Planning Commission Meeting   12/14/2021

And welcome to the Charlottesville Planning Commission regular meeting.

I believe just getting myself together here.

We have three public hearings, capital improvement plan, Park Street PUD and MACA PUD.

We also have a couple of items we're considering for the consent agenda.

Can I please hear from Ms.

Dowell?

Let's skip Ms.

Dowell for now.

Mr. Hibab.

Hey, thank you, Chair.

I lost my Zoom screen for a second.

The Rivanna Bicycle Pedestrian Committee met to discuss potential locations for a connector bridge, and we have our next meeting tomorrow to continue that conversation.

And that's it for me.

Thanks.

Good evening, everyone.

I do not have anything to report at this time.

Hey, Mr. Alejandro.

Having some trouble hearing you.

How about that?

Can you hear me?

All right.

You may be sorry for that.

I've attended a couple of meetings.

The Board of Architectural Review met on November 16th.

We had seven Certificate of Appropriatenesses approved, one of them denied, and then one was deferred.

We also had a discussion of the latest design for 612 West Main Street, which is the apartment mixed use development going on the site of University Tire on Main Street.

And then lastly, we elected new officers, Breck Gassinger,

the chair of the BAR and Sherry Lewis will step in as the new vice chair in place of Breck.

For the tree commission on December 7th, just last week, as I reported last month, Mike Ronane, the urban forester, is leaving the city.

So the new position for urban forester has been posted and the application deadline is December 20th.

Also RFQ submissions for planting this year's allocation of about 160 trees was due last Friday.

I have not heard the results of that.

And then, importantly, we discussed the preliminary results which were just received last week of the current tree canopy study that is being done.

Because of COVID, the flyover for this tree canopy study was done in 2018.

So it's dated now.

But the news is not great, as you might imagine.

So for context, let's go back to 2004.

At that time, we had a 50% tree canopy coverage for the city.

2009, it went down to 47%.

2014, it went down to 45%.

And in 2018, this latest, it's down to 40%.

So in the 10 years between 04 and 14, we lost tree canopy at the rate of about 0.5% per year.

In just the last four years, we're losing it at 1.2% per year.

And the really most important impact is happening at the neighborhood level.

Of the 19 identified designated neighborhoods,

20% canopy coverage.

And that's the point where health and economic detrimental effects are being experienced.

And then two of our districts, Star Hill and Tenth and Page, are below 20%.

Those are where significant detrimental effects

Lastly, we reviewed the CIP where the request by the commission for $100,000 for tree planting has been reduced to $75,000 and the $105,000 we asked for emerald ash borer removal has been reduced to $50,000.

So you can see why how those two things are really causing us tremendous concern.

The city currently is only able to fund emerald ash borer treatment for about 30 ash trees and it's estimated that the city is going to lose 360 ash trees over the next five years.

So do the math.

And then I think as a member of the BAR, I want to bring attention to something that passed on the consent agenda and forgive me for taking so long, but I feel like this is important because it did not get the public attention.

I would like to mention it now.

We approved the initiation of a process for creating the C.H.

Brown Historic Conservation District.

This is actually a tremendous story that I wish more of us knew about.

This designation would honor and recognize the importance of a Reverend Charles H. Brown.

From his experience in the building trades in the early 40s and 30s, Reverend Brown personally managed, financed, and participated in the construction of about 70 houses and churches from the 1940s to the 80s.

and these were primarily in African-American neighborhoods that were purposely built to be inexpensive and thus affordable.

He often provided the co-signed promissory notes and provided financing to get people into these houses and

Right now it's proposed that this conservation district is just for his church, which is the Holy Trinity, Holy Temple Church of God in Christ and five surrounding houses.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg for what this gentleman accomplished and his importance in Charlottesville.

So I did want to mention that.

And thank you.

Ms.

I have no committee reports.

Let's see.

We had our final meeting of the year of TJPDC.

We got some legislative updates that were interesting about what we're prioritizing for the General Assembly next year.

And they announced the hiring of a new planner over at TJPDC.

So we welcomed her.

And then we had a meeting of MPO Tech

The big news was kind of very technical and difficult to follow presentation of the new scoring procedures for SmartScale, the next round of SmartScale.

They are not amazing for us.

It seems like it will deprioritize funding cities, but in discussing it, it sort of became apparent that it's less that they're trying to mess with us and more that in the previous round, we kind of hogged all of the money

and almost none of it went to somewhat more rural areas, which is probably why we got all of our projects funded last time.

So we might do a little bit less well next time, but at least we have all those things in the pipeline.

I think that was the major update.

We heard about the Ravenna River thing that Karim mentioned and

All right, the transit vision plan is ongoing.

They are doing a survey and they had a public meeting last month to get feedback from the community on what the transit system should look like in the future.

So if you want to participate in that, please go give your feedback.

I think there is now actually a better URL that I can read out.

It's tinyurl.com slash transit vision.

And there's both a tech survey about describing what you want to see in the city transit system, an area transit system, and a map survey where you can put little dots on places you want to go, places you want to come from, that sort of thing.

Thank you.

And I do recommend the survey if you like dots.

Mr. Palmer, are you with us?

And I have no report.

Who can speak for the city?

Sure, I'll step in.

Thank you.

We don't have anything in particular to report specifically, but I do want to note that we're working with our consultant team to prepare for the zoning rewrite project.

And thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

At this time, if you'd like to address the Planning Commission on matters not on the formal agenda, please click your raise hand icon, or if you're joining us by the phone, press star nine.

You'll have three minutes for comment, and we would like to remind all commenters to please provide a name and address before speaking.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I believe we now turn to the consent items.

I would move to approve the consent agenda and

I hear a motion.

All in favor, can I get a thumbs up?

I see the thumbs.

I believe that passes.

Correct.

All right.

Then let's please, Ms.

Sure will.

We're here tonight to talk about the proposed or the draft of the proposed 2023 to 2027 capital improvement program.

I'll go through a short PowerPoint.

Many of these things we've talked about and you've seen before, but we'll go through those again and then hopefully open it up for the planning commission to have its discussions and make its decisions for what recommendations they'd like to make to council.

So with that, if we can move to the next slide.

What is a capital improvement program?

It is a five-year financing plan.

The projects in that plan usually cost more than $50,000.

They generally are non-recurring and non-operational expenses, and projects have a useful life of five years or more.

Next slide, please.

When we were looking at this year's capital plan, we basically made very little changes to the plan that was presented last year.

With that in mind, as we were constructing this CIP, there were several things that led to that decision, largely because of the school reconfiguration placeholder.

Some things that changed with that is that we increased that placeholder from 50,000 to now, I'm sorry, 50 million to now 75 million.

The funding for that placeholder was also moved up from FY25 to FY24.

And we know that in order to even accomplish that, even when it's in this plan, that we will need significant revenue enhancements to be able to afford that.

In addition,

We know that our debt capacity will soon be exhausted with this plan and that there were some large projects that were previously authorized to use bonds for that we unfunded essentially to be able to move them and to get us to a place where we could

increased the $25 million for the school project.

That was the West Main Street project, which was originally in the CIP plan at $18.25 million, and the Seventh Street parking garage, which we unfunded about $5 million of that project.

The other thing is we did look at existing project balances in determining what would get new funding this year.

And if there were large balances, we did look to spin down some of those before adding new funds.

So the net effect of all of these considerations when developing this draft is that any additions to the CIP, and that's not just in 23, but across the entire five years, require some type of offsetting reduction.

Next slide, please.

And so what does the draft look like?

Here is sort of a breakdown by category, and you'll see as denoted by the green lines, we feel like this plan continues to illustrate and put funding in a place where council has stated are their priorities.

So in looking at the five-year totals, education would be number one, affordable housing would be number two, and transportation and access would be number three.

couple of things to also note here and each year you'll see that the revenues have to match the expenses.

So therefore, as we talk about adding things, we have to make sure that we take things away to keep that balance.

You'll also notice that we fund the CIP largely with two sources.

One is cash from the general fund and the other is bond with bond issues.

The other category are small dollar amounts that relate to agreements that we have with the county, also some dollars that the school contributes and any other sort of one-off types of grants that we have.

The other thing to note is that I've highlighted in 2027, the bond issue is highlighted in yellow and that number is a zero.

And that is largely because as we move through, or if we were to move forward with this plan as proposed,

We would not have bond capacity to sell additional bonds in 2027 or based on the projects that are laid out in this plan.

And that would probably be the case likely for two to three years.

So even extending out by this year, next time, you know, we'll see another column with another yellow highlight there.

And so what we would be left with would be projects, the ability to only add projects in the CIP that we could afford to pay cash for.

And so the amount of cash here is based on a city policy whereby we contribute 3% of cash or PAYGO, that's 3% of the general fund budget is slated to go to the capital projects fund.

So that's the 6.4 million.

The dollar allocation in that year, basically, I looked at the priorities and funded our agreements with the CAF and the Supplemental Rental Assistance, also the Friendship Court Project, and then sort of just allocated the rest of the dollars to the more annual recurring capital expenditures.

Again, that would all be subject to council's discretion to move that around, but

that's 2027 is basically to illustrate that point.

Next slide, please.

So when we talk about the capital projects fund, often we talk about it in a vacuum.

We talk about capital projects, we have the public hearing, we move on and then we start the whole conversation about the general fund.

It's important to note that they do work hand in hand and that the dollars that are allocated to the capital projects

or to debt all come from tax revenues from the general fund.

And so the point of this slide here is to show you a pie graph of all the general fund expenditures that are all paid using tax revenue.

And you'll see that debt service is a smaller portion of that pie.

as well as, you know, the transfer of cash that we put in the capital projects fund.

So as we put more stress on the cash or the debt service on the capital projects side, we also then are sort of decreasing the other pots or other pieces of pie for other expenses that come out of the general fund.

Next slide please.

So one important factor and one thing that the city is very lucky, we're one of very few communities to actually be double A bond rating.

And why is that important?

Triple A, I'm sorry.

Thank you, Lyle.

So basically the AAA bond rating is the highest standard to indicate that we have structurally sound finances in terms of our results and also in terms of our policies.

It's an independent determination basically of our municipality and our ability and also our willingness to pay our debt.

We've maintained this bond rating since 1964 from Standard & Poor's and since 1973 from Moody's.

Essentially, the AAA bond rating gives the city the opportunity to borrow money at the lowest cost available.

So that means that more dollars are going towards the project and less dollars are going towards interest.

Again, the rating agency focuses on four key factors, the economy.

So what does our look, what do our demographics look like?

What is our employment base?

Property values?

What's our taxpayer composition?

They also look at management.

What are our policies?

What are our procedures?

Do we do strategic planning?

And more importantly, do we have the ability to achieve all of those things and to maintain them as well as meet budgetary targets and adhere to financial policies?

So, you know, as we talk about keeping to our policy, it's important.

It counts.

Additionally, they look at our finances.

What are our budgetary practices?

What are our investments look like?

And finally, what do our year-end results look like?

And then lastly, they look at our debt.

How much do we have outstanding?

What are our future needs?

And what are our current obligations?

So all of these factors weigh into the bond rating.

And even though we talk about all of these issues, it's an exciting time because we have so much stuff to do.

But it is important to keep in mind that we are financially sound.

We're not struggling because we are have financial issues we're struggling because we're excited to do a lot of great things, and so it becomes more of a conversation about priorities than the ability to do something.

Next slide please.

So again, as I mentioned, we started this CIP draft by looking at the 22 plan and making very minor changes, really.

And when we did make those changes, they were made with offsetting reductions.

So if you look at this chart, what this attempts to show you is that which categories change from what we plan to spend in 23 when we presented this to you last year versus what we're now planning to spend in 23 for this year.

And so overall, if you look at the totals, you'll see that last year we said that we were planning a CIP for 26.3 million.

What we've actually proposed in this draft is about 22.7 million.

So an overall reduction just in 23.

for 3.6 million.

Now that's a little bit of a misnomer because we know that we added 25 million for the school project.

So if you looked at the other years and compared on, for example, 24, what we planned in the plan last year versus this year, there's an increase there.

But to kind of highlight what the changes were, there was a change in public safety from 23 last year to this year.

Largely, that is related to $1.2 million that was added for construction cost increases for a bypass fire station, but there were also roughly $111,000 reduction for

Savings accounts that we were building up to replace radio and MDT replacements, which are an expensive endeavor.

Again, in transportation and access, that decreased by 5.4 million.

That was largely because we reduced what was originally budgeted for the 7th Street parking deck by 5.6 million.

5 million of that went to help for the increase for the school reconfiguration project, and 638,000 has been allocated for some structural repairs that are necessary for the Market Street garage.

Additionally, we reduced some paving and we added $50,000 for the historic district and entrance corridor design guidelines.

Moving on to Parks and Recreation, there was an increase there, but there were also reductions.

So we reduced their lump sum by 100,000.

We added 150,000 for a comprehensive master plan.

Again, this is not for individual parks, but to look at the Parks and Rec program and department as a whole to get an idea for what the mission is.

What do we want to do?

How do we want to move forward?

So that's that master plan.

We also added in just a little over $45,000 to address some drainage issues at the Oakwood Cemetery.

We added $50,000 for the ash tree removal and we added $92,000 for the city county park projects which are joint at Ivy Creek and Darden Tau.

350,000 was also added for McIntyre Park drainage corrections.

Those are some DEQ identified issues.

And we also added $42,000, which is the first sort of funding pot for a slate roof replacement that needs to happen at Key Recreation.

There's also the larger construction dollars were planned for 24.

Besides those changes, you'll see that the affordable housing dollars planned for CAF, supplemental rental assistance did not change from what we had planned last year.

In addition, Friendship Court CRHA funding remained the same, and the other categories remained the same as well.

Next slide, please.

So what are the key messages here?

Again, we feel this draft focuses on Council's key priorities.

We know that this plan is not affordable without significant revenue enhancements.

We've talked about tax increases and possibility of sales tax increases.

We need to explore all of those.

So just because the numbers are here in the plan,

We still have to make sure we've got the numbers in to pay the corresponding debt service.

We can also look at reallocations.

So we know that in years past, we've committed funds in previous plans that maybe those projects have changed, maybe our priorities have changed, and they haven't happened yet, like we did with West Main and the 7th Street parking garage.

Perhaps there are other opportunities to reprogram those dollars.

We also know that future needs for the new CIP funding will not be available for quite some time if we proceed with this plan.

Again, we talked about cash being the only option and that 23 would be the first of, in the last projection, we ran the first of approximately three years, which we would likely not be able to sell bonds.

And we also know that even under this plan, we've also talked about the fact that even if we raise tax revenues, we will have depleted all of our reserves.

So even with the Tencent tax increase that we talked about, that is offset.

Those costs are also going to be offset with spending down debt service reserves that we previously had in place.

And so by the time we finish,

will really be at sort of ground zero to start building everything back up.

Next slide, please.

So I want to take just a few minutes.

This is a new slide we did not talk about last week.

And the Infrastructure and Investment and Jobs Act, we've gotten more information since we last met.

We know that there are very specified targeted areas of funding.

They've been identified as repair and rebuild for roads, bridges and rails.

There's a goal to improve healthy and sustainable transportation, to build a network of EV chargers, access to high-speed internet, there's going to be funding available to prepare infrastructure for the impacts of climate change, cyber attacks, and extreme weather events, funding for access to clean drinking water, and funding for airport improvements.

So all of this to say is that I think many of us in finance have sort of been waiting in the wings to find out what would be available.

And it's actually not a one size fits all.

And it also doesn't deliver on a lot of what we already have in our CIP.

So it's not going to help us address our financing problems largely.

And so the other thing that we have found out is that matching funds are likely to be part of the equation to leverage any of these dollars.

So as we talk about reaching capacity and needing to raise revenue to pay for debt service and things, we won't have capacity to probably make a match to leverage these dollars.

One such example that has potentially been

discussed or is in discussions is a potential for CAT to potentially receive up to $37 million.

In order to leverage those funds, it will require a $2 million match approximately.

that's not in our current CIP and also doesn't leave us a lot of room to be able to address these.

So as we think about the CIP and sort of reaching all of these MACs, again, this is another thing we need to keep on our plate and keep in our sights in terms of making decisions.

Next slide, please.

So when we last met on the 23rd of November, these are the things that staff heard the Planning Commission throw out as ideas for potential reallocation or changes to the CIP.

Thank you.

I'd like to start with questions.

If we could start with Ms.

The one question I had she answered, and that was about the reduction in funds for the parking structure.

Yeah, and just to be clear on that, so I think the message and the decision has been clear that there's probably not a parking structure in the future, which is why the funding was reduced.

However, final decisions in terms of what will be needed or required to deliver on our obligations to the county have also not been decided.

So the money that is being left in that account will give us the flexibility to let that agreement and those conversations happen.

Thank you.

I have a few questions.

Let's see where to start.

On the slide where we looked at the expenses until 2015 on the affordable housing, I think it had, in the 2027, about 4 million.

And I'm looking at the projected numbers in the Excel live spreadsheet, and it has 2 million.

What's making that up?

Hold on one second.

I just saw this also.

So what we have in there...

I was looking at the bondable projects and we don't have any because we would have reached capacity.

And then in the non-bondable

There's the red two points.

Yeah.

So what's in that category for affordable housing in 2027 is $925 for CAF, $900,000 for supplemental rental assistance.

So those two are funded level for 23 through 27.

And then there is $2.25 million in for phase four of Friendship Court.

Thanks.

That makes sense.

For the pie chart that we were looking at earlier, where would the CIP budget be in that?

So the CIP is budgeted from debt bonds.

And so that comes out of the general fund in the form of debt service payments.

So that's the piece of the pie that's sort of sticking out.

And then the other dollars come out of cash or funded by cash from the general fund in the way of a transfer.

And that would be, I believe that shows up in the infrastructure

in transportation or either in the non-departmental piece of the pie.

But the total budget doesn't, the total CIP budget doesn't show up here because, as you know, the debt service is spread over 20 years.

Thank you.

I was looking at the conversation about the bond capacity, and there's the proposed sales tax increase.

How would that impact the real estate tax increase that's also proposed?

Yeah, so I think that would be up for council to decide.

What we do know is that the sales tax proposal, if that were to pass, first it has to pass through the General Assembly, then it would have to go to a referendum for city voters to approve.

If both of those things happen, then that's roughly about a $12 million revenue stream that would come in, and it has to be used on school projects.

Thank you.

I'll try to keep some questions for later, but I'll try one more question I have.

for now is related to the, let's see here.

It's about the school project.

And I was wondering if there were options to, or were like V value engineering that number a little bit to see what we can do.

Sure, yeah.

There is always the opportunity to value engineer the project.

We started out with a budget of around $50 million and it was determined from the community design group that that was probably not going to give us the project that would best meet the demands of the city.

So we did get approval from city council to raise that budget and to design towards that $75 million budget.

If there was a change in direction, that could always happen if we were so directed by council.

Thanks.

I found one more question I wanted to ask right now, please.

The parking structure, can you walk me through what the leftover bucket of money is in that?

Because I heard 4.2 million, including the 2023 allocation, I believe.

I think that's pretty close to what, if the 1.3 that's currently in the proposed budget, I believe that's pretty close to the bucket of money that would be there for that.

And again, there's no, there have been no decisions because those conversations are still happening with the county.

And so, you know, is it too much or too little?

It's hard to say right now.

Thank you.

I have no questions.

Thank you, Chair.

Ms.

Thanks.

Thank you, Ms.

Hamill, for your presentation.

I was struck by a note in one of the slides that said reallocation is possible, and I just asked in the chat and you answered.

that that could mean revising the fiscal year 22 budget, which is a fascinating thought.

And just to give some context to those that are on the call and may not realize,

Though we are looking at the fiscal year 23 budget, what we plan to spend in the future, we've also sort of been looking at what the balances are on our fiscal year 22.

And in a lot of those categories, there is lots of money that has accrued over prior years.

So we've sort of been trying to talk about it

Holistically and what's realistic and what we could actually accomplish with sort of those total funds available.

I don't know if that's, is that something maybe, okay, I'll get to a question.

So I don't know.

We wouldn't tackle it necessarily by budget, by year, by year, by year.

But what we do do every year, right before a bond issue, which we typically sell bonds in the spring,

is we send out an itemized project list to all the project managers.

And if they all had their cameras on, you would see them rolling their eyes.

But they get a list of an accounting of all of their projects.

What is the budget?

What has been spent to date?

What is the available budget?

And we ask them to provide a status update in a couple of ways.

One is what do you plan to spend between that time period and the end of the calendar year?

And we're asking that because

We sell bonds based on cash needs.

So we're not going to sell the bonds until one, you've either spent the money and we're reimbursing ourselves or two, we know you're going to spend it in a very short period of time.

So we ask for that information.

And we also ask them for a project, a status update on the project generally.

That information is used to size the bond, but it is also shared with management and our budget team.

And last year we also went through an exercise where we provided the authorized but not issued bond list, which was how we came to a conclusion that

you know that's how West Main got on the table to do or not to do, and in addition, I think through conversations and passing you know the proposed budget last year that's also how the parking garage became a just that funding became discussion.

So any of the funding for any project that's been reallocated that is not moving or, you know, has has stalled for some reason is something that we look at.

Okay, thanks.

Another question, and maybe this is putting you on the spot, but I'm curious if you have done any sort of estimating, this is around affordable housing and how much of our budget, which includes capital and operating,

would we put under the category of our affordable housing, i.e.

meeting the goals of our affordable housing plan, which states a funding level of 10 million annually.

Yeah, so I will also defer to Mr. Icafuna on that, but I will say that, yes, such a thing, such an analysis has been done, and I know that a list has been created, and you're right, we are doing other affordable housing things, such things are on that list that are like tax relief,

or the chat program.

And so there are items that are not only capital projects fund and the general fund, but in other funds as well that do sort of hit that affordable housing mark.

And we do have reports on that.

And Alex, is Alex on?

Good evening.

Chrissy, I think you covered everything.

In terms of the categories, we have a consultant right now trying to compile a comprehensive inventory of cities investment in the past 10 years, and then hopefully by the time they finish, we take a look at what they have, review it, and then make sure that the planning commission gets the final report, you know, as well as the city council.

But some of the

Okay, thank you.

Thanks.

So I'm going to start out with revenue sharing.

I noticed there's a

an unfunded item for revenue sharing grant match funds that would

have to be applied for in FY24 and they would come through in 29.

I know in last year's responses, there was some talk about a revenue sharing grant that was awarded that would begin in fiscal year 25.

And so I guess the question is, are there opportunities to expand the amount of funds available for various projects?

on top of the amount that we have in the CIP now, like I see that there's a revenue item for revenue sharing for East High signalization, but that ends in the current fiscal year and there's no other revenue sharing revenue items.

So with revenue sharing and Jack Dawson is on, so he can correct me on whatever I get wrong, but revenue sharing is typically a 50-50 match.

So for every dollar that we're awarded from VDOT, the city has to match

that dollar for dollar.

And so again, it comes down to priorities.

Can we apply for those?

Sure.

But if we are allocating dollars for that match, then we're taking those dollars from something else.

And so at this point, we do have actually on the books from prior CIPs, we have other projects that are in the mix where there's revenue sharing and we've allocated dollars.

Yeah, that's pretty much correct.

We asked for the revenue share of the general fund to match future grants.

when you look at some of them are like East High and all this is these are some some of these are pretty old projects, but all of these and we've changed how we do it over the years, but that's like a single source to match for that project.

But the general revenue share request was to be there so we could put matches up for multimodal improvements or whatever fits the bill, which is why just to speak to sidewalks, you know,

We had approximately $600,000, maybe $650,000 at the time, and we used $500,000 of that as a match for revenue share.

And so is the advantage of that, that it's just quicker, that we don't have to kind of wait

Yes, essentially.

So again, we can't use for a multimodal grant that we got for these sidewalks, we can't use that till at least FY23, I believe, 24.

So we can't do any new sidewalks till that money comes in.

And then we have to obviously have a consultant design these things.

So the first trickle of money that comes in is when we start designing, prioritizing.

And our current revenue share grant is for

for a list of multimodal projects. So the first thing we have to do is go through those, get updated estimates as we go from essentially just a concept and a line on the bike and pen master plan to a real project. So all of those estimates are going to change. So we submitted, I think,

So yes, if we could, there's a time impact to that.

It essentially doubles our money and you never know how this is going to work out because VDOT did end up both delaying it and reducing their match.

Gotcha.

So when we put money into just the regular sidewalk account for future fiscal years or the next fiscal year, would we, like, assuming we don't also fund the match, would we expect to, like, kind of tie those up in revenue sharing projects as well, like, get that extra grant?

That's a good question.

There's sort of overlapping hypotheticals there on this timescale of if we get funding for revenue share, it makes sense to me, and this has been our very general policy that the various city leadership has supported to match to apply for revenue sharing and match those funds.

It

Yeah, so that would probably be our intent without a dedicated revenue share.

Got it.

And so is it then fair to say that like because of that timeline of revenue sharing, you know, we would expect to have that decent sized balance sitting in there because those funds are committed, but we won't get the match till later.

But then if we don't continue backfilling funds each year behind those, we can then get a revenue sharing for the year after that, you know, FY25, 26, and so on.

Very generally, that's correct.

So this year's cycle is SmartScale, which is 100% funding, and that application process starts now.

We're thinking about what projects we want to go for.

And the next year, we will not have any funds to match revenue share at this rate.

Yep, that makes sense to me.

And then I guess...

To that point, my question for Chrissy would be, you know, instead of funding it, well, we're not funding it at all right now, but pretend that we were, going back to the conversation of rearranging funds, if we're taking a bondable project like sidewalks, would it make sense to do it instead of $100,000 a year in each fiscal year?

to front load that so that we could do a revenue sharing request now.

I think, I mean, simply to answer your question, yes.

I think what we're what we're faced with, though, is, again, priorities.

And keep in mind, there's not just a single sidewalk account.

We also have other funds that are addressing other sidewalk issues, you know, such as ADA ramps and curb cuts and those kind of things.

So

Yep, that makes sense.

Okay, so switching gears a little bit to the paving item.

I recall from the responses, we target a pavement condition index of 65, we're at 69, so we're doing a little better than we target.

Prior to COVID, I think we were at a million a year in projected funding for future years for paving, and now we have a million and a half in the current fiscal year, 1.25 in the one in the draft, and then a million and a half after that.

Yes, I get that construction costs have increased, but, you know,

like what would be the impact of reducing that, for example, to $1.4 million a year in the out years, which is, you know, a relatively minor reduction for that, right?

Like six and a half percent, but would be, say, doubling the sidewalk budget if we reallocated it that way.

Is that question clear?

Yeah, so in terms, speaking specific of what would be the impact, I can't answer that because I don't know.

I don't know if there's someone here from staff that can address that specifically.

What I would say to that is that pre-COVID and in prior years, we were

paving closer to $2 million a year, and that has slowly been reduced for several reasons.

One was primarily that there was sort of a pause at one point to go back and look at

sidewalks and curb cuts and to be more deliberate about getting those sort of on all on the same schedule so that if we were moving along we were able to address the sidewalks and the curb cuts before the paving or vice versa. There's also lots of coordination that happens with utilities so as they're doing work and paving is about to happen then we're not going back in and cutting new pavement. Thank you so much for joining us.

So all that to say, could we cut it?

Perhaps.

What is the impact?

I don't know.

Michael Koch- Too specific a question to answer tonight, but I think generally in terms of priority setting, I think there's a question of, like you said, where we turn that dial and whether we're aiming to be slowly increasing our payment condition index, whether we're Michael Koch- Trying to stay even or whether we're allowing ourselves a slight decline as long as we're above our target.

Michael Koch- And to me, at least, I think it makes sense to prioritize that last one to set that as our priority and

roughly stay treading water, maybe allow ourselves a slight drop given how large that budget item is and how much impact shifting it would have percentage wise on increasing it to other items.

So I think that's enough for streets things.

So for affordable housing,

you know i'm looking at the affordable housing plan page 49 which talks about the the division of that 10 million dollar funding per year.

And it calls for 2 million in tax relief, 7 million in direct subsidy and 1 million in administrative funds.

And I think for tax relief for TAF and tax and rent relief for this year we're looking at about 1.82 million

I'm assuming that will go up a little bit next year as assessments continue to rise.

And then in the current fiscal or the draft fiscal year, there's 7.325 in the CIP, which together put us at, you know, 9.15 million or so, plus administrative and staff, plus fiber community fund stuff.

So it seems to me that we're about at the right target for this year, and I think we kind of stay at that through fiscal year 26.

And then that's really where it, you know, drops off a cliff when we hit our bonding capacity and, you know, we can't give any more money to CRHA anymore, or maybe we're hoping that they'll be done with redevelopment by then.

Is that the plan?

And then the question becomes, you know, how do we keep capacity available, given that that's supposed to be 10 million a year for 10 years?

And, you know, given what's in there now, it's really just Friendship Court and serious aid redevelopment and no other projects beyond the 900,000 a year allocated for the CAF, which is going to be split up between a lot of things.

But like, for example, the two projects we're reviewing

tonight really have no hope of getting the funding that they're going to need.

And so I guess the question is, does it make sense to be trying to kind of pare back other programs enough that we can keep some amount of capacity going through 27 or later?

So dialing back spending on

maybe everything in previous years, rather than having that hard cliff?

Or are we thinking that we have cash funding potentially available in 27 and later?

A couple of things I would say to that.

One is, you know, should we think about moving things around?

Again, I think that's more of a policy discussion for both the Commission and Council to mull over.

You know, will we have cash?

Bluntly, as currently proposed, you know, when we're talking about multiple cents of tax increase, I would for one project, the school reconfiguration, I would say that

you're using up your ability largely to raise the revenue, which is for a tax increase, which doesn't leave you a lot of room in the future years.

Now that would be one nice thing if we could offset that with the sales tax, that would alleviate that problem.

But to your point, as what we are currently looking at, that is kind of the reality, both for affordable housing and any other project.

Yep.

And I can't remember if this is somewhere in a report or maybe just a previous session, but

Was there a concern from staff that having used up our capacity could put us in a risky situation in case we needed to do some large project?

Or are there general reasons to keep that room available

beyond just trying to keep things funded steadily in later years?

So currently there is no room.

I mean, what we're showing you and what the projections show, there's no room.

We're using the capacity.

We're buying down all of our debt service reserves.

And we're talking about a tax increase on that.

Our flexibility will be extremely limited.

Is there a policy or a rule of thumb about how much you should keep back?

I don't know that that exists specifically, but certainly I think, you know, for anyone who follows government finances, you know, from budget to budget, year to year, when we come to you

with a CIP plan.

The last two years have been extremely rare in that the plan that was put before you the first year looks very similar to the plan that's being presented to you again.

Typically, they're pretty big changes because

big, new, exciting things come along.

And so we try to address those in the current year.

So if you don't have the flexibility to address those types of things, it is concerning.

But again, if that is our priority or council's priority, then arguably we're meeting the mark.

Okay, and remind me again, because in this draft, obviously it's a five-year draft for Outlook, we hit zero in that final year, but it's years beyond that that we're going to stay at zero, right?

So a couple of things to keep in mind is that, you know, the numbers that we have presented are projections.

Things change a lot.

And some of the projections, there are lots of variables in there, interest rates,

What do assessments look like?

What is a penny versus of real estate worth?

So there are lots of sort of assumptions that have been built into the 10 cents we've talked about, to the bond capacity.

As one of those numbers change, it all shifts, right?

So there's not a hard answer that I could give you.

What I could say is that current projections are such that

three years, roughly, we would be exceeding, so 27, 28, and 29, we would be exceeding our 10% policy in one scenario.

In a different scenario, we are at least exceeding our target

of nine, and we will be burning up all of our reserves for debt service.

So what happens now is the way that we're able to manage the CIP is we manage our projects and our bond issues to a level that we can afford.

So in other words, if we were not at our maximum capacity,

and, you know, a sidewalk project for $2 million came up.

We would evaluate that project and say, well, we can get it in the CIP this year because we can afford it under our current debt service or we can eke that up a couple hundred thousand dollars.

And largely, if you notice from our budgeting for our debt service, we budget an amount.

A lot of times what's coming out of the general fund is sort of a more level annual contribution, and we're able to do that because we have a debt service fund balance that can buy down some of those increases.

But under the current scenario, we're using up all that debt service reserve.

We're also having to increase the general fund transfer to be able to pay the new debt because we're adding on $75 million all at once.

Thank you.

Yeah, thanks.

I guess in the discussion, the one thing, one question I always like to think back, you know, to where we've been before in the city.

And do you, can you recollect a time where we've had that zero debt capacity?

Never in my time.

And I'm working on my 22nd year.

So again, keep in mind that when we talk about debt capacity, there is a state allowed level, which is the state says

You can issue up to 10% of your assessed value, which is millions of dollars.

And then there's our policy, which says we're not going to issue more debt that would exceed a target of nine or 10% debt service limit from our general fund.

So

We have never been at that capacity.

Typically, our general fund debt has ranged in the $40 to $50 million area.

We knew that the CIP was ramping up.

We're now closer to the $80 million.

and that's total.

So our oldest debt, it goes back to 2012 and our total outstanding debt is roughly $80 million.

And so when you look at that over a long period of time and then you talk about one debt issuance of $75 million, you've doubled essentially all in one swoop.

Thank you.

Yeah, that was helpful.

Thanks.

I have one question myself.

We don't really talk about reserve in the capital improvement plan, but it does seem important.

So reserve typically means that we're setting aside money so that we can draw down from that in an emergency situation.

Is that what you mean by reserve?

Yes.

Okay.

So we do have what we call a contingency account.

and that is typically funded by policy.

What happens is every year at year-end our finance director comes to council, presents the year-end results, and anything that is what we call a surplus or over and above that amount goes to the CIP contingency.

And so we do have dollars that are there that can be drawn down

for these types of things.

It's not a ton at this point, but one thing that has happened and that will be happening is that in 2021, you may recall that due to COVID, we didn't fund any cash in CIP.

We deferred everything.

and we held that in the general fund as a COVID reserve.

Thank you.

Questions from council.

No, my questions actually were answered by staff earlier today.

Thank you.

I guess the questions that I have, I'm trying to understand as I look at the document that appears in pages 70, 71, 72, 73, 74 of the packet, in that area where it's sort of going account by account, expenditure summary, where

It's listed that there's a balance for the lump sum.

I'll just take the first one.

Lump sum to school is a balance for the lump sum to schools account of $3 million.

And we've been giving them $1.2 million in this lump sum to schools.

I've never understood why we end up running a positive balance in some of those accounts when we know that there are needs in those areas.

Why are those amounts not being spent if not in the same year they're appropriated?

So Mike and Crystal both are on and they may want to embellish my response a little bit.

But a couple of things to keep in mind, the balance that's included there is truly a snapshot as of that moment.

So it does not take into account any projects that perhaps are planned or in the works or have been allocated and just not either formally gone through a bid process to generate a PO

or an expense.

And then further, sometimes the projects that are being contemplated are large projects, which takes more than a year or two of funding to get to that total to pay those out.

Well, one example would be

were suggesting another $200,000 for this coming year and three years beyond that for the SIA immediate implementation.

And the balance in that account is over a million dollars and it has been, as far as I can tell, over a million dollars for quite a while.

I think we've been spending some of that money.

We did a form-based code that came from that.

We have a Polar branch bridge, pedestrian bridge.

It's currently being finalized for construction.

And there are several other projects within the SIA that could consume that balance.

For instance, there is an Elliott Streetscape project, which is currently under design.

It's about 95% complete.

And then, of course, you have the Bear Mountain Bridge.

Although it is fully funded, there is always the tendency for some kind of

cost run over or some kind of a spillover financially need.

And that could be a source of funding for that particular need.

And then, of course, there is a PHA, part of the Friendship Court project includes

infrastructure improvement because they have to break up that neighborhood and then integrate that into the city grid.

And they may have a cost overrun.

And then if they do, that SIA fund designated for implementation could be a source for the city to provide

funding for that overage.

And then CRHA also has a massive redevelopment project, some of which includes infrastructure.

I look at this and I see literally at least $10 or $15 million worth of fund balances for various projects to which we are allocating more money.

And we're allocating more money this year than the, like I'll use the SIA as an example, allocating $200,000 at a time when there's already $1.2 million in that

in that account.

And unfortunately, we don't have, maybe it exists someplace, but it's certainly not any place handy.

We don't know when there is a fund balance there that isn't likely to be spent.

We don't know what the plan is.

I assume somebody has a plan, but it's not been revealed to us.

So I look at just the next item, small area plans, we're putting another $100,000 in.

The balance for the project is $496,000.

I'm not aware other than the Cherry Avenue small area plan.

I don't know what's coming next for that money.

And so I wonder if we're scrounging around looking for money here and there to, for example, put to a new sidewalk and we're putting another $100,000 into small area plans when we haven't been spending money out of that account.

already and we've got five times that amount already in the account.

I asked myself these same questions last year and I didn't feel that I completely understood the reasoning then as to why we end up putting more money into accounts and building up money in accounts like that.

I mean, I understand some of the SIA stuff and maybe that's just an information issue where we're just not being made aware of

of what the projects are, but I keep looking at these things and seeing places where we're putting money apparently into accounts to not be spent until the next time around.

It's not directed specifically at you, Alex, but just as a general proposition, I look at sidewalks, same issue.

and we sidewalk repair improvements $500,000 and the balance is already $500,000 and that may just be the last year's allocation or this current fiscal year's allocation, but we also see other funds available for another basically $1.4 million and I just find myself looking at these accounts where we've been putting the money in on a regular basis

and building up these balances.

And, you know, I think those are good, legitimate questions.

One thing to keep in mind, too, is that in 21 and in 20, some of the, not some, but the direction was please pause the CIP.

expenses because we don't know what the impacts are going to be.

We need to maintain what we need for operations, et cetera, et cetera.

And so many projects were put on hold.

And in ramping those back up, that takes a little bit of time.

Once that sort of that pause was released, it takes a little bit of time to ramp that up.

And so that is some of the balance issue.

But to your point,

Are there areas where we could ask those questions and do that research and get that information for someone to decide maybe you don't want to put more money in?

Absolutely.

I have specific questions about specific funds like that that I don't need to take up everybody's time with right now.

And maybe, Chris, I can just sit down and talk with you at some point and have you explain to me why we're doing it.

I would look at, one, the school's small capital improvements, putting another $200,000 into it, and the balance is $3 million.

I'm happy to speak to both the school's small cap and large cap funds because I manage both of those programs.

And I think there are some elements of what Chrissy said that certainly play into it.

But other things that affect our ability to spend down those funds are large projects that come through.

So...

you know we we often have large things that come through that are the priority of the of the moment, but the same folks who are trying to spend those large and small cap dollars are the ones who manage the projects that are the hot items of the moment.

I don't think that you know we would not be happy to see those funds go away because

Those expenditures are needed and all of those funds are programmed and planned five years into the future.

And we're happy to share those plans at any time.

But at the same time, you know, every year our division asks for more FTEs to help with that workload and

If you were giving $200,000 a year to small capital improvements and there's $3 million in the account, I have a hard time understanding why there's $3 million worth of small capital improvements that haven't been done yet.

But anyway, that's something we can talk about some other time.

I also, on that same point, by the way, as I recall last year, I noticed that in the authorized but not issued account, there was like $1.7 million from, there's a large sum of money for a small, for a school capital projects from 2017 that had been authorized but not spent yet.

I just, I don't understand the scheme.

I'll have to

see if somebody can explain it to me some other time when I'm not taking up everybody else's time.

Thank you.

Yeah, I have two related questions.

I suspect I know the answers, but we'll ask anyway.

One is what we're discussing tonight, does that

Is it accurate that that does not contemplate at all the costs that will be coming from one, permanent fire department staff members that were paid for with one-time stimulus money from the federal government, two, recurring school expenditures that were made with one-time funding sources from the federal government, three, our wage and compensation study which would likely require wage increases across the entire city for employees, four, any

So yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.

This does not contemplate any of those things.

All of the things that you mentioned are operating budget things.

And so to go back to the PowerPoint, if you recall the piece of the pie and how it was divided up, all of those things are then competing with sort of the debt service piece of the pie and the cash contribution that goes to the capital projects fund.

They do because they impact, you know, if we decide to direct more of a tax increase, for example, to debt service, then those dollars related to the tax increase aren't available to help offset other things in the operating budget.

So a couple of those things we know last year with the 20 or this year, I'm sorry, with the 22 budget, we do know that the schools funded $4.5 million of their operating increase with one-time federal dollars.

So that's $4.5 million.

The addition of the additional firefighters with the SAFER grant, I believe, is either 1.8 or 1.9 million that will be coming online.

I believe that starts in March of 2023.

So there'll be three months of impact on that in the 2023 budget.

And then the full freight will be coming online in FY24.

I know those two.

In terms of the federal dollars that the city has allocated for ongoing expenses, I'm not sure if our finance director Chris Cullinan is on.

He's managing that.

I will say, though, that for the most part in allocating those dollars, we have been conscious about not trying not to allocate those to necessarily ongoing expenses, but to address

You know, immediate COVID needs and one-time types of things.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, and we are just in, we're early in the stages of the general fund.

So we have received the budget.

So I don't have a tally for you on what the new departmental requests are.

I do know for the comp study there from the, I'm going to get the years confused, but from a year prior year end, we allocated one and a quarter million dollars that is in the CIP.

Thank you.

That's all the questions I have for now.

And just one final comment I would make for all of us is I definitely want to highlight how important I think some of those departmental requests are because I think we've deferred them for several years, but I think they are intimately and directly connected to our ability to execute our climate action planning process, affordable housing plan, managed sidewalk and bike and pedestrian infrastructure projects and so many other things.

But that's all I have for now.

and thank you.

I believe we are ready for discussion.

That's an excellent idea.

Thank you, Chair.

And at this time, if you would like to address the Planning Commission, please click your raise hand icon.

If you're joining us by phone, press star nine, and you'll have three minutes for comment.

Please state your name and address.

And first up, it looks like we have a caller.

You're on with the Planning Commission.

You'll have to unmute.

Peter Krebs, Great, thank you.

I'm Peter Krebs, Charlottesville resident, speaking on behalf of the Piedmont Environmental Council.

Peter Krebs, I have the honor of being part of the steering committee for the recently unanimously approved conferences plan.

The comp plan is appealing because it balances density and improvements to make the city livable and ecologically sustainable.

That includes safe places to walk and bike and everyday access to nature.

The plan mentions walking and biking over 150 times.

There are more than 50 references to parks and the word tree appears 130 times.

Here's a typical line.

The city will place an emphasis on enhancing networks

and safety for walking, riding bicycles, and public transportation.

The plan simply can't succeed without robust funding for connectivity and green infrastructure.

Yet the current CIP dramatically reduces funding for new sidewalks, bike lanes, and other infrastructure that make this place livable.

This was part of a downward trend that began a few years ago, and it got worse during the pandemic.

At this point, the proposed funding can only be described as minimal.

Time to reverse that.

Here are some ways we can do so.

First, allocate the staff's full request of $600K for new sidewalks, not the current zero.

Fund the full staff request of $400K for bicycle infrastructure.

Three, increase parks lump sum and direct some of that to

trails and also to canopy restoration.

We're losing tree canopy at an alarming rate.

And four have already pulled up funding to match federal and state monies just as Albemarle County does.

Our recent experience with the scribbling sidewalks show that infrastructure is both necessary and expensive.

You're going to see that again with the two projects tonight as well, I might add.

The amounts that I've listed are not sufficient, but they're a great start and they can get us going for next year.

In 2022, I'd like for you to work with the new public works director and hopefully a new transportation planner that will fill in for Amanda Ponzi's departure to get underway a significant section of the priority list.

That is also something the comp plan calls for.

The city's budget is the first real opportunity to decide whether we're serious about the comprehensive plan's focus on connectivity and livability.

I think we are.

And next, please.

And next up, we have Matthew Gilligan.

Matthew, you are on with the Planning Commission.

Hello, Planning Commission.

Thank you for your time.

We thank you once again for your ongoing work and dedication to Charlottesville.

I'm speaking tonight on behalf of Livable Seaville.

The unanimous approval of the comprehensive plan was a historic moment for our city, and it provides excellent guidance for prioritizing capital projects.

While the city's current proposed capital improvement program is an improvement compared to previous years, we believe several changes will help bring our budget in line with the priorities

that the new comprehensive plan lays out.

The comprehensive plan's first strategy to address affordable housing is to dedicate $10 million in average annual spending to fund affordable housing programs.

With respect to transportation, the community vision statement of the comprehensive plan states the city will expand transportation options for walking, bicycling, and transit while efficiently managing and serving vehicular travel.

We are asking for several changes to the capital improvement program budget.

We strongly recommend funding the Charlottesville affordable housing fund with at least $3 million a year.

Simply put, $900,000 is not enough to meet the need.

Increased funding will help hundreds of local families maintain or secure affordable housing.

Projects such as Premier Circle and the MACA redevelopment will be able to come to fruition as a result of a robust affordable housing fund.

Second, remove funding for the court's parking agreement.

It is environmental and economic malfeasance to spend $4.3 million on additional parking infrastructure when current and historic parking demand rarely max out supply.

Three, increase funding for new sidewalks, sidewalk repairs, safe routes to school, and citywide ADA improvements.

Accessible and complete sidewalks are essential to making Charlottesville a safe and walkable city.

The FY19 Capital Improvement Program allocated 1.9 million over five years for sidewalks.

The current one has 300,000 over five years.

Additional funds are not the only requirement for better sidewalk infrastructure, but they certainly are necessary.

Four, increased funding for bicycle infrastructure.

The comprehensive plan repeatedly states the need to improve bikeability of Charlottesville, but the current proposed $602,000 over the next five years will not result in significant improvements.

Five, fully fund the tree commission's request for forest health improvement and tree planning.

The city's tree canopy has diminished significantly over the last 15 years.

This is a relatively low-cost way to fight climate change and improve quality of life.

And six, recommend creation of a new line item for funding for improvements to bus stops.

One of the Charlottesville Climate Collaborative's recommendations to improve our transit system is to increase safety at bus stops by ensuring they are well lit, clean, and provide protection against weather.

The city needs to be funding these intentionally.

Thank you for your time.

Next, please.

Next up, we have Vicki Bravo, followed by Josh Karp.

Vicki, you're on with the Planning Commission.

Good evening.

My name is Vicki Bravo, and I'm with IMPACT, our interfaith direct action organization of 27 faith congregations.

In our community, before the pandemic, over 3,780 families in our city

or one paycheck away from homelessness because they pay more than half their income for housing.

That's enough families to fill the Ridge Street and Belmont neighborhoods.

Hardworking people should be able to afford housing and still have money for groceries and other necessities.

Everyone should have a safe, stable place to call home, no matter how much money we have.

We already have a proven solution.

The Charlottesville Affordable Housing Fund, or the CAF.

How do we know it works?

Over 1,100 affordable homes have been built, rehabbed, or preserved.

That's about 80 homes a year since 2007.

Places like Carlton Views, The Crossings, and numerous Habitat for Humanity homes would not be here if it weren't for the CAF.

And there are upcoming affordable housing projects in motion

like at MACA and Park Street Christian Church that we'll discuss tonight that will be counting on the city's support to make them possible.

So to the Planning Commission and City Council, we call on you to allocate $3 million annually to the CAF for the next five years.

And we call on City Council to find dedicated income streams to make that goal possible every year.

The new land use map and affordable housing plan don't mean a thing if we can't fund our goals.

We chose the figure of $3 million because $3 million of CAF funds can leverage enough funds from other sources to build 100 units.

It's doable and it can make a real difference.

So again, we call on the Planning Commission and City Council

to set an annual goal of at least $3 million and to find dedicated income streams for the CAF.

Like air to breathe and food to eat, safe shelter is a basic human need.

And thank you.

Next, please.

Next up, we have Josh Karp, followed by Brad S. Josh, you're on with the Planning Commission.

Hey, can you all hear me?

Okay, well, thanks for the chance to comment.

I think other commenters and I agree, so I'll try and skip some repetitive parts, but thanks to previous commenters too.

So yeah, so we have a comp plan now.

Thank you all so much for passing it.

It's really good.

I wanted to read to you a few points of your own work, which you know better than I do, but that I think are very relevant to this discussion tonight.

This is mostly from the chapter on interpretation.

So we are now supposed to build, because we don't have, a continuous, connected, well-maintained network of sidewalks, bike facilities, and trails to support increased walking, biking, and transit use.

We are supposed to create safe walking and biking routes to every public school in the city.

We are supposed to consistently apply universal design features, including ADA standards, citywide.

This is all really good.

Again, thank you for writing this stuff down.

But I'm having a hard time reading this budget and comparing it to the comp plan that you all passed.

As previous commenters have said, the plan calls for more sidewalks.

And this point I'll repeat.

Relative to the budget from a few years ago, we've gone from $2 million in new sidewalks over five years to $300,000.

That's a huge cut.

And our sidewalks have not gotten magically better in the past two or three years.

That's a massive cut.

There's a smaller but still pretty galling cut to bike infrastructure.

The plan asks for, in fact, it requires safe routes to each school, but we're denying a pretty well-matched funding request to the safe routes program.

The plan calls for increased ADA access, but we're denying a funding request for that as well.

This is a lot of cuts, but I think what's interesting is to think about what's not being cut.

So there's still money for downtown parking, which we don't seem to need and which council does not seem to want to pay for, which I agree.

There's, as we've talked about earlier tonight, basically a maintained or even increased funding for road milling and paving.

And I did not see road milling and paving in the comp plan.

Let me see.

There is, as Councillor Snook has brought up, funding for the SI implementation.

I have no idea what that money is for.

I think there are better things to talk about in this plan.

So what I'm trying to say is I don't think this budget really fits with the comp plan that you all have worked on.

I think if we're serious about the plan, we'll need to cut spending on car infrastructure and reallocate funds to walking cycle and transit.

More concretely, I hope that we can spend zero dollars on downtown parking aside for maintenance and reduce or defer funding for car infrastructure like road milling and look into funding that we aren't really spending like the SIA item.

And I think we should allocate the funding in ways that align with the comp plan into sidewalks, biking, and public transit.

And very briefly, the point about

Well, we can not fund accounts that already have money in them.

I just hope that makes a lot of sense.

We need sidewalks.

If we have a balance in the account, spend the balance down and then put more into the account because we are very far behind in our sidewalk backlog.

Anyway, thanks for consideration and your time.

Next up, we have Brad S. followed by Chris Meyer.

Brad, you're on with the Planning Commission.

Yes.

Can you hear me all right?

Great, thanks.

Good evening.

My name is Brad Slocum.

I'm currently a resident of Stanton, though I lived in Charlottesville for most of the last 10 years.

And I also still commute each weekday into downtown Charlottesville.

And three or four days out of the week, I take the Afton Express public transit bus to the Amtrak and downtown transit stations.

I'd like to speak to the current fiscal year allocation of approximately $1.3 million for the contractual obligations to Albemarle County related to parking.

I encourage the commission, city staff, and council to examine any and all ways to refine and ultimately reduce the budgeted amount and reallocate the remainder towards currently unfunded items like the green infrastructure opportunities and the 29 North Park and Ride Hub.

Given the urgent reality of climate change and the significant contribution of driving and parking to the Charlottesville Albemarle area's total global warming emissions, the planning commission and county must work together to prioritize CIP allocations that reduce dependency on single driver and parking dependent modes of transportation.

My park and ride experience from over the mountain has been great and funding for similar initiatives, greener infrastructure and more walkability would be visible improvements that residents and commuters could see improve their lives daily.

And with my remaining time, I'd also like to congratulate CAT on their receipt of significant grant funding for zero fare service, which demonstrates another great way to prioritize lower emission modes of transit.

Thank you.

Next, please.

Next, we have Chris Meyer, followed by Josh Cran.

Chris, you're on with the Planning Commission.

You have three minutes.

So it looks like Chris is using an older version of Zoom, and we would have to promote Chris to panelist.

I think so.

Appreciate the panelists.

Chris Meyer, 124.

I will jump off panelists.

124, Oklahoma Court.

I want to thank the counselors, commissioners, and city staff for the efforts they've been making in regards to developing CIP and improving this community.

I'll start with my appreciation for the council prioritizing school funding and upgrading our school facilities in recent budgets in the CIP.

Going back more than a couple of years ago, though, school infrastructure funding was not prioritized.

which left the city's school system with a huge deficit in building modernization that you all have inherited.

I'll note that while school modernization was not being prioritized, just one local private school, STAB, between 2006 and 2019 raised $90 million.

While not exactly an apples to apples comparison, when I compared the city's 2007 to 2020 CIP budgets for school-related allocations, I was only able to allocate, calculate, sorry, $34.8 million

allocated to school investments.

90 million raised by a private school versus 35 million in the nearly the same time period by the city.

The bigger point, I believe, is that there is plenty of money in this community that is supporting education, just not always the public system.

That then leads me to tax policy and specifically the real estate tax of property tax.

While I'm happy to hear we could potentially have a sales tax increase to support school funding,

A sales tax is regressive compared to our local property tax, which utilizes the Charlottesville housing affordability program to make it more progressive Charlottesville's current property tax rate is well below the 2019 state median for cities at $1.09 per $100 of value.

I hear all too frequently folks say don't raise taxes because it will hurt low income people.

Taxes do impact low income households, but what happens if we don't raise taxes?

The alternative is that low income people don't get the same opportunities as middle high income folks because the city can't provide basic services.

School reconfiguration being an example.

School buildings crumble, operational budgets are low and impact service provision offerings, et cetera.

Low income folks only have the public school system as an option for where to send their schools, for when they send their children to schools.

Middle high income folks, they can send their children to the private schools.

Opportunity is then not equal.

So we need to think carefully about taxing, raising revenue, but low-income residents are also negatively impacted when we do not raise revenue, say, from property taxes.

I encourage the Council and Planning Commission to think about strongly raising as much revenue as possible to fully fund all the infrastructure and capital improvements we need to make our city equitable for all.

Thank you.

Excuse me.

And next up, we have Josh Cran followed by Crystal Passmore.

Josh, you're on with the Planning Commission.

Hey, y'all.

Thanks for taking my call.

I'm Josh Cron.

I live on North Avenue in the city.

And I wrote down a whole bunch of nuts about things that I wanted to talk about, but I really am just going to be mostly dittoing what other callers have said.

Definitely co-sign the letter from Livable Seaville.

Ditto what Peter Krabs and Josh Karp said about walkable

bikeable transit.

I guess a couple of notes that I wrote down from the meeting that I just wanna highlight.

One was a slide that had funding coming from the Infrastructure Act, the federal funding.

And there was a list item on there that said, improve healthy, sustainable transportation.

To me, that means sidewalks, that means bike lanes and protected bike lanes, and that means improved buses for Charlottesville.

So what can we do?

What kind of funding are we going to expect?

And what can we dream up to do with it?

The other thing that stuck with me was I think Chrissy Hamill mentioned that in past years we've been spending around $2 million a year on paving.

So my reaction to that is, well, why aren't we also spending $2 million on sidewalks?

Why are pedestrians second-class people?

Why are bicyclists

second class because we're certainly spending more on car infrastructure just on that small amount of repaving money, which is admittedly not very much.

And then the last thing is, as we all know, the city has made significant goals to reduce climate emissions.

in the near future.

And we can't do this without improving walkability.

And that starts with connected sidewalks on every street within the city limits.

It's funny to say that when we're talking about five or 10% here or there from an extremely small budget.

But I think we need to just

do it.

The comprehensive plan that was passed a few weeks ago was a banger, and now we need to act on it, make it happen.

Thank you for your time.

And thank you.

And next up, we have Crystal Passmore, followed by Katherine Slaughter.

Crystal, you're on with the Planning Commission.

Hello, my name is Crystal Passmore and I live on Forest Ridge Road and I concur with everything Josh Krohn just said.

I would like to advocate for money to be put towards biking and pedestrian infrastructure and then to actually spend that money on biking and pedestrian infrastructure as a person who's pushed a stroller both for recreation but also as a way to get my child to and from daycare on my way to work.

I know that many of our sidewalks are both woefully inadequate.

I also know that the city does not prioritize fixing our sidewalks, and this is reflected in the current CIP.

and the spending on sidewalks from previous years.

Also as a person who would like a future for her child, I would like it if it was easier for myself and others to bike instead of to drive in the city.

So we need to put more money into getting people out of cars as opposed to spending money to keep people driving.

We need to make biking in this town easier and safer.

We need to allocate money towards protected bike lanes

and then actually spend that money.

We have a large line item for transportation, as Josh Cron mentioned.

When we allocate that money, we need to not automatically give it all towards paving roads, which is the most expensive mode of transportation and the least accessible.

We instead need to split that budget more equally across biking and sidewalks.

These are modes of transportation and not just for recreation,

which is how the city seems to treat them.

Please spend the money we have accumulated and allocate more money away from roads and towards other more affordable modes of transportation.

And next, please.

Next up, we have Katherine Slaughter followed by Gregory Weaver.

Thank you.

I'm Kay Slaughter.

I live on Short 18th Street in the Woolen Mills.

And I know that you have many large projects, as we've heard tonight, and limited funds.

However, I ask that you consider a small allocation to refurbish

the Drury B. Brown Memorial Bridge, which memorializes 37 local citizens who crossed racial and economic bridges to make Charlottesville a more equitable community.

A city monument to local people, the bridge needs a few simple improvements to make it more visible and to properly commemorate its honorees.

Five years ago, the Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials, and Public Spaces unanimously recommended that the city enhance the visibility and appearance of the bridge.

And my comments also have been endorsed by many of my former colleagues on City Council.

Specifically, we request appropriate and visible signs announcing the bridge on its east and west ends and this signage should draw the eye of drivers, pedestrians and cyclists.

Second, the city through its consultant Roadside Hartwell had developed design plans to replace broken and missing plaques and we believe that these should move forward.

Finally, banners on the bridge's light post could feature images of the bridge builders, which would make this memorial more visible and get people really to know something more about these individuals.

These relatively inexpensive banners could rotate through the year so that all images would be shown over time.

We ask that you request staff to price out these items and that you put it in your capital improvement plan

and at the time of refurbishment, that a citizens advisory group be established so we can truly celebrate these local folks.

For a small amount of investment, you can celebrate the heroes of Charlottesville's civil rights era.

Thank you.

Next, please.

Next, we have Gregory Weaver, followed by Claire Denton Spaulding.

Gregory, you're on the Planning Commission.

Hi, can you all hear me?

Great.

Hi, Planning Commission.

My name is Greg Weaver.

I live in Frye Spring.

Tonight, I want to urge you all in council to commit to reallocating the money earmarked for the parking garage towards projects that will get cars off the road.

Not only would doing so strengthen the strides we are making via the comprehensive plan, but if done in the right way, this reallocation could have a significant impact or significant impact on our effect on significant effect on our climate impact.

Remember that Council committed to reducing its emissions by 45% by 2030 and becoming carbon neutral by 2050.

These are fine goals, but it is my opinion that we should be thinking much more radically.

2050 should be the absolute latest.

We should become carbon neutral.

That said, the projection that we won't have new bond funding for a few years starting in 2027 is alarming.

The problem is that we are on the planet's time.

Climate change isn't waiting for us.

We need to have a long-term vision towards a city that cuts its dependence on cars that we are willing to start acting on right now.

That is, we need to pour as much money into projects that will mitigate our contribution to global warming, thereby also mitigating the effects of climate change on our city.

That means focusing on mass transit as well as pedestrian and cycling infrastructure.

We need to transform the way we get around in the city and we need to do it in a way that centers racial, economic, and environmental justice.

Let's allocate those parking garage funds and think about reallocating other funds, like perhaps replacing the police's radios, to projects that will get people on the bus, on their bikes, and out on great new sidewalks.

Buswise, in accordance with C3's recommendations, I'd love for stops to be transformed to improve safety.

Doing so is one of the fastest and least expensive ways to make the largest potential impact on ridership.

committing to creating a light item for this now would be a win, even if you need more information as to a more exact dollar amount down the road.

I'm also interested in the unfunded park and ride.

I haven't been able to find much detail about it, but it seems like a missed opportunity to forego $3.6 million in funding for a $150,000 match.

Further, I don't know if this is valid or not, but I'm concerned that if we don't act on this soon, the Yunkin administration is going to cut support for mass transit initiatives and we'll lose out.

Of course, the park and ride has to be done right.

Hypothetically, we could put a park and ride near the airport and create a bus lane up and down 29 to simultaneously make it harder to drive single family vehicles on 29 while making it easier and faster for commuters to come into the city and go to and from the airport by bus and other destinations along 29.

To me, that'd be a solid way to reduce emissions and also economically help our neighbors that have been pushed out of the city due to affordability.

If the current plan does something similar, let's go for it.

To reiterate, in short, please take significant measures in the now that correspond to long-term efforts to do what we need to do to transform the city in the face of climate change, completely defund the parking garage, fund mass transit, pedestrian, and cycling infrastructure.

Thank you.

Next, please.

Next up, we have Claire Denton-Spalding, followed by Peggy Baniers.

Claire, you're on with the Planning Commission.

Hello.

Can you all hear me?

Great.

Okay, awesome.

Great.

I haven't done this before.

So, hello.

Thank you all for taking public comment today.

I live right downtown in Charlottesville by the Amtrak station on 7th Street.

So my priority in attending this meeting today is really to target the city's climate goals and to use the work you all are doing to target those goals, especially the emissions goals for 2030, given that we have one shot at funding some of these activities in the near term due to the decrease in funding from the bond issue.

So I encourage you all to reevaluate some of these priorities.

So there are quite a few unfunded investments and infrastructure like biking and walking, and there are opportunities to make positive change while we still have the money and flexibility.

So I'd like to advocate for a few things that you mentioned and are in the unfunded section or that you've mentioned today.

So I first wanted to support allocating funds to the CAT to get that match that you are mentioning earlier today.

Public transportation and free or affordable transportation really does make Charlottesville accessible.

And then I'd like to second the or third the thought for the funding the park and ride.

So this is the unfunded section with the

$150,000 in RN to get that $3.6 million match from the states and fed.

And again, I love the recently suggested idea to have something at the airport.

And then finally, I'd like to support the idea of bicycle infrastructure.

So I'm from the Midwest.

I'm from Chicago, which has terrifying bike culture.

And I can't be alone in finding the biking in Charlottesville to be a terrifying experience.

And so I would love to you all to continue to support and to support even more strongly focusing and improving bike transportation and because it would really improve the experience of living in Charlottesville for many of its residents.

And I'd like to both vote voice support for funding these essential priorities by reallocating funding focused on cars like the multimillion that's still in the budget for the parking structure.

Next, we have Peggy Vaniers followed by Patricia Johnson.

Peggy, you're on with the Planning Commission.

I'm Peggy Van Yeres.

I've lived in Charlottesville for way too long.

Although I'm on the Tree Commission, I'm speaking tonight as a representative from a new project that the Tree Commission has just started, which is very exciting, and we call it Relief Seville.

Now, Relief is spelled R-E-L-E-A-F.

and we are here tonight to support the Tree Commission CIP request.

We support the $100,000 for new tree planting, particularly as Jody has told you how rapidly our tree canopy is declining.

Since the rate of decline has doubled in the last four years as compared to the prior 10, we can project that our tree canopy now in 2021 is under

40%.

That's a bare minimum for a healthy city.

We also support the $105,000 for removal of ash trees.

We know that one of the best ways to combat climate change is to protect our existing large shade trees.

So if you don't fund this request, our tree preservation budget could be actually cut in half.

We at Relief and the Tree Commission believe that trees save lives.

Therefore, Relief's mission is to protect our low canopy neighborhoods, health and well-being from the rising heat of climate change.

This is how we'll do it.

We're going to plant trees, preserve trees, and educate kids and families about the importance of trees in nature.

First, we're focusing on the 10th and Page neighborhood, which has the lowest tree canopy in the city, about 18%.

This is a dire situation.

That's resulting in more heat and polluted related illnesses and higher energy costs.

We know from three C's that the families in 10th and Page pay more than 10% for their energy costs.

The average across the city is 2%.

As far as education, we just gave a presentation to all the third and fourth graders at Venable talking about how important trees are.

I was more nervous about presenting to them than I am to you.

So Relief is a partnership between the Tree Commission, the Tree Stewards, the Virginia Chapter, the Nature Conservancy, the City of Promise, the City Schools.

represented by James Bryant on the school board, who's also been a lifelong resident of Tenth and Page.

But we want you to be our partners too.

We will plant and preserve trees on private property where you can't.

If you fund the tree commission's request, the extra $25,000, which equals about 50 more trees, we will match that number on private property.

So let's join together in making our neighborhoods healthier.

And next, please.

Next, we have Patricia Johnson, followed by Brian Menard.

Patricia, you're on with the Planning Commission.

Hi, can you hear me?

Actually, I had signed up for the MACA hearing.

You can come back later.

Thank you so much.

Brian, you're on with the Planning Commission.

You have three minutes.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Yes.

Good evening.

Thank you to the Planning Commission for its hard work on this.

My name is Brian Menard.

I'm the Chair of the Street Commission.

I'm at 5228th Street Northeast.

In the interest of time, I will just say that I endorse unreservedly everything that Peggy Van Yerres just said to you.

But I do want to just stress four points.

And I like to think of these as loss, which Jody Alejandro referred to earlier and others have.

Loss in terms of tree canopy, the need to invest in green infrastructure, think of trees as important infrastructure as the rest of our infrastructure.

and also hazard liability.

On loss, Jody pointed out, and Peggy has as well, the accelerating decline between 2004 and 2018.

But really today, what we're talking about is about 650 to 700 acres of canopy that have been lost in that period of time.

That is out of a total of 7,700 acres within city boundary.

Again, this is an accelerating loss and it's an unsustainable loss.

One of the reasons for this is investment.

We need to invest in planting trees.

We have a goal to plant 200 trees a year.

We have not been doing that.

In fact, we've actually been losing ground because we have to replace trees for any number of reasons during the year.

This last fiscal year, we planted 23 trees total.

The $75,000 that we have currently will allow us to plant about 160 trees, although we don't know that until we get the final quotes in because of the cost, inflationary cost of trees and also contractor services.

So if we stay at $75,000 for the next fiscal year in the CIP, we're looking at planting considerably less than 150, 160 trees.

Again, we need to invest in green infrastructure.

It is important.

It is important for public health, for sustainability, for stormwater management, as well as for environmental justice and equity.

Lastly, hazard and liability.

While the commission appreciates the fact that $50,000 has been appropriated for the emerald ash borer removal and for treating our primary trees, nonetheless, that is less than half of what had been requested for a five-year project that will be required to remove about 300 trees.

And I noticed that in the CIP draft, it's listed as a hazard and liability, which it is.

It's a hazard and liability to property and person.

But I'd ask the Council and also the Commission to consider that not funding our green infrastructure is an even bigger hazard and liability to the public safety, to public health,

and to the environment that we're trying to preserve and protect in this city.

So I ask you to look back at our request of the Tree Commission and Parks and Rec and do everything you can to fully fund them.

Thank you.

Next, please.

And next up, we have Robin Haynes.

Robin, you're on with the Planning Commission.

Hello.

Can you hear me?

Hi, I'm Robin Haynes.

I'm with the Charlottesville area tree stewards and I want to echo what Brian and Peggy have been saying.

We are just so concerned that the city hasn't been able to give what's needed for the planting of city trees that you really need.

There's so much construction that you are planning on.

so much density, and the trees are needed for, you know, stormwater issues, clean air, so many reasons.

And it just keeps being cut and cut, and the quality of life in the city is going to tumble.

So I really ask you to hear us.

And thank you.

Thank you very much.

I believe this public hearing is closed.

Moving to discussion.

Ms.

Sure.

So I guess one of my questions, a lot of things we've heard from not only my fellow commissioners, but also city residents is about the unused funds in the parking deck or for the parking deck.

No, it was a question that could turn into a motion.

Kind of sort of or just some type of survey.

I don't know.

I guess for me, I just feel like kind of we already have plenty of parking downtown that is not being used to as fullest capacity as it is.

And being that we have, we definitely need to update our sidewalks and infrastructure.

One of the

projects that I'm thinking mostly about when thinking about this is that one that we just passed that is great for affordable housing.

All of the key components are in the project, but you can't get the project done without doing the sidewalk infrastructure.

Other thoughts on that?

Sure, I fully agree.

I think there's four and something million dollars, 1.3 million we're allocating in 2023 and the rest is already in a bucket of money waiting to be used for this.

And that could, money could go to fully fund the trees request and the pike pedestrian unfunded request and the sidewalk request.

And we'd have leftover money in the bucket to

fund our affordable housing gap that we have.

It just seems, I mean, I completely agree with doing that.

And I'd even go further and say, since, I mean, things come up with the CIP all the time, projects come up that we fund as the need arises.

Why are we saving all this money when it could go to good use now and provide housing and trees?

And then if we need to spend $100,000 or $200,000 or whatever the amount is to satisfy the county agreement,

I generally agree.

I mean, I think it might be prudent to leave some amount dedicated towards that.

If nothing else, maybe out of

Goodwill towards the county.

Absolutely.

Yeah, so I definitely agree, of course.

So my understanding of where it's at now, since we've opted not to build the garage, the county gets to choose whether they want the 63 space surface parking lot.

next to the S&P building or spaces in the Market Street garage.

And so if I'm understanding staff correctly, they want to keep the money in there and add all this extra money to fulfill the costs associated with those.

but and I mean I'm obviously no expert on what these things cost but if it's the surface option we repave the lot and we add gates that's probably the more expensive option and then if it's the garage we add a bunch of signs that say courts parking only and maybe need like a validation system for people going to the courts and it seems to me either of those cases

cost clearly a lot less than $4.3 million, based on what very little I know about what Gates cost.

So...

I don't know exactly how much that is, but I think I'm hearing that like the county is going to make that decision soon and then we'll know which option it will be and then it should be easy enough to price out.

And so I think from our perspective, it makes sense to just say, you know, minimize the amount that we spend on that to just to the amount needed to meet the obligation to the county.

and then, you know, maybe without putting a number on it, since we don't know exactly, but then in the back of our minds, we can say, well, we know that frees up a few million for all these other priorities and let's say we want those.

Yes.

And then the only, is Ms.

Hamill?

Ms.

Chrissy, I had just one quick question for you.

That was the sales tax option, which has to be approved by the General Assembly first and then has to go on a referendum and be approved by the voters in the city.

So yes, if we could possibly find a way to not maybe cost burden our citizens in this budget so much on the school reconfiguration, that will also be part of my preference, but she's already clarified that we have to wait on that.

All right, thank you.

I completely agree with the

everything Commissioner Dowell said.

I want to bring up Stribbling.

Hopefully it's a little hanging fruit, but we'll see.

We tied the development to the sidewalk that we now need to get funded, and it cannot happen without the sidewalk.

If we look at our comp plan that we just passed, we call for pedestrian access.

Even though the sidewalk is not on the top of the priority,

Essentially we're getting it for free and it's about half a mile of sidewalk almost.

I guess I can gather feedback on that, and then I can bring up my next more, I guess harder to go through topic.

That was also kind of what I had, I didn't name the project, but that was the project that I was referring to.

Like that project hit so many of our comprehensive plan goals, affordable housing, access or walkability access, but it's not safe.

So,

I would hate to have to approach new people in that area without already protecting the residents that already live there.

And I'd add, you know, since like definitely since it doesn't impact our bond capacity and the revenue is not going to be there if we don't build the project, it's a win-win like

total improvement with essentially no direct cost to us, which is to me a no-brainer.

But the thing I'd add is that not only does that pay for the sidewalk, which the neighborhood has been requesting for a decade and a half or more,

But also, you know, in the draft agreement, economic development is anticipating, depending on the development schedule, that it would be paid off, the sidewalk would be paid off in about six to seven years.

After that, we're getting that $600,000 plus a year in revenue, you know, without any strings attached.

and very conveniently seven or so years from now is exactly when we very badly need cash because we have absolutely no bonding capacity left.

Other thoughts on this topic?

on that topic in particular or?

Next thought was, I guess it's more of a concern about hitting our capacity, our bond capacity.

It seems like looking at, you know, 2027, it completely goes against our comprehensive plan having zero dollars for sidewalks and trees and

almost really anything except less than half of our housing promise of 10 million.

So I think Commissioner Alejandro mentioned this.

It almost seems like we can't afford it at last meeting.

And I just want to raise that as, I guess, as other commissioners go around to just get opinions.

I'm not sure what emotion would be, but

just seems kind of concerning.

Thoughts on schools?

blowing or debt capacity.

Harmon Zuckerman, I think schools are a tough one right because it's I mean the amount of that project is the entirety of the five year fiscal 17 budget.

Harmon Zuckerman, It's this elephant in the room, but it does seem like Council and the school board have approved the project.

Harmon Zuckerman, Without really consulting us and I'm not really saying they should consult us necessarily but

like it's a little bit out of our wheelhouse, but it certainly constrains us a lot.

Yeah, I agree.

I don't feel qualified to even have the discussion because I don't know the issues involved with the educational reorganization.

I just look at the broad picture and see the imbalance between all the funds going in one place and disregarding the rest of the city's needs at the same time.

And I guess I'm just trusting that someone has a game plan and has figured this out in the back and that we'll all find out about it and that we'll all be okay.

But

in terms of I was interested in Ms.

Hamill's presentation and that one of the first of the four keys to a good excellent bond rating is the economy and the demographics and that means keeping the people

wanting to live in this city.

So when you start sacrificing infrastructure, trees, utilities, sidewalks, parks, you start sacrificing that for one overwhelming need, then it seems to be that becomes less of a desirable place to live.

Enough said.

Sure.

I'll keep it to those.

And again, to reiterate, I'm not against the project.

I'm just not comfortable with the bond capacity situation that happens.

So hopefully there's a better solution.

Absolutely.

My main focus is restoring the delta between what the tree commission requested and what is in the current CIP, about $80,000.

I feel like that there's room in any number of places for providing that small bit of change compared to the other

I want to bring something new up, which was, Ms.

Hamill, you alluded to this exercise in which you can go back and really push on budget managers to give a kind of

project update on their projects and the status of what's left to spend.

And Counselor Snook brought this up as well because tell us what we still need to do in these things and are we way overfunded in these categories?

So I think that exercise would be useful.

I don't know from a

motion standpoint, if it's something we have to have a motion to do to sort of go back and be really judicious about that fiscal year 22 and what is still in the balance.

I had something else.

What was it about?

Oh, I am.

I wanted to bring up the topic of the small amount to remain in the West Main Street scape around the Drury Brown Bridge and the bridge builders and caselotters.

you know plea really to keep some money for for that initiative.

I don't know if we have a number in mind and or and or if staff could you know if that number could be available if there could be some work or has been some work done in the in the thing in the things that were listed banners lights things like that but I do think that would be a worthy you know initiative.

got some ideas for some motions.

Thank you.

Yeah, on the bridge builders bridge,

Would that potentially be just like an operating item that wouldn't go in the CIP?

I mean, I know Parks and Rec puts up all those banners on the mall like five times a year.

I wonder if there's another route we could explore with that.

But I mean, it does seem like a worthy thing in itself.

Similarly, in terms of things I'd like to explore but not necessarily act on,

there was talk, there's talk of the park and ride, which I've got the sense that it's still in a pretty early stage of planning on that.

And I wonder if that's kind of more the county's wheelhouse than ours, given that

a parking ride in the county for commuters to the city would be serving county residents and then bus stop funding.

I'd like to understand more whether we can, you know, get significant or, you know, whether it makes sense to be funding that ourselves or whether that's the sort of thing where you'd be getting grant funding from the federal government, the state government to do that.

But certainly it seems like a worthwhile thing to do that.

I don't know that we do that much right now.

I have some suggestions.

I think everyone else's suggestions for things to fund have been good.

I have some suggestions for things to defund.

So certainly the parking structure authorized but not issued minimized that amount.

We had a discussion earlier about milling and paving, and I would specifically say that we want to target or calibrate our amount we're spending on that in a way where we're not going under our long-term target of 65 as our index, but that we're not prioritizing it so much or funding it so much that we're increasing that amount, right?

And so, you know, whether that means a small reduction of something like $100,000 a year on that million and a half or, you know, alternating years going down to a million and a quarter like we're doing this coming fiscal year, I don't have an exact suggestion, but I'd like that general sentiment to be something that we say if others are agreeable to that.

Well, other things, things with big balances.

There,

It seems like there's a few different buckets those fall into, right?

And I think we got a pretty compelling argument for sidewalks to have that big balance because it lets us get those state matching funds that multiply our dollars but require tying it up for a couple years.

And so if our revenue sharing all kicks in next year or the year after that for that thing we applied these funds towards, we're going to spend all that and then all of a sudden we're going to have nothing in the pot and we're not going to have any revenue sharing applications that we applied for several years ago that would trigger in the following two years.

and so to me, I think we very much need to refund sidewalks at the amount that we saw before COVID at the very least, before our FY21 budget, which was $300,000 or ideally at the full $600,000 and potentially front load that money so that

You know, instead of using up a little bit of our bonding capacity over time, we just kind of get done all at once and get those applications in the pipeline for matching funds.

Other things with big balances that maybe don't make as much sense to continue building up.

The Economic Development Strategic Initiatives Fund has over a million and a half dollars in it, has very little spent out of it in any given year.

I can't, I don't have a clear sense of what

has been spent on it before or out of it before, but they don't seem, they seem to be a little bit disjointed, not necessarily often economic development.

It just seems like a pot of money to draw from.

And, you know, I don't know if that's like a great way of planning.

And so I'm not necessarily suggesting that we withdraw the million and a half that's in it now, but maybe we should stop funding it at $150,000 per year.

until it starts to draw down.

And actually, I think backing up a little bit to the point about this giant elephant taking up all of our capacity here, I think we need to be treating the next few years, the next four years in a little bit of

a similar austerity mode as we treated the last fiscal year, where we put a big stop to things that weren't absolutely critical or super important.

And that's where, you know, removing some funds from items like that, I think, come into play.

I would add to that the Small Area Plan Fund has about half a million dollars in it.

I believe Small Area Plans cost about half a million dollars, judging by the, I think that's what the TJ or the Cherry Avenue one costs.

So maybe let's put a pause on that, at least until we do one of those.

And I'd imagine we want to be doing one of those at a time and let it play out, which takes a few years.

I also feel like

We've kind of done a few small area plans and several of them are kind of sitting on a shelf not doing much like the hydraulic small area plan.

Others like the SIA plan, we are devoting a lot of resources into implementing, you know, millions and millions of dollars through Friendship Corps directly, which is probably really the centerpiece of the plan and reintegrating that into the street grid and the parks and all that.

And then

Separately, we have this SIA implementation fund, which has a lot of money in it, and there are certainly some good projects coming out of that, like the Pollux branch, like the LA streetscape, but

A, I think it's similar to the economic development pot.

It's a grab bag that seems that it really did.

You know, it seems to me that the Pollock's Branch Bridge or the Elliott Streetscape should be line items in themselves.

And that just continuing to fill up this bucket to draw from

makes less sense than that.

So I would say take a look at what we have planned for that.

If that's the $2 million that's in there or whatever the amount of that is, I don't have that offhand, and maybe put a pause on that and then use the recommendations in the Small Area Plan to help guide our decisions in using other pots of funds

And, you know, if we have a really big item come up, then put that in as a top level CIP item.

So to recap, I would, working structure, obviously pull from that, million paving, calibrate, turn down the dial a little bit, don't be exceeding your targets, put a stop or a pause until we have bonding capacity for economic development strategic initiatives.

Okay, thank you.

It's a tough one.

I can't say I have too much advice to give.

I think what the commissioners have kind of outlined, especially their Rory, seems to make a lot of sense, especially with the school projects going forward, gobbling up a lot of debt capacity in the future years.

Thank you.

I believe Mr. Palmer is exactly correct.

Every year I keep saying this is the hardest CIP we've ever done and then we do a harder one.

So what's really striking me is just, you know, thanks to staff and other commissioners who've done so much hard work and grasping a hold of this and figure out where do we go with it.

Briefly.

Yeah, I think, given where we're at, it's important to kind of see where some of the small wins are.

I am kind of encouraged to hear so much consistency around just some of the bike pet infrastructure and tree infrastructure.

I will say in the area of smaller plans, given that was just raised, that the

The Grady-Creston 10th intersection area related to one of the VDOT projects for smart scale funding was identified at that time as something that we would want to have more planning around because there was a lot of resistance that there wasn't a lot of community engagement when that proposed plan was coming to fruition.

And so when I hear the phrase smaller your plans, that's one of the priorities that comes to my mind that I feel like that we did make some kind of commitment to the community that we would follow through on before that intersection specifically was

was done.

Related to the schools, I certainly, I hear where folks are coming from.

This is certainly a huge commitment.

At the same time, having sat through so many meetings, I understand just how long putting a real investment into our school system has been the making, and certainly investing just in our school infrastructure doesn't solve all of the issues, but when we think about how long it's been since we've made this type of investment in our school infrastructure, it has been a tremendous long time, and

All I can say is I encourage all of us to continue to push forward that this, I believe that this sales tax allowance that we have to get approval from the General Assembly and then from the community is really our only path forward.

I think that to forego so many of these other things is going to be a challenging uphill for many years to come and so

I know I'm committed to continuing that work, even outside of my council capacity.

And I'm optimistic that we'll get there.

I'm just concerned that we won't, I mean, I get there this next year, but I'm not ruling it out.

But I just, I do think that that has, that's definitely going to have to be part of this equation as we move forward.

But I do, I appreciate just, again, the consideration of just kind of the small wins that we can have and the recognition that we do have a commitment with the county that does kind of keep some of these dollars in limbo.

But if those dollars free up,

identifying what are some real realistic things that we can do moving forward.

I am surprised, given the rest of the agenda tonight, that some of those projects haven't specifically been raised because they do come with dollars associated with them for those LIHTC applications to be strong.

So we'll see where that goes.

Thank you.

I'm not sure I've got much more to add.

I'm concerned, and I'll be honest with you, one of the things I meant to ask when I had the opportunity to ask questions earlier, and if it would be okay with you, Chair, perhaps I could ask Ms.

Hamill my question right now.

Could you explain what the practical effect is of money being on the authorized but not issued list?

is that money that if we're to say, yes, let's go ahead and do it.

So the money on the authorized but not issued list is really just a number.

It does not represent actual dollars until we sell the bonds.

So in calculating what our total capacity is,

which when we last ran these numbers and we presented something to you, it was roughly $185 million.

The authorized but not issued just becomes a subtraction out of that as those were prior commitments that we made.

Those were dollars that had been appropriated to projects.

So there's a budget sitting on the books.

for someone to spend, and as they spend those, then we need to sell the bonds to recoup those dollars.

So if we say, okay, we've got $2.9 million roughly on the authorized but not issued list,

for the parking garage.

And if we assume that we're not in fact building the parking garage, at least not anytime soon and not in the present contemplation of things, I guess I'm curious as to what the effect of having that $2.9 million out there really is.

So it frees up $2.9 million of capacity.

It depends on what you replace it with.

If, for example, we wanted to put that into a housing project that did not qualify for bonds, then you're right.

It doesn't help you.

So freeing those dollars up have to be, it frees up bond capacity, but that means the expenses on the other side have to be bondable.

So I'm not sure I'm totally answering your question.

I'm not sure I am either.

So I'll be honest, Chrissy, I asked you some of these questions last year, too, and I clearly it didn't sink in very well through through this skull here.

I'm just trying to understand all of the different limits that we've got.

And the ABNI list is one of those things that I've just never quite figured out why.

Yeah, so I think one way, I don't know if this analogy will help or not, but often we've talked about bond capacity as sort of like our limit on the credit card.

And I think the way you could equate the bonds authorized but not issued list is sort of the, they're in the pinned category.

So you haven't actually spent those dollars.

So it's not going to come on a bill to you yet, but they're waiting out there for the

for the project to actually happen and for that switch to turn on in which you're going to owe that bill.

So basically when we are setting a budget in the CIP, we say, how are we going to pay for it?

And so as you see from the CIP, we've got revenues that matches expenditures.

And so what that means is once the budget is approved, that expenditure budget hits our books

and it's available to be allocated.

And then we follow up on the back end to either make sure that we are filing with the cash or the bonds.

So the budget's sitting there, the bonds authorized but not issued are sitting there.

And if we're not gonna spend the money, then these bonds are freed up to allocate someplace else.

It's not in this CIP because what you're looking at is going forward.

And so the authorized but not issued represents projects that you have approved in prior years for projects that are on the books, either in the works or haven't started.

The thing is, is that if you looked at the authorized but not issued list,

Almost every project that was approved in FY22 is going to be at the bottom of that list.

And the reason for that is because we're about a year behind.

So by the time that the CIP gets approved, the project's got to come to fruition, we've got to start spending money, and then we're going to sell the bonds.

So there is just sort of a time delay.

So, you know, looking at that, there's not

You know, it's a big deal to try to find dollars that you can take off of that list because they are associated with real projects.

I guess the issue that I kind of come back to is to use the example of the 2.9 million already on the AB&I list for the parking garage.

If we take that off the parking garage, if we take that off the AB&I list, we defund that completely.

The only thing it could change is just like you see on that list for West Main and the parking garage that 2.9 could go up in the revenue side and it would give you the opportunity to add 2.9 on the expenditure side.

Anyway, that's what has puzzled me.

Yeah, no additional questions.

I guess last comment would just be, I think Commissioner Alejandro said he hoped that there was someone somewhere who had a plan and it all figured out how to reckon with the fact that as presented the CIP even with a 10 cents tax increase will both max out our current capacity and then also in a few years cause our funding for affordable housing, sidewalks, climate planning, et cetera, to fall off a cliff.

I just want to be clear that to my knowledge, no such plan or solution does exist.

So I would just want to underline that I think that really is one of the central challenges facing us over the next few years and to figure out how we are actually going to prioritize given the realities of where our budget is.

And I would echo what Councillor Hill said in that I think

One of the solutions is definitely the sales tax increase and what we can do to try to encourage that to happen at the General Assembly and build coalition partners to help make that happen.

There was something I wanted to bring up, and it's around affordable housing.

And I think what we're talking about doing is what I've heard is if that reallocation works to reduce the parking deck budget to the maximum amount possible and maybe hold some aside for our obligations.

and reallocate towards several buckets.

And I heard trees, sidewalks, bike infrastructure, and then affordable housing doesn't cover it all, but to the maximum degree possible.

My question is then could that also, if we were able to bump up the affordable housing

number, whether it's in one line or, you know, I actually would prefer it see you to get broken out into different lines to actually specifically allocate for homeownership, rehab, LIHTC, and supportive housing, as many of our community partners have advocated for.

Question, would that be able to possibly, would some of these gap fundings that are unfunded be able, you know, could they apply to those funds

I guess it's a question for Ms.

Hamill, right?

Because we know we have on the unfunded list the PHA gap funding for two projects that we're reviewing tonight.

And we've not proposed to add those back in, but if we increased our affordable housing

So in theory, you are thinking in the right direction.

The problem with the affordable housing piece is that not all of those expenses are bondable for technical IRS reasons.

And so the funding that was contemplated for the parking garage because it was to build a parking deck

Yeah, and I would, you know, I am thankful that the conversation has gotten to this level.

I think one thing that might make it easier for you all as the Commission is to simply evaluate the projects on the merit of the projects or the funding on the basis of where you might want that to go and pass that along as your recommendation.

We can work through those other details because I think, you know, sort of limiting you to thinking about, well, what's bondable, what's cash and all that kind of stuff kind of gets away from the point of, you know, the importance of the project, how does it apply to the comp plan, yada, yada, yada.

The funding limitations are kind of a secondary piece.

Yeah, thanks.

I was going to say something about bonding things that are currently listed as non-bondable, like the master plan versus when smaller plans are bondable.

I'm not going to talk about that.

I'm thinking about many people have asked us or requested that we add $3 million more or $2 million more to the cap

for example, and I'm looking at the affordable housing plan and its recommendations are pretty clear.

It's $10 million a year, $2 million are tax relief, $1 million in administration, so it's really $7 million in direct subsidy.

And that's all on page 49 of the plan for reference.

And so,

So $7 million, you take off the $3 million a year for CRHA, that's $4 million. You take off $900,000 for CIFRAP, the voucher program, which I think everybody agrees is good. Now we're down to a little over $3 million. And then we try to put almost a million in the CAF.

And it really gets to, you know, when you look at the two to three million dollars of remaining funds left after those things, you know, it gets to the fact that we've really already committed those funds with what seems to me to be, from an affordable housing perspective, the elephant in, the smaller elephant in that room.

which is that Friendship Court is taking up between two and a half million and three and a half million pretty much every single fiscal year through the end of this CIP.

and that leaves essentially no room to add anything to the CAF unless we're to go, you know, above that $10 million a year commitment beyond what the Affordable Housing Plan recommended.

So, I mean, you know, there's a question of was the $10 million a year for $10 million that we committed to not enough?

In which case, where is that extra few million coming from?

Or, you know,

you know is that I mean if we are meeting it and we do seem to be meeting it for every year, at least through FY 26 and this plan whether we are doing as much as we possibly can with the money.

And, you know, the Affordable Housing Plan makes some recommendations of essentially forming a new committee to competitively analyze and score requests in order to make the absolute most, get the most housing for our dollar.

And

I mean, it seems to me that at least for the next four to five years, unless we were to move money around, they're really just playing with that $900,000, $925,000 in the cap, and not the bulk of the funds, which were things

you know at least seven million dollars a year in direct subsidy and you know does that undermining the affordable housing plan that we adopted.

And yet you know, obviously the flip side is we've made the commitment to redevelop French report.

We have a four-phase plan that was created by a resident-led planner team.

And, you know, I certainly am not saying that we should just abandon that.

But, you know, when it's running at costs of $400,000 a unit or more, and there's all these infrastructure costs, and then we also have this other SIA pot of infrastructure costs that we may be using for overruns on top of that amount.

you know it puts us in a really tricky position where things like the two projects will be reviewing later tonight just they're they're just completely crowded out of the room.

And I mean I don't have an easy answer to what to do about that.

But you know I I think it's

Worth pointing out that phase four of friendship court is much easier and doesn't have as concrete a plan, and I believe that's after all existing residents have been rehoused.

And, you know, maybe that's the point where we start shifting funds into the CAF so that things from there are funded competitively.

But even that, you know, keeps us locked into the situation through FY25.

And, you know, I know staff has mentioned that HRNA is working on that report of how we've spent our CAF funds so far.

And I think I'm eagerly looking forward to it.

I think it's going to tell us a lot.

And then the question becomes like,

You know, how will we act on whatever it says if we've already locked ourselves into a path anyway?

Again, I don't have any easy answers there.

Throwing millions more dollars at the problem each year would make it easier, but it's not clear to me that that's in the cards because those millions of dollars don't exist.

I believe that puts us with Ms.

Well, I would like to offer, suggest a motion to, and maybe someone can help me out with how this should be accomplished, but to revise the parking deck, parking structure

I hear a motion.

Do I hear a second?

I hear a second discussion.

I would make maybe one tweak to that, which is I think there's a million dollars in FY22 and then two million came from the prior year, FY21.

So maybe just generically mentioning the authorized prior years.

And I might say something specifically about the existing contract.

Additional discussion on this topic?

Ms.

Real quick before Missy calls the roll.

So are we adding Roy's friendly amendment or adjustment to Ms.

I'm happy with Roy's amendment that talked about, you know, prior year budgets, not just fiscal year 22, and then also meeting the current contract obligations.

So I think just for clarification for the public at home, because this has been a long session, so I want to make sure that everybody understands clearly.

Ms.

Russell, would you mind repeating that motion?

So yeah, sure.

The motion is to revise the parking structure budget for prior years, as well as proposed fiscal year 23.

to a minimum amount necessary to meet current contract obligations with Elk Morrow County.

Perfect.

Ms.

Sure.

Ms.

Aye.

Mr. Stolensberg?

Aye.

Ms.

Russell?

Aye.

Aye.

Ms.

So following that, I would like to introduce a motion to reallocate funds to the best degree possible to the following categories.

and amounts.

Sorry, I'm going to have to go back and look at what they're called, but let's call it trees, new sidewalks, bicycle infrastructure, and affordable housing.

The amount requested by staff.

Okay, thanks for getting through this.

Motion to reallocate

Can I clarify that it's not, there are two different categories in trees.