as prepared for life after high school as your peers that did go to a private school.

So that was our biggest, most wide-reaching conclusion.

Another thing that we were able to conclude is that this problem has existed since Buford and Walker opened, this disparity and perceived bias, and it has only been exacerbated by the pandemic because, of course,

Private schools have the funding and ability to, or they had the funding and ability to offer class back in person starting as early as the fall and the public schools simply didn't have that capability.

I would direct you also, there is a really wonderful article on Charlottesville tomorrow, I have the link that I'll post in the chat in just a second, that gives pretty much more intensive history of the two schools and their ties to Charlottesville's

racist history.

And lastly, our last conclusion was that this bias against Walker and Buford, first of all, it exists.

It's prevalent.

People are aware of it.

And second of all, it is largely connected to the systemic racism that is found in Charlottesville.

So right now I am just copying and pasting that link that's very long.

We can send that out in a separate email later, but I really encourage you to take a look at it.

It's a great piece of journalism.

and it has really important details to what we're talking about here.

Next slide, please.

And lastly, we have some recommendations.

So our biggest, most popular one, this was supported by, let's see, the school member and a current CHS guidance counselor that we interviewed.

This recommendation is that we recommend and fully support remaking middle school's plan to reconfigure the Charlottesville middle schools.

this would involve moving sixth grade to Buford so that it serves grades six through eight making Walker a preschool and moving fifth grade to the elementary schools.

And this overall everyone just feels that it would create a much better experience as we're adolescents growing up less breaking up of the school schooling experience.

As well, we really recommend any upgrades to Buford's physical building as possible.

This one in particular, it is perfectly functional, very functional and successful on the inside, but the outside building is not one that is appealing to the eye or particularly welcoming to current students or prospective students and families that are maybe comparing Buford

a high class quality public middle school to other equally as good private schools, things like that.

So with this, we realize that it may come off as potentially a silly or kind of superficial request, but it really does matter.

And so we were thinking like a coat of paint or more community gathering spaces, little things like that can make a really big difference here.

and this is mostly a school board thing.

So what we're thinking is since city council approves the school board's budget, if they ask for money to try and make these renovations, we ask that you please, first of all, consider it.

And then if the funds are available, grant the request to some extent.

As well, we ask that, or we recommend that the elementary schools be rezoned.

So this issue really does start in elementary school, as Caroline alluded to, people kind of travel with their friends, the people that they've known for a little bit, and that disparity begins when you have unequal representation of Charlottesville's population found in the elementary schools.

So if City Council were able to rezone the elementary schools to be more reflective of Charlottesville's, excuse me, Charlottesville's diversity, both racially and socioeconomically, that would go a long way in addressing this problem.

And then of course, last but not least, dismantling the housing segregation that currently exists in Charlottesville and can be dated back

to Jim Crow era, a really Charlottesville's racism that's still prevalent, that would as well go, that would be very helpful in taking care of this issue.

So with that, that is the end of our presentation and I would like to thank you very much from me and my council members for your time and taking the time to listen to us.

So we really appreciate this and we hope that you will take our requests and recommendations

into account in the future.

No, thank you all.

This topic of just the dynamics of our middle school is one that certainly weighs heavily on me and it actually does have an impact on as we look at the reconfiguration, which is something that we certainly continue to explore.

And I'll just be very, very transparent that comes with a significant price tag.

And so we're just trying to work out how we can prioritize those funds and accomplish many of the things that you're setting out.

But it is true, and I think as we think about reconfiguring, understanding what impact that will have on how many students might retain in the city school systems if that reconfiguration happens, both the fifth graders who will continue to stay at their elementary schools just by being able to stay at their neighborhood school and then how that translates then to Buford or whatever that combined school would be called in the future.

So I think you've certainly tapped on some just really important things that I know that we as a council, Charlottesville City Council have been wrestling with along with the school boards as well.

And I really appreciate just the directness that you've put into this in terms of just the issues and the history behind those issues and the suggestions that you think for moving forward.

So again, appreciate this.

This is a really important topic and just

I'm glad that it was one that you all could could reflect on and took the time to get that feedback.

I think that one thing for me would be just seeing like if there is opportunities to get even more broader feedback from both the schools communities as well as in the private schools communities beyond.

I understand the limitations of a limited sample size, but

I would hope that we'd find ways within our own school system to be able to kind of get that kind of data and have a broader set in that regard as well.

I think there's probably a lot of thoughts about from the staffs and many school board members as well as here we are in council.

But I know that there's certainly limitations, especially during a pandemic with getting that kind of data.

But I would be curious of understanding how that patterns and what those thoughts persist if there's more folks that are chiming in with their thoughts.

I'm just, I'm very impressed with what you've put together.

You've obviously both recognize, done a lot of research, but also recognize where your limitations are and acknowledge those, which is very impressive.

It's important to science and data research in general that you keep that up.

Do you think in in what you're presenting with the idea of adding some physical, you know, brightening, I guess, of Buford?

Are you thinking that to be doing that before the idea of reconfiguration or to see maybe how that could happen to kind of if reconfiguration does happen, how that would

Speaking for everyone, of course, yes.

Yeah, I think it is really important.

I mean, we all do.

Reconfiguration would be a huge added bonus, but I think it might only intensify the need.

If physical changes to the building don't come with the configuration, and the configuration does happen, I think that those physical changes, the need for them would only intensify because more students would be coming into the building every day.

I'd like to ask one question, but preface it by saying that although I just joined the video call about five or 10 minutes ago, I was listening on my phone as I drove back from court.

I actually joined the call about five minutes after four.

I apologize for being a little bit late, but just got to miss Ryan Davidson for a few minutes.

The question I had for you all is, you mentioned the notion of redrawing elementary school district lines.

which of course is a school board function.

It's not a city council function.

Do you have any sense of how that might relate to the reconfiguration decision in either in terms of timing?

Does one require the other?

Does it change the outcome one way or the other?

Sabrina, you can take it.

Okay.

I think that when we came up with our recommendations, we were thinking about them in more of an individual manner in case that just to make them more realistic and that we understand that not every single one of them would get checked off.

So then when we are looking at the elementary school rezoning, we are looking at it more in terms of the problem that exists right now.

I'm not exactly sure

how that might change if we reconfigure the middle schools.

I think that the problem would still exist because if the elementary schools aren't being rezoned, then that issue of some schools being having parents that send their kids to private school still exists.

That doesn't really go away.

Okay.

That's all I, that's the only,

issue that came to my mind.

I confess I hadn't thought about the issue of elementary school attendance zones, but it certainly would be reasonable to think that if we're about to put the fifth grades back in the elementary schools, that that may raise some capacity questions for all of the elementary schools that may feed back into the question of attendance zones and so on.

Hal Hallstein, But as I said, that's, that's a school board issue.

And if you see that issue specifically, there are, there are students who are bused to a school that's outside of their neighborhood.

And so that's, you know, a more immediate concern that that has certainly been raised by the public and those families.

It's something it's not even a rezoning.

The legacy that the reason that decision was made is part of what you all discussed in terms of the racism that's permeated the school system since it's at least since the integration segregation, you know, discussion.

Yeah, just as I just said, thank you.

I think it was a very direct report directly hitting on a lot of the big issues our schools have been facing for decades and are trying to confront now.

As others brought up, I'm curious, one, arguably the issue of school redistricting has received

less attention than reconfiguration, even though it's very important.

I'm just curious, in your research, just perhaps in more detail, what some of the findings were and what the positive impact you found would be from taking that action.

And then second, did you find that the pandemic

I can speak to the second question.

We did not like in our survey have a specific question on whether people switched schools due to the pandemic but I do anecdotally know of

several people in my neighborhood and in my classes who have, because of the pandemic or because they wanted in-person school, switched to private schools in the area that they knew were open.

And about the elementary school question, like we drew the idea of redistricting the elementary schools from our survey because most of the students who said that they went to private school for fifth through eighth grade say that they either went to Greenbrier Elementary School, Burnley Moran Elementary School, or Venable Elementary School.

So that pointed us really to looking at what the demographics of those three schools look like.

And they all pointed to being more white and more affluent than any of the other remaining

Elementary Schools, and that's what made us also draw back to what Caroline had said about how people travel in socioeconomic groups and with their friends.

And so if you're at a school where everybody else is also going to private school and those are your friends and your parents can afford it, a lot of the time that's where the trend was just increased.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you all.

And that elementary school, I mean, it starts there and it continues through the entire, you know, school career.

And it's really limiting on development.

That's why I'm hoping that we get some of these conversations that we're having, right, with the reconfiguration, with the families over in the West Haven community, 10th and Page, they have

wanting to return to Venable.

So it's not just a school board conversation.

It has not really been the community's desire to make that change either.

And so as with a lot of things that we see on council and at the school board, the public input that we receive.

So it really takes that culture shift for the public will to be there for those changes to be made.

to be made too.

And there is a really significant difference in the education that's received at those elementary schools.

And we've even talked about in the past, even the upkeep that those schools receive.

And it's really unfortunate, but it's been a big part of our history.

it's even though we always want a lot of diversity when we're getting stats it's good that you all are having these conversations within your income your or your parents income level and that your friends are starting to think about these things as you all move off you know to college and soon to move off to college I guess just a year away and

the decisions that you make and how they influence the work that you'll do in the future.

So it sounds like Daniel and Dr. Dickerson and Ms.

Eagle that you all are off to a good start in helping us create just a more just world for the future.

Thank you.

Hello, everyone.

Thanks for having us.

This is Tamara Wright.

I am the Community Advocate Lead for Cultivate Charlottesville.

I too have to keep my camera off because my internet has been unstable all day.

And you may hear a happy three-year-old in the background and a very unhappy eight-year-old, but we're going to push through this.

So again, I'd like to say thank you for having us here today.

We're going to give a mid-year update on the Food Equity Initiative Partnership.

So Richard, Jeanette, and I will each provide highlights on different sections of the report.

You may notice that we have changed our organizational structure, and we have moved to a shared leadership.

So right now, Richard and Jeanette are co-executive directors of Cultivate Charlottesville.

We also want to give recognition to Gabby Levitt.

She's not presenting with us today, but we wanted to acknowledge her because she pulled together a great deal of this data for us.

I think, yeah, Brian, are you sharing for us?

Okay, there we go.

Thank you.

You can go to the next slide.

Thank you Tamara for that introduction and thank you council for this opportunity to report.

Cultivate Charlottesville aims to build a healthy and just food system.

We do this personally and community and with structures and systems.

We engage with youth at City Schoolyard Garden through hands-on learning and leadership development.

And with the Urban Agriculture Collective, we engage through shared labor in our community garden and through shared produce during our market days.

Through the Food Justice Network, we engage through collaborative advocacy with residents and community partners.

At its core, the Food Justice Network and Cultivate Charlottesville is the recognition that food is a human right.

So those of you who have been with us on this journey have seen this before, but we wanted to start with some of the contextual history.

The Food Justice Network was started in 2016 with the idea of having a systemic approach to

building a healthy and just food system.

Our work is grounded in racial equity and as an approach to building this food system by recognizing the intersection of these various fields of strong communities, healthy people, culture and identity, vibrant farms, thriving local economies and sustainable ecosystems.

So as we entered into the food equity initiative partnership with city council in 2018, we came with this integrated approach looking at various systems as we move forward.

Next slide, please.

Similar, I really appreciated the presentation by the Youth City Council members.

Thank you so much.

That's some of the input that also went into us as we build our organization and our work with the schools is recognizing the effect of segregation had.

So when we started the Food Justice Network, we looked at some of the historical practices that led to the current inequities in our food system.

One of those was the redevelopment of Vinegar Hill school segregation and the factors that the young counselors spoke to and also voting restrictions that were put into place.

And so this is just a reminder that the work that we're doing is focused on undoing some of the practices that were put there before.

For example, when Vinegar Hill was raised, there were four African-American owned grocery stores and that was a vibrant part of the black community's food economy.

Next slide.

So just to give a brief overview, food equity is grounded in the recognition that food is a human right, as Richard said, and it takes time to look at how structural racism operates within our local food system to create that unequal access.

and the work that we've been doing as part of a broader food justice movement across the country.

This is one of our youth food interns who is sharing her perspective on food justice is having the ability to care about your community and what they eat and also to know that they're eating is good and healthy.

Next slide.

So when we started the partnership with the city council after our first year and doing a lot of feedback,

focused on these five core city functions and how they intersect into our food equity system.

So transportation and food pathways, affordable housing, urban agriculture, food access and markets and healthy school foods.

And you'll see these as we look at the current platform that we're presenting this year.

Next slide.

Of those four core areas, as you've been through this process with us, you'll see that we focus the three areas that we've made the most progress on are the Healthy School Foods Initiative, where we currently are implementing a five-year plan that was developed with youth to transition the school foods to be more fresh from scratch, local, and appealing to the students.

Our urban agriculture program, we've been moving towards finding

Land to represent the land that was lost in redevelopment.

And this year our youth food justice interns launched a land as liberation campaign, which you'll hear more about this summer.

And then also working with food access in terms of learning about cooperative grocery stores is one of our community's core goals in that area.

So that's just an overview of where we are now before we jump into the report itself.

So reporting against objectives, we've compiled research including an analysis of food system assessments that identify gaps and opportunities for investment.

We've established mechanisms for community voice, including both formal and informal meetings with oversight by community stakeholders.

We plan for sustainability by pursuing additional funding for long-term investment at the city, agency, and community member levels.

And we've contributed subject matter expertise to discussions on transportation, zoning, and other planning and policy development issues.

And finally, we implemented opportunities to highlight the city's food equity work statewide and nationally.

Next slide.

For COVID, we developed

COVID-19 food security infrastructure that included things like building an emergency food security response infrastructure that enables the Charlottesville community to effectively respond to expanding food insecurity.

Building a safety net for COVID-19 cases and organizations that involves developing and implementing failsafe mechanisms within the COVID food security response that minimizes disruptions in food access.

building infrastructure for COVID positive case support, designed, sourced, implemented, and scaled wraparound services for COVID positive residents to safely shelter in place.

And under equitably governing resources, we've established mechanisms for equitably governing food security resources that minimize impacts of COVID.

Next slide.

So some of our high level accomplishments include launching the food equity initiative policy platform.

And you'll hear more about that a little bit later.

We also had a roundtable called the seat at the table where we had 93 community members show up and we had some great engagement and got some good feedback from the community.

And we've elevated the food equity initiative policy platform to seven city departments, city manager, Mayor Walker's CCS school board, city council and eight partners.

Next slide.

Continuing with high level accomplishments, we've had food equity language and strategies incorporated across six comprehensive plan chapters.

31 specific recommendations, and we've expanded emergency food security supports and improved accessibility and the ability to navigate resources via our food security text initiative, which is a text program that allows people to plug in zip codes and find out where they can find food resources in their area.

Next slide.

Continuing with the high-level accomplishments, we've continued network-wide racial equity capacity building with an uprooting racism workshop that included 31 organizations.

And we were selected for the Heal Food Alliance's School of Political Leadership.

We're part of the 2021 cohort, and that's been a very educational opportunity for us.

So I know the report is quite thorough and it lists all of these details, but we wanted to just amplify some of the pieces around community engagement, which is such a critical part of the food equity work with the food justice network acting as a bridge between community members and the city as we work towards these.

So here's some of the highlights along with the amazing mural work that the food justice interns did this summer with Richard.

They developed this one of their core units was interviewing black

Local Black Farmers.

And in each of their interviews, the farmer mentioned liberation as a tool as part of what they got out of farming.

And so the youth developed these two beautiful murals that we'll be using in the months ahead.

In spite of COVID, we still were able to engage a significant amount of community.

We didn't have the

In 2019, we had so many community events that our community advocates attended and were able to engage folks in discussion.

We didn't have that last year, but we still maintained a robust engagement with the food justice interns and shifted our work to focus more on some of the emergency food relief pieces and getting feedback from that.

So here you'll just see the number of community members.

This is all listed in the report, but we just wanted to highlight it here, the various ways that people engaged.

Next slide.

Additionally, then some of the COVID work focused on again, we wrapped up our the process of filling in for Charlottesville City Schools meals when they're closed.

And we're working with the school system now to find ways that they can do that in the future.

This little diagram here shows our text messaging service, and some of the users that are using it to find out where school is where I'm sorry, where food can be accessed.

looking at families with the wraparound services.

So this lists other ways that we've engaged through COVID.

And over the past month or two, we've been handing off some of these core programs that we pivoted to during COVID to have to be more in institutional places for more long-term sustainability.

So for example, we had partnered with Frontline Foods for their community meal program and had set up a whole

set of principles and practices that they could follow to ensure equity.

And now that program is being picked up by New Hill Development Corporation and under the name of Community Kitchen.

And they're still doing meals and we're still facilitating the steering committee to provide support and community feedback to that.

But that's one of the pieces that we're handing over.

Similarly, the wraparound meal services is something that we've handed over as well.

The next slide just shows a bit of a visual about ways that we've engaged folks over the past six months.

I'll just leave that there for a minute.

And we hope to, this is not in the report, but the individual pieces are, but this images it.

With lifting some of the restrictions, we hope that this summer and fall, there'll be an opportunity to engage more fully with community members around the various pieces of the policy platform.

Next slide.

We've also continued our engagement with the comprehensive plan.

And if you want to go, just go ahead to the next slide.

I'm really excited to, Gabby's done an amazing job of looking at all the recommendations from community members that have to do with food equity and aligning those to the new language.

And we've been able to recognize 31 food equity policy wins are currently in the current draft of the comprehensive plan.

and these are how it breaks down by category.

Food access was added into a chapter on environment, climate and food access.

So that's been really successful and exciting.

And then the next slide speaks to recommendations that we have remaining that we'll continue to advocate for in the upcoming weeks and months as the SEBO plans group moves forward.

That's a big overview of the of the report.

And then we wanted to spend the last piece of our presentation.

Yes, thanks, Jeanette.

So this is our food equity initiative policy platform.

So as you can see from the bullets here, this information is pulled together in response from council.

Next slide.

So here we have individual quotes and vision statements from the 2019 local food and local places events.

And here the perspectives and voices shared during these community engagements are what formed the food equity goals.

So the action values and strategic priorities of the food equity initiative policy platform we're getting from here.

Next slide.

So the policy platform is the outcome of all of this work, the community engagement, the meetings with the department heads, and discussions with council.

And we'll take a few minutes to present each one, and then we'll have time for discussion and questions afterwards.

Next slide.

So here, food equity and justice.

So we want to work towards advancing systemic change and collective movements.

So the food equity and justice is at the core of each plank of the policy recommendations.

We understand that food equity and justice must be considered as the core strategy for community health and safety.

Given that food isn't mentioned in our current city comprehensive plan, we've got a lot of work to do to build the infrastructure that's needed.

Next slide.

So here we have the Power to Grow.

So the Power to Grow has been a priority for Charlottesville residents since back in 2007 when the Urban Agriculture Collective of Charlottesville was formed.

So at this point, most of the community land that is made available to low wealth residents is being lost to redevelopment.

So we're advocating for an equitable investment in urban agriculture.

Next slide.

So here is the right to good food.

So the right to good food and neighborhood food pathways works to ensure that residents have access to the supports available to ensure that they are gonna be living a healthy life.

And that includes transportation to local grocery stores.

Next slide.

So here, we want to also assist in inspiring youth choice.

So our youth have been very active in the healthy school meals.

So here, you know that I think this is pretty self explanatory.

So we want to make sure that we're providing meals that are not just USDA approved, but that they're actually

Sustaining the children throughout the day.

I noticed that during COVID that's been like a huge issue.

The quality of the meals have fallen off just a little bit.

So it's been a real struggle throughout this whole process for our youth.

So we want to make sure that we have them included in this healthy food piece as well.

Next slide.

So building community wealth and advancing neighborhood food access and markets.

Being able to build community wealth is crucial.

And it's another shift from the emergency food responses.

So we want to make sure that we are giving our community members the opportunity to build long term wealth options.

So Charlottesville, I think, is the lowest 10% nationally in terms of economic mobility.

Next slide, please.

So here we have Restore Earth and Climate.

So we want to work towards advancing environmental and climate justice during this whole process as well.

Next slide.

So here we have the numbers for the individuals who have signed on to the Food Equity Initiative Policy Platform.

So this number may have changed since it was last checked this afternoon.

But right now we have 238 individuals.

So 127 of those are city residents.

67 work in Charlottesville, 20 are UVA students, 24 are miscellaneous, and we've also had 50 organizations sign onto the platform.

Next slide, please.

So I'm just going to go through some of the quotes that we have from some of the community members.

So nourishment, nutrition, and food sovereignty are essential ingredients to individual and community self-determination.

The Food Equity Initiative Policy Platform is a comprehensive and interdisciplinary approach to the community health and wellness in the city of Charlottesville.

Next slide.

Food determines whether we can survive and more whether we can thrive.

Centering food as a human right and an essential core element of the community resilience is a reflection of a just and compassionate culture.

And we can go to the next slide.

Richard, do you mind if I jump in real quick?

Sure.

Before we move to next steps, I just wanted to point out we weren't sure if we would have time to highlight them.

In the food policy platform itself, there are recommendations listed for each one.

And you'll notice on the slides that we lifted up some of the key recommendations.

And these are things that we've talked to you all about before, including the setting up a food equity fund by diverting a small percent of the meals tax, dedicating city land for urban agriculture, making sure that Charlottesville city schools are fully funded,

setting up a cooperative grocery store.

So these are the initiatives over the next few months as Richard speaks to what we'll be doing for the rest of the year that we'll be digging into deeper as we get community feedback on them.

Thank you.

We're coming up on time.

So next steps for fiscal year, advancing community leadership, city department food equity plans, and healthy school foods.

Next slide.

Currently, we have the USDA Community Food Projects.

This is some of our funding, $125,000.

And as you can see, Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth equals $30,000.

And I'll just drop down at the bottom here, Charlottesville Area Community Foundation, Shaping Futures, $100,000 for five years.

Next slide.

Just a quick question that one of those last slides around the funding sources, it said like for three years or for five years, is that amount for each year or is that total?

For each year.

Thank you all for that presentation.

I had one question.

In your presentation, you had a slide that made reference to 30,000 meals, $115,000, and I mentioned a community kitchen slash new hill.

and I didn't see anything about that in the materials.

Number one, I may have missed it.

I'm not fussing about that, but I'd like to know a little bit more about that.

I'm not sure I know what that's all about.

Yeah, sure.

I can touch base on that.

I think it was in the COVID section of the report on page seven.

So what I'll say is when COVID first happened, Frontline Foods chose Charlottesville through a connection with John Kluge.

Frontline Foods, which is at World Central Kitchen, chose Charlottesville as one of their sites.

And so we worked with them for most of the first year with several local restaurants to bring community meals.

We formed a local steering committee to make sure that the practices that they were using were building racial equity, for example,

ensuring that they committed a certain amount of dollars, certain percentage of the business to black and brown owned restaurants.

So we've been working with them up until I think in February or March, we passed that coordinating role over to New Hill.

And so they now formed what they're calling the community kitchen, which is the local version of that.

So is the 150, I guess my question is, what's the source of the $115,000?

Yes, they raised that through independent funds.

And those funds went to restaurants who then created meals that were distributed throughout the community.

And we did this in collaboration with the Department of Economic Development in the city, which helped us identify

Okay, I guess I was aware of that at the time, but I wasn't making the connection here.

I just want to say thank you for putting all this together.

It's incredibly important.

Food justice is one of those things that's only come forward to the public eye the last couple of years, really.

But it's been something that's needed to be addressed, I think, for decades.

I still remember in the 80s when we had a vice president who said ketchup was a vegetable.

So we need to make sure that, I mean, food isn't as important as housing is.

One question I had is you mentioned the loss of land that there's going to be through redevelopment.

Is there any potential land that's been identified to make up for it or is that to be determined?

And then likewise in the discussions you've had, were there any mechanisms you found or other people have found to sort of help

I could start off with an answer for that.

We are looking for long-term

investment in land in Charlottesville for urban agriculture.

We'll be at one of those sites that we had been looking at is Washington Park, Booker T Washington Park, and we're currently like going to be entering into community conversations around the viability of that for our low wealth and black and brown communities.

There was some resistant to it and some of our earlier roundtables and so we want to dig into those conversations and find out what would be a good site.

And then to answer the second part of your question, which was so well worded, Michael, thank you.

One of our goals is to work with the city and to set aside a certain amount of land with, you know, like a commitment to a certain amount of land that we could put in trusts.

So we'll be talking with the different city departments about that.

I think that answers your question, right?

Like you were saying, we haven't done any of that yet, but that's one of our goals is to identify other spots.

Yeah, but no, that answers the question.

I'm assuming you've already looked at terraced gardening.

Again, we've got such a hilly area and I'm thinking some of the large sections I'm thinking of that aren't used often if they were terraced.

I know that's more expensive to initiate, but it could be a way of

There are a lot of, as someone who's carried 50 pound bins of squash up the hill at Friendship Court, yeah, there are a lot of hills around town and terracing is certainly one thing we can look at if we end up with a site that has

that is terrorists.

One of the things that we're really hoping to find with New Land for Gardens in Charlottesville is not just a place where we can produce food, but also a place where we can share time and labor with community members.

I don't know if we mentioned that we did just start a farm at KTEC.

So we just did expand that partnership.

And I've been thinking about this since we had the conversation, I guess, a couple weeks ago, a month ago, however long time.

But, you know,

There is a lot of, not just at Washington Park, but the other parks in the areas, even over at Forest Hill, you know, I was looking where the swing set used to be when I was a little girl or the after school program, you know, there's vacant land right there.

So those spaces have been reimagined in the past.

So it should be something that, you

you know that hopefully that we can do but I still think that it takes I'm thinking about like a friendship court where people can you know walk out their back door or down the street that still there's a distance that people have to travel to when you move you know to the parks that's still gonna you know present some obstacles for some people and so I'm hoping that

whatever you know can be done the communities are still able to be you know that you all can still accomplish that because it will be vital.

I don't know if Todd, Pharma Todd would have been as successful if he wasn't right outside of people's doors and walking through the community as frequently as he was walking through but

If all else fails, I hope that the space, because there is available land that we are able to figure out that and, you know, put that on our list of that.

And I was just curious, looking at, you know, there's a lot of budgetary recommendations, and if you look at them in total, there are a number of different directions.

Some of them involve city staff, some of them are involving like meals tax proportions.

I'm just kind of, and some of them are just continuing with the support we've already provided, and some of them are schools related.

So I'm just curious of how you all plan to make more formal requests and how those will be considered.

Obviously, we just finished a budget cycle, and we have some processes in place for external, you know,

Yeah, I think that's a great point and getting your feedback on the best way to approach that would be good.

One of the things that what we've been thinking, the way we've been planning on doing it is to work individually with each department or departments with which it's connected and make requests that way, as well as the

If we were able to initiate a meals tax or some kind of tax that would invest into a food equity fund, that could be a larger fund from which we could pull to invest in some of the larger projects.

So our plan is to come with a more formal request about the food equity fund at our November end of the year report.

for inclusion in the fiscal year 23 budget.

I know that's a little late in your process, but we're thinking we'll make the formal request to council then, and then we'll work in between then and now with departments for the requests that come from each of the departments.

I think because there's so many departments involved that going through the city manager is a central

Okay, I was just saying, usually all budgets, both community organizations and the departments are due into the city manager's office by November.

Okay, we can definitely work on that prior to that then.

And

Maybe, Mr. Borles, we can sit down and kind of come up with a timeline with you and think through what would be the best approach.

For a tax issue, what would the time, I mean, we could talk about that one-on-one, but that's, I think, going to be the biggest ask that would really involve some community feedback around.

And I shared before that that's been something that I've been trying to process since I first heard it.

So I'm still there trying to process that.

And, you know, with all the other things that we're processing, you know, at this time.

So I think the

Okay.

And I will say, Heather, to your point, I imagine you were adding up all the numbers.

Those are like estimates, right?

Like you all saw with our conversation with the city, I mean, with the schools, that those are our initial estimate budgets and we want to work them out more.

And this is a longer plan.

Not all of this has to be done in one year.

So what we're hoping to do is uplift some of the key pieces, like I mentioned, that are on the slides, and then, you know, work on some of the other pieces with time goes by.

This is part of a long-term effort on the part of the city to

both integrate language into our comprehensive plan and actions into our city.

Got it.

Well, thank you.

Thank you.