City Council Meeting 6:30PM   4/4/2022

Anyway, so we got a few minutes here.

My child and I have decided that since we'll be able, we're going to take a die tomorrow, and we're going to roll a die, and every time the die goes one way, we're going to go the way the die tells us to go.

It is.

But that's because every time we came to an intersection, we rolled a four-sided die and was like, one, we go right, two, we go straight, three, we go left.

And so we did a lot of interesting circles.

So, Keena, do we, while have you, have a few minutes here.

I guess a few hours ago, I was kind of surprised that no one had signed up to speak.

Yeah.

It's budget season.

So a lot of the comments are about budget and we do have a public hearing.

Oh, I forgot to unmute myself.

Okay, so it's 4.01 and 4.01 and we've got all counselors present.

And now you're muted.

We're ready to go.

All right.

Well, first of all, let me call the meeting to order April 4th, 2022 Charlottesville City Council meeting.

We'll come to order.

Ms.

Councillor McGill?

Yes, I'm here.

here.

Is there a second?

Second.

All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Motion passes.

So this meeting will be divided into three sections.

We will first have a work session to hear and discuss a staff presentation.

Then it will be followed by a closed meeting of council, which we shoot for roughly 530.

And then the city council business meeting, which will begin around 630.

So the first item on the agenda is a discussion of our affordable housing program and Deputy City Manager Sam Sanders will begin the presentation and the discussion.

Good afternoon.

Just want to make sure you are seeing my screen at this time.

Perfect.

All right.

Just glad that worked.

Again, good afternoon, counselors and members of the public.

In this work session, we'll be focusing on the complicated but necessary topic of affordable housing.

We have a lot to get through and there will be still a lot more to visit in the future for multiple discussions on this critical topic and I will move as fast as I can while also trying to make sure that we have time to talk about a few things as well.

This is the agenda for what I hope to accomplish in this time period, and it does seem to me already that we're going to take the entire time once we start with questions and follow up on that as well.

I'm going to take you back through the HRNA report just briefly, give you a different spin on that, as well as just remind you is the way I look at my starting this job is that I became your housing coordinator right away because we didn't have one.

But also look at myself as a consultant in residence, which means that I have been spending a lot of time observing, reviewing, questioning, complaining, evaluating, and testing all of what we do, how we do it, why we do it, and trying to figure out what else can we do to make it all run more smoothly and definitely run better.

So I'm going to quickly run through the HRNA team report that they share with you and just share a different perspective as well as when you're looking at what they sent you, they're consultants, we hire them to do some work, they come back, they tell us, they don't necessarily spend a lot of time worrying about exactly what you have to say or what you think about it, just making sure that you get what it is that you paid them to do.

I want to actually point out some of the things that you should be thinking about as you go back over this report and look at it again.

after this session and then when I provide all these slides to you.

So what do we learn from the report?

We learned that since 2010, $46.7 million has been invested in affordable housing.

Question that you should be asking is, is that good?

The answer is yes, but good is relative, especially because you will never spend enough in affordable housing.

I think most communities have found that around this country.

And because the markets are constantly changing, there's always a need to do a little bit more, a little bit more, and a little bit more.

How do we know it's good?

Well, when you consistently work to achieve the goal, you measure progress and you accomplish the metrics that you set by that finish line.

And that's why you can really look at, are we doing well or not?

In that report, they also shared with you that 1,611 affordable units were constructed and preserved.

They also pointed out that 640 additional households were served.

The question that you ask is, or you should consider to ask is, can we do better and can we do more?

And the answer is, of course you can.

But how will that decision get made?

How often will you commit more?

How much more?

And when?

Every one of these questions are critically important to managing a program and knowing the cap helps to manage the many expectations that also exist.

So if we look at a couple of the slides that they actually shared in their presentation, this was the summary of statistics that breaks down how the money comes in.

This is how you spend the money today through development projects, program supports, operating dollars, and admin costs.

And that is a nice split of allocation of funds.

It shifts with more resources being poured in, it shifts with priority setting, and it definitely shifts with performance assessments.

or it doesn't, council decides.

And that's what we always wanna remind you when you're looking at the way the program works is you will make those decisions and staff will bring forward data-driven recommendations.

Our goal is to try to make sure that we can be consistent in doing that and that our data is good data when we bring in a recommendation forward.

The next slide shows you that you've been primarily supporting 11 organizations with most of your money.

It begs the question, is that okay?

To those organizations?

Absolutely.

To the organizations not on the list?

Absolutely not.

So all that means is that someone's always going to have a reason to complain because they might not be on the list or they may not be receiving as much as someone else on the list.

Ideally, the way the program works is that the way a good program works is that you're supposed to measure are you really spreading the money around and ensuring that everyone who wants to be a part of this conversation at least has an access point.

Not necessarily equality in the amounts that they receive, but access to the opportunity to get on the field to play the game we're playing.

With equity as a priority for council, we have to consider who is not on that field.

And that's really what's important.

When you look at nearly half of the CAF funding has gone to housing development, and 40% to housing programs, there are always going to be individual groups that will say that we didn't have a shot, we didn't have a chance.

And part of what we want to make sure with our program is that we are providing access to everyone to not only get on the field, but to even be in the stadium where the game is being played so that they too can offer up what their contributions are to the work that it is that we're trying to do.

For you, it is really important to question what's happening, who's getting what.

This slide begs the question, who else could be on these lists?

That's one of the questions that you, as a member of this community who's out talking to everyone about everything, are there groups that you haven't heard, their names mentioned, but they've talked to you about different priorities and they touch on the housing space, but you don't necessarily see them on the housing list.

Those are things that need to be brought to our attention so that we can take a look at what's

what's going on there and why they may or may not be participating.

Who else deserves support for the ability to contribute to this affordable housing need?

Because as we said, it's a big need and there's a lot of resources and a lot of good work that needs to be done.

When you look at this slide, one of the things that I wanted to point out from looking at this is

Going back to 2010, there's been consistent investment.

That's always what you look for when you're trying to make a decision on whether or not you're doing the right things, and that is consistent investment.

It definitely was lower than the $4 million mark that they identified as the high point for the majority of the time period.

We know that $4 million is not the new number.

You both wrapped your arms around the idea of $10 million being a new goal mark.

This is the kind of analysis that needs to be done periodically.

This is what we intend to be able to do periodically to show you how is that average mark moving.

And when it gets to a certain amount, then we should be able to come and pinpoint, has it made it to 8 million, has it made it to 10 million, or is it even more than that?

2020 was clearly a turning point, and we see that as the shift to this whole notion of the $10 million being a good number.

We know that there are a lot of organizations that have already made it clear that $10 million is not enough.

Ideally, for us internally, we look at the fact that you endorsed the affordable housing plan at $10 million a year for 10 years, and it'll be our priority to help you get there.

And we'll make sure that we keep you posted on how well we're doing.

This slide takes a look at the efficiency and in what

The cost efficiency is per unit.

You always want to make sure that you're hearing those references to how much money per unit are we putting into a project.

It's fair to ask the question, is this good?

And when I look at this, the way that these dots have been marked on these two different charts here, the answer is yes, it's good, but that further affirms that the per unit figures are good because they noted at the bottom that soft costs,

like services counseling and other program supports are included in these numbers.

So they're making sure that you get as much bang as you can for the dollars that you invest.

But the thing to remember is that there's always a need for more per unit because that makes it easier to deliver the much needed inventory.

And it's really a balancing act.

The higher the subsidy, the bigger those numbers will be.

The organizations doing the work will tell you they need more, and they do because they probably have difficulties finding money as they need it when they need it in other places.

But your priority would also be that you expect that they do go look in other places to bring additional dollars to the table so that that number doesn't continue to grow, but it allows you to expand how many more dots can appear on these two charts.

This is always a good one to look at because equity is a priority for you.

And one of the ways that they decided to take a look at how well we're doing in the equity space towards affordable housing was to look at a comparison of Black households to non-Black households as beneficiaries.

The reason that this is a good example of the work is actually making it to the right beneficiaries is that the 64% of black households were funded by these different nonprofits that were doing the work.

And these are the individuals who earn less than $50,000 a year.

for the city of Charlottesville, the average is 44%.

So they're hitting above that mark.

And you always want to make sure that the work is hitting up at the mark or above to demonstrate that you're at least doing the quality work of reaching the households that you intend to reach.

We only see black and white as a comparison.

One thing that we have to remember in the equity space is that we need to make sure that we're considering the other minority populations in our community that also deserve attention to be paid to their particular housing situations as well.

So what we will do internally is make sure that we're capturing better and more consistent demographic data beyond just the black white comparison because we know that there are other minority groups in our community.

And especially because we are a receiver community for so many refugees, it's important for us to be able to look at the plight that they find themselves in when they arrive here as well.

And then one thing that has come up in some of the more recent conversations with a few of you, but I have heard consistently since I've been here, and how many current Charlottesville residents are being served.

We have to make sure that because these are City of Charlottesville dollars that are being spent, we want to prioritize City of Charlottesville residents for receiving those supports.

And wherever we see that things begin to go askew, we want to be able to highlight that for you.

Down payment assistance.

That's just one of the programs.

Yeah.

Okay.

This slide looks at over half of the households served by home retrofit and single family new construction programs earn less than 50% AMI.

This is the kind of information that we always want to look at as well because we want to make sure that we consider that it's reaching your target.

In the plan you said that you wanted 50% of the money to go

to 0 to 30%.

We want to make sure that we're always looking at measuring where the money is actually going and that it's hitting those intended targets.

But as I pointed out to you all on Saturday, one thing that's missing is that we don't have what I would consider to be enough of a directive towards the 0%, which is our homeless population.

There's some obvious reasons for us to take a look at how we go into applying some additional resources there, but we'll have to make that data-driven, of course, and bring those recommendations back to you.

Ideally, what we would be looking to do is to try to figure out what are some impact projects or some impact scenarios that would make sense to bring back to you.

So just quickly wrapping up what that

H&R, HRNA report says to you, and this is a long list and it's not good news, but it's really to point out to you that it's important for us to always deal with even the uncomfortable parts of doing this work and that when the assessment comes in, you want it to always be good, but a good assessment also tells you what's bad and it gives you an opportunity to focus on fixing it.

I personally like to deal with the facts for what they are.

And for me, when I see all the different responses that come back when you do the assessment, I like to create lists like this.

So I'm sharing with you the list that I came up with.

We don't know how many affordable units still exist from those that we funded.

That's accurate.

Sam, I'm sorry, sir.

Is that something that's measurable or is it just?

It is.

It absolutely is.

Part of it is that we don't have the mechanics in-house that are set up to be able to do that.

We also have to retrain our partner community, developers specifically, on what it takes for us to be able to gain access to the information that we need.

Yeah, and I just quickly want to add that if we're pouring, I think you said $47 million over, that is definitely something that, you know, I guess in the future, once we set it up, we would

And not so distant future, we will be doing a whole lot more and being able to tell you exactly what we think about how this works and what kind of investments we may even need to be able to turn that around.

We don't have a good compliance program internally.

That's why we can't.

as well as we should be able to.

We don't have the best agreements in play.

They're not the comprehensive set of agreements that we would use that would ensure that we could capture the information, that we are denoting who is responsible for reporting said information on what schedule, and that way we can then go back to them and get what we want to be able to point out to them, you sign an agreement and you're outside of compliance with that agreement.

We're not necessarily protecting consistency in our execution.

If we move around and we're not really following a policy and a program, that in itself makes it inconsistent and it makes it very hard to keep track of what it is that we're doing because we're always having to remember why is this relationship different from all the other relationships or why is this one, this one, and this one all different from each other yet different from the rest of the relationships that we've established.

We need to strive for more consistency because it does make it more manageable in doing the work.

We don't have a comprehensive housing policy.

We have a series of policies on the books that are aimed at different aspects of housing, but we do not have an affordable housing policy for the program that we are actually running today.

So that's a big flaw in the approach that we're taking.

because in itself that means that we don't have something to go to that further directs our actions and then gives us the ability to hold others to whatever those actions or requirements are.

So there's some real work that has to be done to turn that around.

We don't have a great, and I use great by choice, we don't have a great working relationship with our funded partners.

We have a variety of good working relationships with funded partners, but

And they all won't always be great, of course, because sometimes when you have to be happy, you can't be friends with them for a little bit, but they always turn around because he who holds the money always tends to hold their attention in the housing world, at least.

So for the great working relationship aspect of it, that is where the hack plays a role.

That is where the task forces play a role.

That is where getting out in the community will play a better role.

and being able to fix any things that may be off and to try to realign things that have gotten askew over time.

But I promise you, the one thing that I assure you that makes it better is a good, solid, affordable housing program that you are following because the consistent measure of how you're doing what you're doing and applying it across the board is how people then start to see that this works, this makes sense, and we can actually live with these changes over time and it starts to turn around.

We don't have a definition of affordable housing.

I mentioned that to you on Saturday.

We decided we weren't necessarily going to focus on if every one of the key terms had to be defined.

I am not letting go of the notion that we need to define affordable housing.

And I will point out to you later in this presentation what you should consider that definition to be.

Not, of course, because we're not taking action, asking you to make any moves towards committing to that specifically, but I will be back to ask you for that commitment.

helps our partners understand what that means to you as the council, but it also helps staff understand how to do the work that it is that they've been charged to do.

So with this slide again, this appears to be negative, but I don't see it as negative.

I see this as all positive because now we know when you know what you need to do, then you need to get to work.

And I'm definitely ready for us as a team to be able to do that and get to work.

But I don't want to miss the moment to at least celebrate something good just because it did feel like it might not be all good.

The one thing that the team from HRNA wanted to make sure that we did not lose sight of is that Charlottesville is punching above its weight class.

And that is important for you to recognize that the $46 million over the past

10 years and what we have as an endorsed plan of 10 million a year for 10 years is more than what your peer cities would be doing today in comparison.

And that in itself, while it's a moment to celebrate, that doesn't mean stop doing what you're doing.

It doesn't mean pull back and do less.

It just means thank you for what you've been doing and let's keep doing more and let's do better at what it is that we've been doing.

So that whole point is just to think about we're doing good things, but we could do better.

We need to be better at measuring the results of the work or achieving the desired outcomes that we have set, being very consistent in how we operate our affordable housing program.

And most importantly, we got to do this work because we have a lot of people struggling with this basic need across our community and they deserve our best effort, period.

And we all know that.

And that's what it is that we're trying to do here.

And I think it's important for us just to remember that we are doing some good stuff, but there's still more to do.

And we're going to talk about affordability and the huge gap that exists in Charlottesville.

And it is a little sad when you see it, when you reconcile what is actually happening in our market.

It speaks to why we are doing what we're doing.

So that for me in total just means that we're doing the right thing by continuing to stay focused on this topic and not considering it done and letting us move on to something else.

We've got to keep doing the

So I'm going to stop there for just a second.

I'm going to shift.

We're going deeper into what are we doing and how are we doing it and what I'm going to be recommending we can do to fix.

But because I've gone through a bunch of slides, I just want to make sure that you had a chance to reflect on what you just heard, ask a question or two if you have one.

And if you ask something that's going to come up later, I'm going to say, pin that.

We're going to get to it.

Councilors have questions?

Yeah, just quickly, one of the earlier program, I mean, slides you had where you showed the dots of who is receiving the money and the amount of units and money that they've received.

PHA was way out to the right, and I didn't get a chance to see what that

exactly meant.

Yes, that.

So does that?

That's number of units.

Number of units.

Okay.

Okay.

I was looking at the number.

So for Java, you know, we haven't done a lot of units with them.

And so I'm just kind of looking at this quickly.

And so for each unit we've done for Habitat, it's about 45 units.

$25,000 if I'm looking at that right, and we've done about $100,000 or maybe $75,000 if I'm looking at it.

That's the way to read it, yes.

That's the average of the cost per unit versus the number of units.

It gives you an idea to see who's leading your unit production.

And just in general, and I know you may have this now, I don't know if that's, you know, if the average cost is $5,000 or $100,000 if, you know, to do these type of things.

I don't know if this is a

Right, and that's the point that I'm making to you is that with us having the right capacity dynamic in place, we should be able to not only show this to you, but express to you why we think that is a good number or not a good number.

Ben, thank you.

So Sam, on the other, there was another slide that looked at, that had, you know, the 30% AMI

This one.

Yes.

Yeah, they only listed PHA in the multifamily rental section.

I'm not exactly sure why on this slide they did that.

I can go back and look at it.

But they're also targeting 50%, so I'm not sure why that's not there.

I need to go back.

Oh, that's okay.

It's just, you know, the other thing I wanted to question is back to the scatter plot that we were just at.

Okay.

I just wanted to make sure that that supportive services piece had been taken out because like, you know, CRHA and PHA and Virginia Supportive Housing all do supportive services as well.

Yeah, we,

Good evening, good afternoon, councillors.

Yeah, we provided them funding to acquire four lots for in-field development on Nassau Street.

There were four different units that they develop on Nassau Street.

It's a home ownership unit.

That would have been other funds that we would have awarded to them.

Yeah, you are probably looking at another project.

It's a LIHTC project.

Usually what happens is

the city funds goes to a nonprofit organization.

So Carlton Views collaborated with Thomas Jefferson Land Trust as part of that agreement.

So the money had to go to the development through the land trust.

So that's why you have that big

Amount.

And that was over multiple years from 2017 to 2019.

Yeah, the city's money, it's in Carleton View.

Frankly, a lot of money.

Phase one, phase two, and I believe also phase three.

Phases one and two, phases two and three.

I think the city invested as part of the LIHTC project

I'd just like to point out that because it sort of helps to emphasize how relatively new all of us as counselors are that the Carleton Views projects, all three of them were approved before anybody presently on council.

was on council.

Some of us had some involvement in some of the issues going on, but a lot of this stuff, because of the lack of institutional memory, frankly, is something that we're having to sort of learn on the fly.

And I think I understand that.

And I recognize that in looking at reports, one of the things that I would have expected that I might have been able to do when I first got here is just say, give me a stack of reports for the past few years and let me start reading through them.

And I didn't necessarily have that luxury.

That's the result of shifting our internal dynamics to be able to produce that on some regular basis to you so that then when the new council members join you, we'll be able to hand

to help kind of orient them to what work have we been doing recently?

What are some things that were done by the prior council that will actually finish during your term and things of that nature?

And one of the questions I had, I think the very first slide where you showed the 46

$1.7 million and 1,611 affordable units constructed and preserved.

And then you had a plus 640 additional households.

That number came from the work that was done in that we supported services.

So most of that would be homeless services and other programs where individuals were of the right income bracket in that housing space and we provided some sort of intervention.

One of the things that I've sort of been thinking about and I don't know whether it's a correct observation or just the result of looking too closely at too little data, but it seems that on average it costs us, well, these numbers would suggest it costs us about $28,000, $29,000 per unit

if we're going to be constructing or doing anything serious to preserve affordable housing, which had me thinking about the projects, the two projects on Park Street, one of them talking about $3 million that we're supposed to be contributing works out to in the neighborhood of $30,000 a unit.

Yes, that's right.

Great point, Mayor Snook.

I just want to add that on the average, if you are spending in terms of unit production, anything below 35,000 to a unit,

So I just want to let you guys know it.

When it starts going above that, then

Okay, so we'll keep going.

We'll go into digging a little bit deeper into what we're doing and how things are looking and shaping up.

And then we'll wrap up with some decision points for consideration.

Not today, but just to put on the radar and then next steps.

So when you look in the planning space, we have an affordable housing plan.

It's a very good document.

I just want you to know that I do feel that way.

It's a very good document.

It's a high level vision.

It shows that council has recognized that there is a crisis that we're facing in this city, that we want to dedicate the ability to put $10 million per year for 10 years towards doing what we can to be responsive to the needs of our residents.

But it hasn't been a consistent message.

And that has been the one thing that you all will remember that I've asked you at different times.

Do you see that 10 million per year for 10 years as a goal or a commitment?

I view that as an important distinction.

When you look at it as a goal, that means you may or may not hit it and you do your best to get there, but you may or may not hit it and you view that as okay at times to not hit.

But if you really, really consider it a commitment, that means it is non-negotiable.

You should be doing everything in your power to hit that number.

But it also would suggest that if you hit that number, then you're done.

It's not to say that I am really trying to pin anyone down, per se, to making one of those decisions because you will always have the ability to go above $10 million if that's your choice.

But it is important in order for us to set the right kind of expectation that as we're interacting with the various members of our public who are coming to us for resources, that they then understand what your priority is.

Is it 10 million as a goal or 10 million as a commitment?

We already know they don't think $10 million is enough.

I did this work.

$10 million, if I were to say what's going on in Charlottesville and I was on the ground doing the work, no, it's not enough.

It needs to be half, 15 million, it could easily be 20 million because that's how much we'll have a crisis that we actually face in our community.

So it is really just about setting the table.

I think part of what I'm seeing in my time here

Being able to reflect is not committed and tied to how we're doing what we're doing, but to ask the right questions.

This is about setting the table so that everyone can come to that table and understand what it is that we're serving here and how are we planning to serve that and then we do the best that we can with what we're able to pull away from the table with.

That plan should be our roadmap.

That's really the way we look at it.

When you spend the time and energy and the money to put together a plan, that plan should become a roadmap.

It doesn't go on a shelf.

It becomes something that you're working on all the time.

You need to set some annual pit stops so that you can check in, check how are we doing, what's going on, fill up on new information and make sure we need to make some changes.

Check the map so we make sure we're headed in the right direction and then we get back on the road to where it is that we were going.

Fits and starts don't do anything but confuse what it is that we're doing.

If we say we're going to do one thing and then turn right around and do something else, all we've done is a fit and a start.

That just means that people now don't know what it is that we prioritize or what it is that we're working to.

So it's important for us to really try to keep that in the forefront.

that we don't want to confuse the situation.

Every time we confuse that situation, that's time, energy, and money.

And it doesn't mean that we're going to have a guarantee that by the time we finish, we're going to hit our mark at the end.

So that's what we're really, really trying to make sure that we keep in mind.

When you shift from the plan side of it, you're all about the implementation.

You've got to make sure that we're managing expectations, that implementation is always going to be continued needs assessments.

What is it that's missing?

What is it that we cannot do?

What is it that we should be doing?

That gap analysis is going to be things that we're going to always be thinking about what's missing.

What is it that we're not doing and who are we not reaching and how are we not helping?

Those are things that are going to come up from time to time.

You want to know those things, but they're not to always

The amount of speed that you take, the amount of dollars that you may allocate for whatever, but also to just kind of keep you on track and targeted.

And then you look for ways to do some investing, to pivot on occasion when you feel that there's a need to do something, something responsive, another pandemic strikes or we go back into serious COVID protocol.

You want to reconsider some of the actions that you take in and you always want to be able to go back and consult your reports to see how well you're doing at whatever it is that you're doing.

So then when you shift from planning, you get into investing.

One of the comments that was made was that we don't necessarily know where we're putting how all our money is going out and what is it doing and things like that.

So I want to spend a little time to focus on that.

It's like a honeycomb process.

That's why I went and found this image is money going in all different directions.

I mean, there are multiple ways.

So we spend it in multiple ways.

But when you choose to spend in multiple ways, it complicates the tracking.

And that's what we always want to remember.

So, excuse me, Sam, is it and, you know, I know we're not there yet, but is it possible to get a a program or some type of system that whenever

money is given or decisions are made and a unit is developed that someone can put in there.

It's affordable until this year.

It's to serve the AMI zero to 30 of

50 to 80, whatever it is, so that if that planner or that housing specialist, you know, person leaves that whoever comes in will be able to kind of pick it back up and we're just not lost.

And ideally, that's where

I would want to be so we're not trying to figure out where this, you know, you know, 47, 48 million dollars, you know, because we're going to be given more in the future.

That's right.

No, you're on the point.

That's that's it for sure.

We should be able to track it.

It should be consistent and it should be reliable and it should not matter whose hand is actually pushing buttons or pulling the reports from the printer.

All of it should be consistent and you just change our personnel to execute.

to keep whatever queries and reports you want to pull.

That's what we're going to try to get to.

We've done some exceptional work over the years going back and looking at what we did to try to compile.

And we have a few series of moments in time where we did the work.

That's how we were able to feed HRNA the information that they were able to use to do some of the work that they've done.

But it also speaks to because we had to do it that way, we don't know how accurate it ultimately is.

And we want to make sure that we're utilizing a system that will guarantee that our information is accurate because we can accurately define how much money we put out on the street.

We should also be able to accurately define what that money went to and did it meet its goal, its intended purpose.

So when you look at the investing side, there are opportunities and that's the reason why you always want to look at how are you investing, but what else could you be investing in?

So just highlighting a couple of things that have come up routinely in this conversation as I've interacted with each of you.

And as I've talked to different members of our community about where we could be having dollars go, an area of opportunity would be the land trust.

That's an opportunity for you to add an item to your affordable housing toolbox.

There are a lot of communities today that are wrestling with the idea of how can we make it more affordable because simply building it isn't necessarily making it work for everyone.

And rental is really where you want to focus to ensure that at a minimum a person has a place to live and it's a place that they know is not going to disappear from them.

But when you're in a community like this one where market rates are what they are and the drivers are what they are and they change so much and they continue to go higher and higher, even rental isn't safe.

because people are having to move because they can't afford when the rent goes up to stay where they are.

The land trust gives you an opportunity to be able to fix the opportunity for them to stay in place if they were able to attain home ownership as an outcome.

It has its drawbacks.

There are folks who don't necessarily believe it's the only way to do it.

And I'll just point out to them, it's not the only way to do it.

It is a way to consider making housing available for some.

It's not the applicable option for everyone.

People move through markets, they increase their incomes, and they don't necessarily want to be tied down to any one property for a long time, and you want to allow them the ability to move just the same.

But it is something that's worth looking into.

So it's there on this list.

And the way I imagine doing the work going forward, we'll be able to bring to you items like this where we've done some work on that.

We've done some analysis.

We've looked at what our options are.

The question really is, are we talking about creating our own?

Are we talking about creating a land bank?

Or are we talking about just making sure that the community land trust that exists in our community

is capable of doing the work that we needed to do.

And you can set that in motion by prioritizing that when we decide to give out funds.

We want to make sure that when we bring to you these opportunities to put the money out on the street, that we're also thinking ahead about how can they make the biggest impact?

What are some different ways that we can deploy them?

And can we get a different outcome, a better outcome, more of the outcome that some of us are saying that we want?

The other, as I said, I'm gonna drill, drill, drill, unhoused homeless population is important.

It's a group of people we need to take a look at what can we do.

Part of what we need to do at this moment is identify what are some targeted investments that we could make that would be a difference maker.

What are some service supports that would help to close the gap?

When we talk to our homeless providers, the homeless providers are all doing various things.

Some are overlapping, some are doing enough to catch up to the next place that the organization stopped, but not all of them are when you put them in the full continuum that we refer to in the homeless space.

We locally, with all of our housing providers, can acknowledge we have gaps and there's no one in that gap.

So if there's no one in the gap, if you're running a good affordable housing program, you stand in the gap.

So what we need to be able to do is to figure out how do we get in the gap in the right way with the right resources to successfully close that gap.

How do you close that gap?

It could be you ask one of them to expand what it is that they're doing and you fund them to do it.

or, and I know we have some opinions about how many nonprofits we have, you might stand up another organization to fill a gap or two if that's what needs to be done.

But you don't know any of it if you don't do the assessment work, you don't do the analysis work, and you don't ask the questions.

Yes, sir.

So I'm just looking at this, the land trust, and I do agree, I think that's an area of growth.

And so I know that now PHA has taken that over

can like the housing authority be a land trust as well.

I mean, I keep bringing this up because I know this is what they did in Norfolk and they were doing at the time that they may be dated.

Now they were doing a lot of different things.

And and because this is what I wrote my paper and they were that development arm.

For the city of Norfolk at the time, and maybe at some point we

have said the PHA or other would take that role.

But I think if we're diversifying and maybe some things that PHA can do and they can do it really well, but maybe some things that the housing authority can do.

I just think that since I've been here and seeing the last 30 years as a student and now

as a resident that they haven't really played.

They just really kind of stayed in their box, you know, more traditional box.

And I think that they probably can do a lot more.

That's where I was going.

I mean, that would be that would be the question.

I mean, I think that's part of what the scenario is, is that

As the council, and you're focused on these various things, you direct us to where you want us to go and look at things like that.

If you're hearing about it and you're interested in it, then we can go do work to figure out what that means, how that could be deployed, and then bring it back for consideration.

If it requires us to go and meet with different parties to talk to them, then it's a matter of can they see themselves as that?

Do they feel like they have the capacity to do it?

One of the risks that you have in trying to establish more than one is

And that just means that there's going to be more money needed in order to stand up the internal frameworks for being able to deliver it.

You're already at a moment right now where you're trying to strive and push to $10 million.

That's going to likely cause you to have to do more than 10.

And is it going to then diffuse how much someone else gets?

It's going to reduce what someone else gets to make room for them to fit into the space.

So it's something to think about.

And I think what we will do is part of the way to look at what we should be doing differently is when we come back and we show you how we're doing with the money that we've been receiving.

If you're seeing that we're not getting a number of homeownership units on the ground, then that's where you say we need to figure that out.

We got to do more in the homeownership space and then we can go and do the investigation as to why it's not happening naturally.

Sometimes the investment can spur it.

Sometimes it could be that we have to find some new opportunities to bring additional dollars to the table that are outside of the city's resources to stand up in operation to be able to do what it is that we think they should do.

That's that last bullet there.

Need council direction on city role and standing in the gap.

That was what that meant.

I knew I was getting to a point.

There you go.

So when you look at investing, this is going to give you an idea of what has prior councils done.

This is what have they left for you and what have you inherited because the first box in green there is showing what's going to be during your time here on council pending commitments are what is going to be coming as responsibilities in the coming years.

And then I like to always know where I'm headed and what's on the road ahead of me.

Future commitment possibilities are things that we know based on what conversations are occurring in the community today, that there's going to be an ask coming to the city.

We don't know what the numbers attached to those asks are going to be, but we know they're coming.

And at this moment, we need to be thinking about that.

So when we look at our CIP as how we're making significant investments, as we're making the decision about schools,

And as we're approaching what limitations that may or may not have on our ability to do more bonding of projects, this is how you look at it from that housing angle as to how this then helps you consider whatever decisions you're going to make as it relates to how much of the CIP gets tied up for one project over another.

But you got some current commitments with CRHA on the development side as well as the rental assistance side and with PHA in regards to Friendship Court being three phases.

All of these are going to FY25.

These are already in place.

These are expectations, millions and millions of dollars.

That's good work.

but there are pending commitments that are right now you're wrestling with Park and MACA that's $4.9 million for additional projects but you've also made some commitments and that is going to cost you to pay back tax rebates for projects that have already that are already on the ground and those are going to come for payment beginning with PHA for Friendship Court and FY24 we estimate it's going to be roughly $200,000 a year for what that is going to cost the city itself to rebate

for those improvements.

That was a trade-off decision that was made by the prior council.

There's no question on if it's worthy of having that expenditure for what we know is going to be on the ground at that time.

But it's just to keep in mind that you've got to look at every decision that you make

and how those decisions carry some dollar figure associated with it.

Because when we come back to you and tell you, are we hitting our $10 million goal commitment, whatever it may be, I'm adding all this stuff up because all of this is a part of our story in the affordable housing space.

And until you tell me otherwise, this is what I believe belongs there, plus what it costs for you to pay for Alex, Brenda and Aaron to do the work that they do and the additional staff members that they bring to the table.

I have a question for you at some point.

Do we count the staff members who are in other departments that are doing housing related work?

that is critical housing-related work, but they are in Department of Social Services, Department of Human Services, Office of Human Rights.

That work product is of value in our affordable housing program, and there's a dollar associated with that.

Do we count that as well?

Todd Divers is running the tax relief program.

The tax relief program is a nontraditional program to be running.

There's an expense in regards to running that program.

Todd would kill me if I didn't tell you right now.

He needs another tax specialist.

We're going to try to figure out how to make sure that that happens.

That number should also be a party to this because it takes that to manage that tax relief program that we see as very important and a valuable resource.

So there's some reconciliations of things that we have to do.

Sam, can I just go back to that last one?

I'm not sure I understand those two lines about CRHA 30-year tax rebate for LIHTC units, PHA 25-year tax rebate for Friendship Court.

So with those, this is a performance agreement for PHA in regards to doing the Friendship Court projects that for the first phase, we are going to not charge them the taxes that are due.

So it's in essence a rebate.

Okay.

I think we voted on that, Lloyd.

Right.

Okay.

I remember that piece.

Yes.

I didn't recognize that as what we're describing.

So if I'm understanding that correctly, it's for various units that were produced using a LIHTC deal previously.

And it's the same synthetic TIF scenario in that whatever tax obligation that would be due would not necessarily be paid and the city would be covering it.

Right, because we're not, there's a delivery date that I think is not determined yet, because it's a variety of units in different places.

And that is when the taxes will start.

So that's the reason why the question marks are there.

But that too was a question that I had.

So in my mind, that question should be answered.

Yeah, we'll get it.

I just have to go digging.

I am, but I don't mind doing this work.

So when you look at, and this is to go into CAF, when you look at CAF, the key parts of CAF at the moment is we have the hack restructuring.

That's what we're going to be going over with you tonight.

establishing the subcommittee for considering the grants.

We need to look at aligning the Vibrant Communities Fund.

The statement there is, it is my opinion that the Vibrant Communities Fund should no longer award grants for the housing category.

And any of those requests should come to CAF.

We should be able to build the CAF out

in a way that any of those requests would be taken care of there.

And it's important for your housing program to know that all requests that are coming into the city for housing should come in through one portal.

And that way we know exactly what is being done.

And then you expand the CAF because I know what I can hear some of my nonprofit friends who are listening at the moment are worried about, well, the CAF doesn't do all those things or there's not enough money there.

This is a request to realign that to make sure that the calf grows for some additional amount so that it can absorb those particular requests, but to also define the calf in a way that you have these different categories to ensure that the types of requests that have been considered by the VCF will actually now be able to be considered by the calf.

Again, it's about keeping the information in one place so that we're aware of everything and it goes through the same set of mechanics when we make the award, we let the money go out, we put out the report request, we receive the

We notate how it's performing.

It's all the same.

Everyone who's listed right now in the vibrant communities fund as having a request or recommendation for funding have all been through the CAF before.

So it will be no different.

Ideally, what we also mean in aligning it is that we want to make sure that it is performing as efficiently as we possibly can.

So we're actually looking to use the same system that our friends and human services are using for submissions to try to make it even more streamlined approach.

I just said, I like this.

I like that, I mean, and just that when we do that, it would, I hope that we also make sure that we can just factor in a certain amount of administrative okay money that, again, nonprofits, so many grants will not allow a nonprofit to have any administrative money.

Right.

But

They should be able to make sure people have adequate health insurance and are able to take time off because we want people who know what they're doing to be in this work to help everybody too.

And I just know that so many grants won't allow for that.

And again, you have the control to set that.

So that's something to keep in mind.

As the five of you come together to consider what the priorities are, we should be able to report to you that there's a request for that.

When we're doing the consolidated plan and the action plans each year, we're hearing directly from beneficiaries as well as providers of the various services and executors of all the various programs.

As we're hearing that information, we should be able to document that in a way to tell you that

We have an increased request for operating support.

And then you can wrestle with that on what that means and how that will look in the next round that we put the funds out.

So we want to acknowledge that we understand that operating support is there.

One good thing that they all will have and understand is that I did this work.

I know what it takes and I know how hard it was to find affordable, to find operating dollars.

And for me, it's a great opportunity for me to make sure that we don't lose sight of the fact that that is a reality for doing the work.

If they don't have people to do the work,

It'll never get done and the people in need won't get what they're looking for as well.

We need to enhance our own staff capacity as well.

So it's not just us, it's them as well.

Maintaining the data analysis is important for us and we've got to make sure that we're building relationships and repairing those that are a little strained and tested, I will say.

When it comes to the Environment and Communities Fund, you all have been having a whole lot of conversations about that.

So I'm going to try to lighten the load by pulling the housing mess out of there so you won't have to chew on those and make it a little bit easier.

But eight housing-focused proposals came in this year from seven different organizations, and all of them have been funded by the CAF before.

And that total request that they submitted was $750,000, but what's being recommended is a little over $500,000.

Simple Solution is for us to work with our vibrant communities team.

Let's go back a few years, average out what the various housing awards have been.

That number is the number we say.

Let's shift that over to CAF.

You get back to doing what you were doing that's now not focused on housing as an additional layer of consideration.

Let us consider all of the housing requests in one location and see if there's some synergy and better impact work that we can get done as a result.

That's ultimately what we think we need to do.

So when you look at our tax relief program, this is a breakdown of how the three different programs have operated.

This is information I asked Todd Divers to give us for FY22, just to give you an idea of seeing who it is that we're reaching with this program.

Tax relief is really, really hitting your up to 30% AMI.

That's a good thing.

That's what we want to know.

In my mind, if you're doing a tax relief program, that's where you try to aim it.

You aim it for the lowest rung of the income bracket because they're the ones that are hanging on by their fingernails, just trying to keep what it is that is normal and stable in their lives.

You don't see any rental relief at up to 80%.

You only see four people in the 50%, but the majority of them in rental relief is at the lowest rung.

That means you're really, really getting that subsidy as deep as you need it to be by actually prioritizing those different income brackets, and then you see how people respond.

That's a good measure.

You want to come back and look at that from time to time.

and see if there's anything else that you want to do.

Todd will say that he advocated strongly much of last year to merge the programs and make it easier to manage.

That goes in the same vein as what I'm sharing with you about how I'm looking at the programs that we've been executing up to this point.

We got to be streamlined and be as efficient as we possibly can so that it moves a little bit smoother in getting the dollars out on the street.

you look at home and CDBG our entitlement dollars are important to us because those are free dollars that come from the federal government they come every year it's like clockwork but one thing you have to always remember is if you don't do right by HUD they will definitely prove to you that they cannot do right by you by taking it all away it is our responsibility to keep them happy and it is very simple how we do that we just have to meet their expectations and they tell you what they are

They want you to manage your program well, they want you to meet their national objectives, and they want you to prioritize low moderate income households.

They don't say that you can't use some monies in some ways for over that, but they want you to prioritize low moderate income households.

We're doing that.

They also, one thing that you always want to do with HUD as well is just make sure that you stay in good graces.

So from time to time, they're looking for programs to spotlight.

So if you can exceed that expectation, that's a good thing as well.

The only way to ensure that you don't end up on a bad list is you can't have timeliness issues.

And that is our biggest issue here.

We have timeliness issues.

We've got to fix that.

Timeliness is an ugly word to HUD.

They do not give on timeliness.

I have seen them pull programs from communities and they don't give them back to them.

They give it to someone else to manage on their behalf.

That's the worst thing that could happen because then you lose the market actually driving how to spend those dollars, the local market making that decision.

So timeliness is probably our biggest concern.

We are definitely adhering to the national objectives, but what we gotta make sure is that we don't want HUD to ever accuse us of misusing funds and we don't want HUD to ever direct us to recapture funds.

We have had to recapture funds.

You recapture funds when the money is not spent correctly or on time.

Those are things that we cannot forget.

We've gotta always focus on those two priorities in the execution of programming related to entitlement dollars.

We've got to spend it on time and we've got to spend it on what we agreed to spend it on based on what they told us we could spend it on.

The thing to remember about HUD is that they don't tell you exactly how to spend their money.

What they do is they like to paint a nice big box for you.

And they say whatever your local market deems important, do whatever you need to do.

But what they will do is they'll come down very hard to go outside that box.

So that's what we have to remember.

I had the luxury of meeting our HUD team just recently, our representative who comes in on a regular basis to do the analysis work as well as a director for our region.

They had good things to say about the work that we're doing, but we did not get out of the conversation without them saying timeliness.

So they wanted me to hear that timeliness is the concern that they have for us.

And that's something that we've got to make sure that we stay focused on.

And part of that is looking at how we spend the money.

What projects do we choose to do?

There are good projects and there are not so good projects for this money.

Not to mean they're not good projects.

They're just not good projects for this money.

because every dollar that comes from HUD, when you put it in the form of an agreement, when you actually receive it, there's a clock ticking.

When you put it in the form of agreement, you have a new clock for that party to deliver.

If they don't deliver, usually make sure that there's time that you get extended, but extensions are not what you want to be accustomed to doing on a regular basis.

It's more work.

And they are watching.

Everything that Erin is doing in our system, there's somebody looking at every interest she's making, every change that she's making.

And at any time that they feel like we're doing a little bit too much, they're going to call her and talk to her about it.

We don't need them calling us.

We should be calling them.

Sam, is this a staffing issue, the time maintenance thing?

Is that basically what it comes down to?

We're doing a pretty good job on the management of our program.

It can be a staff issue.

In some places, I've seen that it's a staff issue because they're not actually making the awards.

They're not putting out RFPs to get the money responded to in the way of a proposal and then making the grant agreements and then actually getting the actual grant agreement to them to be able to perform.

Our problem with timeliness is that we're picking projects that we know are not working in the way that we can get them done in time.

Sidewalk projects are good for CDBG when you know that the project is pretty much already studied, planned out, you're ready to roll, you're about to start pouring concrete.

But to pick a project that has not had any design work, no evaluation whatsoever, and you're not even sure that it can be done because conditions suggest that it might not work, think stribbling.

You wouldn't use CDBG for stribbling because we know that there are problems in the execution of that sidewalk project.

But you would use that money somewhere else for something that you know can get done more quickly, something that you know that you can meet that timeliness objective, and you're going to also meet the national objective.

Sidewalks are permissible.

And again, as I pointed out to you, HUD paints a big box and they let you move around and play in that box.

We're free to make the choice to do a sidewalk.

Our problem is that we've had difficulty performing.

And that's an example of one type of project that we have done more than once that really, really makes it a little hard for us to meet the timeliness expectations.

Bus shelters will be another one.

You wouldn't necessarily use CDBG money on bus shelters because there's a whole FTA process to get a bus shelter even approved.

You would want to do it for bus shelters that you know have already been approved and you're close to being ready to execute and then you can plug these dollars in because there's some sort of gap that was identified or there just wasn't enough money all the way but you did the preliminary work in advance.

There's a way that we have to change how we do it so that we don't have the issue of the project can't happen, even though it's a good project, we can't necessarily do it because we're not going to have enough time.

Sam, do you know how much money we've had to re

Recapture?

Yes.

So the thing is that we have our own mechanism for recapture.

So in the program, as we're executing today, but actually want to define it better, is we can recapture from a nonprofit that is not able to perform so that we still have time to get that money redeployed and can still meet our timeliness objective.

The worst part of the recapture is when HUD tells you, no, we want you to send it back to us.

Because if that comes, then we lose it altogether.

So have we had any recapture to HUD?

Yes, I'm looking up the number now.

Now, the recapture from us, I know because I know there was a whole series of time.

Every other week, every other month, every other meeting, we were

voting on CDBG changes.

And it's occasional.

It's okay for it to be occasional because things happen.

Projects don't necessarily come together.

Anything can happen inside a nonprofit and cause a project to go off track, and that's okay.

You should be able to get forgiveness for moments like that.

But it's the bigger recapture when HUD tells you, send the money back.

We're not even going to let you spend it.

That's what we've got to always avoid.

You never send money back to the federal government.

This past year, we sent back $15,000 to HUD.

Usually what that means is, and it's good for that moment to have happened with that question, Councilor Miguel, is when we tell you that in a report,

then we should also be telling you why we think that's happening.

Usually what it is is that we might be over investing in an activity.

because if we're giving them too much money and they can't spend it, then that means we need to shift how much we give them.

Or it's also possible that we invested in a bad project or we invested in a project that just went bad.

All of that happens.

That's okay.

All those different moments happen.

We want to make sure that we always have within our way of managing these programs the ability to

If we have to recapture, recapture it in time that we can use that money in a different way and still meet the objective and not be forced to have to write a check by the government.

And that's one other thing that we will do is have standby projects.

We need to make sure that we have a standby project list available that we can say, we got to pull this.

And if we pull this, we're going to need to do that.

But we're going to need to have the flexibility to be able to do that.

Because if we have to go back through a full round process, if we have to go back through our prescribed process of using our task force that may take a little more time, all those moments are timeliness moments that are actually we're losing as well.

And that makes it that much harder for us to still be able to deliver.

In all honesty, the size of the program for home and CWG dollars that the city of Charlottesville receives, timeliness should never be an issue for us.

It just really shouldn't.

It's too small to do that.

It is how we're doing it that we've got to really focus on.

How can we really make some adjustments to tighten it up?

All right, so I see I am rapidly losing time.

So I'm going to fly through some slides.

So I just want to show you here, this is kind of showing you, this is the next 10 years.

So we started with the 10 year look back with HRNA.

We're going to look at the 10 years going forward.

So for FY21, we were able to exceed $10 million in support.

So the year that you endorsed the plan, we did what we said we were going to do.

FY22, we are above that number as well.

FY23 is going to get there, especially when you make the decision on where we are with Park and MACA is going to drive this up as well.

There are commitments already in place.

That's what this is intended to show you.

When you look at the admin dollars, proffers, tax relief, CIP, VCF, CAF, and home CDBG, all those different color codings show you an approximation of the agreement

that we have on the books that show that we have money allocated that far out already.

And what we want to do is just to make the right decisions on the space that is below the 10 million.

How do we make sure that it's strategically invested, not only to get to the 10 million, but to produce what it is that we desire to be produced, make sure we're making the difference that we want to make with getting as many households affected and touched and in a place of stability.

I recall someone, I think Mayor Snook, you asked, how does the money move through?

What's our process?

And this is meant to show you this is how complicated it is.

It's not an easy process to do this kind of work.

When you have that many boxes and that many things, there's still more that could be added to this on what the home and CDBG process is.

has its own system of boxes that you follow.

The point there is we've got to have the right team, the right size team in place to be able to do the work.

So we'll be able to spend more time on this and figure out are there ways to streamline what we're doing, make it a little bit more efficient, but to be able to get you to that last box of monitoring.

That's the one thing that we always want to make sure that we focus on.

Every dollar that we send out the door, we should have the ability to monitor how it's being used and to be able to come back and evaluate, is it being used the way we want it to?

And then the last, well, one of the last items in the investing categories is the proffers.

So when we make proffers, and I put stribbling here just as an example because it's a question.

If we're going to do the sidewalk agreement tied to housing, are you going to count the stribbling investment for sidewalks as a housing investment?

It's a question.

The Friendship Court performance agreement that has $200,000 a year, 25 years, that's going to be a cost to the city.

That's going to be an investment.

This is an area where we have considerable work to do.

This obligation originates in zoning, but there's no tracking that occurs beyond it.

Once it's passed by you, it's on the books and that's it.

We must capture these and all of the other housing activities which will require new parameters for developers.

We run the risk of losing their interest because tracking means it does not end at certificate of occupancy for them.

It ends after however many years we were required that the unit be affordable because someone is going to have to be able to confirm that the person that's there in that unit is of the right income to ensure that we can tell you that unit is affordable today.

There's also a conflict of how proffers are delivered.

Proffers awarded to developers as part of approving their zoning request, and that means they agreed to deliver the units.

But developers have also been permitted to partner with other organizations who then come to the city and ask for money to deliver the same affordable housing unit.

That's a question.

We see it as a conflict.

It then becomes, is it a conflict that you want to fix, or is it a conflict that you understand exists and you're satisfied with, that's okay, we'll do whatever we need to do to make the unit possible.

But until we really, really have that conversation with you and give you the chance to decide on that, we just want to point out that that conflict does exist.

And I'll take just a quick moment.

I'm sorry.

Could you please...

So the conflict as it has come up in conversation with some council members when they ask about the different projects that are on the agenda.

When a proffer is offered, it's offered by the developer, we don't negotiate that.

We don't dictate what it is.

They say, well, we're going to do 20 affordable housing units as a part of this project.

And they're coming in order to get their zoning approved.

And the zoning is approved by you as the council.

And there is a commitment to produce 20 units.

It is safe to assume that your expectation is that they're going to make 20 units happen, period.

But in practice, what can happen is that same developer can go and partner with someone in the affordable housing space who is accustomed to actually doing that work, asking them to make those same 20 units possible, make them happen.

But in doing it, they'll come to the city and ask for the money to build 20 units.

Yeah, I know we can talk about this more later, but what you've described to me is unacceptable.

So we can talk about that more later, how we present

And it's a question.

I mean, there's nothing wrong with it.

It's just making sure that you understand that it exists.

And the question has come up.

And when we've given the answer, it's obvious that it's not necessarily been appreciated from everyone.

I don't want double counting and double dipping.

And that's one of the things that we want to make sure that we're guarding against.

We don't want to double count.

All right, so on the admin side today, the admin side is the Office of Community Solutions.

We didn't spend a whole lot of time talking about this great idea of mine last fall when I came up with it and said, well, we don't have a team really truly assembled just to do the nuts and bolts work that is the affordable housing space.

And then I learned that in addition to a housing coordinator, we had a redevelopment manager who didn't have a department to be a part of.

And then our home and CDBG money was being tracked by an individual

who was sitting within NDS, but still it wasn't coordinated.

It wasn't coming together.

So the thought was to bring them together and create what some communities would call a community development office.

We use neighborhood development services.

The goal was to try not to make it as complicated and confusing.

is just to try to pull out housing, redevelopment, and neighborhood services are within the purview of this new team that is assembled as the Office of Community Solutions.

The goal is to potentially expand this team to do those three things to the best of our ability, to be as consistent as we possibly can in doing that work and to make sure that if we need to do something in either one of these spaces, there's now a place

and we don't have to try to figure out is it NDS, is it Public Works, is it somewhere else?

And that makes it a part of the city manager's office because affordable housing is one of your top priorities.

And as I see it will remain one of your top priorities for years to come.

This is some work that was done as a part of that analysis was just to point out that we can go in all different directions with expanding out what this team could do, because as you complicate it and add more money, different ways of doing what it is that we're doing, there's going to be a need for additional hands and brainpower available to help manage and work through that.

So we can always talk about this more later, but this is just to show you that there is

There is more that can be done.

There are more critical roles that are needed if we are to go down this path in any more significant ways than what we're doing today.

And this is why we have to think about it now.

These are the things I shared with you in the beginning that we're not doing.

And some of the roles that are listed there are how we get those things done.

So if we look at performing and we got to be better at tracking and the way that we can do that is we've got to come up with some tools.

So the hack has done some work.

This is just a snapshot of the housing intervention analysis tool that was prepared by the hack.

This isn't exactly what it looks like.

It's an Excel workbook.

It's a very sophisticated workbook.

Part of it is it's a manual entry system, so it can be corrupted over time, and it's only as good as what you put in that what is what comes out.

We got to make sure that this is the right tool for us to use.

This is one of those relationship building moments for me to go and work with HACC to figure out how we can get this document, this workbook up to date fully.

Who owns it afterwards?

Are they going to do it and report into it themselves and that way we can have that consistency or do we do it ourselves?

So that's one of the questions that we can explore.

One of the things that I've actually been exploring more recently is this new enterprise land management system that we're in the process of beginning our strides to bring live next year.

Could it do some of this work or could it do the work if we were able to add to it?

So there may be a question that comes from that as well.

Another tool that will come is the implementation work plan.

This is something that I put together when I first got here as a tracker.

This ultimately will become how we track the implementation of

is going to be able to lay out for you the funding recommendations as they were provided in the plan.

We should be able to break down all the parts and pieces to them.

What is the human allocation?

What is the financial resource allocation?

Looking at it from the goal perspective, what is the short term, midterm, and long term goals associated with that?

What potential barriers exist?

How are we adjusting?

And what's the status of it?

Both of these tools in my mind become report items for you.

These are things that we can be able to provide to you on a regular basis throughout the year that you can consult and see how well we're doing and from time to time we will present to you.

But in addition to that, we can provide this to the public because these are documents that can go on the website, they can have access to at any time.

So once we can turn this into the kind of document that it needs to be with the right quality information, as we're updating it, we can make it live and in living color for you to look at any time, the public to look at any time, and then we can come back and report to you how it's working and what it actually is saying.

So some other things to consider, our alignment with HACC, we talked about the structure of subcommittee, remedying some of the tensions with staff and making sure that we can all play like friends in the sandbox, because we only got a box, it's not going to get so big and we got to make sure that we can do things that we need to do.

And then what are some strategic investments that we can look at?

How can we make sure that we're doing all the things that we can possibly do to make it possible to reach more people?

We got to make sure we're reaching as many households.

What are some external grants that we can go after?

What is some leverage dollars that we can look at being able to deploy in concert with our friends in the county?

We had some conversation about that as well.

That's how we're going to have to tackle the homeless problem is the homeless situation that we face.

How do we resolve that problem when people are actually coming here?

Because we do so well at trying to offer a variety of services that are just not available in other communities nearby.

But we've got to make sure that we're looking at what those strategies are.

So here's the big one, and I don't have much time, so I'm just going to tell you what I think and not leave a whole lot of room for you to disagree with me.

What is affordable housing?

The fact is anything is affordable because anybody, somebody can afford almost everything, right?

That's the problem with that term, affordable housing.

In the housing sector, it's pretty subtle, it's not a question.

HUD defined affordable housing a long time ago, 80% and below, that's affordable, period.

They also went as far as to take it all the way down to extremely low.

So below 30% is extremely low income.

Below 50%, very low income.

Low income is below 80%, and anything above that is moderate.

We stopped counting at 120.

It's no longer important for us to be worried about what's affordable at that point, so we just stopped talking about it.

And this is how it's been done for a long time.

It's not a question.

But you hear AMI thrown around a lot and people are always saying, well, what's the AMI on this and AMI on that?

Charlottesville has a very high median family income.

That in itself skews everything to all of our numbers are gonna be a little bit higher as a result.

That's actually a good thing.

That means more people can fit under the tent because the caps for each of those measurements are a little bit higher than you would find in a peer city.

So we did this on adjusted for family of four.

$28,000 and less is 30% AMI.

$28,000 is not a lot of money when you think about what it costs to live in the city of Charlottesville today.

So anyone who finds themselves in that situation is going to have a difficult time finding something to rent and be able to sustain a good quality of life when you have all the other bills that come with just simply living.

We haven't talked about car payment or any of those other bills that any of us may have.

But affordability is actually achieved when you're not spending any more than 30% of your household income on housing.

That is not our story.

That's the goal, 30%.

Many communities are spending about 50%.

The Charlottesville experience is that we know people that are probably spending almost 80% and 90%.

They don't have a whole lot left for anything else.

That is why we have a problem.

That is evidence that there's a problem and we need to do something to turn that around.

And the example I want to show you is that just looking at the resources available as the housing choice vouchers that we received from HUD that comes to the housing authority.

They target that program for 50% AMI and below.

75% of those vouchers are targeted to 30% AMI, that lowest rung, the deepest affordability.

This is what that looks like in numbers.

Our fair market rent in the city of Charlottesville, based on HUD's projections, and they do this work every year and update it and tweak it for what their analysis suggests it should be, is $1,077 a month.

Our housing choice vouchers, the max that they can go was $1,131.

We came up with our own program to parallel the vouchers, and we set the city cap at 1,346, and if they use our program in the county, it's 1,185.

It's still not enough.

We've been asked recently that we should consider increasing the max to 150%.

That would take it to 1616.

This is why it's important for you to consider it because it just so happened that this item was dropped on us and it showed us what affordability looks like around the country.

If we do our own comparison to this particular slide here for the city of Charlottesville, a thousand square feet is what an individual will be able to find and it's going to be roughly $1,400 a month.

That puts us just above Las Vegas and just below New Orleans.

That's not good.

If you think about New Orleans and Las Vegas as comparables to the city of Charlottesville, you know we're in trouble.

We're a fraction of the size of those communities and our folks are paying those rates for housing.

That is why we've got to make sure we stay focused on the job.

So I always like to say it's not about affordable.

We don't need to be focused on the word affordable.

Our focus is on the word attainable.

What is even possible?

What can an individual actually secure for their livelihoods, for their stability in our community?

And today we're saying that they should be paying what folks are paying in Las Vegas and New Orleans.

We got to do better than that.

So I'm going to wrap up by just telling you that I'm going to share with you this PowerPoint.

There are three more slides that I'm not going to get to, but I'm going to make sure that you get this tomorrow.

It'll be posted on the website so the public can actually take a look at it as well.

But there are some serious decision points that we need to make sure that we bring back to you and look at.

There's a lot of work that needs to be done internally, so we're going to have to roll up our sleeves and break all that down.

And then there's a lot of next steps, many, many next steps.

Yeah, I'll just say that this was fantastic.

Really appreciate it.

Sam, very, very helpful pulling all these things together, particularly for a

person who's new to this like myself.

I guess I have just a number of reflections.

And you can email me just like you can email me questions.

OK, well, maybe I'll just do that.

I can just do that.

I guess just a couple of things, though, for the group, I mean,

Right, okay.

And then in terms of the land trust, whether it's owned by PHA or led by PHA or by the city, I don't have strong feelings about that.

What I don't want to do is invest in a bunch of rework.

If what PHA or whoever has is working, as long as we've got, you know, solid guardrails to make sure that that's being done in a transparent way,

with oversight from us.

That's where I stand on that.

In terms of the $10 million per year, and this gets back to the investing graph that you showed, where you had a line at $10 million, but the next few years are basically at $7 million.

One could argue that

with a $7 million investment over the next years, we're already meeting what was agreed to in the affordable housing plan a year ago.

Yeah, I'm not necessarily saying that, because remember, that's the point of the question.

Is it a goal or a commitment?

Because then that just becomes a mark.

If it's something that you don't want to focus a lot of attention to, that's fine.

But if it's about us hitting that mark every year, then of course, for us, that means we want to make sure we are aware of what other projects are coming down the pipe.

Reality is,

What you saw on that chart is not where it's going to end.

We know that there are people working on projects right now that we won't have those numbers for them for another two years or so.

I mean, CRHA is working to do their entire portfolio.

Yeah, in that section, yes.

All right, as far as I'm concerned, I think that 10 million should be our goal, or commitment, rather.

It should be, and that's where Brian stands, commitment every year that we do 10 million with some flexibility in terms of averages, you know, maybe over a three to five year span that we average that amount.

I also feel like in terms of, and I understand your points about, well, do we count these FTEs as part of this program or not?

I say let's err, so to speak, on the side of

being inclusive of if we're really spending time and money in this sector, let's document it.

And then maybe what that means is our goal needs to go from 10 million to 11 million.

I don't know, but I'd rather know what those numbers are so that we can speak to it.

I like the idea of putting the VCF housing stuff through CAF.

Yeah.

I really appreciated your defining affordable housing those slides at the end.

That's very helpful.

I think it thinking in terms of attainability versus affordability.

And then

Whatever we can do to be aligned with the regional housing plan that the planning district is doing, I have no idea where that effort stands.

My guess is that we're a good bit ahead of what they're doing, and I don't think we need to slow down or necessarily tailor what we do to fit into theirs, but just to be as aligned as possible.

So those are just a few things.

Just real quickly, likewise would agree, you know, I view the 10 million as a commitment rather than a goal.

I think I also agree that the the land trust idea, especially if you think about how that could work with a land bank, is an idea that can be pretty transformational and expanding

how much land is available for affordable housing and getting to more permanent affordabilities at deeper AMI levels.

And to me, the bottom line is just what approach is going to be the most effective and produce the most housing opportunities at the deepest AMI levels.

And more broadly, definitely agree we should be routinely looking at the

what we're getting for our investments, looking at the efficiency and impact and be willing to adjust based on what we're seeing from that data.

And final two things are, you know, I think the slide on

You know, future phases of public housing redevelopment are really important.

You know, I'm still concerned that we haven't fully incorporated that into our budget.

And when that time comes, we won't be able to make that commitment.

I think we just need to do a lot of planning to ensure that doesn't happen.

And final thing is just, you know, as others mentioned, what can we do to become a closer partner with CRHA

Okay.

I mean, I've made a lot of comments throughout and I know time is tight now.

I just look forward to, you know, us providing concrete input for you as you move forward and to hearing your reports as you move forward.

But I was taking, I know you're going to put it on this.

Yeah, I'll send it to you.

But I was taking some pictures because sometimes when I'm in the parking lot or in the store, I can't have that, but I can go to my pictures in my phone to answer some questions.

So thank you so much.

This is so helpful.

Thank you very much, sir.

I'm just going to put out there that I am worried at our zero AMI level.

And this is kind of a stark reflection on how we're not putting anything into that.

I know we do pass through from the feds with the homeless solution HSG and ESG grants, but that we're not really seeming to put a ton.

Though TJAC, we do give money to TJAC, so that's not really reflected in that.

So just, you know, CRHA does serve 0% AMI.

I guess I would just want to make two comments.

One is, and this is at some level a matter of semantics, I look on the $10 million as a goal and not a commitment.

And the difference, as I said at the impact meeting, is that a commitment is like my wedding ring.

That's a commitment.

That's not an average.

I don't average fidelity over five years.

That's a commitment.

I'm willing to average, which makes it a goal, but it's not a commitment for me.

Furthermore, we don't have the authority to bind future councils as a commitment.

So it to some extent doesn't make a lot of sense to worry about that excessively.

I'd say it's a strongly held goal

but if we have a financial crisis on the order of COVID or something like that, my marriage survived COVID.

Some financial commitments from the city did not.

So I wanna keep the semantics clear.

The second thing I just wanna note, nothing about a land trust helps us establish it.

It doesn't save us money

to call something a land trust, to put money into buildings or to buy land.

It's simply a nonprofit receptacle for the land.

It still requires actual money from us or somebody else to build.

So in terms of a long-term maintaining affordability,

That's fine.

It helps people who want to buy land, who want to buy a property, but they don't need to be investing in the land itself.

And that's the long term value is it takes out some of the speculative value of the land, but it doesn't make it any easier to establish.

Most of the land trusts have been established

have come because large sums of money have been given to the land trust to buy the land or land has been donated or it's come through a federal program of some sort.

All right.

It just makes it a little bit harder to make that clear, but that's okay.

I mean, we've been doing it.

Well, of course, the reality is that in city government, something is a commitment until it isn't.

That's true.

Anyway.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay, it is 20 of 6.

We have designated a closed session starting at 5.30.

We're a little bit late to that, but we're the only ones who are going to be there except for Ms.

Robertson anyway.

Is there anything else we need to do right now that we can't do at 6.30 or thereafter?

Except to thank Mr. Sanders for a very thorough report and a challenging report.

Thank you very much.

All right, so we need someone to read us into a closed session.

All right, I think I got it.

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 future appointments by council to the city's planning commission and legal consultation regarding compliance with requirements of Virginia code 15.2-22-12.

Do I have a second?

Second.

Second.

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Motion passes.

City Council will now go into closed session.

We will return to a separate Zoom link for the open meeting at 630.

Thank you

Music

Music

Music

Thank you

Music Music Music

No.

No, I'm using my personal computer right now.

Okay, now we're all here.

Rogers, are you all set to go?

All right.

That was a yes.

Okay.

So having established that we are first have come out of the closed session.

That's right.

Okay, Ms.

Councillor McGill?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Wade?

Yes, Mayor, I have a few.

And actually, I was just trying to find one of them.

So,

This one came in via email from Alex Zan letting us know about the eighth area student contest focused on helping others that Charlottesville, Virginia, Central Virginia students in grades K through 12

are encouraged to participate in the upcoming My Help List contest starting on Monday, March 14th, but through Friday, April 22nd.

The contest is created by Charlottesville author award winner and trailblazer, Mr. Alex Zan.

To enter the contest, students from a school, including homeschool, in the Charlottesville, Albemarle, and surrounding counties are all eligible.

They must

One, in 50 words or less, share in writing why it's important to help others.

And two, list five things they have done to help someone or can do to help someone.

There will be four winners chosen by selected judges from grades K through second, three through fifth, sixth through eighth, and ninth through 12th.

And the winners will receive a cash prize of $100.

Winners will be announced on

NBC 29 and also at alex.zan.com.

All letters and responses can be mailed or dropped off at Jones Heating and Air at 633 Rose Hill Drive, Charlottesville, Virginia 22903.

And please include a name, address and phone number.

The contest is centered around character, personal responsibility, respecting and valuing others.

Additionally, I did also want to bring awareness that upcoming we have the Take Back the Night.

March will be Take Back the Night Vigil will be on April 8th at the UVA Amphitheater from 6 to 8.

There are also

throughout the month of April, there are a number of events happening in regard to Take Back the Night, one being communities of color celebrating wellness and self-care on April 14th, a pride festival and picnic on April 16th.

More information can be found on the UVA Take Back the Night Facebook page.

And my last announcement is I would like to congratulate our Clerk of Council, Ms.

Yay, Keena.

Hear, hear.

Thank you.

Okay.

Any other announcements?

So we will now hear an update from Dr. Denise Bonds, Blue Ridge Health District Director.

Good to see you all.

Let me share my screen here.

All right, so good evening.

Let's talk about COVID.

Fortunately, there is less to say about COVID, although we do have at least one new announcement for individuals.

So here we are today.

The district as a whole has had 48 new cases, which is actually a little higher than we've been seeing on a daily basis last week.

You'll notice a slightly new format.

There have been some changes at the state level with regard to databases.

So I'm showing you from our health district point of view the total numbers that we've had so far in Charlottesville.

And you can see there's been just under 10,000 individuals that have had COVID since the beginning, 194 individuals who are hospitalized, and 75 unfortunate deaths.

The curve that you see below the histogram with the seven-day moving average actually gives you the most recent six months.

And you can see that generally here out at this tail end, we have very few cases that we're seeing in the city of Charlottesville, really single digits.

So that's good news for Charlottesville.

We do have a new community level that we're using in many businesses, and I know the schools are using this as well, to look at, to provide you with some guidance about what you should do.

So as a reminder, there's three levels.

There's the green, yellow, and red level.

And you can see that for the entire state, pretty much everyone is in the green.

There's a few scattered places in the yellow.

And I know that at least for Albemarle, it's a little bit of an artifact that we're trying to get

some clarification on.

We believe that for Albemarle, that yellow warning, that increased warning is due not to new cases that are happening this week, but to some data cleanup that we have been doing from previous surges of the Omicron variant that are somehow getting counted as new cases at the CBT level.

So for the city of Charlottesville, though, you are on the green level.

It doesn't show the map, it doesn't show Charlottesville on there, but you can pull it up and I've done that here.

It is the green level, so it's very low.

You can see that the case rate per 100,000 population, in fact, it's not even registering.

And this was the case rate as of last Thursday.

That is when the CDC looks at these levels.

The hospital admission rate, there's eight hospital admissions, COVID admissions per 100,000 population, and two and a half, roughly, percent of the staff inpatient beds are being used by individuals with COVID-19.

Just a reminder, those hospital data points are actually for the region, and our region includes more than the Blue Ridge Health District, so remember, this is

a pretty large area of the northwest region, including places like Orange and Madison and Culpepper.

So overall, Charlottesville's doing well, and we really believe the Ademaro increases the data artifact that we're trying

So less COVID numbers, and as you saw in the CDC numbers, means less full hospitals.

So these are the COVID inpatient statistics that I pulled up just this afternoon from Baltimore Hospital.

The orange lines show what's happening at UVA.

So yesterday they just did know three new individuals with COVID-19 and have 26 patients in-house as of yesterday.

So really,

You can see the trend has really been a gradual decrease, although not zero.

We still are seeing cases out there.

And people who are at higher risk do need to be aware that there is still disease in our community.

It's the same over at Central Arkansas Jefferson.

Again, as of this morning, I have four confirmed cases representing 3%.

So a decrease in numbers, but still not zero community.

So if you are immunocompromised, please do be cautious.

Variants are still primarily Omicron, although it's hard to see, but if you look on the web page, you can see there's a little bit of a change.

There's more of a salmon color as opposed to the bottom, which is more of a purple-y color.

So it is becoming more of an issue in the state of Virginia, although at least in the Northwest, still when these were tested, still primarily seems to be the original on the farm site.

So new information, the CDC has now come out with an additional recommendation with regard to boosters.

So they have said that some individuals can get an additional booster using an mRNA vaccine.

So that's either the five-thirds of them have done a vaccine four months after their first booster.

So essentially, this represents a second booster.

So here are the groups that the CDC recommends, and you really have to do your own risk assessment.

And using your health care provider is probably the best individual to contact if they know your health care.

but it's anybody ages 12 and older who are either moderately or severely immunocompromised, any adult ages 50 and older regardless of young age status.

So it's really just based on being older than 50.

And then individuals or adults between 18 and 49 if they got J&J as their first shot and as their booster.

So if they got

J&J as their first shot, but then got a subsequent mRNA booster, no second booster is recommended to the age group.

However, if they're over the age of 50 and received J&J as their first dose and then got an mRNA booster, then they can receive a second mRNA booster four months after the previous booster.

So you can see, depending on which category you fit into,

You may be eligible, or you may ultimately receive three vaccines, four vaccines, or five vaccines if you've got that third primary dose, which you are severely immunocompromised.

So boosters are available.

We are able to provide them.

We can now go into base and actually register.

There's a little bit of a lot of the state offices last week, and I'm sorry for any individuals to get caught up in that, but

It's all been worked out now, so you can make appointments.

We are at every health department every week, and here in the Charlottesville area, we're here at Rose Hill Drive on Friday afternoon.

And you can either make your appointment or you can walk in.

So just a reminder, even though you're in the green zone, there are things to think about.

Remember, getting vaccinated, that's the primary way to keep yourself safe.

And now if you fall into one of those categories, getting that additional booster shot,

If you are in the high-risk group, that is you have moderate to severe immunocompromised, or you're older, or you have underlying health conditions that might put you at greater risk for an adverse effect of COVID, we're recommending maybe upgrade your mask, either a surgical or a KN95, sorry, KN95 or N95, or something similar to that.

Distance is your friend.

We really continue to recommend people keeping that six feet apart.

Whereas it's always better to socialize than indoors.

There's a very few outbreaks associated with outdoor gatherings.

And if you are going to be in a crowded dorm retention, wear that mask.

And of course, wash your hands.

It's going to keep you safe on lots of things.

Just a brief reminder, we are not doing case investigations or contact tracing now, except in very special circumstances.

If you know that you are infected with COVID-19, if you have done that home test and it's come back positive, you need to isolate for at least five days, longer if your symptoms are better, and wear a mask on day six to ten.

You may want to think about getting another home test after day five to see if you're infectious, if it's positive, stay in isolation, but that's a recommendation.

If you've been exposed, then it's a family member or a friend because you've had COVID-19.

If you are fully vaccinated, including your booster, then you don't need to quarantine, but we do recommend that you wear a mask when you're around others.

If you've not been vaccinated or have not had your booster, then we ask that you stay home and stay away from other individuals for five days post-exposure and then wear a mask day six through ten.

And again, we are recommending that you get tested five days after.

We are still doing testing in the community.

It's a little more complicated because we're not in every location every week.

And so what I'm recommending is if you're not going to use one of the Monday, Tuesday, or Friday regular testing in the Charlottesville area, if you're going to go to one of our localities, that you look on our website to see when we're going to be there.

It's essentially every other week.

But it's not consistent and varies a little bit.

So if you just go to our website, look under testing sites, it will provide you with a full list of where we are by calendar day so you can know when to show up.

And again, you don't need an appointment, although you can make one if you want.

These are walk-up tests.

As I said, we're vaccinating.

We're in every locality every day of the week.

at least one day out of the week.

We are still doing movie on the mall, so if you're down on the downtown mall on Wednesdays now, Wednesday afternoon, you can stop by the field van and we'll be happy to provide a vaccination there.

We do have some other things like masks and things that we can also pass on.

Take a day that's most convenient and a location that's most convenient, and we're happy to help you get your booster shot or your primary vaccination.

And of course, we still have our community health workers that are helping to man our COVID-19 hotline, and there are other places that you can get a vaccine, just go to vaccine.gov, and you can find out a location that's convenient for you.

Anybody have any questions for Dr. Bonds?

Dr. Bonds, thank you for your usual thorough report.

I'll tell you, I'm going to get my second booster on Friday.

I already got the appointment made, so I encourage everybody else to do the same.

Well, those of us who are old folks, we're all sort of automatically eligible for all this stuff.

I'll just read it very briefly, whereas in fiscal year 2020, 783 children in Virginia were subjects in reports of child abuse and neglect, whereas child abuse and neglect is a serious problem affecting every segment of our community and finding solutions requires input and action from everyone.

And whereas our children are our most valuable resources and will shape the future of Charlottesville,

And whereas child abuse can have long term psychological, emotional and physical effects that have lasting consequences for victims of abuse.

And whereas protective factors are conditions that reduce or eliminate risk and promote the social, emotional and developmental well being of children.

And whereas effective child abuse prevention activities succeed because of the partnerships created between child welfare professionals, education, health, community and faith based organizations, businesses, law enforcement agencies and families.

And whereas communities must make every effort to promote programs and activities that create strong and thriving children and families.

and whereas we acknowledge that we must work together as a community to increase awareness about child abuse and to contribute to promote the social and emotional well-being of children and families in a safe, stable and nurturing environment and whereas prevention remains the best defense for our children and families.

Now, therefore, I'm J. Lloyd Snook III, Mayor of the City of Charlottesville,

on behalf of the City Council do hereby proclaim April 2022 as Child Abuse Prevention Month in the City of Charlottesville and urge all citizens to recognize this month by dedicating ourselves to the task of improving the quality of life for all children and families, signed and dated this April 4th, 2022.

Okay, thank you, Mayor Snook.

That it?

Thank you very much.

If not, then time for the consent agenda.

Ms.

Consent agenda?

Two, resolution, approving appropriation of the Annie E. Casey Foundation Family Engagement Support Stipend Grant, $15,000, second reading.

Three, resolution, approving and appropriation for COVID homelessness emergency response program funding, CHRP, $200,000, second reading.

Four, resolution, appropriating funds,

from the Charlottesville Albemarle Technical Education Center for KTEC Kitchen Floor Repair, $75,000 second reading, five resolution appropriating grant funding of $94,276 from Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation,

for development of a flood resilience plan and authorizing the city manager to execute a grant agreement.

Second reading.

Six, resolution appropriating funding for American Rescue Plan eligible local activities, $536,553.97.

Second reading.

Seven, resolution.

appropriating funding received from the Virginia Department of Social Services for driving and transportation assistance for foster care youth, $13,877, first of two readings.

Eight, resolution appropriating additional funding received from Virginia Department of Social Services for the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program, $16,435, first of two readings.

nine resolution appropriating Virginia Tourism Corporation American Rescue Plan Act supplemental funds for the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau $280,000 first of two readings 10 resolution authorizing a refund

of $12,866.44 to a taxpaying entity or business for business license taxes paid in error for 2020, first of two readings, 11, resolution approving a minor amendment to the city's FY 2020-2021 CDBG action plan to authorize the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority,

to implement a contingency plan to expend its community development block grant funding on or before June 30, 2026, one reading, 12, report, land use and environmental planning committee, LUPEC, semi-annual report.

Thank you, Ms.

Thomas.

We will now take public comment regarding items on the consent agenda just read by the clerk.

Note, please, if you are here and you want to be commenting on the budget or anything else not related to this,

there will be other opportunities to speak.

So just as to those 11 items, each speaker will have up to three minutes.

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

If you're joining us by phone and wish to speak on the consent agenda, you can press star nine.

Are there any speakers?

Okay, well, that's fine.

Moved by Vice Mayor Wade.

Any further questions or comments from Council?

Ms.

Councillor McGill?

Yes.

Yes.

Next is the city manager report.

Yes, sir.

We have a couple of items.

I reported to you last week that we were going to start doing a written city manager's report

and I've asked Ashley and Sam to share items from their clusters with you tonight.

At future meetings, we will get these reports to you in writing in advance of the meeting so that you can read them before the meeting.

So Ashley, Sam, please report on your items.

Yes, sir.

Good evening, Mayor Snook, Vice Mayor Wade, and Council, along with our members of our community who are on.

I wanted to provide a few updates on behalf of the city manager focused on several departments.

First, organizationally, several key hiring processes are underway within the city to ensure the organization continues to provide excellent service delivery to our community.

Those hires include our Director of Communications and Public Engagement,

our Director of Human Services, our Director of Human Resources, Director of Information Technology, and the Deputy Director of Communications and Public Engagement.

Many of those are moving forward into second round processes and the rest will be moving into first round shortly.

Further, the city has also launched a competitive application process for college students who may be interested in summer 2022 internships with several departments through our employment website.

Those are still live and active.

The city is also working to potentially secure an ICMA local government management fellow, and those fellows are recent masters in public administration or masters of public policy graduates who are seeking a one-year opportunity

to gain some hands-on experience with local government management.

We're quite excited about that opportunity.

The city of Charlottesville has re-engaged the University of Virginia's Center for Survey Research within the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service to launch the 2022 Employee Engagement Survey that will hopefully begin its administration later this month.

The Office of Equity and Inclusion will be hosting a virtual groundwater session

in June of 2022 led by the Racial Equity Institute.

The groundwater approach is designed to help people at all levels internalize the reality that we live in a racialized structured society and that is what causes racial inequity.

Once our staff is able to register any remaining slots, we open to the public and that training will be free to the community.

We will make sure that that information reaches those who need it.

We're very excited to announce that the Home to Hope program peer navigators will be participating in the TomTom festivals tomorrow Charlottesville services on the future of criminal justice reform on April 20, 2022.

and our downtown job center will co-host early education and care panel with Virginia Career Works and city space on April 8th, 2022 from 4 to 5.30 p.m.

One of the five panelists we are delighted to announce will be Charlottesville Department of Social Services team member Alyssa Cattell Gordon.

The Office of Human Rights held a virtual town hall style meeting with the public on Thursday, March 24th at 6.30 and the office is additionally excited to welcome a new member of the team

Ms.

Victoria McCullough to fill the vacant full-time role of the community outreach and administrative specialist.

Victoria will be assisting with individual service intake and providing service provision in addition to working with the director to develop outreach initiatives.

The Department of Human Services would like to make sure that the community is aware

that our Community Attention Foster Families program is currently and intentionally engaging in foster parent recruitment efforts, which include media spots, a partnership with Vinegar Hill Magazine, and numerous community outreach activities to come this quarter.

Their efforts are focused on increasing the number of families of color,

to foster children as well as the number of families who are willing to support LGBTQIA plus children and teens.

If any member of the community is interested in learning more about the opportunity to engage in a child's life through fostering, please come to the next information session to be held on April 13, 2022 via Zoom beginning at 6 p.m.

and more information can be found on our website.

Finally, the Department of Information Technology is proud to announce two recent hires.

Ms.

Omana Taha as a Department of Information Security Engineer who will be devoted to cybersecurity, as well as Ms.

Maria Weiss, the IT Operations Manager.

The team is also happy to welcome the return of former retiree in this Barbara Seitz to take on project mapping of their business processes and developing and updating procedures.

During the month of April 2022, the IT team has several cybersecurity initiatives taking place over the next few weeks that will include completing the ransomware protection project and pushing out annual cybersecurity for the city staff.

And those products are a key component in the department's multi-layered approach.

Thank you, Ms.

Good evening again, council and community members.

series of reports to share as well.

From the city manager's office, just want to share that the neighborhood leaders group that had been meeting in years past and has gotten off track, but we did have a couple of meetings last year.

We will be resuming our quarterly schedule with the first meeting for this year being held on April 28th.

Any community leaders that have been a part of this should have been should have received invitations by now.

And if there is anyone listening that feels as though they should have been provided an invite on that list to reach out to the city manager's office and we can update that information and look forward to rebooting that process for going forward.

from our environmental sustainability division.

Just want to make it known to the public that the GHG emissions data that we have been tracking on the inventory web page has been updated.

That is something that we know that people have expressed some interest in being able to see.

So that information has been updated for more recent

information, so take a look.

Public Works is testing an updated street sweeping schedule by establishing specific dates so residents can better coordinate parking arrangements and then the team will be able to do more curb-to-curb sweeping.

The map has been posted on Twitter at hashtag SeavillPW and on the Public Works webpage and you can always call in the Public Works if you needed to ask a specific question about your particular neighborhood.

In the engineering division, our leadership and project management teams are completing a review of our VDOT program ahead of a deep dive for VDOT that's scheduled for later this month.

We anticipate some changes that we'll be bringing to council in regards to how we manage those projects going forward.

And we're looking forward to being able to make sure that everything is in good

and being able to maintain that relationship.

And as some of the council members have reported, it's very important that we are ready to deal with the flow of additional funds that are going to become available and they'll particularly come through VDOT.

So we want to make sure that we're checking with them.

The Fifth Street Alternative Study has been contracted and staff is working with our vendor to

begin that work.

There'll be some community conversations coming up in April and May, and they will, as a team, will be presenting to Council at the second meeting in May.

So there'll be an opportunity to see what options we may be able to consider for going forward.

Transit has been able to initiate the feasibility study that you all heard from Director Williams at his January work session.

That process has begun with Kimberly Horn as the contractor.

They'll be able to get that analysis done.

and we look forward to getting the reports of that and then shifting right into the implementation plan that he also discussed as a next step.

In addition, I was able to join the team at Transit for their intake session to kick off their FTA triennial review.

That process will conclude on the 14th.

We'll have an exit review before the final report comes a few months from now.

is a chance for us to just check our relationship with FTA to determine what things we may or may not be in compliance on and get those things in working order.

Again, wanting to make sure that we're ready for the flow of money that's coming.

And this review will help us make sure that we are where we should be.

Utilities is celebrating a great moment in that they gave out 250 trees that were done through donation.

as a part of an energy saving trees program.

They provided free trees to residents in support of Arbor Day.

Utility staff worked with the tree commission to determine the most suitable tree species and got those out and they went out as quickly as they told people they were available.

So we're very happy to see folks taking advantage of that opportunity.

And then the Office of Community Solutions is working on getting the next funding rounds for home CDBG.

Those recommendations will be coming from the task force to counsel for consideration at the next meeting.

In addition, the action plan public comment period has been advertised and a public hearing will be held at the May 2nd meeting.

And they're in the process, the team is in the process of getting

And reminder that the home art funds can be used to target 0% AMI projects.

So if there's anyone out there in the homeless space that is interested in doing some work there, we would be interested in seeing proposals from them as well.

And the last update is from the fire department.

A lot of plans and reviews and things underway.

Fire department has initiated its long range master plan with their consultant Emergency Services Consulting International.

They'll be having a preliminary kickoff meeting with stakeholders later this month to review the scope of work.

Thank you both very much.

Mayor, Council, I

We will send the written copies of these reports for your review.

And I think it provided a lot of good meat in terms of what's happening throughout the city.

Thank you, Mr. Rogers, Mr. Sanders, Ms.

Marshall.

No comments, just appreciate the update.

I think this is great.

The city is moving.

We're doing things.

We're taking care of business.

Yeah, I appreciate the update.

So next item on the agenda is community matters.

We had no pre-registered speakers, so there are 16 speaking slots for community matters.

Topics may not include public hearing items, because those are things we'll talk about in a few minutes.

Those three public hearings will be, number one, changing the central absentee voter precinct, number two, the meals tax, number three, the fiscal year 2023 city budget,

If you would like to speak on any topic other than those, each speaker will have up to three minutes to speak.

There will be an additional public comment section at the end of the meeting.

So we'll now open it up to speakers.

If you'd like to speak, you can select the raise hand option in the Zoom webinar to be placed in the speaker queue.

If you have joined by phone and wish to speak during Community Matters, you may press star nine.

All right, so let's move on to that first public hearing.

First public hearing is to amend and reordain chapter nine, the election section, to designate the central absentee voter district location, moving it from city hall to city space.

Hello, I am Taylor Yowell.

I am the general registrar here for the city of Charlottesville, and this is Anne Hemingway, our vice chair for the city of Charlottesville's electoral board.

I am here to introduce the moving of CAP from City Hall into the basement conference room to city space, pursuant with Virginia Code 24.2-129.

Any

moved to a polling place or changed to a polling place does have to be brought up and changed in a public meeting, having a public hearing.

The biggest thing we want everyone to make sure that they know is this changes absolutely nothing with where you vote and where you cast your ballot.

This is cap only pursuant to election day.

So on election day, this is where any absentee ballots are processed and sent through a central scanner.

So for early voting, it will still take place in our office, and then all ballots will still be accepted at our office.

The main reason we have done this for the past three elections, so starting in November of 2020 was due to COVID, keeping everyone out of City Hall, having a bigger room in city space for more airflow.

And with the increase of early voting,

and absentee voting with the enactment of starting July of 2020 with no excuse absentee early voting.

Anyone could send in a ballot early.

And then so this increased our numbers tenfold.

So we needed additional election officers.

We also have additional poll watchers and observers now that need the extra space.

So that's why this needs to be a permanent change over to city space in order for a better flow and to better for

Thank you, Ms.

Yell.

Ms.

No, I don't have anything to add.

Yeah, just a comment.

I assume that, you know, I think that the previous location, you know, people can just kind of park.

It was a few steps and they could go in.

There were some steps, but, you know, there's a ramp in things.

Do you anticipate any extra steps?

problems because there's no like a parking space like right next to city space.

You know, there is a street, but it doesn't go through anyway.

We did, but because it's not active voters going in and out, we do not foresee that being an issue.

So this is more of where party representatives would be.

Anyone from the general public can come.

They just typically don't.

It's a very boring, very dull day.

But there is a ramp, so it is accessible in that sense.

And the election officials that are part of the central absentee ballot precinct can park in the parking garage.

And they're really there all day long and all day for the early processing of the ballots.

This is so you don't have to be in the City Hall conference room processing in that weird little conference room corner.

Correct.

But it's just so that you can spread out better and have people.

Yes.

And one of the major things, I think I hit on it a little bit, is that having city space with it being much larger, we saw this past year a huge increase in the number of party representatives and observers.

And we had the presidential election, we had almost 50

what 50% of the ballots were early voting ballots.

So I got a little bit ahead of us.

We were supposed to have gone into the public hearing piece of it first before we were getting issues from counselors.

But so if there is anybody who would like to speak on this topic, now is the time.

Again, raise hand in the Zoom webinar or press star nine on your phone.

Mr. Delahunt, anybody interested in this topic?

It does not appear to be any takers.

Well, so this is the first of two readings, and the second reading will be held in May.

I don't know which one of the May meetings it will be.

Does it matter to anything in your timeline, Ms.

Ms.

Okay.

Well, we'll be here.

Okay, so the matter will come back for Council on May 2nd or thereafter for a vote.

So passing it on to the next meeting.

Thank you.

So the next is consideration of an amendment to the City Code Section 30-283 to increase

the local excise tax imposed upon the sale of meals from 6% to 6.5%.

Again, the first of two readings.

Just very briefly, we have been looking at other ways that we can perhaps raise some additional funds to meet, among other things, the capital needs, the need to build schools and so on.

And one of the suggestions

was to increase our meals tax from 6% to 6.5%.

This would bring in roughly 1.2, $1.25 million a year.

Most of the meals taxes by cities in the state of Virginia are either 6% or 6.5%.

So either way, we're still pretty much in the average range.

That's the general issue.

We will also be having a hearing immediately after this to talk about the city budget.

So we'll now open the public hearing as to the meals tax.

Okay.

So let's go on and talk about the FY 2023 city budget and annual appropriation.

Ms.

Thank you.

We've discussed, Mr. Mayor and Council, the budget several times and given you a summary of what the city manager's proposed budget is.

We sent you a budget with $216,171,432 as a general fund budget.

It included a tax amount advertised at $1.05.

That would be a 10 cents increase.

We reduced the personnel property tax rate from the standard down to about $200,000, I think, was left in that.

And there were no other tax increases included.

And we tried to cover the school construction reconfiguration project and a number of other items that had been discussed by council as priorities.

and the $9.2 million that would be generated from a 10 cent tax increase was unallocated for determination by council.

All right.

Okay, so these are the points that Mr. Rogers just highlighted for you.

I'm going to move on.

We talked a little bit last week about some revenue enhancements.

We've revised our projections a little bit.

We have another month under our belt in terms of revenue collections.

So this is the same slide we talked about last Thursday.

We're seeing a slight decline in the Virginia communications sales and use tax.

If council decides to make no changes to personal property, we're estimating right now that would be an additional $2 million of tax revenue.

We're also continuing to see increases in utility tax, sales and use tax, lodging and meals.

Again, these are a direct result of COVID and our recovery being better than we originally anticipated.

And additionally, in the business and professional license, that's about another $300,000.

So again, if we move forward and council chooses not to change the personal property tax rate, we'll be looking at just over $3.7 million of new revenue that we can use to amend what's currently in the city manager's proposed budget.

We also presented to you a five year proposed capital improvements plan.

The dollars for 23 were just over $23.9 million.

The five year total is 1.57.

That does include the 75 million budget for the school reconfiguration project.

And as we have talked about through many scenarios, we know that in any of those cases, revenue enhancements are needed.

We also last week brought for your consideration just notes that we had heard over the course of the work sessions, several potential amendments to the CIP, the Stribling Avenue project, the Meadow Creek Trail.

We looked at a scenario for the school reconfiguration project at a price tag of 68.8.

And we also talked about two project requests that PHA brought forward for affordable housing.

Again, this was the slide where we talked about the potential amendments for the school reconfiguration project.

Again, not a recommendation, but just hearing some consensus around the 68-8 and the idea of funding somewhere in the $50 million range with bonds.

These were two different scenarios, one in which you could

fund an annual increase in debt service over a three-year period, or you could do a one-time tax increase, and the equivalents of those are marked here.

and we're rounding the corner.

We're almost there.

We have a work session scheduled for this Thursday night at 6 p.m.

where we'll be talking about the remaining issues and hopefully wrapping up.

The public is invited to attend.

And then on April 12th, council will be making a vote for formal adoption.

And that's all our presentation that we have.

Thank you.

Our first speaker will be Alexander Bruner.

All right, good evening, counselors, and thank you for your tremendous service to this community.

My name is Alex Bruner.

I am a lifelong resident born and raised here and now raising a family of my own in the city.

I previously served Charlottesville for five years as a police officer and currently sit on the Charlottesville Police Foundation Board, but today I come to you as a concerned citizen.

Last week I sent you a detailed email and letter, as well as a supporting spreadsheet for reference.

I ask that you kindly read it in full, but knowing you are pressed for time, I'm here to share the core of that message with you and the others listening tonight.

During council meetings in March, several people used public comment period to advocate for reduced police staffing and funding.

Their arguments focused on the fact that Charlottesville is an outlier compared to several regional cities in spending per resident and number of officers per 10,000 residents.

This is true, but that argument does not consider the unfortunate truth that according to FBI statistics Charlottesville's crime rate and especially our violent crime rate is far higher than our regional peers.

Plotting department size against the crimes in each jurisdiction is a much better measure of how much work each department must handle.

That plot shows that, in fact, the department's desired level of staffing and funding is perfectly in line with other cities in our region.

Today's actual staffing levels in the upper 80s to low 90s puts us well below the standard set by our neighbors.

Next, we should compare the number of sworn officers in each department against the population and violent crime rate of each city.

We have nearly the same populations as Harrisonburg and Blacksburg, yet our violent crime rate is about twice that of Harrisonburg

seven times that of Blacksburg and four times that of Albemarle County.

If Charlottesville had two to seven times the number of house fires as Roanoke and Lynchburg, I would expect our fire department to be proportionally larger.

We should feel the same way about our police department.

We also cannot assume police budgets are an apples to apples comparison.

There are many factors which may drive up a budget.

For example, the need to hire and train dozens of officers over the last several years, which costs much more than retaining them.

CPD also invests heavily in training such as forensic investigations, critical to both victim and suspect rights and crisis intervention, critical to police interactions with some of our most vulnerable community members.

Both take money and resources to implement, yet their value to the community cannot be overstated.

To provide the best possible services to the community, we need to hire, train, and retain the best people we can get.

The department is hemorrhaging officers.

In October of 2021, former managers

Chip Boyles told the council that 93 employees had resigned from CBD over the previous three years and 74 had been hired.

The department has only about 90 officers today.

Not only should we not cut the department budget, we should increase it in support of better pay and benefits to help with recruiting and retention.

These men and women run toward the sound of gunfire, and that seems to be happening a lot lately.

They help us when we have nowhere else to turn, and now they need our help.

Please fully fund the police department's budget request and help our officers serve the community to the best of their abilities.

Our next speaker will be Sarah Elaine Hart.

Good evening, everyone.

I am a resident of Charlottesville City and also a proud former employee of Charlottesville City Schools.

And I want to thank you all for your thoughtful consideration of the many challenging puzzles you have in front of you in regards to the budget.

Charlottesville City Schools are tremendous.

They are full of outstanding, hardworking educators and students.

And unfortunately, our facilities don't reflect this reality.

And it is such a shame.

Buford students and teachers deserve a functioning non-leaking up to 2022 standard building that is future oriented and planning for growth.

Please protect the investments that are collectively made in the young people by their families, by this community.

Please don't delay any further

in this important reconfiguration project.

There's a half a century old building that needs repair and only you can help us get to it.

So I'm asking you as a former employee of Charlottesville City Schools, a future parent of Charlottesville City Schools student to fully fund the reconfiguration project for

Buford and support Charlottesville Public Schools.

So please raise my meal taxes, please raise my property taxes to support our children.

I don't believe that could be a misinvestment in any way.

Thank you, Ms.

A reminder, if you wish to speak, you may select the raise hand option in the Zoom webinar or press star nine if you're joining by phone.

Mayor Snook, I see no additional hands at the moment.

Okay, Brad Slocum has just raised his hand.

Yes, hello, can you hear me?

Yes.

All right, hello, my name's Brad Slocum.

I'm currently a resident of Stanton, but as I've noted previously, I

lived in Charlottesville for most of the past decade and commute into work in the city five days a week and often visit on the weekends.

Previously commented in support of looking closely at the transit budget and in particular funding the expansions needed to the city fleet to reach the

Well, it sounds like 30 minutes is a current goal based on staffing, but eventually 15 minutes service, particularly on critical routes.

But I'd also like to call attention to two other areas.

The other one that I previously commented on of funding the necessary preliminary federal transit study, which I believe my last figure was about $200,000 necessary to look towards expanding the fleet to include electric vehicle buses.

What I'd like to also note is that looking at the last five years or so of the police department budget, they consistently over budget to roughly an average of $500,000 a year.

And so what I'd like to propose is that spending amount, I think that you could safely reduce the budget, particularly in the area of operations and some of the fixed costs and more than comfortably afford the transit study needed to shift the CAT fleet towards electric buses.

So I'd urge you to look closely at the ways

that the police budget or that the way the police department is spending their money and note where those areas could also bring a lot of benefit to the residents and folks who commute into the city.

Thank you, Mr. Zlocum.

So,

There are no further speakers.

The public hearing is now closed.

Council will convene on Thursday, April 7th for a final budget work session when I hope that at the end of that work session, we will have a final set of numbers so that when we convene on April 12th, it will be a very short meeting because we will already have worked everything out.

I know that it kind of has to be a short meeting because we're expected to be in front of the planning commission at six o'clock.

And so unless we're going to hold up progress on the planning commission side of things, we will need to make short work of it at 530 on the 12th, which means come prepared to make decisions on Thursday, the 7th.

an ordinance to appropriate state funds to replace the Derry Road Bridge.

Thank you, Mayor.

Good evening, City Councilors, City Manager.