City Council Meeting   2/7/2022

Roll Tide.

Most of my family's in Birmingham, right outside of Birmingham on the northern area.

My half-sister's in Prattville, which is about an hour south of Birmingham.

Hey, you're talking about my hometown.

What are we talking about?

You know, I'm a big Alabama fan, and I was asking Sena, you know, when she goes down there often, and I was asking her, when have you been to Tuscaloosa?

She was trying to figure it out when she has been down.

That is my hometown, yes.

Oh, wow.

That's home.

Yeah, most of them are in Birmingham.

I'm one of the outliers.

Yeah, got it.

No.

Absolutely.

That was interesting.

Yeah, it was one of the things I learned a little bit about football just because I had to.

Yeah.

Though I used to tell people, I'll watch the Super Bowl when the Detroit Tigers are playing.

Thank you for laughing and getting that and not trying to say you're a dumb girl and the Detroit Tigers are a basketball team.

That's my whole point.

Another large part of my family was in Michigan.

from Michigan is Lloyd and Mr. Rogers.

Law school, yeah.

Sheila's family is from Michigan, half Michigan state people, half University of Michigan folks.

I used to go up with my grandmother and visit

Sheila was born in Battle Creek.

Petoskey stones are a stone that is just found basically on the beach of Lake Michigan in Petoskey.

They're basically fossil stones.

They've got fossils embedded in them and they get worn smooth and so you see the edge of the fossils and it's really kind of cool.

So let's see, are we missing anybody?

We got all the counselors.

Do we have everybody we're expecting from city manager staff?

Looks like we got all of our city manager people.

I guess it's now four o'clock.

It's time to call ourselves to order.

So the February 7, 2022 Charlottesville City Council meeting will come to order.

Ms.

Councilor McGill?

I am here.

Yep.

Here.

Is there a motion to approve or to amend the agenda?

We need to have an amendment for the real estate tax rate to be part of the city manager's report.

Oh, wait a minute.

I guess so we don't need to add that separate agenda item.

We'll consider that as part of the city manager's report.

Okay, so we've got a motion.

We've got a second.

Any discussion?

Just want to make so we have we know so the other

So the discussion about boards and commission appointments amongst counselors can go in the boards and commission section.

Right.

Right.

You're not voting on that.

You actually are just providing guidance to the city manager or to staff.

Thank you for clarification.

Are we good then?

So just do this voice vote.

All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

All opposed?

No opposition.

So the meeting is going to be divided into three parts.

The first part will be a work session where we will hear and discuss a staff presentation by Dr. Smith and the Charlottesville Fire Department.

We will then have a closed meeting.

We'll discuss that later on.

Finally, the regular city council business meeting will be at 630.

First item on the agenda then is Chief Smith modernizing the Charlottesville Fire Department.

Do you have a presentation for us?

Or Joe, are you doing it?

I'm looking at who's connected.

OK.

Good afternoon, Council.

Good to see everybody on a beautiful Monday.

At least it's not snowing outside, right?

Yeah, good to see everybody.

I need the screen sharing option to be turned on, if you would, the host.

We have who's managing the back end.

Thank you.

Are you viewing my screen now?

Yes.

We see a screen.

That's not the screen you want to see.

No, it's not.

But is it your screen?

Yes, it is my screen.

There we go.

You'll see a better screen.

Yep, there we go.

Should be in slide mode.

All right.

So good afternoon, Council.

Happy to be here.

Certainly, I look forward to having a conversation with each of you today and just giving an update on where we are with the Charlottesville Fire Department as we approach, I guess, the end of January.

With that, I just want you to take a few minutes to reflect on some of our experiences over the last 12 or 13 months in this community.

There's been a lot of tragedy within our community.

And fortunately, our firefighters, they remain committed in terms of serving the community to their fullest in spite of COVID, in spite of all the other challenges that they face.

And as our strategic plan focuses on workforce and make sure that we exemplify our department's core values and, you know, we serve unrelentlessly in terms of supporting the mission of the organization and the vision, certainly in alignment with what the city's needs are in the community.

So over the last 13 months that Dye Street fire there, you see their significant fire unfortunate for our residents in the city that were part of this incident.

But I just wanted to kind of reflect on that a moment and just kind of say, you know, we appreciate your support.

And I want the community to know that we are very committed in doing our ultimate best to make a difference in the lives in your lives and the community.

Recently you also saw the incident regarding the Rivanna River where a lady was pulled from that river in coordination with the police department and our firefighters.

That was a challenge for our teams.

Certainly the Cherry Avenue fire was definitely one that really touched us.

My apologies, Chief Smith.

This is David Dillahunt with the comms office.

Could you please click the green button in the corner of that presentation window there?

I'm sorry, my apologies.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

Just kind of going through that, the Fifth Street incident, everybody knows about that.

We've been working collaboratively with city staff to see how we can assist in any way possible in the Carlton Street fire.

So those are some significant incidents.

And certainly the First Street North multi-story family dwelling, that was a challenge to our firefighters as well.

So I just wanted to kind of start off with that.

Hello?

Is somebody saying something?

Okay.

With that, we're committed.

We're embracing the forces that are impacting the 21st Century Fire and Emergency Services in our community and certainly in alignment with what's going on across the United States.

Charlottesville is no stranger to all hazards type incidents that we have to be prepared to respond to.

As I've communicated in the past, my vision is to enhance the department's culture and service through transparency, innovation, trust, and integrity.

And that vision is supported by those pillars as indicated there.

The organization chart, don't need to really get into that.

I think we spoke about that before.

With that, our strategic plan, just to reiterate, our strategic plan is at the bottom of most of our signatures is publicly available on the websites as well.

Six goals, workforce, safety and health, communication across the organization, up and down, training, services and response, and certainly support in all ways possible comprehensively.

Real quick, accreditation, very important element of a fire department to ensure that we maintain the highest levels of services that we provide to our community.

I want to thank Chief Powers for his relentless commitment to that endeavor as we are in the midst of the accreditation process now where they're evaluating our competencies.

We met those competencies in 2017.

We are fortunate to say that we are rated a class one organization from the insurance services organization, which is the highest rating that we can get in terms of fire services delivery.

And there are only eight others in Virginia, so we stand proudly behind that.

And basically accreditation, if you don't know, just to refresh, it basically focuses on validating what we say we do, how we're addressing community risk reduction initiatives and actions related to that, our standards of cover, which deals with how we respond to calls, how efficient our workforce is, and then certainly our strategic plan, the elements thereof, and how do we move forward in terms of aligning our strategic plan in terms of our outcomes and our mission statement.

And it's a process.

It's a cyclic process.

Really, it's not a one-and-done thing.

It's a self-assessment that's conducted and we submit documents.

And then there's an assessment reviewed by reviewers.

And then there's a determination on how we measure up in terms of what we say we're doing versus what we're able to document.

I share the slide with you because this is very important for us to really

Embrace and Understand.

The Center for Public Safety Excellence produced a white paper some time ago and basically talk about the elements of a 21st century fire service, fire and emergency service, but alongside that there's an EMS agenda for the future which kind of looks at how you should prepare yourselves now as we move forward into the future and what are the elements related to an EMS system.

Fortunately for us, we are a fire-based EMS system service model, which is a little bit different than it was years ago where we're just focused only on fire.

We're all hazards department, whereas we have to incorporate the elements of both of these things in terms of 21st century fire and emergency principles based on the philosophies or the document that's been produced by the Center of Public Safety Excellence and experts in the field and also the EMS agenda for the future.

So you probably say, well, chief, why does that matter to us right now?

Well, essentially, when we talk about alignment, we talk about vision, we talk about alignment and ultimately execution, when you look on the left side here, you're seeing that there's a number of elements that were in that disk, if you may, how they align with the EMS agenda for the future.

And I'll address those indirectly and directly as we move through this presentation.

But again, goal six.

is for us as part of our strategic plan to ensure that we have a responsive, sustainable, resource-driven, resource-rich department that comprehensively addresses the current and future needs of the organization and certainly the community.

In doing that, I want to bring you back to inclusiveness and culture.

I'm committed to that.

We spoke about that the last time we had a conversation.

That's in alignment with our organizational strategic plan.

We look at diversity not only in terms of ethnicity.

We're talking about education competencies.

We talk about military background.

We talk about levels of training and competency as it relates to basic EMT versus paramedic.

Certainly,

The change that I've implemented since I've been here in terms of my hiring practices have demonstrated a 5% change and a 4% change respectively.

So I'm very proud of our team for selecting individuals that are able to transition into our organization and we hope to continue moving forward with that.

Just a little bit about overtime.

You know, we talked about the incidents really that, and by far the first slide that you saw those incidents, that's just a snapshot of what we actually are committed to doing and the work that we do in this community.

But I'm happy to say that between the same periods last year, July 20, I'm sorry, July 21st, 2021 to December, same period of time,

Our overtime was high, and it still is high.

I'm not comfortable with a 20% reduction.

However, we're committed to making sure that we are mindful of the expenses related to that.

But keep in mind, COVID and other illnesses and injuries that we suffer ultimately impact overtime.

So our workforce needs to really be supported in any endeavor possible through council and through the budgetary considerations.

So with that, in the FY23, there is an additional grant request for 22.

I should have probably said 23, FY23, but this is the current year we recently applied for it.

Our goal is to make sure that we're safe.

We talk about those incidents that involve

Debt, multiple patients on the scene, and having three firefighters on the apparatus is not the standard.

The standard based on 1710, which is a national fire protection standard for departments, is to have four persons per company.

So the staffing analysis that was recently completed indicated that we could benefit from having this additional staff members apply to provide us the appropriate resources to address the unexpected absences, but most importantly, for us to effectively operate in a safer operational framework on a day to day basis in the fire department.

Goal 5 here again talks about partnership and services and response.

Here, I wanted to focus on Chief, the efforts of collaborative efforts ultimately, but led by, primarily led by Chief Powers, where there's a collaboration that we continue to do in this community.

We are committed to collaborating with all the partners in this region to make sure that we provide the needs for the needs of the community and the members within the community through partnership.

In doing so, my philosophy is a data-driven philosophy, not only quantitatively, but qualitatively as well.

We want to make sure that what we're doing is right for our community and will serve our community moving forward.

And it's based on solid information that is obtained through

Community Risk Reduction Initiatives, looking at our response times, looking at our workload on our firefighters and paramedics, looking at how we're being trying to be physically responsible in terms of overtime and things of that sort.

So those are some of the elements that contribute to our data driven approach.

Real quick, this just basically gives you a quick snapshot of a period of time 2018 to 2020.

It really hasn't changed that much in terms of peak time.

What that means is the number, the hours within the day that we're expected to be busy running EMS calls, fire calls, or other types of situational, responding to other types of situations in the community, in the community of Charlottesville.

We're able to get to the entire city, normal drive time, obviously, with good weather, limited traffic, things that I saw, based on our GIS analysis, about eight minutes.

Ideally, that's the framework that we have established.

And ultimately, we've demonstrated through a GIS analysis to confirm that we should be able to reasonably arrive in an incident within that period of time, regardless of the type of incident or where that incident is located.

With that, I want to talk a little bit more about our system analysis.

Lucas, he does a phenomenal job in providing me the information, providing us

the information that's necessary to make decisions, right?

When we talk about decisions, we talk about being able to respond to cardiac arrest, for example, in a timely manner.

So within the last 24 months, I should say 12 months in 2021, we responded to about 112 incidents.

And as you can see there on the right, that's basically by neighborhoods.

And this information is available to us to kind of help drive our initiatives.

So you'll see later on this month that we'll be releasing a PulsePoint app and there'll be some more information coming about that.

But what that does, it prepares our community members to be able to respond to cardiac arrest emergencies in a public venue and ultimately even start CPR and hopefully enhance the chance of somebody recovering from that uncertain incident that might have happened because of a cardiac arrest or some kind of cardiac insult.

before 911 actually gets there.

So exciting times ahead for the city of Charlottesville.

We implemented the similar approach in the city of Orlando, and it was very successful.

And what you're seeing on the left here, the number of people that have downloaded the app, and we're hopeful that once we

We communicate the purpose of this and the value that this brings.

You will be able to have more responders in our community that can actually help save a life.

Wouldn't it be so great for a bystander to do CPR, help someone survive a cardiac arrest insult?

Certainly, I would think you would agree with that.

Quick numbers.

We talk about return of spontaneous circulation, right?

We talk about early CPR, early intervention, the need for defibrillation early.

And these particular technical words down here don't pay too much attention to them, but basically what you're seeing here is information that says how effective are we, or certainly how effective are we in terms of trying to get return of spontaneous circulation.

Certainly we do our best to try to bring folks back from cardiac arrest, but ultimately sometimes you have underlying problems that certainly we can't make a difference with.

But as you can see from ventricular fibrillation in this community, you have a 57% chance in terms of based on the data that's here from 2021, we were at 57%.

When we talk about a systolic, which is the flat line, we're at about 29% there.

So certainly there's opportunities for us to improve that.

And how do we improve that as a community?

We establish, we provide CPR training, we identify neighborhoods that are at risk and educate them on proper living and things of that sort.

So with that, there's going to be some discussion later on, I think, about compression devices and what that means for us in our community that paramedics and our EMS providers will have devices that are available within the ambulances to do CPR so they can do it effectively without standing in the back of an ambulance riding down the road in the case that they're transporting a patient to UVA or the

to the hospital essentially, Martha Jefferson, but ultimately that will help us be safer again.

So ideally you're seeing some research here from 2021 that kind of talks about potential implications for chest compression devices that are used in a pre-hospital setting really to address the safety of our providers as they respond.

Diabetic emergencies, again, information here about the neighborhoods and we can drill down into the neighborhoods of where the diabetic emergencies are occurring and how we can drive education to support that in our community and the best folks drive that and how can we work together with partners to communicate and educate our community

It's not just about running with lights and sirens to medical calls and car accidents and things of that nature.

It's actually becoming actually more engaged in our community and educating our community and hopefully they can recognize early signs and symptoms of strokes, heart attack and things of that sort.

So what you're seeing here is a display of the various neighborhoods.

Mental Health.

Mayor Lloyd Snook, I know we've had a lot of sessions about what are we doing with that in our community.

Dr. Smith, can you give us a small example of how that partnership

So if you're talking about mental health, are you talking about the pulse?

But just in general.

So in general, for example, mental health, the city of Orlando deployed almost like a team of individuals in the downtown core area.

And I think there's some initiatives that are ongoing right now with Chief Powers coordinating that.

But essentially, we can intervene in terms of identifying, OK, what are the needs?

Do they need to go to the hospital?

Most of the times, they may not need to go to the hospital.

They may need to go get...

to a psychiatric location.

So working with partners, not only law enforcement and fire, but also other social services partners can help alleviate the stress that it puts on our community members.

We have to be able to take that into consideration.

And certainly we talk about the fire department being all hazards.

It's not just about the fire department.

Department.

It's about our parts, cars, for example.

It's about social services.

It's about law enforcement also coordinating those efforts, whether it's mental health situations or whether it's a diabetic situation where a person has been recently discharged from a hospital and we want to make sure that they're following up with their physician or their medications that they're supposed to take.

Similarly with overdoses.

There's a lot to be done outside of the 911 system that the fire department is not capable of addressing.

So we will be relying on our partners to do that.

And that's where cars and others play a significant role in the 21st century fire service delivery model that I talk about.

Hopefully that answered your question, sir.

Yes.

All right.

So again, opioid overdose, we know about opioid situation across the United States.

How can we implement strategies to mitigate that?

Narcan leave behind program, we implemented that in Orlando.

There's opportunities here in this small 10 square mile, I call it a micro metro city, because we were just as busy as an urban city in all actuality based on the density here.

So we'll transition to operations update.

I'm sorry I'm moving a little fast, but there will be an opportunity at the end for us to actually have some appreciative dialogue, if you may.

So one of the big things in the city here, and should I say in the county, in the region, working collaboratively with Sunny and the ECC staff and also with Chief Eggleston, the implementation of EMD protocols.

What does this mean?

Well, this means that for a number of years prior to my arrival and prior to this implementation, we were using a

a process that wasn't really validated or it was good for the times that it served.

This is 21st century call processing where the calls are triaged appropriately based on the responses of the caller and they're triaged appropriately so the appropriate resource can be sent to the medical

fire or police emergency.

So I want to compliment Sonny's team out there at the ECC for a job well done in implementing this process for pro QA, EMD, emergency medical dispatch protocols in the city of Charlottesville, because right based on this, we're able to

implement, or should I say, realize the benefit of the proximity dispatch process that was implemented back in July when we weren't too clear on the value of it.

And I'm going to demonstrate to you the value of this as it was a precursor to us implementing the EMD protocol dispatch system.

But essentially, prior to the change,

Ambulances were sent to scenes with long response times and sometimes frequently passed a fire station with an appropriate life support unit available, whether it's at the BLS level, basic life support level, or the advanced life support level.

So certainly it was great for that time, but as we transition and make sure that we match the appropriate resources with the risk associated with our 9-1-1, our community members, it's important that we look at how does this affect outcomes?

How does it affect the

Delivery of Care.

How does it address equity in the delivery of services?

So the focus on this really was to look at timely responses, not in one neighborhood, but in all neighborhoods, because healthcare disparities is real when we talk about delivery of pre-hospital care.

What this means?

The closest unit goes.

Based on the protocols, EMD dispatch, the closest unit goes.

We're utilizing the technology that we've had for years that really we did not implement it in the city of Charlottesville.

However, it was implemented right next door.

Chief Eggleston has successfully implemented this process.

And we're just basically trying to align our protocols and our response model to meet the needs of our community.

So at any one time, we know where all our units are located in the city.

Quick snap summary in terms of demographics, 2021 demographics, 57% white calls respond for EMS, 35% African American, about 50-50 in terms of male and female and others at a lower percentage.

It's a business system ultimately in 10 square miles.

So I'm very happy to say that our members, you know, while they're overworked and they're

You know, they're running a lot of calls.

They're committed to it, and we're committed to delivering the highest services to the community.

So then we look at, and this is all going to come together in the next few slides.

We talk about chief complaints.

What are we going to calls for?

As you can see, the degenerate sick person is like, oh, I don't feel too well.

It can't really be classified as a headache or a breathing problem and so on and so forth.

But you can see there that breathing is a common thing in our community.

Cardiac

or should I say chest pain, whether it's cardiac or not, this one says non-traumatic chest pain.

It's also a significant call volume for our city residents.

So it's important for us to look at how we can, from a community risk reduction, not just about fire,

and smoke detectors and things of that sort, but educating our community in terms of how we can prevent them from having to go to the hospital or experience traumatic insult.

This is the 2021 data where you're seeing 46% of the patients transported based on the information provided through our systems analysts represent Charlottesville Fire Department.

and CARS represents about 25%.

Certainly there are other elements to our system which involve, you know, assisting agencies and calls that are canceled before we get on scene or while we're on scene.

So what you're seeing here is a response analysis.

This basically excludes our non-emergency responses.

So when we look at it over time, 2019, 2020, 2021, I think you would agree that there is an improvement in the service delivery in terms of the timeliness of our response.

And my focus is certainly on 90th percentile, because averages sometimes kind of be skewed to some degree, doesn't account for outliers.

But 90th percentile, there's been a definite improvement in terms of travel time, if you may.

And that's across the system, not looking at one agency versus another agency, looking at the system as a whole.

And that is my commitment, looking at the system as a whole and making sure that we work together collaboratively.

Looking again, comparing, now we're looking at agency comparisons based on the same data.

Certainly there, should I say, there are factors sometimes that are beyond our control, but certainly you're seeing the information here as it's available in one of our dashboards as it relates to our response CFD versus cars.

Looking at not emergency calls only where a trend in is very evident there.

Operational efficiency has improved since the July implementation of proximity dispatch.

Prior to that, we were sending multiple units to scenes

and sometimes duplicating our resources.

The one thing that there's some significant opportunities to work on is what we call hospital offload times.

I don't know if any of our hospital partners are here, but that impacts the system.

We talked about empty building calls.

We only have three ambulances, generally Monday through Friday, but on the weekend, sometimes we may have a couple additional ambulances staffed by cars, which are very valuable to the system.

And if we had more during the week, we could actually strategically place them

at areas in areas where the calls are predicted to happen historically based on the data that's available.

But you can see offload times certainly they can impact our readiness to respond to the next call and it's called resilience ultimately.

Neighborhood risk assessment.

This is what helps me quantify and qualify what we do in the community.

So I'm very thankful that this information is available not only to us internally, but also to our community as well.

So with that, we look at the closest unit go.

We did an analysis, 120-day proximity analysis, been about that long.

We look at our neighborhood 10th and Page, for example, where you're seeing out of the 19 neighborhoods,

There are certain things that pop up.

Cardiac arrest is first in 10th and page area.

Drug use, diabetic emergencies, cardiac emergencies, they're about third there.

So when we look at before proximity and post proximity, what have our citizens realized in terms of service delivery?

What you're seeing here in green highlight is that there's been an improvement of about 11%.

in terms of our response times to 10th and Page.

So important to note that prior to that, you're seeing here on the left here, this is what the response was in 10th and Page neighborhood compared to what we are moving forward post proximity dispatching.

And I'll do that for a number of different slides, but I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it because slides will be available.

Fiveville, for example, second for strokes and asthma, seizures.

The difference again, 11%.

We're going from a seven minute, 24 second 90th percentile response to a six minute, 35 response.

Fry Spring, same thing.

This is a 28% improvement based on proximity dispatching that was recently implemented in July.

So what this tells us is that we have to make sure that we are equitable in the delivery of services regardless of what we

Think is going on with the patient, because when I call 911, when you call 911, your family, when our community calls 911, they expect us to be there within a reasonable amount of time, and they shouldn't have to wait longer for a unit coming from further away to provide them the care that they need ultimately.

And again, 25% response improvement in the Belmont area.

Ridge Street area seen 18% improvement.

I'm just focusing on the green here.

21% collectively in these areas.

And the reason these areas are collectively

Analyze was the call volume in those areas are not that significant in terms of number of calls within the sample population, or should I say the sample period of time, which is that 120-day analysis.

Same amount of cases on the left versus on the right.

So service delivery costs, it's not just about those numbers, right?

It's about what does it cost for the city of Charlottesville to deliver services?

A number of factors, and I believe I probably missed a few here, but the reality is there are several costs involved that, you know, whether it's administrative, whether it's equipment, whether it's law enforcement support, whether it's infrastructure, the roads, the lights, things of that sort, but more specifically training,

hardware, software application, paying the medical director to provide oversight and minimize our risk for any litigation issues, things of that sort.

So those are all part of our service delivery costs that have to be considered.

So with that, the future, the futures are bright.

Again, I'm committed to ensuring that we appropriately use our partnerships and make sure that we address the mental health needs of the community, certainly of our providers as well, but also making sure that the social agencies that are around and also the non-emergency agencies that are around can support our needs in this community as a holistic approach through a multifaceted

method or process.

So again, go ahead.

Question, please.

I'm almost there.

Oh, I thought somebody was saying something.

My apologies.

All right.

So

The future, the future is bright.

The future is bright.

Our commitment is to continue to collaborate with our partners, whether it's Narcan Leave Behind, whether it's Stop the Bleed Program.

And you'll see on the left here, we met earlier, I think early in the year, Kars and I and my team, actually, Chief Rogers, we met to talk about

What does the vision look like?

What does it look like?

And how does it align with the fire department's strategic plan?

How do those two come together?

And we're able to basically pull out of here that one of their goals, goal three, looks at mobile integrated health, exploring roles of the providers with mental health.

CARS community involvement, CPR training, stop the bleed training, all those things are of essence for us, right?

The fourth bullet you see in that the needs that the fire department ultimately have is that we need one ambulance, two ideally during the day, but one ambulance for sure during the day and an ALS ambulance at night and on the weekends to support our response model.

That is the 911 need.

However, the community has more than the 911 need.

As you well know, we've been engaging with UVA with the vaccine programs.

We've been doing a lot of things with, you know, just making sure that we are working together with partners as we've communicated.

The frequent 911 utilizers, CARS has been very instrumental in supporting that endeavor with Chief Powers and a number of other individuals related to social work and social service and things of that sort.

So I think the future is bright, ultimately, I really do.

And as long as we focus on equity and efficiency in our service delivery model, I think we're going to be fine.

I think the Charlottesville, the city of Charlottesville will ultimately be fine in terms of one vision, one goal, and ensuring alignment as we continue to move forward and execute it.

All right, I'll pause there for any questions.

If you have your phone, you can reach your phone up and hit the QR code and it'll take you to our risk reduction website, if you may.

I'm sorry.

No, go ahead, Vice Mayor.

I just had just a clarification.

You mentioned several times the closest unit, I think, responds.

So if that means that an ALS staff or ambulance is at one neighborhood or location and that call doesn't necessarily

need that higher level.

I may be speaking out of terms and terminology and things like that, so please excuse me.

But someone else across town needs it when you only have one ALS ambulance on call.

How does that work?

Yeah, so ultimately, with the 21st century call processing protocols that's in place currently, ideally, the call will be triaged appropriately.

And based on the level of acuity that is required at that scene and the capability, so an ALS provider on an ambulance can provide the most basic care if needed, right?

However, a BLS staff ambulance cannot provide

provide any higher level than a BLS level of care.

So ultimately what will happen, depending on the type of call and the recommendation in the probably $2 million computer-aided dispatch system, the appropriate unit based on the call type description will be recommended within milliseconds.

So ideally in the past, I shouldn't say ideally, in the past, the idea was

Well, you're tying up an ambulance for a low acuity situation, or the fire truck should sit and wait for the higher acute.

So basically, that premise was that if grandma's leg is hurting and she has a history of diabetes, and the call comes in as a basic level call, and an ambulance is sitting within two minutes of her address,

We said, no, grandma, we're going to send another unit that's further away because you're not that important.

You know, your level is low because, you know, you've got a history of diabetes.

So that is not the philosophy when we talk about equitable delivery of care.

And fortunately, I've been able to hire additional paramedics.

So ultimately, the paramedics are not just on the ambulances.

And actually, we've been trying out something to kind of minimize the stresses for our providers.

We've actually had a number of BLS ambulances on several days in the city to kind of see what that looks like.

And ultimately, if it's an ALS call, the engine, the fire engine or the ladder truck goes along anyway.

Or if it's a BLS by itself,

I'm curious, Dr. Smith, is an ALS ambulance

Ultimately, an ALS apparatus can provide pretty much all the services that an emergency room physician can do for the most part.

So to answer your question, the equipment is a lot more expensive to maintain in terms of cardiac monitors and having the pharmaceuticals on the trucks.

But just as our partners down the road, oftentimes their staff at an ALS equipment is on their apparatus as well.

So at any time as they get volunteers to come in, they actually can

actually have an ALS unit.

So in terms of return on investment, the equipment oftentimes have probably a 10-year service life ultimate.

The cardiac monitors is probably, I would say, is probably the biggest expense.

And maybe the power load stretcher, which minimizes back injuries, that's probably one of the biggest expenses there.

But to provide services,

I guess the distinction that I was trying to make in my own mind, I know obviously you have to have a, if you're going to have advanced service, you have to have number one personnel who are properly trained to provide the advanced service.

that is going to be more expensive than providing a basic level of service.

Number two, that obviously if you are providing pharmaceutical interventions of various sorts,

Those are things that would have to be on an A level, but not on a B level.

I'm really- Well, they're still on it, sir.

Not to cut you.

They're still on the BLS unit.

Oh, okay.

So that's not a difference.

Not a difference, sir.

And so the main equipment, you say there'd be some equipment differences like the cardiac monitors, the easier lifting of the beds or whatever.

I'm just trying to get a sense of what it means from the council's perspective, because obviously our big issue is not how you staff your department, it's how we pay you for the ability to do that.

Well, I think an ambulance is a shell, ultimately.

And what you buy is certainly separate of that.

And to answer your question, just matter of fact, recently, I think I approved some funds for an ALS equipment to go in a car for cars, ultimately.

But ultimately, the system has already invested and committed to providing the highest level of care in our community.

I guess I'm asking a question perhaps more out of vital curiosity than that I can point to something in the upcoming budget for which this is an important answer, but I'm just curious how much

How much more stuff goes into an advanced level ambulance?

I mean, are we talking about $100,000 in difference?

Are we talking about $50,000?

I would say a cardiac monitor, and I don't know if Chief Rogers is on, I think a cardiac monitor is probably about $30,000.

And other than that,

The medications, I think we exchanged them with the hospital.

So the cost, I think the cost is borne on the hospital to support the system as it relates to that.

We do buy a few medications ultimately.

And I think cardiac monitors really is it.

We talk about a stretcher, but it stretches for anybody at the basic life support level.

So in terms of reviewing any requests for FY23,

equipment replacement.

I don't think we have anything there that would require you to weigh in on and say, well, do we have to do this?

Do we not have to do that?

I think there's nothing on our FY23 related to that.

But what you can understand, however, is ultimately the discussion always evolves around what it costs to staff

and ambulance potentially, salaries and so on and so forth.

That is oftentimes a thing that's kind of thrown out there.

Yeah, I remember, and I'm trying to pull it up right now, there is

someplace in our capital improvement program, some money set aside for, I think it's for a new, I don't know whether it's new ambulance or what, my recollection is it was in the neighborhood of $300,000.

I don't think it's this coming fiscal year, but it's maybe out a year or so.

Yeah, I think our

We have an ambulance on order, which obviously equipment and vehicles reach their end of life, ultimately, where repairs outweigh the costs of maintaining them.

But I think I recall, I wish, Chief Rogers, Chief Rogers, please speak up, I see you now.

The funding that we provided for some cardiac monitors to support our partners the other day, wasn't it close to $100,000 or so, or $200,000?

Yeah, you're roughly right with the price per unit.

The unit the mayor was speaking of, we have a unit on order right now.

The price break there is roughly 260 plus or minus for the actual ambulance itself.

And then there's, like you say, usually another 100 or so, just shy of 100,000 for the equipment.

And the equipment's everything from the stretchers to the cardiac monitors the chief was talking about, sundry of other items that the office of EMS with the state provides a license for the vehicle and they have an equipment inventory list that has to be on the unit, whether it's licensed BLS or whether it's licensed ALS.

No, in the system like Chief Smith spoke of, every unit is pretty much ALS, BLS combo.

They get licensed, so to speak, as ALS, meaning even the cardiac monitor, the basic level EMTs can do the 12-layered electrocardiograms.

They get transmitted to the hospital.

So in order to do those, you still have to have that advanced level cardiac monitor.

So...

Like I said, the drug boxes for right now are on the unit supplied through the hospital.

That may change in the future if the pharmacy board changes that regulation and then the cost of the drugs would be on the agency.

Okay, thank you.

By the way, to

Mike Rogers, I apologize for sending you the email that I had intended to send to the city manager, Michael Rogers.

Yeah, first of all, thank you for your presentation, Dr. Smith.

It was very informative and well done.

It's Brian Pinkston.

Yeah, and thanks for the tour you gave me when I was able to come see your station on Fontaine.

Thank you for that.

The question I have is just in terms of like our partners with UVA, with CARS, with Region 10, with all the folks with the CPD, how do you, what is the mechanism, I'm sure it's different for each group, but how do you, what's your sort of philosophy or what have you learned since you've been here in terms of

you're our guy when it comes to taking care of the city for fire and life safety as I understand it and we appreciate the work that you do for sure what's your sort of sense of where we are as a system in terms of all the various cogs of this large machine working well together getting the very best outcomes for our citizens any any top level things you could

Yeah, I appreciate your compliment as well, sir.

Thank you very much.

It's much appreciated.

I would say that we're in a good position.

The city of Charlottesville, we're resource rich.

And that's a very, very valuable thing, especially being so close knit.

So I would endeavor to say that we need to continue to maximize our partnerships with the different stakeholders through different mechanisms, i.e.

through

and I might allow Chief Rod Powers to speak here, but the community risk reduction element that was implemented prior to me getting here, that is huge in terms of making a difference because ultimately the 911 system is designed for

unexpected things, right?

And ultimately, by engaging our partners through a strategic methodology that looks at how old the buildings are, how many citizens are renting versus

Owl in these homes.

What is our student population like?

What does our elderly population look like?

Where are they living?

You know, looking at when the snow comes through and the powers are out, the power is out.

How do we connect to them?

Do we know them ahead of time?

So I think we're in a good position ultimately.

And it's important that we continue our forward momentum and trust the system while it evolves and continues to change under my leadership ultimately.

Yeah, and can you guys hear me?

I'm going to stay off camera because I'm in a car right now.

You can hear me?

Okay.

Yeah.

Hey, thank you, Chief, very much.

I'm the

from a community risk reduction standpoint, it's a completely different way to look at a fire service and it's matching risk to response, matching risk to resources.

So, you know, a lot of what we've been doing over the last two years is

is establishing strategic community partnerships and figuring out what the right public engagement is.

And much of what we do from a CRR standpoint, community risk reduction CRR standpoint, is leveraging those partnerships because we don't have the resources and the staffing to do everything that we want to do.

and we found that there's so many partners within the community that can do those things that are already doing those things.

One other question.

Yeah, I got just a couple questions.

And again, as others have said, really appreciate the presentation.

I really like us being able to make decisions based on data with data metrics to measure success.

So really excited to see that kind of approach.

Likewise, wholeheartedly agree with the focus being the looking at the entire system and how

that provides the best service to citizens.

A couple, you know, a couple quick questions.

One, just out of curiosity, like, I know you covered the overdoses.

Are we seeing, you know, a significant

So I will trust that my data analyst, I'm going to ask you to speak, Lucas, if you don't mind.

But to answer your question, one of the gaps in our system currently is getting outcomes from our hospitals.

And again, health data exchange is a connection between the hospitals and the fire department EMS providers, which we don't have here, which we have in Central Florida.

And we're moving towards that end.

We do understand that what I would hope you understand that when we respond to an overdose, we're not able to determine unless it's the physical evidence is there, what type of overdose.

Certainly the threshold for

Reversing that overdose could suggest that it's a higher level of something that's on board.

So to answer your question specifically, whether there's a rise in fentanyl in the region, I would suspect yes, as it is across the United States.

Sure.

So that's a great question, Michael.

And our emergency departments are going to have much more definitive data on the presence of fentanyl and carfentanil in overdose patients.

But especially since the pandemic began, we have seen an increase in overdoses.

For 2021, we averaged about 5.5 per month, which is a record since we started keeping records in early 2017.

I wouldn't call it significant, but we've seen it tick up in both 2020 and 2021.

It seems to have seasonal patterns as well.

I know you mentioned Narcan distribution.

Actually, just prior to my retirement, actually, we implemented that framework in the city of Orlando utilizing the GIS data that's available here.

We're able to drive it down to the particular neighborhood's region, but what we also did, we actually put them on the ambulances.

So when the crews responded to an overdose and took care of the patient after it was all said and done,

They turned to a family member or someone who's there and said, hey, here's a Narcan leave behind kit.

Here's the instructions.

These are some of the signs you need to look for.

And also we have additional information on how that person, when they get back, can get help to deal with their situation.

And it was very successful.

Thank you.

No, that's really exciting to hear.

And I would definitely agree with the importance of that.

And then one last question.

I know this is a

Bigger question, maybe, you know, we can't fully get into here, but I'm just sort of curious, because I know as everyone's aware, you know, we're getting into our budget season and some budget decisions we're potentially thinking about will have impacts on our budget for, you know, five, 10 years.

And so, you know, I'm curious just to get a sense, thinking in like a five to 10 year time horizon

In terms of some of the investments and improvements you're seeing as necessary and vital to the department, sort of what those dollar amounts will be, what specific areas they are.

So as we're thinking about, again, long-term impacts of budget decisions, we're able to incorporate that into our decisions and thinking.

Yeah, so I'll talk about FY23 priorities and beyond, ultimately.

Number one, the bypass station.

We have to get it out of the ground, and I really appreciate your support in doing so, and I think there's been commitment to some degree in terms of capital improvement, but that needs to come out of the ground.

It's...

It's dilapidated.

It's sad.

I don't know if you've been in there, but it's unfortunate that our firefighters have to live there.

But ultimately, the Ridge Street Fire Station also needs to be on the roadmap as well, because that is just as old, if not older, if I'm not mistaken, with cracks in the wall that we've been monitoring for a number of years.

So that is an important aspect in terms of priority.

We also want to make sure that we keep in mind that big ticket items, other than the depreciation of fire truck, I don't think our ladder truck is up for a couple of, I think another two, probably two or three years.

So that's, and I think that's already spoken for in that five year CIP.

plan that's out there.

Also, a step plan for our firefighters.

Our firefighters are not paid what is comparable across just this local region, even a county next door.

So that is an important ask for you, and I am pleading with you to support our firefighters because it ties in with retention, it ties in with recruitment, it ties in with their families.

I can probably count on one hand how many of them live in the city of Charlottesville.

They travel for hours sometimes to come and serve this community.

So that is a priority for me as well.

And certainly it's not going to be fixed immediately, but I think the council should be able to at least address it just a little bit as we start thinking about the future, about collective bargaining.

That is also an important thing, ultimately, when we talk about benefits and things of that sort.

So being compliant with NFPA 1710 is also a priority.

And that's why we're looking to ask for six additional firefighters because we need four firefighters on the truck.

The truck sitting behind me many days, most days, it has three people, two in the front, two empty seats in the back, and one person doing the tilling in the back.

We need that.

And I want to make sure that every firefighter goes home safely.

I don't want what happened in other cities to happen here in the city of Charlottesville.

And we have had some significant incidents within the last

13 months.

No, that is helpful, and I would definitely love to see, and I know this isn't the purpose of this discussion, but I would love to just get more information because, again, we're making decisions with five tenure implications, and we definitely agree all those things need to be

really important priorities we need to incorporate.

And I really appreciate that.

And, you know, for me,

The Council can send a strong message to our men and women who serve humbly here in the city by, you know, considering that the requests that have been made, especially as it relates to a framework for a step plan, certainly the fire station, ultimately, that is, you know, it will send a strong message to our team.

And, you know, I'm hopeful that, you know,

I realize we're a piece of the pie, right?

And we all have to be give and take a bit.

But ultimately, we have some committed members here.

And the reality is, I think about 25% of my staff I hired since I've been here.

I hired 27 people since I've been here.

And it's only been a year.

and I've made about six or seven promotions to captain.

So our workforce is young.

Thank you, and that's all I have, and I'll just read her again.

I love the data and specificity.

It really helps me, and I'm sure everyone else, make decisions.

I want to say, Chief Smith, that as far as the mental health component, that's exactly why we invited the fire department to the Marcus Alert group that we were putting together to begin the discussions on the Marcus Alert.

Part of that was to bring in, because we know that the fire department gets

many of those phone calls and also talking to Mr. Powers and Joe, I'm sorry, I'm always getting the ranks mixed up, please forgive me.

And I truly am grateful for a lot of the preventative and the prevention and the frequent utilizer and looking at people's actual needs

and drilling down as to what someone's actual need is when they're a frequent utilizer.

Because usually it's not true medical needs.

Usually it's something else that there's just a hole in our fabric right now that's not getting met.

And this is the last call.

Thank you, ma'am.

And the reality is, change is uncomfortable, right?

But ultimately, I have over 34 years of experience in emergency services, and I came to Charlottesville to contribute, basically, and give my all to this community and the system.

And I

Basically, I've looked at all elements of the system and I've identified where the opportunities are and what we need to do to continue moving forward as a 21st century service delivery agency.

I had one other question related to something we were talking about earlier.

I'm looking at the capital budget that is now officially the budget.

Obviously, we haven't made the new amendments to it.

It shows that in next year, not the one, not the budgeting year we're starting to budget for now, but FY24, it shows an expected expense of $1.1 million.

This is Deputy Chief Rodgers.

That's the next engine that's due to be replaced.

Basically, the engines are on a 10-year replacement cycle, and the oldest one we have right now actually is older than 10 years, where actually the reserves go into reserve at 10 years, and then they serve upwards of 20 years, and it's...

met past due, so to speak.

So that's the next engine that we have for replacement.

And there's a little bit of appreciation in there each year.

I think some of the prior years, they were in the $800,000 to $900,000 range.

That replacement rig there was a specialty rig that cost a little bit more than the standard engines.

So I think that one was bumped up a little to account for that specialty rig.

It's the engine that does double duty as the hazmat response.

So, okay.

So $1.1 million in FY24, there was nothing budgeted for FY25, FY26.

I'm just curious about the long run sort of scheduling of likely replacements.

One second, Mike.

So great question.

So essentially what a lot of agencies do, we depreciate and we set aside funds every year in anticipation of the big expenditure.

And I think I've identified some opportunities for that because while we may be focused on a fire truck, our air packs, for example, have a certain lifespan and they're expensive as well.

We do a number of things in the city where, for example, we set aside in the capital budget $100,000 a year for sidewalks.

We may not actually spend that until we save up

three years worth or four years worth or something.

It distresses me to look at the budget for you all and to recognize that one year we get a chunk of almost $400,000 and two years later, $1.1 million and then nothing for a while when if we were to be trying to do something on an annual basis, it might make planning easier.

It would also, to be perfectly blunt,

If we say we're going to have certain expenses every year out of our capital budget and those are just givens and we're not going to shortchange the fire department as a consequence, we need to have a sense of what those recurring expenses are.

I saw Ms.

I know, I was going to just say it's a great, it is a great point.

The reason why we have not put that in regularly, as you speak of, is because we basically put them in.

They're bondable because they are such a big expense, a firetruck.

It's not amortized over the typical 20-year period, but it is

We do amortize over a shorter period of time.

I will say that we have been having continuing conversations with Dr. Smith about the equipment and the other fire trucks, and we typically just put the fire truck in as the replacement schedule allows.

Hasn't been a problem because we've had capacity within our bonding capacity and our CIP.

But to this end, through this conversation, it would have an impact on this as we talk about maxing out capacity.

Those are things that are not currently in the plan.

The only recurring dollars we have in for the fire department at this time are equal dollars that we have in for police and sheriff for mobile radios.

Okay I'm gonna have to go take a look at that I don't have that in front of me at the moment but you know I'm if we're looking at a possibility of

That's correct, and Mike, I don't know if you can speak to it.

Mr. Mayor, I know that we're about to wrap it up.

I'm still kind of taking all of this in by

or water hose, if you will, or fire hose, you know.

But like Michael, I thought this was a really good presentation.

I never really thought about

Fire in the lands of equity.

You know, we've been talking about education for me for the last 16 years, and I never really thought about, you know, fire, you know, fighting in that regards.

And so the information that you provided, Dr. Smith, was incredible.

I really, I thought it was informative.

I also like the way that you pointed out on several occasions that you

You see the bright future of working with our partners such as cars.

I think that's really vital.

And I really would at some point like to get a tour of the bypass station.

And I know that that is something that's been on the list concerned for many years.

But I just thought this was really informative.

I thought, you know,

Thank you, sir.

We have put aside money for the station, but we've been held up because of the waterline, correct?

And where is that in the CIP?

I don't see the bypass station.

It's under public safety.

It's 1.2.

On the bondable side, it's the last line.

If you're looking at the summary, you probably won't see the details.

But in the summary, you know, to point that out, in the summary, under the bondable section for public safety, the bypass fire station is the only thing

That sounds about right.

All right, and that's, yeah, I mean, I've been in the bypass station delivering the Girl Scouts years ago, a couple of years ago, we delivered some dinner to the different fire stations, and I could not believe that people were actually

staying inside that station so much.

And that kitchen still has the avocado green appliances.

Those are the best.

We're in a situation.

I said Ridge Street isn't a whole lot better.

It's bigger.

It's been able to have some upgrades and a few.

Yes, yes, it's concerning to me.

One last question I had, I know we're running out of time.

I really appreciate the sort of strategic and systematic way you're thinking about where we are now and where we want to be.

And I know that in your presentation you touched on these things, but do you have a document or a master plan or something like that that

you're working on to sort of say, this is where I think the city needs to be five years from now with these, you know, the various components that would make that work.

I'm sure you've got that in your mind and putting the pieces, you've been here for a year, so you've gotten your feet wet for sure, but I'd love to see that at some point.

So what you'll see on our website is our most of all of our initiatives have to be in alignment with our strategic plan.

But tactically, there's additional information that certainly was a part of my 100 day plan where I actually

documented prior to me getting here, where I'm at, where we need to be ultimately.

And it's an intimate document, but I think there's some opportunities for me to kind of share that tactical approach ultimately so people can, you know, so, you know, stakeholders can have an understanding, but ultimately our strategic plan is what guides our forward momentum.

And matter of fact, we're supposed to update it this year and certainly the outcomes of the

of the accreditation process may identify some opportunities for improvement, ultimately.

Yeah, because I'd love to be able to say, okay, this is where we are now in terms of this whole system of response, of which cars, for instance, is one component.

Where do we want to be five years from now?

What makes the most sense?

And not only with respect to cars, but

all the other things that you have on your plate.

Any other questions or comments from council?

I guess the last comment I want to make

is that I don't know whether the rest of the folks in Charlottesville know that on January 27th, we declared it to be Stephen Walton Day.

Stephen Walton having been a civil servant for 50 years, including the last 46 of it in the fire department.

And at Chief Smith's invitation, we did a proclamation declaring it to be Stephen Walton Day in the city of Charlottesville on January 27th.

presented it to him and had a very nice breakfast with the fire department assembled and I appreciate the invitation.

I appreciate the opportunity to break bread with you.

Yeah, absolutely.

Steve is a wonderful person.

I tell you, he's been a cornerstone.

I've had many conversations with him and I'm very appreciative of the services that he's provided to the city and continues to provide ultimately.

And, you know, as we continue in Black History Month, I think it's important for us to really acknowledge not only Steve, but all the contributions of others who have contributed significantly to this community and certainly to the fire department.

So I really appreciate that, Mayor Snook.

Time was not too long ago when there was a lot of concern that the fire department in Charlottesville was not friendly to African-Americans.

And I think the recent history has suggested that that's not the case.

I think that that's, that's really the only item on the agenda that we've got for the four o'clock meeting.

Should we, it's about nine minutes earlier than we had thought that we might, but should we go into the closed session meeting at this point?

Okay, well, first of all, thank you, Chief Smith for having been with us and Chief Powers.

I'm sure you don't need to stick around while we sit around and twiddle our thumbs off camera.

Oh, wait.

You got to read the closed session motion.

Were there any amendments or changes to it?

Okay.

Pursuant to section 2.2-3712 of the Virginia Code, I hereby move that the city council close this open meeting and convene within a closed meeting as authorized by Virginia Code section 2.2-3711A1 and A8 for consideration of prospective candidates for appointment by council to city boards and commissions and for consultation with legal counsel regarding a zoning application pending for council's consideration.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

All opposed?

Do we have to take a formal vote?

Aye.

Any opposed?

Motion passes.

We will now go into closed session.

Yeah, Kina sent one.

Okay, so if there's a link there, I'll see you there in a few minutes.

Yes.

Okay.

See you there in a second.

Yes.

At 6.30, do we have Michael?

Yes, yes, yes.

I don't see him yet.

Okay.

So we have our not only a quorum, but we have everybody back.

so we can begin the business meeting with a moment of silence.

Oh, you're right.

I've got it up and happy to read it.

OK.

Okay, it's been moved and seconded.

I guess we probably need to take a vote.

Ms.

McGill?

Yes.

Councillor McGill.

Vice Mayor Wade?

Okay.

Motion passes 5-0.

Now, having established a quorum, we can begin the business meeting with a moment of silence.

Thank you.

Yes, I have a few.

Two announcements.

The first is that it is Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month and with that,

the Center for Sexual She Shelter has a virtual workshop geared towards middle schoolers and high schoolers, but parents and educators and college students are welcome.

The new dates, the next dates coming up are 2-7, which might have been today, 2-21 and 3-7.

from three to four.

You can get in touch with Alex at prevention at shelterforhelpinemergency.org.

And then the second announcement I have is from Mr. Alex Zan, the Black History Celebration, the All-Burley Reunion

Charlottesville, Virginia, Alexander Black History Pathway in celebration of Black History Month presents a tribute to the All-Burley Reunion and its founder, Mary Taker Neutengale, a 1960 Burley graduate.

She will share the Burley story reunions with Mr. Alexander on Thursday, February 17, 2022 at 7 p.m.

on Channel 14.

and on alex-zan.com slash YouTube.

Historic Jackson P. Burley High School opened in 1951 to serve both Charlottesville and Albemarle County African-American students.

The segregated school graduated its final class of seniors in 1967.

The school is known locally and statewide for its academic sports and band excellence and further created a training course in practical nursing known today as the hidden nurses with the University of Virginia.

Jackson P Burley graduates graduates are worldwide and very proud of their former school, which is presently Burley Middle School.

Burley has played a pivotal role in highlighting the Black History Pathway that strives to preserve and celebrate the city's African-American history.

Black History Pathway is the honorary name for 4th Street between West Main Street and Preston Avenue, which was designated by Charlottesville Historic Resources Committee and the City Council in February of 2021.

Thank you.

We've got some other things we'll get to in a little bit, but are there any other announcements?

Okay, we'll now hear from Dr. Denise Bonds, Health Director for the Blue Ridge Health District.

I am.

Thank you for having me.

Show me the wrong ones.

Hold on.

Let me just stop this and share the other screen.

So thank you for having me here today.

I'm going to start by just giving you an update in where we are right now.

So you should be able to see on my side the timeline of our COVID cases here in the Blue Ridge Health District.

And as you can see, we've had a really big spike that started at the end of December and has continued on and is beginning to fall now.

This, of course, represents Omicron, the highly contagious variant that caused thousands and thousands of cases across the United States and really the world.

We continue to be on a very high transmission level.

That level is determined by the percent positivity, that is the percentage of

PCR tests that are done in the locality and how many are positive and then the rate of new cases within the last seven days.

And you can see that the percent positivity and the rate of new cases that's a per 100,000 rate are both trending down but still quite high.

So hopefully we are heading in the right direction now with regard to our COVID cases.

As expected, that really high COVID number rate did result in large numbers of hospitalization.

As we can see, this is the UVA COVID data.

So it's not just Charlottesville.

Obviously, they are a regional hospital, and this represents individuals admitted from their entire catchment area.

But you can see that the peak was really higher than any other peak that we had, even the

dating back pre-vaccination with regard to hospitalizations.

So even though generally Omicron is much milder and we have a large percentage of our population that are vaccinated and thus either weren't infected or didn't suffer an illness that was as serious, this high number of unvaccinated individuals in our community are still driving very high hospital numbers.

Again, that number seems to be

Trending in the right direction now.

So I think that's a really positive step.

I did just want to show you this slide.

I know that there's been a big concern about children recently and how going to school might impact the cases of Omicron.

We did see a large increase in children, particularly in that zero to 11 year age group.

We have either no vaccination in the under five years or

Lower rates of vaccination because the vaccine hasn't been available as long in that five to 11 year age range.

But there was a pretty big spike.

However, the numbers are really still being driven by adults at this point in time.

As you can see, that's that red line on this slide.

When we look at the variants, as you can see, it really is primarily Omicron.

We do still type a small amount of the Delta variant in our area.

This is the North.

Actually, this is the entire state of Virginia right now.

I didn't drill this down to the Northwest region.

So in Virginia, we primarily have Omicron, but we do see a small amount of Delta that does still circulate.

to my knowledge, we have not seen the new Omicron sub variant subtle Omicron or the B2A that hasn't come on the radar screen as of yet in our state.

So vaccination is really critical and I'm going to show you a slide showing just how critical in a minute, but here's how we're doing in Charlottesville right now.

There have continued to be individuals that get their first vaccination.

We're up by almost a thousand individuals from the last time I spoke to you about a month ago.

So that's great.

That means that another 800 to a thousand individuals really stepped forward and decided to get vaccinated.

The percentage with at least one dose, which is really kind of the metric that we are using

has increased over time.

We're at about 75% now for the entire population of Charlottesville.

Adults are a little higher at 79%.

They've been eligible for the vaccine for longer.

And you can see the percentage fully vaccinated.

And this right now still means just two vaccines, not the booster dose as well.

For the entire population is 68%.

62% for adults.

I'm going to have to look at that.

I think that might be a typo there.

So please disregard that.

And then about 42% of the population has either gotten a booster or a third dose.

And remember, if you're immunocompromised, we do recommend that you get that third dose.

So why are vaccines so important?

Because vaccines save lives.

This is a scatter plot.

where we've just taken our district and it looks the same if we take all health districts across the state where we've looked at the deaths in a locality versus vaccination.

And if you draw a line out through that, you can see that the more people that are vaccinated, so being at this end of the spectrum, the fewer number of deaths that a locality has.

So

We've seen this pretty consistently over the last few months as we follow this data, the higher the population or the higher the vaccination rate in a population, the better, the fewer number of people that end up dying.

So vaccines for COVID do save lives.

So really encourage anyone who's been thinking about or considering about starting that vaccination series to do it today.

And here's who's getting vaccinated in the Charlottesville area.

As I said, we still have relatively lower rates in that 5 to 11.

That's because that vaccine hasn't been available for that age group for as long, but it's still a pretty good chunk of that group 69% essentially who've gotten at least one dose of that vaccine.

We still have very relatively low numbers in that 18 to 24 year old age group.

And that's not just Charlottesville.

We see that pretty consistently.

It's a group that's just hard to reach and are pretty resistant against getting vaccinated.

So if you know of somebody in that 18 to 24, have a heart to heart with them and encourage them to get vaccinated.

When we look at vaccines by race and ethnicity,

We continue to see lower rates of vaccination amongst individuals who report being black on their vaccination status and in the community.

Highest rates really amongst the Native Americans, relatively small numbers, Asian and Pacific Islanders and the Latino population with whites in there as well.

I do just want to

demonstrate or show you a slide about health inequity with regard to different racial groups.

So this is a graph that you can find on the state web page and you can drill down and it's for the entire district.

It doesn't drill down.

to just the Charlottesville area.

But what it does is use the white population as essentially one.

And if you have a bar that is on this side, on that left side, as you're looking at the screen, or less than one, that means that your cases or your hospitalizations or your vaccines are less than the white population for that same area.

If your bar for a particular racial group is on

the right hand side as you're looking at the screen or greater than one.

That means that your cases, hospitalizations or vaccine are greater than the white population.

And so you can see here for Asian and Pacific Islanders, they had relatively fewer hospitalizations and cases, but have a relatively higher vaccination rates than the white population.

And we just saw that in that previous slide.

compared to the black population that has higher rates of cases and hospitalizations compared to the white population, but a somewhat lower vaccination rate.

And then the Latino population where they also have higher cases and hospitalizations, but have a higher vaccination rates than the white population.

So really just a nice summary of where we are.

We continue to reach out to populations that have not gotten vaccinated to try and encourage vaccination and to help answer their questions.

And I'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute.

Just want to remind everybody that there are lots of steps that every individual can take to keep themselves safe.

As I've encouraged already, get vaccinated.

Vaccines are safe and effective.

The Moderna vaccine was just approved by the FDA.

It is now called SpikeVax.

And it is now, just like the Pfizer vaccine, fully approved for use in individuals over the age of 18.

It's really important to get that booster.

So if it's been more than five months since you've had your mRNA vaccine or two months since the J&J vaccine, please go and get a booster.

I'll provide a list of where you can get that vaccine.

Remember, it's still free.

It's still very effective.

And now both Pfizer and Moderna have been approved fully by the FDA.

Wear your mask and upgrade your mask.

Encouraging everybody now to really move beyond the single-ply cloth mask.

Think about at least upgrading to a surgical or a medical mask.

They have a greater protection and they're widely available.

N95s and KN95s also offer really great protection.

They don't really make kid-sized N95s or KN95s.

If you have a child who has a larger face, they may be able to wear an adult one.

They are thicker and people do feel the effort to breathe through them, but they provide really superb protection.

Cloth mask can be effective.

If you're going to use a cloth mask, make sure it has several layers to it.

And the most important thing is that a mask has to cover your nose and mouth completely.

I still see a lot of people whose masks hang down below their nose.

That makes them really ineffective.

They're not blocking aerosols from your nose, nor are they protecting you from aerosols from other people.

Keep your distance.

Six feet is best.

Outdoors is always better than indoors.

And if you are going to go visit a crowded indoor location, again, be sure you're wearing that well-fitting mask.

And then finally, wash your hands.

It's good hygiene and it protects you not just from COVID, but lots of other diseases.

We are no longer calling every single case and we are no longer calling contacts of individuals.

We're really moving towards a model where we're focusing on either high risk settings or outbreak situations.

So you may not get a call from us.

So it's really important that if you do a home test, for example, and find out that you are infected with COVID, you know what to do.

So if you are infected, isolate.

The recommendations are at least five days, longer if your symptoms are still going on, particularly if you still have a fever.

And day six through 10, you can leave isolation if you're improving and you're fever free

but you must wear a mask because you are probably still infectious at least during those early days.

If you have access to antigen tests, and they are a lot more available now than they were just a few weeks ago, I saw a big pile of them in the grocery store this weekend, consider getting an antigen test and doing a test at the end of that five days, and if it's still positive, that's an indication that you probably still are infectious, and so you need to stay in isolation for a bit longer.

If you find out that you were exposed, you have COVID-wise or

a friend or relative calls and says that they had COVID and you were exposed, then you may need to quarantine.

If you're fully vaccinated and you have had your booster, then you don't have to quarantine, but we do recommend and ask that you wear a well-fitting mask when you're around others for at least 10 days.

If you've had confirmed COVID in the past 90 days, then you also don't need to quarantine.

If you haven't gotten that vaccination series or you haven't gotten your booster, we do ask that you quarantine for five days post exposure and then wear a well-fitting mask when you're out in the public on day six through 10.

And again, we also recommend that you get tested five days after exposure or if your symptoms develop so that you can see if you've actually contracted COVID.

There are lots of places to get tested.

As I said, there are lots of ancient tests that are widely available now.

You can order them from the federal government.

They come through the postal service, but they're relatively inexpensive and appear to be available now and a lot of grocery stores.

If that doesn't work for you or you want a PCR test,

you can do the you can go to the Community Testing Center.

This is actually hosted by the same group that's doing our community vaccination.

It's located at Pantops where the Food Lion is.

On Monday there's testing available through UVA, the Church of Incarnation or in Louisa if you're out in that direction.

on Tuesday at JC Penney or at Mount Zion First African Baptist Church or the Green Health Department, Wednesday and or Thursday again back at Fashion Square Mall where the old JC Penney is or at Nelson on Wednesday or Fluvanna on Thursday and then at Friday we're at JC Penney at Fashion Square Mall.

You can scan the QR code or go to our website

and look at our testing sites.

Pre-registration is available for some of these, but most of them are take walk-ups.

And then if you have decided to get vaccinated or you need to get your booster, there are a whole bunch of places to get it.

We're at every health department.

We are at the downtown mall.

We are moving up.

It used to be down near the

City Office buildings.

We're now up to closer where Bashir's Tavern used to be.

Just look for Moby, the giant teal van.

They're happy to do it on Mondays from 12 to 3.

And then, of course, our Community Vaccination Center in Seminole Square also is available Monday through Saturday, 8 a.m.

to 6 p.m.

We'll just make a comment about both the community testing and the Community Vaccination Center.

Although these are sponsored by VDH,

They are funded through FEMA dollars.

And if we do not meet certain criteria, primarily the number of people who either get vaccinated or tested, they will not be in our community.

So they've been a great asset.

We're really delighted that they've been here and have been able to help us with vaccination and testing.

But if

They don't have the numbers, they will close that particular site.

So if you're thinking of getting boosted for your vaccine, now is really a great time to do it.

You can take children there to get a booster.

Absolutely, they would be happy to do it there.

And of course, you can talk to your pediatrician.

They may be able to do it as well.

But the Community Vaccination Center will do children.

So some things to look forward to in the next coming weeks.

Vaccines for six months to four years are coming soon.

The FDA meeting for emergency use is next week.

I think, yes.

And that'll be followed if it's approved by the FDA meeting by the CDC ACIP meeting, which is the advisory group that also provides their recommendations.

So it may be as soon as the end of February that we have that vaccine available, depending on what the data showed at the FDA meeting next week.

to assist people in getting their questions answered and to help those individuals that have vaccine hesitancy.

We have hired additional community health workers that will be out and about to answer questions and go door to door and talk to individuals about COVID vaccine and answer their questions.

So look for them out in the community.

And for parents who want to get their kids vaccinated but are really having challenges getting to one of the vaccination events, we are doing in-school vaccinations now.

Twice a week we're in a Charlottesville area school.

We do get parental permission and so permission slips are sent home ahead of time, but then we do them in the school during the school hours.

Parents don't have to be present for that.

So look for that at your school.

coming in the next few weeks if it hasn't, if you haven't already seen it.

So as always, our hotline is operating there, 9726261, and of course, vaccines.gov will give you all of the locations in the community that you can get vaccinated.

No, I am just happy that you all are providing all of these opportunities for both testing and vaccination.

So thank you so much.

You know, we're going now, I guess,

We'll be going on the third year of this in another month or so.

So it's been a long haul.

So thank you and your staff so much, you know, for really the whole community.

Thank you.

I'll be sure to pass that on to the staff.

They are

They've been working really hard and it is, we are entering our third year and it's definitely taken a toll.

Dr. Bonds, would you say that children in schools should probably wear their masks for safety reasons?

That is a great question and I'm going to answer it in a couple of ways.

The CDC definitely recommends that mask use is an important mitigation strategy for both adults and children in school.

I no longer have school-aged children, but if I did have school-aged children, I would have them wear masks in school.

It's very clear that COVID is an aerosolized virus.

and while schools have done a fabulous job of upgrading their systems and employing other mitigation strategies, I think we don't understand the long-term ramifications of what happens when a child or an adult is infected with COVID.

And so I would

want to use all of the tools that I have available for my kids.

Both my kids are vaccinated, but they're also young adults and not quite in the same situation as some parents.

So that's my personal opinion and how I would treat my children and what the CDC recommendations are.

I know parents are getting a lot of mixed messages all over the place right now.

Thank you all.

Dr. Bonds, I have one more question before you go.

What is the best guidance, either from CDC or VDH or any other authoritative source on public meetings?

Should we be having public meetings as we had two years ago?

Should we be doing some sort of hybrid meetings?

Yeah, so that's a great question.

And I

I don't know what the current CDC.

I'd have to go and look up if the CDC.

I think it's going to be very situation dependent with the things that you need to look at being the transmission rate in the community.

The situation for the public meeting, that is, has that building had upgraded ventilation systems?

Can you hold the public meeting in an outdoor location?

We are in February and outdoors is sometimes 20 degrees, so sometimes not really appropriate.

And how many people do you expect to be in the building and what is going to be the community compliance with other mitigation strategies?

So do we expect everyone to stay six feet apart and to be compliant with wearing masks the whole time or

Will people be crowded and individuals not wearing their mask?

I think I would personally probably not attend an in-person meeting that I thought was going to be crowded until we see lower levels of spread in our community.

It's certainly going in the right direction right now, but we want to protect our hospital.

and we want to make sure that that service is available for people who need important procedures or have an emergency.

Thank you.

Questions?

Other questions, counselors or for that matter, anybody on staff?

Hearing none, thank you, Dr. Bonds, for your monthly report.

So next on the agenda, proclamations.

We have a proclamation concerning Black History Month 2022, and Vice Mayor Wade would like to read the proclamation.

Whereas February has been set aside nationally as a time to remember and learn about the contributions of Black Americans to the formation of our country, and whereas February, we bring focus to the stories of Black Americans who have helped build our nation and our city, who have advanced the cause of freedom and civil rights, and who have strengthened our families and our communities, and whereas we examine our nation's history,

and the history of Charlottesville, which continues to be written.

We discovered countless stories that inspire us, stories of triumph of the human spirit, the triumph over cruelty rooted in ignorance, prejudice, and bigotry, and the triumph of everyday people rising above seemingly insurmountable

circumstances to achieve greatly.

And whereas we commit to work with intentions to address past injustices that have hurt the Black community, racist laws, policies, and practices that

are intended to displace, intimidate, and financially harm Black citizens.

We acknowledge our collective responsibility to break down barriers to equity and inclusion, and whereas we celebrate Black History Month to teach our children, our neighbors,

and all Americans to rise above complacency and to be champions of human dignity, fairness, equity and equality.

And whereas we take this time to rededicate ourselves to affirming the promise of the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

and whereas in the city of Charlottesville we resolved to teach

The true history of all our people in both public schools and our public spaces and whereas Black lives do matter in Charlottesville, Virginia, Black people are valued and vital members of the community.

Black culture is woven into the fabric of the community and we work to attract, welcome and retain a diverse population.

Now, therefore, we

The City Council and the City of Charlottesville, Virginia hereby proclaim February as Black History Month.

We call on the people of Charlottesville to join us in learning about and honoring Black achievement and the Black experience in our community and throughout the country.

And we encourage and support Black History Month programs.

Signed and sealed this seventh day of February 2022.

Thank you, Vice Mayor Wade.

I swear I have to officially vote on it, but I know that I speak for everybody else on council.

I would also add that those words are not originally mine.

They are essentially the same resolution that we've passed a couple different times.

It's a statement that I think all of us take seriously.

I should add, by the way, that the official theme of Black History Month, according to the national sources, is Black health and wellness.

And I know that at the University of Virginia, they have a number of things that they are doing that are

trying to tie into that theme.

One in particular is tomorrow evening, actually all day tomorrow, there's a UVA health disparities conference, why we can't wait healthcare justice for all.

And that's something that will be going on tomorrow.

There are other events that

are going on.

So if you have access to things at the University of Virginia, just sort of follow up on what they're doing.

One of some interest in particular would be the history of race at the UVA Medical Center from 1901 to 2000.

Of course, we know that that's a time that included eugenics.

It's a time that included also the recognition of that history and some of the

some of the changes that have been made ever since.

Next item is a recognition that was coming from the Virginia Department of Social Services.

And I just want to read this

It's a benefit program specialist appreciation month, which is a little bit of a mouthful, but here's the resolution of appreciation.

Whereas Virginia has provided a safety net to the most vulnerable citizens of the Commonwealth by administering the benefit programs of SNAP, TANF, medical assistance, general relief, auxiliary grant, refugee cash assistance, and energy assistance by local departments of social services.

And whereas Virginia's landmark welfare reform legislation and the present social economic climate in the United States and Virginia have significantly impacted the services provided by local benefit program specialists calling upon them to creatively promote individual self-sufficiency and personal responsibility.

and whereas Virginia continues to experience unprecedented implementation of complex policies and procedures in all major benefit programs, as well as continuing the processes of working remotely and relying on technology for processing cases and issuing benefits during a public health emergency as essential employees, whereas Virginia's 3,916 benefit programs workers

316 view workers, 453 childcare workers have been at the forefront of public efforts to meet that need, steadily maintaining a high rate of application processing and case management to ensure that those qualified for social services benefits receive and continue to receive them.

And whereas more than 37,000 TANF recipients and additional $4.7 million in TANF diversionary payments

were issued to prevent long-term dependence on public assistance, 7,166 view cases, over 753,000 SNAP recipients, 1.8 million medical assistance recipients, 444 general relief recipients, more than 3,000 auxiliary grant recipients, 108,000 energy assistance households, almost 27,000 child care households,

Over 4,000 children under 17 in foster care and 838 young adults are served through the benefit programs division and depend on the dedication and commitment of benefit program specialists who handle their cases in an accurate and timely manner.

And whereas benefit program specialists are continually faced with reconciling an environment of rapidly changing policies, procedures and technological advances with quality control requirements.

and whereas benefit program specialists provide ethical public service, respect human dignity, are responsible for the application of the law, demonstrate personal integrity and promote professional excellence.

Now, therefore, be it resolved on this 15th day of December 2021, the State Board of Social Services does hereby commend all benefit program specialists across the Commonwealth

for a job well done and recognizes the month of February 2022 as Benefit Programs Specialists Appreciation Month, calling upon Virginians to join in acknowledging their public service contributions, signed Clyde Santana Chair, the State Board of Social Services.

So we have with us Mary Jane Skidmore from Department of Social Services, who has a couple of words for us on this.

Ms.

Yes, thank you.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, City Council, Mr. Rogers, Ms.

Marshall, Mr. Sanders, and the citizens of the City of Charlottesville.

My name is Mary Jane Skidmore.

I'm the Chief of Benefit Programs with Charlottesville's Department of Social Services.

I represent the Division of Workers.

This resolution of appreciation is directed to for the month of February 2022.

Benefit program specialists, supervisors, and administrative staff who work in Charlottesville Department of Social Services provide a safety net to the most vulnerable citizens of the city by administering the benefit programs of SNAP, TANF, medical assistance, child care, general relief, auxiliary grant, refugee cash assistance, and energy assistance.

Over the last year, we've seen an increase in our workload due to various reasons such as the pandemic and influx of refugees from Afghanistan and more individuals and families who are eligible for assistance due to program policy updates and changes.

The resolution reflects data for the state of Virginia, and I wanted to share a little bit about our caseload numbers, specifically the areas of increased need in the city.

In the month of December of 2021, we carried more than 8,400 public assistance cases.

That's a 20% increase from December of 2020.

The majority were Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance or SNAP.

These two programs increased 24% and 15% respectively for the last year.

Even though we face many obstacles with technology, vacancies, policy updates, we continue to successfully serve the most vulnerable in our community.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share the extraordinary work that the benefit program division has accomplished over the last year.

And thank you for, first of all, being here, second of all, for speaking up for this

group of very hardworking people who had some particular challenges during the COVID time.

Yes, sir.

We're working remotely and we still are processing more applications than we did prior to the pandemic.

So we've been able to modify our work environment so that we're able to still work with our community as well as with our clients.

And I know just when you thought COVID was winding down, we throw a whole bunch of refugees from Afghanistan at you too.

Exactly.

Thank you for all of your good work.

I just want to say as much appreciated.

I work with the county's social service department and this language and those numbers are just very familiar and very astounding.

The work that has been done by all social service workers over the last couple of years, it really has stepped up to just provide an integral call again to provide some services to some residents that are in most need.

Thank you, Vice Mayor Wade.

Any other comments?

Well, thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yes, Mayor, I

So I move to appoint to the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau Executive Board, of which there are two vacancies, Walter Burton and Angelique Jenkins.

To the Human Rights Commission, of which there are four vacancies, Jeanette Abbinator, Ernest Chambers, Katherine Lawn, and Erica Robinson.

and to the Social Services Board with a conflict to his schedule, Vice Mayor Wade must step down from that and Councillor Pinkston has agreed to serve in that place.

So is there a second to that motion?

Yes.

Second.

and discussion.

Ms.

Councilor McGill?

Yes.

Councilor Pinkston?

Yes.

Yes.

Okay, that motion passes 5-0.

Next motion is to remove a member from the Region 10 Community Services Board.

Regretfully, Ms.

Dawn Pryor, who has been serving on that board, has been unable to serve since 2020.

Yeah.

Okay.

Any discussion?

Ms.

Councillor McGill?

Yes.

Yes.

Okay, so that motion passes 5-0.

Yes, the third motion is to appoint a counselor to represent the city for the upcoming NACO grant about helping the EBDM Policy Committee

It is a non-appointed board.

that I was asked to be part of based, it was almost like a subcommittee of the Justice Committee that I am appointed on.

And Neil Goodloe is the staff person kind of on that.

And the NACO grant is, NACO is the National

It's the Association of Counties.

Okay.

Is there a second to that motion?

Second by Vice Mayor Wade.

Any discussion?

I'll only say that it's a it's a badly needed project.

I'm glad you're working on it.

Thank you.

Ms.

Councilor McGill?

Yes.

Councilor Pinkston?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Waite?

Okay, so that gets us through the boards and commission appointments.

I should add that if you have wanted to be on the region 10 board, there is now a vacancy and applications, I believe, will probably be open pretty much right away so that we might appoint someone in March, if that's the usual course of conduct.

So there is a spot on the city's website for applying to be a member of any board and commission.

They only appear there when there is an opening.

And we do it basically every three months that we appoint new people to various things.

Next item is the consent agenda.

Ms.

Consent agenda, number two, minutes, December 20th, closed and regular meetings, January 11th, special meeting, three, ordinance, amending and reenacting the provisions of chapter 28, streets and sidewalks, article six, sidewalk cafes of the code of the city of Charlottesville in 1990 as amended to establish the city treasurer as the city's official responsibility

the city official responsible for collecting rents from sidewalk cafe operators and to waive rents due and owing to the city under the provisions of city code section 28-214C2.

All right, thank you.

We'll now take public comment regarding

Excuse me, sneeze there.

We'll now take public comment regarding items on the consent agenda that were just read by the clerk.

Each speaker will have up to three minutes.

In the Zoom webinar, you may select the raise hand option to be placed in the speaker queue.

If you have joined by phone and wish to speak on the consent agenda, you may press star nine.

Mayor Snook, I see one hand at the moment.

Mr. Stein, is this specific to any of the- No, I thought this was the public comment section.

Okay.

Yeah, I recognize your name from the prior paperwork, so we'll get to you in a second.

The next person with their hand raised is Elizabeth Stark.

Elizabeth, you have three minutes with counsel.

Hi, I'm so sorry.

Sometimes when we're listening to these Zoom meetings at home, things happen at the wrong time.

Were you saying that you pulled the Downtown Business Association and partnership with the firefighters?

Was that just from the agenda?

Yes, that's been pulled.

Okay, great.

Thank you so much.

Okay.

Anyone else?

Is there a second?

I'll second that.

Any further questions or comments from Council?

Ms.

Okay.

Councilor McGill?

Yes.

Yes.

Yes, Mayor, Council, there is a report.

We want to provide tonight a return to the discussion we had on February 3rd concerning the budget.

As you recall, one of the primary issues that we presented to you on that evening was that we needed to meet a deadline on February 14th in terms of advertising our intent to increase rate, revenue, or rates

With that discussion, that's a series of questions about what actions we need to take.

We have a series of questions.

And tonight we want to turn to that discussion with the presentation.

summarizing last Thursday's discussion and answering the questions you raised about the allocation of resources should you take an action to raise the revenue rate.

Okay, I'm going to learn how to share my screen and get that down a little more smoothly next time.

But good evening, council.

So as Mr. Rogers said, we are here with some follow up to some questions and things that we talked about at the budget work session last week.

And we hope that these will address some of the questions and additional information that you asked us to gather for you.

So with that, we're going to talk about, we're going to revisit some budget projections and the new requests.

We're going to talk about some tax comparisons, some tax implications, tax relief programming, some key decision points, and then a spin scenario for you.

So when we were here last week, we brought up with a list of drivers that we know are driving, excuse me, that are driving the revenue for this year.

Most notably, we have seen a significant real estate revenue increase

of about 8.2 million.

And then many of our other taxes are climbing back out of sort of pre-COVID levels.

And we're looking at a new revenue number of roughly $4.8 million.

and I caution just to say that this number is what we know about now.

We're still getting numbers and updates from the state, so this number will change slightly once we get to you with the proposed budget, but we don't anticipate anything material, but just want to put that caveat out there that this is still sort of a work in progress.

So we also talked to you about the drivers that are things that we know about that have significant or material cost increases associated with them that basically are associated with sort of maintaining the service level that we currently offer.

One of the biggest things we talked about was employee compensation and benefits, how this was an employee market.

You know that you approved a 6% mid-year increase.

We are currently looking at a 3% merit at a cost of 1.7 and a 2% retiree COLA.

in the school's contribution.

We know that the schools, based on their budget submission, they're asked to the city is going to be a $4.2 million.

Per the formula, it's $3.3.

And then we've been talking about tax relief enhancements and we are setting aside roughly a million dollars or so for that change.

We also talked to you about some things that were reduced or deferred due to COVID on the operating side, most notably equipment replacement funding and funding for facilities repair to get those back to those pre-COVID levels and a little bit of catch up that was roughly about a million eight

The human services match was 800.

Contractual agencies, which again, this is another number as everybody's firming up their budgets, continues to change.

But right now we're looking at roughly about $325,000.

And then per our policy, there's roughly $430,000 that will go to the debt service fund from the meals tax increase.

So all of these things total up to about $14.5 million, give or take.

Again, I want to stress that these are drivers and things that we know about, but there are also some decision points within here.

So while it looks like it's all spent, again, there are some decision factors, none of which are easy, but there certainly is flexibility to revisit any of these things that we are noting as drivers.

So again, kind of comparing the two, we have still a little money on the expenditure side that we have not allocated.

We talked to you last week about roughly a half a million dollars.

We still are comfortable with that, that there would be about a half a million to still allocate out.

And again, this is just a reminder that those are drivers and recommendations for what staff is looking at at this point.

Going back to the new request, about half of the new requests are for additional people.

Many of these new staff could address efficiency and performance.

The budget team, the city manager and deputy city managers are still reviewing these new requests and working through those to decide what priorities or things that they might want to push forward.

Absolutely.

Thank you, Cressy.

What we've provided here is additional information on tax comparisons.

However, one thing we would like to make sure that we do to provide as much information for Council's consideration

is to note that when we think of the real estate tax, there are always some variables that go into how a locality chooses to apply whatever tax rate they currently are applying.

For example, we know that some of our Northern Virginia cities, certain portions of tax rates are designated to certain things.

The other thing to consider is also

The average income in that particular community, as well as considering the median house value.

So if a house value, median house value in a locality is lower, they may need a higher tax rate in order to conduct the business of the city.

So, for example, in Roanoke, which I feel fair to pick on because I'm born and raised there, the average median house cost is $225,000.

So when you think of that and a $1.22 tax rate, it's going to hit a little different than, for example, in Loudoun County, where the average home value is $625,000.

So those are certainly some things, just as you all are looking at data that has been presented to you by various members of the community and also that you all have been weighing within council, something to keep in mind is just that there are potential reasons as to why a locality has a higher tax rate than another locality.

It's going to be very specific on their jurisdictional needs.

as well as things like their home value or the cost of living.

So again, to pick on Roanoke has a higher tax comparison, but actually a lower cost of living using our average of $59,471, which is from the census where they looked at the average

Median Income from 2015 to 2019 to live in Roanoke, you can earn 14% less because there you could survive on $50,919.

But again, they've got the highest tax rate.

So if you also recall in the budget work session, I think it was Council Pinkston who had made reference to wanting to have a better understanding of the makeup of the new request as it related to just not necessarily knowing the efficiency of the overall organization to then be able to fully consider this item.

What we wanted to point out here in the notes there at the bottom of this screen is that half of the new requests are for additional people.

doesn't necessarily mean that we are in full agreement that that is what we need to do and should do and can do in any one fiscal year.

But just pointing out to you that the loud voice of the of the leadership team is that there is a need for additional people to help us fix some of the various things that we've been faced with over the years.

Many of these things would definitely address efficiency and performance, but we as a team, a budget team, and also in the city manager's office are still evaluating what will be the right approach to take, which departments will receive additional individuals if we were able to be able to make them fit into the budget.

But ideally, as you pose the question in regards to efficiency,

So one of the other questions we as we were discussing, I think you all had asked about what would the impact be.

So we looked at just some ranges of house values, keeping in mind that

The actual changes by parcel can vary significantly.

So, for example, some neighborhoods had reassessment changes as high as 31.2% and some had zero.

So this is just sort of meant to be a guide to

kind of gauge what the impact would be.

So again, the values are in the first column.

The second column is what real estate taxes would have been paid in 2021.

The next column, which is the middle column, is the real estate taxes that will be due just based on the reassessment itself.

And then the last column finally would be what the impact would be if we layered on the 10 cents.

So at $100,000 in 2021, prior to the reassessment, your tax bill would have been 851.

After the reassessment that just occurred in January of 2022, you would now be paying 950.

That's the bill that would be going out.

Should we approve a 10 cents tax increase, that bill would now bump to 1050.

So just to be clear, for the $100,000 row, essentially the person, an individual whose assessment was at that figure would end up paying another roughly $200 over the course of that year if we had a 10 cent extra.

That is correct.

And again, the 410 is the average assessed value.

So that's, you know, that's the average of what the impact would be for the average assessed home.

So moving on, the other thing that we talked about in the drivers are the tax relief programs.

So with the new assessment alone, if we make no other changes, we're looking at roughly about a $50,000 increase over last year.

However, we know that just looking at that, 67 households or 11% of all people that were applied and were eligible and received relief last year now fall out of eligibility because their assessment is over the 375.

And again, the 375 is a charter limit within the city charter.

In order to raise that, we would have to go to the General Assembly and ask that that be raised.

So not something we could do for 23, but certainly something we could look at for the next General Assembly session.

It's not going to let Mr. Divers.

I think I just did it.

Yeah, I can now.

I got bounced out for a second.

Hey, everybody.

The question about the charter change, I'll be honest with you, I don't know if there's a higher vote threshold to pass a charter amendment.

I can find that out.

I just don't know the answer to that.

And again, the issue is that the program is pegged to the VHDA home loan program parameters.

And that's specified in the charter.

So if you wanted to peg home values to some other criteria or have it say, we want to set it to whatever we want to set it to, that's got to be in the charter.

And to be clear, the $50,000 is if we make no changes whatsoever to the relief programs parameters.

You know, we keep the income thresholds at $55,000.

We keep the formulas the same.

I'd really rather not do that.

Correct.

And this is just based on the current new assessments, right?

Yes.

The new assessments only.

I thought it was going to be higher.

But, you know, like Chrissy said, so many people dropped out, you know, got dropped out of the program because of the home values that it kind of balanced everything out, you know.

And is the...

Yeah, I think it's, you know, I think it's partially that I think, you know, some of it has to do with maybe the income threshold that we're doing, we're using.

And I, you know, I think the city's just trending younger, to be honest with you.

So we're losing, you know, we're losing folks who are applying for real estate tax relief, you know, which is

doesn't have the home value cap, but I think, you know, we're losing elderly folks who are not applying for that as much.

Any other questions on the tax relief?

So again, the million dollars that we have on the expenditure drivers already would address the program changes and things that Todd will be recommending.

So moving on, we have shown you this chart several times to give you some ideas of what a tax increase might look like.

Again, a penny on the real estate tax rate based on the current reassessment is roughly about $927,000.

The meals tax, another 1%, that's 2.6%.

personal property 10 cents would roughly be $233,000 percent on the lodging tax would be about $812,000, $13,000 and then the cigarette tax we do not have the ability to raise that we are maxed out on that one.

And so again, last week, the takeaway was for us to come back to you with an idea of what a five cent tax increase would look like and what a 10 cent tax increase would look like.

Five for operations and five for the CIP.

So we're going to walk through a couple of those.

And I'll be posting this PowerPoint on the budget work session.

There's a lot of information here.

And so at the conclusion of this meeting, it'll be out on the budget web page under work sessions.

So you can look at this later.

But if we talk about the current debt, so this chart here is an indication of where we are right now.

We have debt that we've issued over prior years.

We have an annual debt service of $11.9 million.

Our general fund budget is $192 million.

So that puts our, we're roughly at our capacity, I'm sorry, of our debt service ratio of 6.21%.

If you'll recall, our policy is a target of nine and our max is 10%.

So we're still well within that policy.

If you look at our general fund budget, we are transferring in $10.7 million to pay the $11.9 million debt service payment.

And the way we're able to sort of smooth this general fund transfer is that we have a rather large debt service balance that we have accumulated in anticipation of issuing higher debt limits.

And so in order to smooth this out, we started

putting in a little extra as we go.

Now the increases that you see here for the annual increase, this is reflective of COVID and the meals tax change.

So you'll recall in 21 due to COVID, we dropped our meals tax

projections.

And then we actually ended up performing a little better and we upped our projection for 22.

And again, we're upping that again for 23.

So that's the change here.

So roughly for 23, where we're starting without issuing any new debt

These debt payments continue for 20 years from the time we issue them typically.

And you'll see that over time, if you don't issue any more debt, then every year you're buying it down.

And we are using some of this fund balance.

But again,

Again, we've got plenty of cushion, if you will, on the ratio, and we've got some debt service fund balance so that we have some flexibility with the increases or what we budget in the general fund.

So what happens when we add debt?

So as you know, we've been talking about this chart here, which is the five-year CIP plan that was presented to the Planning Commission.

We have $157.4 million in the CIP, 122 million, give or take, was for debt service, and that includes the $75 million project for schools.

So if we back out a little bit, just to take a step back,

Let's take a look at the CIP plan, excluding the school project, everything else being the same.

So that would give us $82.4 million over five years.

We would be selling $46.9 million of bonds.

So you see that the school project is out, the bonds are reduced, and we're at 46.9 and a total CIP of $82.4 million.

So what happens to our debt chart?

Before we get there, I want to just clear out a few assumptions, and then we're going to sort of layer on each time.

But again, we've also talked about that our debt capacity to get us to the 10% ratio is about $185 million.

We know that in prior CIPs, we have approved projects that we're gonna sell bonds for and haven't yet in the amount of about 66 million.

So that gives us the remaining capacity of about 119 million here.

And we know from the 23, 27 CIP excluding the school, we're looking at about $47 million just on general government type projects.

which leaves us a capacity of just under $72 million.

So in the assumptions for the next table that I'm gonna show you, I'm assuming no tax increase, I'm looking at our historical year average.

So basically for our sort of general fund, general government projects on average, give or take, we've been issuing about $15 million of new money a year.

I'm assuming a two and a half borrowing rate for 22, three for 23, three and a half for 24 and four for 25 and beyond.

I'm also assuming that the general fund is going to grow about 1.5% a year, and that meals tax is going to grow about 2% per year.

That's generally standard for what we've been using with these projections, and I'm using that for years 24 to 27, and I'm also assuming that we're going to use the debt service fund balance to mitigate the impact on the general fund transfer.

So when you do that, here's where we are.

So our yellow line, this is where we were just talking about.

This is where we are.

We're issuing $15 million worth of debt each year.

Again, this is just hypothetical.

Could be more, could be a little bit less.

This is just average for display here.

We are still well within our policy.

No problems there.

Still have cushion.

Again, we have an annual debt service payment in 23 of 12.9.

We're transferring in 11.5.

And we're continuing to draw down this debt service fund.

Oops, excuse me.

We're continuing to draw down this debt service fund balance.

Now you'll notice even in this scenario, before we ever added the school project, we were talking about affordability.

And so what this indicates is that in order to sort of smooth this and to maintain your debt service fund balance, we're looking at an increase in this transfer of roughly half a million dollars every year, just to maintain the debt we have, plus the general fund or general government projects in the CIP.

So if we move on and also indicate that our debt service is going from roughly 12 million to 16 million in 10 years.

So moving on.

What we've talked about is adding in $75 million.

So we know that that gets us to $157.4 over five years, and that's $122 million worth of bonds.

And you asked what the impact would be of a five cent tax increase.

So again, looking at the calculation, I'm going to still use the 185 for our debt capacity.

You'll see why in a second.

It does increase our capacity a little bit.

When I was backing into numbers, it was roughly about $2 to $3 million, depending on the other variables.

Again, the authorized but not issued does not change.

We're still at the 118, but now we're looking to spend 121 or just under 122 million.

So on our bond capacity, we're short.

So the assumptions I'm going to make in the next chart is that we have the only thing that I'm changing here is just what's in black.

So I'm adding a five cent tax increase and I'm adding the $75 million back in for the school reconfiguration.

I also have added in a draw schedule, an example draw schedule that VMDO has provided.

And you'll know that in our prior scenarios, we were showing the full 60 million in like 23.

So I did spread that out.

So if we go to the table, we'll see keeping the base 15 million.

I'm now layered in the school 75 based on the sample draw schedule.

Our debt service for 23 doesn't change.

Our general fund fund balance, I'm sorry, our general fund budget does go up reflective of the 5 cent tax increase.

And our capacity, I mean, our ratio, I keep saying capacity, I'm sorry, but our ratio, we are at our target and we do not exceed our 10%.

So pretty good.

You know, no problem there.

But when we get over here is the problem, the affordability piece.

So here's the tax increase plus a little bit assumption for the meals tax increase.

Down below, these are just the meals tax increases.

So we've dedicated five cents to a tax increase and we're doing okay until we get down here.

And then you'll see that our debt service is going from 12 or almost 13 million to 22 million.

And yet our transfer is not increasing at the same amount.

And so we are continuing to draw down this debt service balance at a much faster pace, and we're actually finding ourselves in negative.

So in actuality, the five cent tax increase does not afford the $75 million addition.

and we're increasing the debt service.

But again, the ratio is okay.

So much like when we first started, even, you know, multiple budgets ago, if you went back and looked at our presentation, even when we were at $500 a year, we started talking about the fact that affordability is an issue.

And so it will require more investment to the CIP or to pay debt.

So we also got the question of what does the $50 million project look like because that's what you started talking to us about.

So I went back.

I basically did the same thing.

I

added the five cent tax increase.

This time, instead of 75, I layered in 50, everything else being the same.

I adjusted the draw schedule.

This was not by VMDO.

I should change this note, but I actually just used the same percentages that they gave me from the 75

And so when I layer that in, again, you see the 15 is the average for general government.

Now here's the 50 million layered in over, you know, a possible draw schedule.

Here's the tax increase yen.

on the ratio, we're great.