City Council Budget Work Session 4:00 - 7:00 PM   5/6/2020

Thank you.

Thank you all for joining us today.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, City Council, and to the public.

We're here again to have another one of our budget work sessions, and I'm going to go ahead

Thank you, Dr. Richardson.

So good afternoon, Dr. Richardson, councilpersons, and Mayor Walker.

What I'd like to do, and Brian, I'm ready for the first slide.

I'd like to talk to you about our funding request from City Council.

Dr. Richardson asked us in light of the downturn of the economy if we would roll back our budget request for FY21 to level funding in FY20.

So what I'd like to do is present tonight what the FY20 funding looks like.

and what the expenses for FY21 are projected to be, and then the request from City Council.

So I'd like to start with our revenue estimate summary.

For FY20, our funding from City Council, the appropriation was $57,366,000.

We had anticipated requesting from City Council a little over $3 million, $3.4 million.

With the request from Dr. Richardson, we have taken out the $3.4 million request, bringing us back to the funding in FY20, the $57,366,000.

We also looked at state funding for FY20.

We received $20,857 from the state.

We were anticipating to receive a little over $400,000 for FY21 from the state.

However, we have been notified that that allocation will be reduced also.

The General Assembly met on

April 22nd and approved revised funding request from the governor.

And so Charlottesville City Schools is scheduled to receive $242,000 less, right around $243,000 less in state funding than we had anticipated.

So that brings our roll forward anticipated amount to 21,014,000 from the state.

From FY19 we have a fund balance of $720,000 that we would roll forward to include in FY21.

Now we have local dollars and those dollars come into our operating budget and go right back out at $3.1 million is represented by

tuition that we receive from our district.

It also includes funding for our regional special education program, excuse me, known as the PREP program.

And then our federal funding for FY21 is about the same as we've received for FY20.

We anticipate 5,280,000, bringing us to a reduction of 3.6 million

and then a rollback funding anticipation for FY21 of $87,550,000.

And I would draw your attention to that this does not include the $468,000 for our gifted teachers.

Next slide.

So now we're looking at what our non-discretionary and critical expenses are for FY21.

The Virginia retirement system, the employer share of that cost has increased by $811,000 for FY21.

Each year our health insurance, again, the employer cost has increased and this year we're going to realize $686,000 increase.

Telecommunications.

Each year we get E-rate reimbursement from the federal government and over a period of time that E-rate reimbursement reduces successively over the years and so for FY21 we're anticipating a reduction of $61,000 in the telecommunications.

And each year we go in and look at our enrollment and we make adjustments for enrollment.

So the adjustments that we have to make for enrollment are $332,000.

And then during the spring, late winter, early spring, we had a technology audit done.

There were a number of school divisions and localities that had some breaches in security, so we thought it was prudent to have an audit done.

That audit recommended several changes for us, and one of them is a security upgrade that will cost us $49,000 right at $50,000.

So our non-discretionary and critical expenses for FY21, $1,942,000.

Next slide.

So when we put the revenue and the expenses together, we anticipate for FY21 that our revenue will be the $87,550,000.

our expenses during that time would be the roll forward from FY20, $88,055,000 to that we have to add $1,942,000 bringing us to the $90,465,000 in expenses.

So the net between that expense, the revenue and expense is $2,915,000.

our carry forward enrollment based cuts looking at each school individually and what we project the enrollment will be.

Some places we have to increase staffing, some places we decrease staffing, but the roll forward of that would be 409,000 less than we had in FY20.

So now the gap.

Not taking into consideration any of the losses that we might realize in lottery or sales tax, the gap would be $2,506,000.

We would also have to ask for reappropriation of the supplemental funding for our gifted program, which is $468,000.

Additional estimated city requests, $875,000.

So our total estimated request for the FY21 from the city would be $1,343,000 and that would leave the Charlottesville City Schools remaining gap of $1.1 million that we would have to make cuts in those areas.

We have been notified that we'll be receiving stimulus funding, $1.2 million in stimulus funding.

Because stimulus funding is one-time funding, we would not recommend putting that into our operating budget to cover expenses for salaries and ongoing recurring costs because it is one-time funding.

We are recommending

to our school board that we use the stimulus funding to cover any loss that we might realize starting as early as July 1 in sales tax revenue and any loss that we may receive in lottery funds.

Councilor, do you have any questions?

I have a question.

It's actually probably for our staff related to the schools.

Mr. Oberdorf, could you kind of explain how the maintenance and transportation budgets or somebody, budget team, whomever can take this

How that's kind of managed and how that kind of flows into their overall budget, that's the question that's come up when I've talked to school board members.

And I'm also just curious to understand a little bit more about how maybe savings are realized in those areas.

I guess it's all done within city dollars and what impact that has on the schools.

I can't speak directly, but I can say that the funding is essentially a reimbursement back to the state for services that are provided.

For instance, with the maintenance folks as they go out and they do maintenance repairs or preventive maintenance, those charges are charged back to the account.

So at the end of the year it should equalize out and typically I don't think we see a savings.

I have a question about the CARES money.

Councilman Magill, let me see if I can rephrase what you asked.

The CARES Act funding, the $1.2 million, we would use to cover any sales tax revenue decrease that we have, lottery funding decrease.

and any other of the one-time expenses that we might realize during the school year.

We do anticipate because we've had such a large deployment of devices to our students that we probably will realize some loss and damage with that that we'll need to replace in order to continue with the online learning.

And so right now it's a total of 2.4 million in the gap, correct?

And that is not

taking into account any additional losses for sales, potential losses for sales tax or lottery revenue, correct?

That's a part of our operating budget.

We include that in the total amount of our operating budget.

and the reason we contract that so closely and we have to anticipate is because that revenue, the sales tax revenue comes in monthly.

and it is a two-month lag in receiving it.

It's based on sales tax revenue going into the state and what the state collects from the localities on a two-month lag.

Yeah, correct.

What kind of losses we're going to have?

Yes, we have with the lottery funds, one of the estimates that we have received so far is that in March, which the state only realized about a half of a month, two weeks of shutdown, the lottery funds revenues came in 30% less than it did the previous year from the same time.

With sales tax, we have asked the state several times to give us estimates of what they anticipate the sales tax revenue might look like.

And because it doesn't come through the Department of Education, it comes through the Tax Revenue Office.

We have not been able to get that.

However, we went back and looked at our tax revenue last year around this time and we also went back a little further to look at prior to the state implementing the e-commerce sales tax and just did an estimate.

We rolled our revenue back about 30%.

Dr. Atkins, Brian Wheeler with City Communications.

Kim Powell has raised her hand.

Thank you.

I was just going to share that our Finance Director, Renee Hoover, shared with me yesterday

but an email string that was being circulated by VGOFA, which is the Virginia Governmental Finance Officers Association.

And we were seeing a minimum of 20, 25% estimates for sales tax loss from the different localities.

On top of that, there is the 30% loss that we've been advised about as far as the way the lottery was tracking as of March.

That $1 million for us,

when we ran those calculations early on, and this was about a month ago, but that really only represents about 16% of our sales tax.

So it's a fairly conservative, when we talk about using CARES money to offset losses in revenue tax, revenue, I'm sorry, sales tax and lottery revenue losses, that's really a fairly conservative,

Every monthly cycle that we get sales tax revenue.

OK, OK, OK.

Yes.

How does the CARES stimulus, is that just given as a lump sum?

It is given as a lump sum.

You will still appropriate that.

We believe we're still getting guidance on that.

We don't think it will come directly to the schools.

It will still come through the city and the city will have to appropriate it to us.

We have received some federal and state guidance on how to use that funding.

One of the recommendations that the state is making to us is to be very, very, very cautious about using it for recurring costs.

So there's a list of items that are highly recommended that we use it for.

I have a question about the sales tax assumptions that you're making.

The city, and this is based on our revenue assumptions as I think our product of

of Commissioner Revenue Divers and Treasurer Jason Vandiver.

Our projections are that we are projecting reduced April collections of sales tax to about 75% of the original projections in April, in May to about 70% of original projections, and thereafter about a 5 to 10% increase monthly until the assumption is that by the end of the year we'll be back up to more or less normal.

That's a great question.

What we, the assumptions that we are using are not scientific at all.

It is that the city is, the state is shut down and we know by that that our sales tax revenue that was being generated while they were fully operational is not being generated.

So in anticipation of what that might look like, we along with

a conservative number to estimate the decline.

There is an analyst, a financial analyst that works with Virginia First Cities, Jim Regenbaugh, who also does some projections on what sales tax revenue may look like.

And Councilor Snook, just for a little bit of clarity, I had a similar question and I

We contacted someone, the State Department of Education, just as to how that sales tax was based.

Was it based on local sales or statewide or some combination?

And this is based not on the local collections, it's based on statewide collections and then it takes into account

the number of students in the school system as part of the whole population of students throughout the state.

So it's kind of a combination of factors.

That is correct, yes.

Different formulas, yeah.

I'm not sure that that is the case.

Not sure of the philosophy behind that, yeah.

Yeah, good evening, Dr. Atkins.

This is Leticia.

I had a question concerning your presentation on the non-discretionary and critical expenses.

It seems that your total has increased about 166,000 since we last spoke.

Yeah, well, the budget is never final until it is final.

And as our principals are working through their master schedule, one of the areas that we have focused on has been in equity.

And this year we've seen a big change in equity in our orchestra program at Walker, starting in our fifth and sixth grade.

So we saw large numbers increase.

And as the principal at Beaufort is working on his master's schedule, he will almost double the number of students that will need to be enrolled in, not orchestra, I'm sorry, in engineering.

We doubled the number of engineers.

We opened a new engineering program this year at Walker, pre-engineering.

So the students who are in the pre-engineering program will be moving up to Beaufort to be in their engineering program.

And at Beaufort, we currently only have one teacher.

So we'll need a second teacher in the engineering program.

also we had at Lugo McGinnis Academy we have a teacher a special education teacher and the students who are going to who are currently enrolled who will be in the program for FY21

will not need the special education teacher.

So that teacher moved over to Beaufort.

They do need a math teacher.

So that left an opening there after the special education teacher was moved over to Beaufort.

So we will have to replace that teacher with a math teacher.

So those are the two additional positions that we had to put in the budget.

And then the total on that is 166,000.

So it's that 332.

Yes.

It was previously 166,780.

We have an ELL.

Let me tell you which positions we have, and then the total positions.

It's an ELL teacher, English as a Second Language teacher, which is required by the SOQ, which is the standards of quality by the state.

That ratio increased.

We have an engineering teacher.

We have a math teacher.

Dr. Atkins, I can answer that if you'd like.

Is that the orchestra teacher?

It's the orchestra, the two that were there from the original budget proposal were the Buford Engineering and the ELL because those were known about earlier in our budget process.

The two that emerged as we have continued on planning for next year were the Walker Orchestra,

and then the need for additional SPED resources at Buford which then created the math needed LMA that we're actually gonna need to hire for.

So those are the four.

And we use a cost factor of about $83,000 per teacher when we have to hire a new one.

So the total number of those teachers for enrollment are four.

Correct.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

I know we got into some of it on Monday, but just obviously, I think by tomorrow, we'll have a better sense of what some of these cuts are, looking at this remaining cuts that they're doing on their side.

And I'm just trying to pin our heads around what that looks like.

And it's just going to take us, I think, a little more time

have been discussed by the school board for us to kind of grapple with that.

I anticipate that tomorrow night we'll have our school board meeting and there's some sequencing in how we make those cuts.

Once the board has finished with all of its deliberations tomorrow,

and gives us the go-ahead policy-wise to start making the cuts.

We anticipate contacting employees Monday who are involved.

I will tell you that our intent is to use attrition for those cuts.

We have $1.1 million in cuts that we'll have to make, so to use as much attrition as possible.

to move our employees around to try to keep them employed.

Can I just make sure that I'm clear in summary, if we were to give you the additional $1.3 million

then you would use the Additional CARES Act funding to offset the expected declines in revenues from state lottery and sales tax.

That's correct.

Let me add a little bit to that CARES Act.

We use it for shortfalls in lottery, sales tax, device replacement to support nutrition, all of those services that we have in place.

We anticipate it, yes.

So I don't know.

I haven't gone back yet to watch the meeting from the other night.

But did you all land on an amount?

I mean, we know that the 468 is included there.

Was there any other conversation about any additional fund?

Did you all ask Dr. Richardson to just go ahead and just ensure that they

Mayor Walker?

Oh, okay.

All right.

Mayor Walker, this is Brian Wheeler.

We did have one question from a school board member.

It's visible in the Q&A module right now.

I can read it.

I'm wondering about the contracts with the city for student transportation to follow up on what I guess I asked.

Wondering if shouldn't there be some leftover this year since we are not transporting students as normal?

Yes.

OK.

I don't know about gas, but maintenance will probably, maybe not as frequently, but still need to happen.

But I just wanted to make sure people were still employed.

Right.

I can speak to that.

And those are savings that the city at this point has.

The city is saving $9,000 a month.

That's correct.

I'm sorry, we actually pay in advance.

It's a charge back from, I'm sorry, it's Garland Williams.

I'm over Pupil Transportation also.

It's a charge back to Public Works from CATS budget.

So just to clarify also the school pupil transportation is a contracted service so it's a fee that is established at the beginning of the year it's not a one-for-one necessarily because sometimes when we're developing the budget and by the time we give the schools a contracted amount it does not include

For example, any merit increases that the city council may or may not approve with the passing of that budget.

There are also some other expenses that were in this year that were not covered in the original contract that went in the school amount for special needs transportation.

All right, I think I have some questions, but I'm going to ask them.

Right now, Nikuyah, Dr. Richardson is going to go through something.

I'm not out there talking about schools.

I just know.

And Dr. Atkins, I know that you have probably have other things to do.

So maybe if you can't stay on that by the time we get back around to the discussion part,

if we could just contact you if we need it.

If you can stick around, that's fine.

But just we may have questions later.

I'll be happy to stick around.

I'll hang in.

All right.

Thank you.

I'll go ahead and move on with our presentation on our side.

And what I wanted to do is just basically give a recap

to the public and to you City Council about basically what we talked about on Monday but just a recap of where we're at with our proposed budget and I'm just going to start off by talking about our originally proposed budget we talked about before was 196 million with all the issues in terms of the economy we took it down to 191 million

So now we're at about a $5 million decrease between those two budgets from the original to the revised.

Moving on, as we said before, we'll maintain our current tax rate at FY20 numbers.

If you look down to FY21 tax revenue decreases,

That's about $2.3 million, inclusive of sales, mills, and lodging.

And then I have also listed the other revenue losses that we are planning to experience in 21.

The other big one is the business and professional licenses, which we call BPOL, at $2 million.

And as you can see, we have other funding sources that will be decreased going into 21 with state revenues and other revenue sources that we have.

Moving on, as you can see that our departmental decrease will be a total of $2.6 million from FY20 going into FY21 from our originally proposed budget with the schools.

That was one of the areas I was going to talk about with the contributions.

As you can remember on Monday, it was at $2.1 million.

It's down to $1.7 million.

and you can look at that adjustment in the next line where we had 7.9 million held in our reserve and we took that down to 7.5 which will cover the appropriation for the gift of teachers in that particular line item but it's taken down our reserve and then moving on in terms of the human sources non-profits you know the budget level that we went back to was FY20 and as you asked us to break it out

from what our contributions were from the Vibrant Community Fund and then what is allocated for arts and culture.

And you have that there.

FY21 Capital Improvement Program, as you can see the total proposed CIP is $25 million, $25.7 million.

Our FY21

plans in terms of bond funded projects as originally proposed.

As you can see the District Court project, we got those broken out into those two years primarily because we had a conversation with the county.

We previously appropriated $500,000 to them and then another $300,000 will go in FY21.

which will total about $800,000 which is 34% of the design will have to come back in FY22 and fund it in the amount of $6 million.

Our other cash funded projects that have been deferred, and these are the few exceptions.

One is the housing vouchers.

That was at $900,000, the small cap

for schools was about $200,000.

The downtown mall infrastructure is $93,000.

And remember that revenue comes from the downtown mall vendors.

And then also to the public access TV, which is about $40,000 for fiscal year 21, which comes from the PEG funds.

Then going back in terms of our Vibrant Community Fund, as we discussed before, those allocations will be based upon the availability of funding and provision of services in the upcoming fiscal year.

And council, you'll still have those discussions and that'll be coming up soon.

We're in the process of still gathering information to be able to present to you in terms of the programs that are in need of the funding.

to going on to our budget amendments as we talked about before.

These will be based upon the economy.

Our team will continue to work on a daily basis I mean on a weekly basis to talk about our overall revenues and expenditures and then from that we'll come back to the council and talk about any

issues in terms of revenue losses that we may have experienced or projecting to experience for that particular month.

So we are working throughout the week to make sure that we are looking at our overall revenues and expenditures.

Tonight, well today, which we'll go into tonight, we wanted to talk about here are the key points to talk about today is basically, you know, we talked about our overall budget and where we're at.

You had discussion with the director of the 221 and based an explanation of how we're bearing in terms of our FY21 dollars that we'll be able to spend using the FY20 expenditure budget.

but also to the additional funding for city schools, number one.

And then number two is the capital improvement program, basically just going along as we present it in terms of what our plan is to move forward with the capital program.

And then lastly, just giving some updated calendar dates so everyone will be aware of that.

and moving on to the 18th is the public hearing on the budget which will be the first reading and then we'll go for final budget approval for June 1st.

And then also too the public can go to our budget page where you can find information that pertains to our budget.

That concludes what I have for you today.

All right.

Thank you.

I do have some questions about some of those changes and specifically to start the housing vouchers.

So we're not going to add dollars to that.

And I was going to comment on this the other night.

but I thought that we were going to have a conversation about that.

And we're not going to add additional dollars to that.

It's not fair for it not to be open to other families.

I understand during a pandemic that that would remain stable, but we will have to look at that on a case by case basis.

If we're only going to give families like a two year

the two year cycle, which is what it was supposed to be, not extend that and then give other families the opportunity for it, then the families who were able to get in first are the only families that benefit this.

So it's either going to, we're either going to have to add to it or cycle families through it.

And so I hope that

It just wasn't extended for another two year period without taking that into consideration.

Because if it's just we are just assisting, then a set of families getting a two year break and then another set of families getting a two year break, but we cannot add and continue only funding the families that are currently in there.

And I don't know what that looks like for this year, but I mean, I get it.

I understand it all, and I wish we had money.

And if we do have money, I would be the first to advocate for it.

I can talk about both, but if we're not going to add dollars to it, then we need to make sure that it's a fair process so that citizens, maybe they can apply for it again after the next two year cycle goes through.

And I don't think everybody's on the same two year cycle.

So,

Some people would be rolling off of their two years before other people, but we just need to look at this as in

If we're not going to add to it, which I think we should, but if we don't have the resources to do that, we need to ensure that there is some equity for other families in the equation.

There's a lot of families in this city who's having a hard time paying their rent.

And if we only let the people who are currently on there stay on there, then other people

No one else will get the benefit.

And a two-year break is better than nothing, right?

Well,

The initial contract, it was guaranteed for a two-year period.

So the way that it was set up, it was supposed to be like a two-year period, 24 months worth of funding.

Is that the case?

Mayor Walker, can I just clarify, Brenda Kelly's not on the call and we can get these exact answers for you.

I just want to be clear, so we did include the $900,000 in the CIP to fund the vouchers and that's consistent with what we've had in the five-year plan for each year.

That I'm not sure about and we can clarify with Brenda, but I do think there's some room in that $900,000.

I'm happy to address it if you want.

The certification of the program is two years, so I think that's where the two years comes from.

The intent of the program was to keep people housed, and then hopefully the people become higher incomes that they roll out of the program, and that way you roll new families or households into the program.

So currently there's about 80 some vouchers issued.

Our estimates have been we should be able to get up to about 110 vouchers.

Correct.

And that's why in the agreement, it's a two year recertification.

That's why we put in the agreement.

It was on an original version of the CIP, you are correct, it was zeroed out.

It was simply an omission on our part when we went through because we were working from the idea that we were deferring all cash funded projects until we had a work session and we basically said, oh gosh, this is something that we can't defer.

So we added it back in.

The only way that the CAT

So the agreement we have in place with housing authority, housing authority uses the HUD guidelines to administer this voucher program.

So they're basically administering it the same as they do their housing choice voucher program.

We did make one exception when you all approved the agreement about a year ago when we amended it to allow different types of housing units to also be included in the program.

to free up more access to units.

That's about the only change there's difference.

HUD does request annual recertification, income recertification.

And a question I have from Monday, how much are we now going to transfer annually?

I know that 79,000, I think it was, was over the course from after the HUD review, but how is it going to be?

It's not 75, 79,000 a year, is it?

So I think that comes out like 54,000, I think.

And HUD is typically at about 9%.

I've got two questions regarding that.

One, if that continues to be an issue, could we potentially move that in-house?

And could Mr. Sales

We, of course, we'd have to talk to administration about that.

And there would probably be some additional staffing needs.

And that's why we did do the administration over the housing authority because it is quite a bit of a burden on administration and they already do the process.

Yeah.

Well, it's just the staff person's time, right?

Is what their concern was.

Correct.

I think they do have an additional person on or they've been putting it

Okay.

I don't know the answer to that.

I guess

Another potential budget item, even though I know we don't want to think about new things to add on, is just we got an email about the city's emergency fund, which is already depleted.

And I think the number is around $150,000 to $160,000 of already existing backlogs of requests through that emergency fund that cannot be met.

and I guess just throwing it out there if there is any potential interest in trying to provide any additional funding for that fund to try and meet some of that unmet need while, you know, recognizing that we're already having to, you know, make cuts and, you know, it's not a time when we want to be thinking about new things at all but, you know, that's certainly I think a major

Mayor Walker and I, we've talked about that today and that's something we're going to be looking into.

I'm looking into it with staff in terms of

I was also curious, can any of the vibrant community funds be used for that?

What's the constraints on that?

I think we would need to wait to.

I'm just asking if we can't find another sources, is that a source?

Because it's along the same lines.

No, I was just going to say, yeah, I mean, we have that $2.1 million pot, and as part of that $2.1 million under the vibrant community funds, roughly $85,000, $86,000 I believe is the amount we have in there now.

was from the emergency assistance fund program.

So we, you know, as we're reviewing that we could definitely look at it and increase that amount from what we traditionally have been funding around the $85,000 mark to additional funding, whatever council wishes.

But it's just, it would all, I mean, obviously, you know, we would all come from that same pot.

So, you know, you give to one you'd have to take from another.

So it would be balancing council's priorities.

But if this is the priority, then council could definitely allocate some of those funds.

Thank you.

Are there any other questions?

So just procedurally, Mayor Walker, we're just going to go and do public comment and then we can do the other discussion points around the capital program and schools?

Yes.

I had one final question.

So if the discussion around the $900,000 for funding the

All right.

If you'd like to speak to council, you can click the raise your hand icon and that will put you in line.

And Mayor Walker will bring you into the meeting.

Right now we have one person who's raised their hand.

That's Peter Krebs.

Peter, you're live with council.

You've got three minutes.

Thank you.

And really, thank you, Council, for just everything you're doing these days.

This is incredibly difficult times.

And I also think it's important to acknowledge your staff who are working in a very difficult situation and are handling it admirably.

So thanks.

Additionally, a big shout out to the Parks Department who are keeping the trails open, putting signs up to help people stay safe and everything.

It's really important.

Thanks.

And we're actually seeing just tons and tons of people out using the outdoors.

You're seeing it with your eyes.

You're reading it in the paper.

There's actually data indicating four times as many people are using John Warner this year versus last year.

Three times as many people are using Riverview.

The numbers are pretty astounding.

We've been talking about the importance of infrastructure for walking and biking as a vital public health

resource, and we're really seeing that play out right now.

In fact, there's even clear research indicating that people who exercise regularly produce an enzyme that reduces the severity of COVID-19.

So these are things we knew.

Now there's data, and not even to mention stress and stress management and the important role that that plays.

So thank you.

This is all stuff that you guys know already.

And I'm simply stating it to remind you to keep it in mind as you're making difficult choices ahead.

And also, we'll need to think of creative ways to use the resources that we have.

Working with staff to, for example, widen sidewalks by

reassigning non-use vehicle lanes or leveraging stimulus funds, streamlining project management, all those sort of non-budgeted things are going to become really important in the future.

So thank you for everything and in this difficult time we're

It's important to remember that we're surrounded by dedicated staff and an engaged public and we're all going to get through this together and thank you for your work.

Mayor Walker, next up is Brandon Collins.

Brandon, you're live.

Hi everybody.

I fully appreciate the hard work you guys are dealing with with this budget.

I know it was hard doing it just in general.

And now with all this, I just wanted to briefly get at the CSRAP, the City Voucher Program.

People always get confused by it, but I think Brenda Kelly gave a pretty good explanation of how that works.

I do think it might be

to look and adapt to be able to meet the need for folks as we come out of this as the financial hardships increase on renters there might be a way to if you could fund that program more to adapt it to also include some kind of rent relief for renters in private housing

I see a proposal for something like that coming up soon through the CDBG application.

But really, I think it points to

the wider need for a coordinated housing strategy.

I think the hack which created the C-Strap program and did a really good job of doing so would be a really good policy body to consider how you might adapt that program to provide rent relief and meet the needs of the community.

There's a lot to consider.

with this housing crisis is just gonna explode here soon I know y'all don't have a lot of money but you know we we need to have a coordinated approach and a full understanding of all the different types of money that can help everybody work together to make sure we're not missing something or we're not over taxing somebody like TJAC

who have hotel rooms, but there's going to come a time when people got to move out of those hotel rooms and where are those folks going to go, right?

They're just going to go right back into homelessness.

So we all got to work together.

to prioritize this housing issue.

And I hope you can make, at the very least, protect CSRAP in your budget, but coordinate efforts and find the funding to make sure things can happen.

I wanted to say one other thing about CSRAP.

It mirrors housing choice voucher admin plan.

That, along with public housing ACOP,

has been slated for a revision to remove a lot of the barriers concerning people's criminal backgrounds.

It's a tricky subject with residents about who they want in their communities, so we've done some work on that and had been kind of moving towards having both those documents being revised

as redevelopment, in anticipation of redevelopment.

Of course, everything's kind of been on hold now, but there has been a longstanding desire by FAR and the Housing Authority to put in something much more fair that furthers fair housing.

And we have some really great stuff about it.

It's just a matter of making it happen.

Can I just comment on that last comment?

I do want to just share like I understand that our staff and maybe Dr. Ritchie can talk to it further but they're actively working on things that will provide assistance and we're looking at our existing CAF funding which we have left over from

some of our surpluses as well as some that got kicked back because of a product that didn't go through and so just want the community to be aware that those are things that are being considered and I hope that they'll be able to be shared publicly in the near term.

No, not at this time.

I think you expressed it.

But again, those things, we will take feedback.

So I think something has shifted to where there are people who think that

because we started a discussion that we do not read all the feedback that comes into us about everything.

So I just wanna just say that too, that we do take that feedback and tweak stuff accordingly and talk about it openly if we don't.

So hopefully people will continue to provide feedback

as much as possible, like only two comments for the budget, that's not good.

And I know that Brian and his team are doing everything they possibly can, but that means that a lot of people just are not aware of what's really happening.

And in terms of equity and transparency and all of that stuff, that's a big deal that people

are engaged in that they do see this.

And other people watch it on the other avenues that they're able to watch it on and send emails and things like that.

But normally, doing a process like this, we would have a lot more people engaged.

All right.

This is Rory Stolzenberg.

Rory, you're live with council.

Great, so I guess a couple points.

First off, again, thanks for holding this meeting on Zoom.

I do think that the platform itself can be very accessible, but it's, I think, pretty important that we publicize that these things are happening, what the materials are for the meeting in one place, and how you can access the meeting via just a regular phone line, which is a feature that Zoom supports.

But I think as it is right now, because you still have to fill out the online web form to enroll in the webinar, you still have to go online and fill out the form in order to get an email with the phone number to call in.

So while you shouldn't need to have to use the internet to participate in this meeting,

Because of that one forum step to sign up, it does still seem necessary.

But I think that's just part of the learning curve for something like this, and I'm hopeful that we can make this a much more transparent and open platform than in-person meetings were.

Another point, so I notice on the CIP, which again, I didn't really see the meeting material until pretty recently, but I see that the garage has been largely shifted into fiscal year 22.

with two million remaining in fiscal year 21.

And we had previously been told by staff that they were on a very tight schedule that couldn't take any amount of shift in order to meet the deadline to deliver those parking garage spots to the county.

Given, obviously, the current situation, I'm curious what the thinking is in shifting part of the funds later

whether the city would consider working with the county to find a better solution for that and a better solution on a more reasonable time frame, especially, obviously, since the garages have been empty for the last month and a half, and it's not clear that that's gonna change.

So I guess the budget presentation hasn't quite happened yet, but I'm very interested to hear more about that and other budget items.

And I'll just add the first part.

I couldn't get on today and I probably just missed the email, but I, that was the first time that I encountered that form.

So I just, I emailed as I was signing on that that was the process and I did have some questions about it.

So I understand what you're saying and I don't know if there's a workaround cause it's the first time I'd ever seen it.

but I asked about a phone line early on too because I understand that that may be the only way that some people could potentially call in.

I'm thinking of like Ms.

Carey, how often she's at a council meeting and we haven't heard from her on one of these Zoom meetings.

And so Mr. Gaines, people like that who just won't be able to probably navigate the Zoom platform.

Also, I tried to figure out how to invite somebody who I knew had an interest in things to comment.

and to register for the Zoom webinar and it took me quite a bit of clicking around before I finally found a link for myself as a participant but for somebody else to join in.

I finally found one on the calendar on the new website but the combination of the fact that the website is new and a number of other things relating to that

I just wanted to say that Brian Wheeler and his team, they continue to do a great job in terms of trying to communicate our meetings to the public.

If it isn't through 360, our various means of social media that we do have, that these meetings are provided to the public in terms of the time and how we're going to be operating at this

present time with COVID-19.

And I think another barrier to public participation, which I think makes all of it tough, is just that people are so overwhelmed and sort of burnt out.

It is.

I don't have the mental energy.

So I understand that's why I think it's very important for us to make sure that we don't make decisions that are not

you know, that we make those equitable and just decisions.

And that's sort of what I was saying when we talk about ramping up.

I don't know where you all landed in that conversation either, but boards and commissions, it's hard doing our, we know how hard we work and how often we are in meetings.

And we do not need to be in those one million and one meetings all the time.

But

We're there, but it's a challenge even under normal times.

So now I just can't imagine ramping that stuff back up full gear.

But I also understand that business has to be taken care of.

I just want to say that relative to the budget materials, just so the public is aware that, as I think Brian said in the very beginning, all of these budget materials are available from our website under the budget section.

I think that they do too that some people are having a challenge.

And I'd also like to address the second question in terms of, you know, the funding of the parking garage and why it's empty.

It's empty because nothing is open at this time.

And secondly, our employees aren't here.

Everybody's teleworking.

And then thirdly, on top of that is that, you know, asking about how we, you know, are managing that capital project.

One of the things is this is why we got it down to that amount.

We've worked with the county times.

And it does go up in 22 substantially, but that gives us a chance to get back on our feet and see how the economy is doing at that time.

And then we may have to do another adjustment with the county to be able to get it done.

But these are all things that we've been looking at, all funding, all of our revenue and expenditures.

OK.

OK.

If people come on and they send messages, could you just let us know if people, because it's after 5 now, if people are still working and things like that, could you just let us know?

Because we can do another.

We'll do another one at the end.

And I think there's a way, an approach we could take by just maybe leveraging even some of our staff, if we provide a number to people and someone on our council staff even might be able to just put those questions into this.

I mean, I'm even happened to be, I can't answer the phone.

Sure.

The practice we've been using the past several weeks has been I make sure that the clerks to council have a phone number.

So if anyone calls them and says, how can I participate via telephone, that number is available and can be shared.

I would say there is concern by staff that openly advertising a public phone number to a Charlottesville city council meeting could have some unexpected

Yeah, I think where we're trying to, you know,

draw the line or I guess replicate that experience of somebody coming in front of city council, they're identifying themselves traditionally by being physically present and signing their name that they want to speak or they're visible to you so you know who is speaking.

And if it's anonymous phone callers, we have had some pranksters on other webinars that we've had to remove.

It's certainly possible to remove people quickly.

And we do do that.

But what I'm saying is if you advertise a public phone number, it just creates greater opportunities for people who don't join the call with a name.

Thank you.

Thank you and your staff, Brian.

Okay, so we can just open it up for discussion.

I think that in terms of the school, I know that, you know, Heather, you mentioned that we would

Oh no, I'm sorry.

Just what the cuts are that they're already planning.

I think we need to decide if we're going to commit to the 1.3 right now, tonight.

Well Heather, it's no longer 1.3.

We've already committed to doing the, funding the $468,000 for the gift.

The balance of the 1.3.

Sorry.

So the $875,000?

Was that?

Yes.

Okay.

Well, look, I mean, we playing poker.

All right.

Well, we have 875 that we're discussing, 875,000, which is the remaining request from the schools.

I can go.

OK.

I'll just say I think I'm in favor of the 875.

Also, I acknowledge we're going to have to take that out of a reserve.

But I also say I think that the – we talked about this sort of philosophically of whether it would be appropriate or possible to say, well, gee, let's wait and see how the revenues come in and maybe you won't need all of those

All of those revenues that you're getting from the CARES Act to offset tax shortfalls.

But the basic problem, as I think somebody pointed out in one of our—maybe it was Monday night—was that

Most of the schools' expenses are in year-long contracts.

The contracts have to be offered by the first week in June, and they don't have the flexibility

Once the year gets going and you've got people there on contract, they don't have the flexibility to say, oh, OK, we're not going to, we're going to lay you off in the middle of the contract.

We don't want to be in that situation.

So I'm inclined to say, let's do the 875 in addition to the 468, and we'll cross our fingers.

Well, I guess I'm certainly open to it, especially hearing that before CARES Act money came in, there were already some reductions in the surplus that were considered and considered reasonable.

You know, gives me less pause about funding that amount.

I mean, the only thing that makes it hard for me to say definitively, yes, that full amount is one, getting a sense of what is the level of reduction in that reserve fund that

we would be willing to make and then evaluating that against some of these other things that are unfunded or underfunded around, for example, the Emergency Assistance Fund, some of these housing programs, emergency housing needs, or other things like that.

Without knowing, one, what's the level of money removed from the reserve that we are comfortable with or consider a reasonable amount?

And then, two, a sense of what are all the options of where that can be allocated?

It's hard for me to say definitively.

I'm certainly open to it.

OK.

And I understand that.

And I am.

The only comment that I have, and Dr. Atkins, I know you and your staff are still in the school board members, is just to make sure that if there are additional dollars that come through CARES,

you know because I'm sure you know the cause that I have been on they understand that they will probably have to do more than that one whatever the initial package that they have that if that happens and while that money will have to be transferred to you all if they're if

you end up not meeting for whatever reason just and we're over here you know making decisions about how to keep people you know housed temporarily and long term and you know those type of decisions that there's just if that conversation needs to happen if the money is not

I'm committed, as I consistently said, I understand that every staff member at CCS also did not create this crisis and they should not have to figure out how to survive it.

without our assistance.

So I'm 100% committed to that.

Yeah.

And Monday, I didn't speak to that similarly in the if-then

If the sales tax losses weren't as significant along those lines, we just have to have an agreement with this that we're going to recognize that this is the broader good of where we can flush these dollars.

I do have a question and I do understand that the revenue is limited right now and I do appreciate the support from City Council.

As we think about the CARES Act funding, I do want to leave with the understanding that we could potentially use some of that funding also to buy devices or to continue our nutrition program or

Yes.

And I, and we, I think all understand that what my concern is that we, there are major positions, you know, for the city like equity office for the entire city that we, that I wouldn't be advocating during any budget strongly for that I'm putting on

to make sure that we can keep the staff members that are currently employed employed and so we're not adding you know any new staff positions and so just like if you all decided that there was extra money and that we want to add staff positions that we originally didn't have or things like that so

That's it.

But we all get it.

I just want to, on behalf of our staff and teachers and everyone in our families, thank you.

Thank you for the support.

Yes.

Obviously it's not going to be... It is Zoom, and they can log in with Zoom.

Thank you.

And I'll just add, again, I'm comfortable with this allocation, and I understand the situation and support it and understand that.

But I do just want to always keep in mind these other funding areas around the emergency assistance fund, the $400,000 in non-bondable expenditures for the beginning of friendship court redevelopment that's been delayed,

and the fact that we don't have information yet from our input from nonprofits and housing providers about what, if anything, could be changed around Vibrant Community Fund and CAF and emergency housing needs.

And I think as we get that information in, we are going to find that there are needs that go beyond the existing funding level in Vibrant Community Fund and CAF.

And I think we all recognize that.

It's just, you know, I think we're going to encounter difficult, very difficult situations there as we've already encountered with the schools.

Yeah, I agree.

I think it's that

You know, it's all just going to be pretty bleak for a while.

And it's so important for us to keep our citizens stable during this time, because if they're not stable, then the schools will have a completely different

issue to deal with whenever they return to schools.

Yeah, and holistic is certainly the word, because we need the schools to be as ready to go and as strong as possible when those kids do go back.

I'd also like to say it occurs to me that if in fact the school system's revenues from sales taxes are a little bit better than what they're currently pessimistically expecting, odds are that our sales tax revenues will also be better than what we are currently expecting.

So there may

I'm not sure that I would say that we should have any expectation that the schools would be looking to have the schools kick back money to us if they end up doing better.

I suspect that there will be plenty of other things that they could find.

that would need to have money spent on it in order to get back to normal operations.

Yeah, I'm certainly not asking to justify, but I do want to make sure that we are all thinking about what our department leaders and Dr. Richardson and his lead staff, what they're having, the other deputies are having to go through to make sure that cuts are happening on the school level, I mean, at our city level also.

So we can't say,

that it happens here and then fund everything the opposite direction.

Like, we all need to be mindful that we can't do everything maybe that we were considering doing, because we are going to have these increased expenses.

And if there's no money to keep people in hotels or theater or emergency systems or whatever, that's a bigger problem also than

having the schools ready to go whenever there's a return.

We're going to have a whole host of other problems.

So I'm just asking that we all are mindful about that.

And I get it.

Could I ask some questions about the CIP budget, Madam Mayor?

Is that okay?

I'm curious, looking at the budget that was presented, documents presented to us that I read this morning, there is a difference in the amount that we're seeking in a bond issue by about three million dollars.

Most of that is because of the moving and the timing of the funding for the general district court and the parking garage.

As many bonds were not needed to balance out the bondable projects that we now are showing because we had moved those to 22.

So there's a corresponding increase in 22.

So I guess, are the garage and the courts being moved to 2022?

I guess my initial thought was, gee, that was a way of saving money out of the budget, but then it's not coming out of the general fund.

The only thing that it does is because those are bondable projects over the five years, it really doesn't make any difference.

We just simply looked at the timing of the expenditures and because we were going through the exercise for the cash projects and the other things, we looked at the timing of the expenditures and just more closely aligned them with

when we actually needed to sell the bonds.

Initially, when we put those budgets in, in an effort to, you know, sway the big dip, the ebbs and flows and debt service and capital expenditures, we had split them 50-50, not knowing the real schedule.

Okay.

Although I wonder whether given current market conditions, whether there would be any thought that if we're going to build it, building it now, we might get more favorable bids from people.

So the one thing with bonds that give us some flexibility is that we cannot proceed with a bond sale until we come back to council.

We also, because we're selling tax-exempt bonds, we are bound by rules within the IRS in terms of the times of sale.

So in other words, you can't sell bonds and just sit on them.

We have to wait until the construction has started.

So if in fact we do move that timing up,

and we are ready to go faster than what we currently are looking at.

Then I note that there is an increase of $750,000 in the amount allocated for the Smith Pool air quality corrections.

So what we've done is we have drawings that are designed complete to 100%, so that gives us a pretty accurate engineer's estimate.

And while our wild guess at 1.5 million before we went into investigating what the source of the equipment failures

We do.

We've cracked the engine open and we know what's wrong.

Okay.

I didn't know if I need to read the whole thing.

If we put it off and we have people go back into the building, that is a problem.

because it's even worse than we, the people who work in that building every day, they know.

Like, we know how bad it is in the building.

And so if we put this off until next budget cycle, and we send people back into the building, that means that you're asking people to deal with those working conditions.

I agree with you, Mayor.

But as I interpreted, that's looking to spend the additional money in this upcoming year.

In other words, that's not being delayed.

That's correct.

OK.

I've had a rough week, clearly.

I don't know.

Can we stop?

I wish we could just get going now.

I think those are the only questions.

And the other things are a bunch of things that, for obvious reasons, we're pushing off into FY22.

But I'm assuming that things like the

One note I will make about some of those

Cash Funded projects such as the school's playground replacements is that those, some of those accounts do, I don't have all the numbers in front of me, but some of those accounts do have balances that have been built up that they can continue to use through FY.

Things being deferred is a friendship court redevelopment phase one $394,841.

Again, that was just a decision by the fact that we're putting no cash in CIP.

And that is a cash funded piece of that.

And so we did reach out to Sunshine, Brenda and I, and made him aware of that.

And he thought it was something they could work with.

Yeah, and if you also notice at the top, as was with the original proposed budget as well, but just to draw everyone's attention, there are big cash commitments in 22 and 24, primarily because of the funding of that one project, $2 million plus.

So that's a big commitment to the general fund, especially in a year after a pandemic.

I think that in terms of just both CRHA and Friendship Court projects that I just hope the communication with those teams is that when because when we're talking about housing and equity and all of those things that's what their projects are doing and so

It is.

And then CRHA's redevelopment is bondable, so in a sense it's a little less uncertain at the moment.

Correct.

And to the mayor's point, if something happened that, you know, they accelerated their schedule and they were able to do things because it is bondable, because council does have to approve those, we can always change the timing.

Right.

And I do just want to highlight, I mean, I am very, very, very nervous about the future of this friendship court redevelopment because they have already been flexible beyond this year in trying to defer some things and be flexible.

And in fiscal year 2022, we are bumping up the non-bondable contribution to $7.8 million in one year.

And I know in conversations with Sunshine, he's been very flexible.

But I know there's nervousness around even deferring that $400,000 this year.

And I think, in my mind, there seems to be a lot more uncertainty about our capacity to fund that $7.8 million next fiscal year than

maybe is recognized at the moment.

And that is going to potentially throw off a lot of things in terms of the low-income housing tax credits and just how that project is financed.

And for me, that's a top, top priority that we do not make that project not able to happen.

I think we could have done a better job looking at talking about this earlier in the year about the fact that

you know, those commitments were made up front for each year versus that we would consider those in our request every year.

That was a point of confusion for me that I was not aware that we had, because we would not be able to tie other councils to those dollar amounts.

So my thought process had us at considering those numbers

So that's what we're doing.

I think we definitely, this is something that we need to discuss.

It will be harder.

Well, and I know with just the changes and everything going on, and in conversations I had, I mean, the expectation is fully that

The value, what's happening with the value of low-income housing tax credits is going to drive the price of any projects involving LIHTC up.

And so the gap is just going to grow.

It's not going to go down from what it is.

And what makes me just really nervous about it is CRHAs is bondable, friendship courts is not bondable.

I'm just very concerned that we end up in a situation where we've been planning this and say we're going to do it.

And we've put ourselves in a position where, once again, we have to say, oh, we're delaying it for another indefinite amount of years, which is just something we've done for decades.

And I would just hate with the amount of attention and work that's gone into both of these projects, both CRHA and Friendship Court redevelopment, that

And I think with PAJ's current commitment

ensuring that people at the 60%, I think they're at 60 now, I can't keep, but income limit, like with that goal, that is serving some of the most vulnerable people that we have in the area that we would always or should always be open to with that conversation.

you know needs to be while also understanding that what I thought was going to happen every year is not the case.

but I'm committed to the project because of who they are serving and that their commitment to it.

Back in what, 2015, I would have been less so when they were considering selling than everything else but Sunshine is operating very differently.

So I hope that we all would be on that same page but I do understand what you're saying, Michael.

Right.

And again, I just want to flag it.

So it's something that we're all really thinking seriously about.

A much smaller CIP question is just the $93,000 for the downtown mall improvements.

So that Paul could explain a little bit better but I believe those projects are for the infrastructure projects like if there's areas the drainage runnels I know need to have problems that need to be worked on and replaced so it's building up funds to

to work on those.

If there's areas where the mall needs to be rebricked, I believe, Paul, correct me if I'm wrong, but there's also potential for furniture, trash can replacement, that kind of stuff.

It's just minor infrastructure stuff.

Maybe even the fountains, if those start, the pump mechanisms have issues and things like that, because of all the coins that get thrown into the pumps, those kind of things to replace those.

Right.

I'll just throw it out.

I mean, I know every decision we have to make is difficult.

I understand those come from downtown mall vendors fees, but just thinking that's a non-bondable expenditure and thinking about that priority versus some of these emergency assistance funds and other things.

I'll just throw that out there.

And then a final

That's a great point, and I know I may be alone to center on this, but I still think, even as a bondable project, that the downtown garage is just a project that, to me, does not make sense.

And I feel very strongly that 20, 30 years from now, it's the kind of project people will look back on and think like,

What the heck were they thinking?

I think this is a project driven not by serious planning considerations, but rather a political deal.

And that's the kind of project that doesn't have a good history.

I mean, I think we're able to meet that court's agreement without building a new garage.

I think part of it is being driven because the new garage is considered as

A good economic development opportunity for downtown businesses.

I know it's been a priority for DBAC for a number of years to have a new garage.

And it's not being driven by data.

We can meet the court's agreement without it.

The court's agreement is strictly a political deal, not driven by good planning.

And again, with 10 and a half square miles, our publicly owned land is perhaps the most valuable resource we have.

And we are using some of our very, very limited publicly owned land to raise two businesses, one of them a minority owned business, to build a parking garage on land that may not even be good land or location for a parking garage when you consider some of the entrances and exits onto the street.

I have no illusions about us becoming a car-free city.

I fully recognize people are going to continue to drive, and that's not going to change anytime soon.

and I'll just say from the three outgoing counselors, Heather and I was new to this process and I understand that there was a lot of messiness with this process that we missed just because of the time that we came in on.

And as I have stated, where we have received a lot of emails over the past year for people who have opposed that project, who are the, you know, like car-free city type of, you know, that have the car-free city type of process, climate change and things like that.

We started getting a lot of communications from the legal community.

So the attorneys, judges, those type of communications about how challenging it would be for them to, I know one of the locations the county was considering was the, what was it, Fresh Market or something was right there.

Is that something on trail?

That was one of the locations that, you know, for the staff to travel from downtown to their public defenders and the impact, the biggest impact that I saw with everything that I read

and having worked at you know as one of the clinicians for drug court I really understood like if I had to run from the city drug court to the county drug court or something like that to so I understood what they were saying that the only and something that I said before was the only time some of these public defenders for whatever reason I'm not going to talk about them today because I just don't have enough energy but

get to look at their client's files as in between cases.

So that is why I voted for it.

Listening to the other counselors about the commitment that they had put in to resolving it when things were falling completely apart, and then listening to the legal community, because in my world, we wouldn't need as much

you know, attorneys and judges and stuff because people would not be going through criminal and civil trials all the time.

But since that is not the world either, that you want to not limit, you know, the time that

you know, people can spend in the travel time for those individuals.

And especially when you're talking about the ones that work for the most vulnerable people in the city.

So that's why I made the decision.

I might, I want to push back a little bit on some of the emails in particular that we've been getting.

We are not in 2020 or even in 2022 going to be ready to be a car free city.

and for us to think that we are is ludicrous.

The issue of whether we could get by with taking other spots off the market, which is what we would have to do in order to give.

The proposal has been that we say, OK, fine, we'll go ahead and take the lot at 7th Street and give that over to the county.

Well, we've got people who are parking there right now.

So those people have to go someplace else.

We've got a lot of needs for where people are going to park in the next few years and those needs aren't going away and those needs can't be just wished away and we don't have the infrastructure at this point and won't for at least five years by my estimation to be able to provide other parking spaces.

Yes, it is true the agreement only requires us to provide 90 or 100 parking spaces

And yes, it is true that this does more than provide 90 or 100 parking spaces, but it is also true that we've got, as best I can determine, from the amount of money and the amount of expenditures being made on new office buildings in downtown Charlottesville and really construction currently underway,

We're going to look at probably thousands of additional employees coming downtown and there's not going to be enough parking provided by the people who are building the buildings and it's not realistic to think that they're all suddenly going to start taking buses.

A lot of them live in the county, a lot of them are coming in, we've got to have some place to put them.

I just don't think it's a realistic thing to think that we're going to say

We're not going to build the parking garage.

I'll add two other thoughts.

One is that one of the important points I think that we cannot lose sight of is that we have been, in this respect, on this parking garage in particular, the county regards us and has said so publicly as not a reliable negotiating partner.

That we make deals and then we don't follow through on them.

And it is, I think, absolutely important that we be, that we try to reestablish the notion that we are going to be a reliable negotiating partner.

The final point I would make is that it is expected from life expectancy projections that the current parking garage on Market Street may not last a whole lot longer anyway and maybe by the time we're ready to move to a more bike, more car, I mean my bike pedestrian bus

oriented transportation culture, maybe it'll be time to replace the current Market Street parking garage, in which case we will now have a parking garage across the street that we would be able to use.

So there are a lot of reasons.

I think, number one, it was a good decision three or four years ago when it was first made.

Number two, it's a good decision now.

And the last point that Lloyd made was actually one of the ones that really put me over the edge and realizing that was the direction.

as much as Nikuyah said it was messy before us it was even messy with us but it was really just recognizing that that other parking garage is going to have a lifespan that's going to expire and that in the future we'll have much bigger opportunity there but in this current state I agree we do not have the capacity in the downtown area and I know that in prior meetings and our prior council we actually had our parking

Manager come and speak to this and talk about the supply and the demand that we have.

And so I think that's a fruitful thing to kind of refresh everyone's mind about if we have the opportunity.

Well, and I guess just the final thing I'll say about it is I think there's a lot of false binaries there.

I mean, there's certainly people who have emailed us who think one is a goal of Car Free City, certainly think it's a good goal.

But I fully recognize it's not going to happen anytime soon.

People are going to keep driving.

That's just going to happen.

And I also agree that it's very important to keep the courts downtown.

As we all know, this was all initiated by Albemarle County threatening to move their courts as a negotiating tactic to get the city pony up for money for infrastructure improvements, et cetera, related to the courts they wanted.

So it was an effective negotiating tactic.

It resulted in this deal.

But the deal does not require building a parking garage.

It requires providing a specific number of parking spaces

And I don't think we've seen any data, concrete data showing that the only way to meet the parking spaces that deal requires is through building a new garage.

For example, I understand it may be data that's not able to be collected, but even just a sense of how many people currently using the garage are already going to the downtown courts.

So what capacity in the garage is already being filled by that clientele?

And I know, granted it's several years old,

But the last actual parking study done for the city explicitly recommended not building new parking spaces and said we have a parking management problem, not a parking space problem.

And so I just continue to think we can meet the deal, not have the courts move without needing to build a new parking garage.

And I just think in city planning, parking spaces is

one of the areas where there's the biggest gap between what the data shows and what the public perception is.

I brought this up before, but I think it's sort of just a striking statistic from Richmond's last parking study that 41% of their land downtown is used for parking.

Peak utilization, when most people are using parking spaces, is 67% of spaces used during the day, 69% at night, and yet 73% of people say there's not enough parking.

So I think even if we build this, we'll still have people saying, we need more parking.

It's a disaster.

We've got to do it.

And I understand I'm in the minority here, but I just feel strongly there's not data to support it.

And 20 to 30 years from now, when people look back around us using our public land and raising minority-owned affordable corner stores from the only affordable restaurants on the downtown mall, on the main entrance corridor to the downtown mall,

People will think they won't care about the weird political deals that resulted in it.

It'll just be bad planning.

All right.

And I'll just add, my decision making here was about people and if there were two different court systems, I mean, in different places and not in the same proximity, and that if it

It hadn't happened that the county was going to move out of the area.

And what that would do to low income and the most vulnerable people who are primarily the people who fill the court system was why I made my decision.

And I agree.

And again, I think that deal can be met without the courts moving, without building a garage.

The deal is the garage.

OK.

OK.

But remind me again, our next step.

So we aren't talking budgeting again until the 18th.

Oh, we have two, two, ones.

Do we?

A cancellation came to me, and I was like, what happened to my two, two, one?

So who was I with?

I got both a cancellation and a new entry on my calendar.

I think I'm set at three o'clock with Ms.

Oh, so something must have gotten rescheduled.

If you're on the webinar and you want to address Council, click the raise your hand icon.

And Mayor Walker, are you going to entertain repeat customers?

Hey Roy, it's always a pleasure.

Can you hear me now?

Yes.

Sorry, I had you on double mute.

So I figured since you're on the topic, I'd chime in since I've looked into this a whole bunch.

We can clarify a couple of topics or a couple of points on the garage.

So first off, I think nobody is suggesting doing anything other than abiding by the courts agreement and keeping the courts downtown.

And that courts agreement asks for a 90-space parking structure on that lot on Market Street.

And there is an out to provide 100 spaces in the Market Street garage, but I think it's intended more as a temporary thing if construction isn't complete in time.

But it won't be complete until November of 2023, so it is some time off in the future.

And I think the optimal scenario, if we really think through and plan out rather than rushing to meet this four-year schedule we were on,

is to think through an option that potentially provides those spaces on Market Street and also provides a productive use above it that also brings in revenue to be fiscally responsible for the city that offsets the cost.

Because no, we're probably not going to get rid of cars completely by 2025, but the thing, we're certainly not gonna do it if

The government is spending $10 million or $15 million really all in on a huge massive expenditure to subsidize that form of transit while other ones like actual transit cost money.

and one other quick point on the Market Street Garage with the end of life.

So facilities management came to place late last year and they clarified that in 2015 we put about a half million dollars of concrete rework into the Market Street Garage.

And that bothered another 20 years of life.

And that can almost certainly be repeated.

So, come 2035, most likely faced with leaving the status quo for a relatively small amount of money or a big project.

It'll be a conversation just like this except leaving it in place and they'll stick with that.

And I'll just add in terms of, I mean, we haven't spent a lot of time on it, but I know Dr. Richardson, we've had conversations about what reimagining those spaces could look like if the parking needs were met on the other side of the street too.

So there are thoughts about what's possible in those three buildings that's owned by the city, looking at that long term.

Yeah, and I think it would be really productive to take the same attitude and look across the street, where I think we could do a similar thing.

It's right next to the S&P building, which is already pretty large, but right now we're going with just a three-story garage, just for parking cars, and only three stories, only because that's what the buy-write zoning allows, and staff didn't feel like they had time to come and ask council for a special use permit to do more.

and I think that's a little bit of a mistake and we can build a better project even in a pretty short time frame and save a lot of money to boot and still adhere to the agreement and keep the courts downtown.

That's my hope anyway.

Thank you.

And I'll say on my end, just to make a comment, not for a conversation, but

I did bring up during my conversation with staff about, you know, and making sure that the two businesses that were potentially displaced, that if they were, if they talked to them about creating space for them, because there was a conversation that creating space for a restaurant is very different from retail space.

So I had that conversation and about if we could fit, you know, apartments in that space too.

So we didn't just,

And I wasn't in the meeting with Councillor Hill, but I'm sure that there were questions asked too.

So we didn't just say, go ahead with it.

And I'll just say, if it unfortunately must be built, I for one am 100% open to looking at the zoning if there is a way through that process to make it a better project that includes businesses and or housing, as well as addresses some of the issues that

I think that site is particularly ill-suited for Garage because of how it enters onto streets if there's any way to address that issue to the zoning as well.

And there were issues with it being, I guess, one part of the land there.

There were some issues that they

that they discussed with me.

And again, this is not my field.

So we didn't have conversations outside of that team about it.

And maybe is Paul still on the call?

Paul, will you chime in?

Can you also speak to the Market Street market status?

Because I respectfully disagree with that comment.

Sure.

I'll start with Market Street.

So typically, when you look at a parking structure, it would have 10 years service life left into it, and it's teetering over when do you stop putting money into a structure that ultimately is going to have to be replaced.

So the last investment in the concrete repairs to buy us the 20 years, and that's

That is a very generous estimate based on some of the structural issues that you'll encounter.

Things like how hard are the winters, how much salt's drug into the parking deck.

But there are certainly, we were looking at having the deck replaced within the 10 to 20 year, not at 20 years.

If you move across the street, we did look at the potential for affordable housing on top of the parking.

And there would be an increase in the cost of, and I don't believe it was $5 million.

I think it was more along the lines of about $1.5 million or $2 million to go ahead and have the parking deck reinforced so that you could build additional structure above for affordable housing or whatever you would choose.

There are other issues building the deck in terms of ingress and egress and some of the considerations when you look at the signal at 7th Street and Market and you know things are already chaotic at five o'clock at rush hour so we're looking at some alternatives on Park Street and High Street to alleviate some of the traffic congestion so that would be additional infrastructure.

We did do an analysis of what would it be like if we just used the surface lot and decided not to build the deck in the short term and then push all the parking over to Market Street.

And so part of that was that we would lose the revenue generated by that hundred spaces that we would have to forfeit.

So we would be essentially impacting the enterprise fund for the parking deck.

One, what is that amount of revenue loss that there, even just roughly that there would be in the parking fund?

And two,

Yes, definitely changing the zoning.

You could add additional stories above.

OK.

Thank you.

OK.

I'll just throw out again, in the spirit of thinking more long term with the friendship court redevelopment, I think it's not

doesn't impact this budget cycle, but I think it's something we really need to start thinking about now is our low-income housing tax credit properties.

They're going to see their affordability periods expire over the next several years, and what budgetary impact that could have if we are committed to trying to preserve those properties as affordable.

For example, Midway Manor.

Within really the next couple of years, that affordability period ends and there is some indication that that developer intends to turn the entire midway manner into market rate.

Obviously, I think that would be pretty disastrous.

And we need to start thinking about what that looks like to try and prevent that.

And that's just going to be a major budgetary impact over the next several years.

I think Midway Manor is the one that is most immediate, but there are a number of others as well, because the program is just structured.

If you use loan housing tax credits, the developer only needs to keep it affordable for a set number of years.

So a lot of these developers, they just view it as a profit-making opportunity.

And that's why we need to ensure that all the money that we spend through CAF and through, you know, that we support with these other projects, like even PHA, because that property was a—and that's why I really like the work that Sunshine does, but that's why I'm just a stickler for making sure that we have those discussions, because

We have no control over what they do once those credits run out.

And if we put better parameters in place for things to be fun, we can help them think about a different process.

But someone was supposed to check on Midway Manor and give us an update or look at the projects in the area at some point.

Well, I know John Sayles originally brought this issue up with the hack, and I know it's something he's been following for a while, and he has a list of all the properties and when they're set to expire.

But I don't think we ever expected a presentation or anything about it, at least at this point.

I think, Councilor, this is Alex.

I'm good, how about you?

I think there are a couple of years where I think they still have up to December 2022, 2021 or 2022, before the low-income tax credit expires.

On a related note, I think

The point that Michael brought up, and you have said the mayor, is pretty critical in terms of trying to safeguard expiring low-income housing tax credit.

Now, Council needs to start thinking about that.

And then, as we move into the future, when this coronavirus situation ends, it may want to start thinking about how to set some money aside.

so that those low-income housing tax credit that are expiring, sometimes some of them may need additional funding for renovation.

And if the city council can provide that additional funding, then you can extend in lieu of the money the affordability period for another 5, 10, or 15 years.

And it will be helpful for us to know because December 2022 is soon.

So Mr. Blair, are we able to contact the owner to just see what their intentions are just so that we can know?

And then if their intentions are to keep it low income, what

Certainly the city can contact the owners.

I think there are, well and certainly you can inquire as to what their plans or as Mr. Ikaifunus stated, you know,

Alright, thank you.

Are there any other

Mayor Walker just procedurally based on the council's decision tonight about... Do we need to take a vote?

No ma'am, no.

Just the additional funding for the schools that will be part of your when you vote on or when you have your budget public hearing May 18th.

Sorry to drag things out more.

But one last comment.

As I know on Monday, we had a lot of discussion around how the CDBG money is allocated.

And I just wanted to highlight that tomorrow, I think the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission is having their public hearing about it.

So just to highlight that, if people are interested in attending that and sort of voicing

And now because of coronavirus, you can attend that one and attend the school board meeting via computer if you have two screens.

All right.

Okay.

Oh, I did want to make a quick announcement I saw on email, sorry.

I'm Katherine Goodman from the Thomas Jefferson Health Department.

All right.

Are there any other?

No?

Okay.

Well, the meeting is adjourned.

Especially everybody working on the budget.

I know everyone, but

Dr. Richardson, Ms.

Shelton, Ms.

Thank you.

Have a good evening.