City Council Meeting   4/18/2022

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No, put this on the bottom.

Like this.

And now, watch this.

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Okay, I gotcha.

I'm a PC guy.

You're going to want to use your Outlook to join the Zoom meeting on your iPad.

It's telling me that it's 68 degrees in Cupertino.

Oh, here's your zone.

Okay.

So do you have your audio?

Yeah, but I could just use, can I just use my Chromebook?

You can.

And see the presentation on there?

I've got my packet on this.

All right.

You can join us on video.

Don't allow the microphone.

That's right.

And you don't need...

I'll be back in the back if you need it.

I'm not getting bullied or anything like that.

Anybody want to clean their glasses?

This stuff's really good.

I'm good, thank you.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Well then, are we, are the UVA folks on?

Yes.

Okay, let's go ahead and call this meeting, April 18th meeting of Charlottesville City Council to order.

Ms.

So first of all is there a motion to approve or to amend the agenda?

I move that we approve the agenda.

Any opposed?

Motion passes.

This meeting this time will be divided into two main sections.

First a work session to hear and discuss a few presentations.

Then a City Council business meeting which will begin around 6.30 with limited in-person public seating.

We do not anticipate a reason for a closed session today so often we will make sure that we adjourn.

the first session by 5.30 so that we can get into the closed session.

First item on the agenda is a UVA law class presentation on tax relief.

We have UVA law professor Andy Block and or law students Scott Chamberlain and Maggie Woodward to present.

And let me just preface this a little bit by saying that

Professor Block had contacted me a few months ago asking if his clinic could be of assistance to the city in some way and this is at a time when we were really starting to grapple with the question of whether we could do more on tax relief in various forms and feeling constrained by the state laws and so I asked them to do a deep dive on this to try to figure out

what we could and couldn't do, whether there were any limitations or whether there were things that we were feeling were limitations that weren't really limitations.

And with that, I turned the project over to the law school class and said, please educate us.

David, would you mind giving me sharing permission again?

It seems like it's been disabled and I can share that presentation.

Wonderful.

Good afternoon, everyone.

So this year, as the mayor mentioned, we are both students in the law school's state and local government policy clinic under the supervision of our professor, Andy Block, who's also here with us today.

Through the clinic, students provide research and analysis to state lawmakers as well as local governments in Virginia.

For this project, Scott and I were charged with looking at Charlottesville's current property tax relief programs and exploring if there were any untapped ways for the city to offer more relief.

Before we go any further, I'm gonna read you this disclaimer that we include before all of our presentations.

The ideas and recommendations expressed in this presentation are not those of the University of Virginia or the University of Virginia School of Law.

They are those of the authors of this presentation alone.

So with that out of the way, here's a quick summary of what we plan to discuss this afternoon.

We're gonna give you a brief overview of the legal authorities that Charlottesville can draw on to help residents struggling with their property tax burden.

Then we're gonna quickly summarize Charlottesville's current programs.

We'll offer our recommendations for actions that the city could choose to take.

Thanks, Maggie.

So as Maggie and the Mayor mentioned, we were tasked with examining all of Charlottesville's current tax relief programming to ensure that there was no stone left unturned in terms of additional property tax exemption options.

So to do that, we started by examining the authorities that both restrict and empower Charlottesville, including the state constitution, the state code, and the city charter.

and reviewed each of these authorities in consultation with experts in state and local government and read through each of these independently.

So we'll now turn to Virginia's legal scheme governing a locality's ability to grant property tax exemptions as well as local authority to create additional types of relief.

So the state constitution governs all statewide and local tax action and expressly forbids any property tax exemptions aside from those for the elderly or disabled and it explicitly prevents the general assembly from expanding on that list of exemptions.

There's another statewide statute that's helpful for localities that want to provide assistance to their residents and that's the social services title.

Specifically section 62.3-314 gives localities the ability to make grants to their local board of social services.

The local board in turn can create grant programs for the purpose of aiding needy residents.

It's been the responsibility of the local board to administer the program and to set eligibility criteria.

Really notably here, the board is not tied to the same eligibility criteria that are established for statewide assistance programs.

Instead, the local board has a lot of discretion here to raise or change program criteria.

It's also important to remember the special powers that Charlottesville has under its city charter.

Section 50.7 of the city charter gives the city some special powers related to housing and community development that go beyond what's authorized by the Virginia code.

Specifically, the charter empowers Charlottesville to do three things.

First, the city can make grants to low and moderate income households, which I've abbreviated here as LMI, and those grants can be used to purchase land or a dwelling.

Second, the city can offer property tax exemptions

to LMI households.

And third, the city can make grants to LMI households to subsidize their rental payments.

It's important to note that for all three of these powers, the charter requires the city to follow the guidelines from the Virginia Housing Development Authority, the VHDA, when they're defining who qualifies as low and moderate income persons.

So the programs on this slide are not overseen by Charlottesville, but they are currently existing statewide programs that any homeowner in Charlottesville could benefit from if they met the eligibility requirements.

So first, the housing opportunity credit is a new credit available for landlords for renting out low income housing.

And second, the livable home credit is available for any homeowners who have recently outfitted or purchased an accessible home.

Lastly, the Communities of Opportunities tax credit is a credit that Charlottesville residents are not currently eligible for, but they could be if the state code was modified slightly to include Charlottesville in the list of eligible localities.

And we'll discuss that in a bit more detail in a few minutes.

As a brief refresher for council members, we're going to discuss the programs that Charlottesville currently offers before we outline the additional programming that we think Charlottesville can implement.

So first, real estate tax relief or RETR is an exemption for elderly and disabled homeowners.

Second, CHAP or the Charlottesville Housing Affordability Program is grants to low and moderate income homeowners who do not qualify for RETR.

And lastly, rental relief is grants to low and moderate income elderly or disabled tenants specifically who bear an extraordinary burden.

And now that I've talked a little bit about what Charlottesville does offer, we're just gonna explicitly discuss what Charlottesville does not offer before we move on to our recommendations.

So while Charlottesville does offer exemptions in grants, it does not offer any deferral programs.

So now we wanna share with you the opportunities that we've identified for Charlottesville to provide additional relief to residents.

We have five short term ideas that city could implement with the authority that it already has.

And we have one medium term proposal and one long term proposal.

And each of those would require change at the state level.

These are opportunities that we see based on the city's legal authority.

But we recognize that any decision regarding taxes and revenues is a complicated one with a lot of factors at play.

It is

of course up to the city to judge the wisdom of these proposals and to choose if there are any that you're interested in pursuing beginning with a short-term recommendations our first is that the city could change the eligibility criteria for the programs that it currently offers starting with income all three of charlottesville's programs have income limits that are lower than they could be

In fact, there's only one program, which is the rental relief program that's subject to a statutory limitation.

And that's that VHDA income guideline for the city of Charlottesville that I mentioned earlier.

On this slide, we're showing you the current limits for Charlottesville's programs, which are each around $55,000 per year.

And that VHDA guideline is highlighted in blue, and it's much higher.

It's $90,000 per year for a one or two person household.

and $105,000 per year for a household with three or more people.

To lay it out program by program, for RETR, we believe that that $55,000 cap is likely a holdover from when the state code set limits on income and net worth of elderly and disabled people receiving property tax exemption.

Those limits, like Scott told you, they were repealed in 2011.

And now localities have discretion to set their own limits.

In our memo, we've appended a helpful table from UVA's Weldon Cooper Center and that shows the limits that other localities put on their programs that are similar to RETR.

And that can help you gauge how Charlottesville stacks up against other localities in Virginia.

Similarly, for CHAP, if the city operates CHAP under the social services provision that I highlighted earlier, then the board has discretion to raise the income limits.

And as we showed you a moment ago,

There's a lot of room to raise the limit on rental relief up to that VHDA guideline.

Alternatively, the city could operate rental relief through the Board of Social Services under that same provision and then the board would have discretion to raise income limits and the program would no longer be subject to the VHDA guidelines.

When changing program criteria, the city could choose to keep things pretty harmonized across the programs like they are now, or you could try to tailor them more specifically to the populations that each program serves.

Moving beyond the income criteria, there are other program eligibility requirements that the city could choose to change to try to serve more residents.

The city could choose to eliminate the home value limitation on the CHAP program.

Right now, a homeowner can only qualify for CHAP if the assessed value of their home was at or below $375,000.

We think that the city might have imposed this limit to be in line with the VHD guidelines, but those guidelines aren't required to be used for programs operating under the social services provision that we highlighted.

In administering the CHAP program, Board of Social Services could choose to raise or eliminate that home price limitation.

Finally,

The city could choose to expand rental relief.

Right now, rental relief serves elderly and disabled renters, but the city charter gives Charlottesville the authority to make grants to low and moderate income individuals as well.

Alternatively, the city could use its social services powers to administer the rental relief program.

And then like CHAP, the limits will be fully at the discretion of the local board.

Moving on to our second recommendation.

So this one also involves a change to an existing program, but for a little bit different reason.

Applicants for the RETR program cannot have a net worth of more than $125,000.

Rental relief has a similar limit, but the CHAP program does not.

And when we spoke with the city's commissioner, the revenue for our research, he pointed out that the net worth provision is administratively difficult.

It's time consuming for city staff to go through the proper documentation with residents,

and some residents find it confusing to know what documentation they need to provide.

Plus, there are some fairness concerns here.

Imposing the limit on RETR but not on homeowners who are trying to qualify through CHAP just raises some issues of equity.

Like the income limit on RETR, we think that this net worth limit is a legacy from when the state was more restrictive about what localities could do.

But again, those restrictions were repealed in 2011.

So now the city might wanna consider doing away with that net worth limitation.

Our third recommendation is really short and sweet.

We noticed a little inconsistency between different provisions of the city code as it relates to RETR.

In section 30-98,

It outlines the criteria for the program and list the maximum income as $50,000 per year.

But then there's a table in section 30-101 that shows how to calculate the benefit for the program.

And that uses a maximum income of $55,000 per year.

Guidance from the city also uses that higher number.

Our fourth recommendation is to consider implementing a property tax deferral program.

So just as some background, deferrals allow homeowners who might be on a fixed income to wait until they sell their home or pass away to pay off their property taxes.

The deferral authority for the general population of homeowners is very limited.

Virginia Code 58.1-3291, which authorizes deferrals for the elderly, disabled, or any homeowner, defers only the amount of tax that exceeds the prior year's portion by more than 5%.

However, for low and moderate income homeowners, the city would not face the same restriction on the portion of taxes that they could defer.

The city could set that amount themselves.

Our fifth recommendation is that Charlottesville increase its communications about programming and streamline some of their postings.

As Maggie mentioned, there are some inconsistencies across different websites about what programs are available or what the income caps are.

And applications are hosted on several different websites.

So Charlottesville could increase the outreach it does on available programs and make it easier for homeowners and taxpayers to identify which credit or program they're available for and can apply to.

As Maggie mentioned, these initial proposals were our shorter term proposals and then our last two are medium and long term, meaning that they might take some more time and effort from the city to implement.

So this proposal is a little tricky and there are two parts to it.

Charlottesville currently participates in the Housing Choice Voucher Program or was formerly known as Section 8 and separately there's a provision in the state code that allows landlords apply for a tax credit if you participate in the Housing Choice Voucher Program.

So Charlottesville, as a city, does participate in the Housing Choice Voucher Program.

However, even though they do, they are not included in the list of localities in the state code in which landlords can then apply for this Community of Opportunity tax credit.

So Charlottesville could work with the General Assembly to modify the list

of covered localities in the state code to include Charlottesville.

And the advantage of this change is that it wouldn't require the city to alter their current voucher program in order for landlords to be eligible because landlords are already participating in this.

All it would take is updating the state code to include Charlottesville in that list of localities.

Our last recommendation, and this is our longest term recommendation, is working to amend the state constitution.

So we had the chance to talk with Dick Howard, who is one of the drafters of the constitution in 1972.

And we discussed with him the purpose of including the restriction in the constitution on property tax exemptions.

And he shared with us that the original idea behind it was protecting cities from a flood of exemption requests that might undermine their local revenue.

and when they initially wrote the constitution the drafters attempted to find a way to do without the list of exemptions for the elderly or disabled or to expand it but trying to expand it got too complicated so in his words they eventually threw up their hands and walked away from it and kind of just left it as is so we think it might be worth revisiting now if Charlottesville is interested in pursuing making a change in it to allow localities to have greater authority over which exemptions they grant or don't

So that concludes our background and our recommendations.

This slide contains a list of the seven recommendations we've discussed so far.

Thank you very much.

Not right the second, but thank you so much.

So I just want to be clear.

So you're saying that we could raise the RETR limits to $90,000 right away.

There's no bar to us doing that.

Yes.

Scott, I don't know if you can, well, I guess you've stopped sharing the presentation, but correct.

Okay.

So if we

If we were to do that, I mean obviously we have to check on things with the Commission of the Revenue to see what that affects.

I know that one of the concerns that we had had expressed when the large number of reassessments came this year was that between the reassessments, putting a lot of houses over our current $375,000 limit, a lot of people having

net worth issues and a lot of people having income issues that the number of households that could actually receive some amount of tax relief was dropping precipitously and dropping frankly every year.

A question just to clarify.

Okay.

Yes.

So there is an attorney general's opinion that interprets

So the social services provision that we highlighted has been recodified since the time of this attorney general provision.

So the

AG opinion is from the 70s and it's interpreting the forerunner of the current provision.

However, it looks at specifically Alexandria was asking if they could conduct a rental relief program and if that would violate some of the limitations on property tax exemptions.

And the attorney general said, it's not about property tax exemptions, you can do it under the social services provision.

And we felt that that was still

on the I guess final comment I would have is I definitely would agree that all of these are worth pursuing as others had mentioned because you know we had plenty of discussions this year about how despite us expanding the programs the people participating kept falling each year so I think these would be particularly important to pursue and my only thought would be

how we can do an analysis to ensure that any changes we make are as progressive as possible because I think there's clearly room to amend the home value limitations and make some of these other changes but I also want us to be careful to not end up in a position analogous to say California when they froze property tax rates and it ended up having a quite

Regressive impact on the state overall and end up being a structural advantage to wealthier homeowners in reducing the amount of money available to localities.

And so I think there's plenty of room for us to expand without doing that.

Yes, I'm very grateful for your presentation and for the packet information.

I'm going to spend more time looking through it and I hope I can get a copy of the PowerPoint as well.

So if you could help us out with giving us that since although it's very hard for us to write notes on the computer.

I appreciate it.

Any other questions or comments?

Thank you so much.

This has really been very helpful, and it's stimulated in my mind, because I've been working with you on this for a couple of weeks here, it's really stimulated in my mind a lot of ideas about, okay, what could we do for next year?

when we're going to get concerned.

We are concerned already but haven't been able to figure out what we could do about the fact that basically every tax that localities are allowed to impose in Virginia is a regressive tax.

And this is the first time that I've seen any suggestion that we may have a way that we might craft a more progressive way to administer real estate taxes.

Thank you all so much.

Tell Professor Block he needs to give you an A. Thank you.

Thank you all.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

Next item on the agenda is a climate action discussion, and how are we activating that?

Ah, there's some climate people on the screen.

Good afternoon.

The way we're going to do this is I'm going to start with a few comments, opening comments, and then hand it over to Susan Elliott.

Yes, certainly.

So my name is Crystal Rittervold.

I'm the environmental sustainability and facilities development manager in the city of Charlottesville here.

Good afternoon, Mayor Snook and counselors.

Thank you for inviting us here today to talk about the climate protection program and specifically about the climate plans that are in the works.

I'm joined by Stacy Smalls, our public works director and Susan Elliott here, our climate protection program manager.

who will be sharing the bulk of today's presentation.

But my goal in the next few minutes is to set the stage to provide a little context and a little content to kick us off.

The city of Charlottesville has had an active climate program since 2007 when it committed to reducing community-wide greenhouse gas emissions by joining the US Mayor's Climate Protection Agreement.

10 years later, in 2017, Charlottesville reaffirmed its commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions

and prepare for climate change by joining the global covenant of mayors for climate and energy.

The global covenant addresses both greenhouse gas reductions, often referred to as climate action or mitigation, as well as adaptation, which is related to the resilience and responding to the effects of climate change.

We use the terms climate action to be the umbrella for both of these areas of focus.

In 2019, Charlottesville adopted a community-wide goal

of 45% greenhouse gas emission reductions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2050.

We initially launched the Climate Action Plan development effort in the fall of 2020, but subsequently encountered several stumbling blocks.

There were competing priorities and efforts, including the completion of a comprehensive plan where climate is

where the topic of climate is one of the five guiding principles as well as one of the six priority areas.

Leadership and staff and key staff changes plus ongoing COVID.

These last two not only derailed important elements of the original process but also resulted in some staff, some key city staff who would have been able to support this action planning work serving in multiple roles or not being here anymore.

I for example have been serving not only as the environmental sustainability manager but also since mid 2018 as facilities development manager and have been pulled into a variety of COVID related roles and responsibilities we also experienced a significant delay in being able to recruit for our climate program specialist position which I am thrilled is posted right now so if you know someone who wants to work on this with us that position closes on the 29th

This added capacity will help us make progress on both the planning and the action side of the program.

We are well aware of the expectations, frustrations, and disappointment in the community shared by some of you on council about the lack of and the delay in having a climate action plan, and we share some of them with you.

We are ahead of many communities in setting progressive and science-based climate goals that inform our program activity.

and we have been tracking emissions data for over a dozen years so we can see and we can share where we are relative to these goals.

That said, we are behind some communities in having an adopted plan that guides priority setting, process and policy setting, resource allocation and other key decisions.

What we are looking at now is a reboot, a focused effort to bring this process back on the rails and to get on the same page.

This afternoon, we will provide you with an update of what we've done, what we are doing and what we are going to do.

It will include a preview, a preliminary summary of Charlottesville's climate action plan content, its topics and strategies.

There are many which are to be expected and which are included in the climate action plans of peer and neighboring communities, as well as in the most recent IPCC report that was released earlier this month.

and which points at the need for transformative actions across sectors, including energy, transportation, food, forests, and much more.

There are also some complex, complicated, and some might say big, hairy, audacious ones to be considered.

We understand that there are expectations and assumptions around many of these and that some critical discussions have been deferred to this climate action planning process.

such as transit and public transportation electrification or other alternate fueling technology, the future of our municipal gas utility, land use and associated density and zoning.

There's a lot of work to be done between now and the point at which council will have the opportunity to adopt a Charlottesville Climate Action Plan to deliver on the goals of 45% reduction by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2050.

We have a lot of blanks to fill in.

And when we do have a plan, we will have strategies and key actions identified within core sectors that will guide our efforts and focus areas as we move towards 2030 and beyond.

We need to ensure that it has assessment points, mechanisms for evaluating effectiveness and the flexibility to incorporate and adjust to new information, opportunities and technologies.

I want to thank you in advance for indulging us as we present in rapid fire mode and update on the action that we have continued to move forward programs, projects and other efforts, despite not having a document called a climate action plan, and then the subsequent climate adaptation plan.

We appreciate our climate advocacy friends and service providers in the community who have been persistent and consistent in not letting us forget the critical nature and urgency of climate action.

As we move forward, I want to thank you in the community for your patience and your input on this process.

That input will continue to be critical.

We are committed to get there and we are committed to get there with your support.

Thank you, Ms.

All right.

Great.

And then

All right, so for today's presentation, we're going to talk through what our current and ongoing activities are, basically reviewing what we have done, what we are doing, and then moving into talking about where we are within our climate planning process, presenting for you some preliminary content that we have put together so far, and then ending on what we have of upcoming activities of what we are going to be doing.

For our current and ongoing activities, as Crystal said, our climate program was started back in 2006 with the commitment to the U.S.

Covenant of Mayor, or sorry, with the U.S.

Mayor's Climate Protection Program with commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions community-wide.

That commitment was then reaffirmed in 2017 with the city's commitment to the Global Covenant of Mayors.

The city's climate program works in a number of ways to support our emission reduction, including delivery to our community of programs and services, funding, community engagement, policy recommendations, and tracking what best practices in peer communities are doing.

When we joined the Global Covenant Mayor's commitment, the focus of the climate program grew to include some additional steps which are shown on the screen and also to add a focus of climate adaptation.

These new elements were added to the program in addition to the program activities that we already had.

The Global Covenant of Mayors commitment outlines a three-year timeline for completion of all of these steps.

There is no penalty if the community needs to take more time to complete those, and it was acknowledged when we joined the Covenant of Mayors that we would need to extend our timeline in order to match available resources and capacity within our organization.

Over the first two years of the covenant commitment, we completed those first two steps on the climate action greenhouse gas reduction portion of the commitment.

When we adopted our new target, we had a new baseline of 2011.

And so we had to also, in addition to updating our greenhouse gas emissions inventory, we also had to go back and update our 2011 inventory so that we could be in compliance with the reporting standards.

We were opposed to begin community engagement for creating a climate action plan in the spring of 2020, which was disrupted as many things were by the emergence of COVID-19.

Activities to develop that plan have been start-stop over the last two years as different organizational and pandemic conditions have shifted.

We're now in a place of greater stability and we're very excited that we can begin moving forward with renewed momentum to bring the development of this plan to conclusion.

As we look forward at the climate adaptation planning cycle process,

We began in the fall of 2021, which is approximately when we had originally intended to start the climate adaptation planning piece.

We've completed the identifying our climate hazards, and we are in the midst of doing the climate vulnerability assessment.

That process will conclude this summer, and we are aiming for the next phase, the development of the adaptation plan, to be completed next year.

In parallel with these planning activities on these two tracks, we are also still delivering a program aimed at supporting and achieving greenhouse gas emissions across our community.

What we see when we look at our emissions community-wise is that approximately 95% of emissions are coming from the community outside of our local government control and about 5% are from our municipal operations.

Digging into that a little bit deeper, we see that 90% of our emissions come from three main sectors.

Our residential sector, our commercial sector, and our transportation.

How we go about supporting our community and supporting our organization and reducing emissions are informed by a number of sources.

I put on the screen a list of many of the things that inform what we end up choosing as our activities, where we focus our efforts, and how we go about working with the community and other partners to then end up producing and supporting action within our community.

All of this comes together where we have the aim of intending to increase the availability, affordability, accessibility, and awareness of programs, resources, and services that support climate action and bring benefits to our community.

To accomplish this, we often work through community partners expanding on and deepening what their work is within Charlottesville to support our greater community goals.

We found this to be a very good practical model with win-win results This includes supporting and funding energy efficiency improvements including hundreds of home energy assessments annually helping to fund gap fill measures so that our low-income households are eligible for as many utility funded programs as possible providing energy smart home rebates the commercial clean energy loan fund

working to expand the participation within our homes and businesses and the Solarize Charlottesville campaign and then supporting further engagement programs to be able to reach more of our city homes our city businesses and also reaching our students to be able to enable them to understand how their actions connect to climate and then what sort of options they have for taking action in their own individual lives and daily activities

This year as well we've added a targeted outreach initiative which is aimed at reaching the parts of our community who are eligible for state and utility funded programs that offer up to thousands of dollars of home energy improvements and that funding comes with no strings attached.

But I think if you walk up to anyone on the street and you say, hey, we've got a great deal for you, we've got thousands of dollars on your home, no strings attached, you don't have to really do anything, you don't owe anyone anything, people are going to look at you pretty skeptically.

And so while these are great programs that are out there that are being funded by sources that are not our local government, what we saw is the challenge that people didn't know about the programs and they didn't know they could trust them.

And so this effort is really aimed at trying to connect our community with these resources to really bring that benefit home.

In addition to working with our community partners we've also provide resources and resource development a couple of examples of this are the composting programs that the city provides and also the urban heat island data collection campaign from this past summer in terms of informing policy we do that at both the state level such as participating in the state's recent building code update cycle

or local city level in being part of the comprehensive plan, zoning, and the development of a standards and design manual.

We support other city-led programs and efforts, and we participate in regional coordination, community engagement.

One example of that is as part of our Climate Action Together umbrella, where we work with the climate sustainability programs at UVA and the County of Albemarle.

We offered the January 20th climate vulnerability event, which had close to 200 community members in attendance during it.

Within our own municipal footprint, we are also supporting various types of actions to reduce the emissions that we as an organization are providing.

I've listed a sample of these on the slide, two that I wanted to draw attention to, the top one, the energy savings performance contract.

This has the potential for sizable emission reductions within our facilities, and we are in the technical audit stage of that.

Additionally, with the transit alternative fuel study that CAT is bringing forward, we are working with CAT to have an inclusion of the climate agenda so that the full impact as CAT is looking at the transition to CNG and battery electric vehicles, we can then see how those impacts come through on our emissions profile.

And when we look at all these things together, what we're seeing in terms of emissions outcomes is that since 2011, we've had a 30% reduction community-wide.

That 30% reduction is a result of combined action at our local, state, federal level, as well as actions that are made by utilities, the markets, and industry as a whole.

This 30% does put us on track to achieving our emission reduction goals of 45% by 2030.

which is really great to see but there's also still a lot of work left to be accomplished.

And this is a good place in which to look at transitioning over into talking about our climate action planning and how we're gonna proceed towards 2050.

As I said before, we are in the middle of two different planning processes.

One that is aimed at greenhouse gas emission reduction.

The other is aimed at climate adaptation.

For adaptation, we've had workshops and input opportunities in the fall and we have a survey that will be coming out this week and there will also be workshops in June.

For climate action planning, which is the main focus for today, we have completed city council briefings, community workshops, facilitated community stakeholder sessions, climate liaison committee meetings and internal city briefing.

What we have to be completed

is within this week, based on today's work session.

There is a second survey that is going to be aimed at greenhouse gas emission reduction that will be coming out along with the climate vulnerability survey.

In addition to those, looking down the road a little bit further, we need to say having a town hall, more staff and public engagement, drafting a plan, getting feedback on that from the community, bringing that also to the planning commission and city council, incorporating revision, and then being able to bring forward a final proposed plan.

At this point, I'm also going to put a plug in for anyone who's watching.

If you want to stay updated as these different pieces come forward, or you just want updates about any of the other announcements we have from our programs, new campaign initiatives, any of that, please sign up for our Climate Action newsflashes.

We are publicizing these pieces through that.

You can sign up at charlottesville.gov slash notify me.

You'll need to go down to the newsflash section and then select Climate Action to get those notifications.

In addition to the community engagement pieces, other things do inform a climate action plan.

This is a sample of the type of things that we are bringing into our plan to inform what we're focusing on, where we're looking at the strategies, and then what types of actions and commitments and community values we need to be addressing.

What you see on this slide may look a little bit familiar because it largely aligns with the same things that we've been using to inform our program efforts and what we've been doing to help our community already reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

Following from the Global Covenant Mayor's commitment, one of the things that first and foremost our plan needs to make sure it is targeted at is reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.

And so I'm looking at that at these main three sectors along with waste, that is where our emissions are coming from.

What we know within our plan is we have to have our strategies aimed at the types of activity that are producing these emissions and also what the primary source of those carbon factors are for those.

Adding on to this, we also have to keep in mind what is the level of action and investment that is needed in order to really make progress to achieve our goals.

And looking at these three scenarios on the left, which have been shared in previous community meetings, and the current unfunded budget request, we can see pretty clearly that success will require action from the community as well as from government, that we cannot rely solely upon existing utility and cleaner grid commitments,

and that we need to be aiming action at multiple sectors and multiple types of strategies, looking at a combination of building energy improvements, onsite renewables and transportation mode and fuel shift.

I'm going to do a brief pause at this point.

The next section of the presentation will start to dive into the preliminary plan content, followed by what you can expect to see coming up.

Chair Greg Musil Yeah, I have a couple of questions if that's okay.

Chair Greg Musil Yeah, so thank you for your presentation so far.

That is correct.

Okay, thank you.

And then I guess, you know, as a project manager, what I try to do is if there's already a good plan out there, if there's already something that's working,

There are some times in which it's plagiarism is perhaps not the right word, but finding the best plan that's out there that's sort of already doing what we want to do and filling in our data to sort of make it ours.

I see that you're working with the university and with the county, which I appreciate.

I know the university has been doing a lot of work on this for many years.

They're very fortunate to have a boatload of staff to help them with this, which I know we've not had.

Yes, it is.

So we are looking at UVA, how their activities are.

We're looking at the Albemarle County plan.

And there's a reality that the work of pursuing or implementing components of a plan like this will happen with other city departments taking the lead.

So if we look at it as a citywide plan, and then clearly the lead can be taken by the private sector or the community on a number of the strategies.

This is, I would submit not

Understood.

Understood.

And I think I had heard that there was a notion of putting this group, sort of the action group or whatever you want to call it, within the city manager's office.

I think there's been some discussions, but I think that would

Okay.

Maybe I just dreamed that.

And then I guess the other piece was the other question I had was in terms of the work we're doing with our facilities.

I saw one of your slides that

I don't know if you're bringing in a contractor or whatever to help with that.

I'm assuming that's including like retro commissioning to go through and retro commission our HVAC systems to do whatever we can to make them as energy efficient as possible.

Sure.

We recently are using a program provided by the Virginia Department of Energy, which used to be the Department of Mines, Minerals, and Energy.

And we used a, they have pre-qualified energy services company.

We went through an RFP process.

We selected a firm CMTA.

They're currently doing the technical energy audits of about 40 buildings that include school buildings.

This summer we'll be getting reports from those audits and essentially that will be a menu of

Yeah, I think that will be very informative.

I'm really glad to hear that you all are doing that.

So I'm assuming that's everything from whether your fixtures have got in your bathrooms automatic flushing or whatever to LED lights to the envelopes of the buildings.

I'm assuming that will be a very comprehensive analysis of all city properties.

That is the idea.

Okay.

And does all of this work have connection with what the utilities departments are doing?

Yeah, I'm thinking in terms of like efficiencies with our water production systems.

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

Those are great questions.

And just remember, when you borrow from one person, it's plagiarism.

There you go.

I have a couple of quick questions.

We are particularly looking at the ones where the city or the schools are paying the utility bills because the way this model works is the savings from those projects

help finance the work.

We do have a number of city owned buildings that we don't really collect any rent for.

So I was just wondering if

where we clicked a minimal amount of rent that the savings of that actually might count.

Yeah.

At the moment we have identified, and again, we had to put a little bit of a manageable size and shape around this effort.

So they are the school owned, the school buildings, all the CCS buildings, the city buildings owned and operated and occupied by city functions.

And we're also looking at some of the jointly owned buildings.

But again, that's a little bit of a different portfolio because of the ownership and cost sharing around that.

Okay.

I'm just kind of, you know, I'm just keep, we get very siloed sometimes.

And I understand that we do that a lot of times so that we can actually control a project and actually get it done.

But I always want to bring us back to the awareness of the whole picture that we own.

And in the climate action planning process, are we looking at

how we can, I know only 5% of the greenhouse gas emissions are coming from our municipal buildings.

So I'm hoping that part of this process is also gonna help inform us

as we are putting money into climate action and in reducing the greenhouse gas emissions across the city that will help inform us of the areas that we can target funds as grants or as nonprofits or something like busing buses and transportation where we can get the most bang for our buck.

Yes, and what you're pointing out, there will be some more content coming out in this presentation that will help you kind of see where we're looking at with that.

So our municipal footprint is informed by the energy our buildings use, the energy used for our street lights and traffic signals, and then for any of our mobile or transportation assets.

And so one of the things is we do have more operational control over all of those pieces within our organization.

So we are able to actually go a little bit deeper or more targeted with our strategies and look at where do we need to be focused?

What will give us those biggest changes?

But then we can go to extra little layer in terms of

Starting to also look at are there sort of process improvements?

Are there things within our institutional policies?

Okay.

I just have a couple of questions.

First of all, I'm just curious, if you're looking at HVAC issues, there are a lot of things I now will just sort of throw out that I have a little bit of knowledge here and only a little bit of knowledge, but I know that an awful lot of HVAC issues have been able to be addressed using CARES Act, ARP Act kinds of funding.

There's a possibility.

I think a lot of the work that's been done today was specifically to do COVID mitigation and not so much prioritizing energy efficiency.

Coming out of this technical energy audit, the focus will be how those systems perform and do the COVID mitigation, but also where there may be efficiency opportunities.

And

Okay.

In the 2016 Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventory, the document included numbers for energy consumption and emissions for municipal uses, breaking out energy use in municipal buildings and driving municipal vehicles.

For some reason, those numbers don't appear in the actual Excel spreadsheets on the City website showing the data.

for 2016 through 2019, the CSV files that are at the bottom of one of the pages.

Is there some reason for that?

Yeah, so where we use the software called ClearCast that's provided to us through our membership in ICLEI and there's a series of different types of reports that we can do exports with to try to put the data out there simply.

We selected one of those reports and that's what we then uploaded onto the website.

We can

Go back and look at the municipal side of it.

One of the pieces in terms of methodology updates that has happened is that when we look at the type of data that's used to calculate emissions on our community level, we are not able to clearly identify what within there is from our municipal vehicles and what is not.

and so the fleet portion of our municipal emissions is something that we can calculate because we have access to the data of our actual fuel usage but if we put that all into one big pie chart instead of representing a hundred percent it's going to represent more than a hundred percent but because we can't tell you how much of the community transportation includes the emissions from our fleet fuel we can't tell you how much of an overlap there is

So to add the municipal data onto the website, it would make more sense actually to do a completely separate data set that is just the municipal data.

And we can do that.

I mean, just in terms of what we can control directly,

We have much greater likelihood of controlling directly a municipal use than we do trying to influence a non-municipal use.

And so it would be useful to know if there are things that we can change.

And maybe we get to a certain nut that we can't get any smaller than, but I'd least like to know that.

So I was also struck by one other thing during the earlier presentation.

The 2016 report, and you quoted this, talked about phase two would include setting a greenhouse gas reduction target, which we did back in July of 2019, and assessing climate vulnerabilities.

And I'm not sure that I know what that would mean.

What does it mean to be assessing climate vulnerabilities?

I don't think we've done it, whatever it is.

Yeah, I can try to provide a bit of explanation on that.

So assessing a climate vulnerability, we're in the middle of that process right now.

We had some workshops in the fall.

We're going to be releasing a survey to get more community input, and then there'll be a second round of workshops in June that will help put all that together.

What affecting plant vulnerability is, is that you start by identifying what your hazards are.

So the top three climate hazards for Charlottesville are extreme heat, increased intensity of precipitation and flooding, and then changing seasonal conditions.

After you recognize what those are that are your hazards, you then go through a process of understanding what is the risk from those, both in terms of what is the level of impact and what is the level of exposure.

So for example, if you have for extreme heat, you may have outdoor workers have higher levels of exposure.

Whereas people who have certain health conditions, people who are younger and then older, they are more at risk in terms of when they're experiencing extreme heat, biologically their health system, their physical health ends up being affected more than somebody who is not in the same population subgroups to how they respond to extreme heat.

and so it's a process of working both with staff and also with the community in terms of trying to understand where is that risk from the where are there exposures that you'll be that people will be experiencing those climate hazards but also then what is that potential level of impact from it where that feeds into is then identifying what are the things that we then need to be targeting our climate adaptation strategies out at recognizing that we're going to be experiencing these effects

Where do we have these vulnerabilities in our community that we then need to look at?

I mean, I'm curious, in particular, today we had snow and sleet in Charlottesville on April 18th.

Of course, that that is an indication of weather rather than climate.

But it tells us in the sort of the big picture that something's going on out there.

I guess I'm wondering whether you will be able to figure out a way to quantify or to measure those assessed climate vulnerabilities.

Is that quantifiable or is it just one of these things where you say, okay, it's happening, folks.

So in terms of what is projected of, for example, how many heat waves we would have in the course of a year or how long each of those heat waves would go, there are the climate projection models and that's part of identifying what the climate hazards are.

When you get over to the vulnerabilities, it ends up being a gradient

of like least impactful up to like having the greatest risk with the greatest vulnerability impacts on them and then that gradient is part of what will be coming out after the June workshops and when we have all the community input and all the staff input of what that looks like we can definitely bring more of that information back to you and I can offer some examples from some other communities of what these vulnerability assessments end up looking like

That's right.

Today is just an early phase of the process, I know.

As I was looking at the data from the past reports, it looks like our CO2 equivalent emissions in 2019 were about 320 million metric tons, if I've got the units correct, about 30 percent off of the same number for 2011.

for us to get to a 45% reduction we'd have to get down to about 250,000.

The good news seems to be that we're two-thirds of the way to the goal.

The bad news is that most of the improvement seems to have come from Dominion Power having a lower carbon footprint in the energy that they're providing to us rather than because we in the city have particularly done anything.

We have to dig into more of the data, like going back into the activity data.

We do see in the data, especially when you think about growth that the city's experienced since 2011, we have seen improvements or at least lack of increase in terms of the energy that we're consuming with it.

Since 2011, Dominion has made quite a significant number of changes of its fuel sources that it's been using to generate electricity.

When you look at across our residential and commercial sector, about two-thirds of the energy that's powering those buildings is coming from electricity.

So when Dominion in the past made the change of switching from coal to natural gas-fired plants and now that it's moving forward with adding more renewables and clean energy and reducing its reliance on natural gas, we are seeing all of those benefits come in.

One of the things that we saw back in 2016, and I think it still holds true today, I haven't double checked it for every inventory year, is that we're seeing an increase overall in our community of energy, the amount of energy that's being consumed, but the overall emissions are actually going down.

So that means where we're getting our sources of emissions, how effectively we're using energy overall, including our growth to end up doing all the activities that we do on a daily basis.

were using less carbon per energy unit overall.

The numbers

About 3 o'clock in the morning, I got around to playing around with some of these things as I was sort of diving more deeply.

And it appears as though the change in efficiency, or I'm trying to find out the best way to characterize it, or more accurately, probably the decline in emissions per unit of energy in electricity seems to have been about a 20 percent decline over the last, really just the last three years between 2016 and 2019.

The changes in gas and other such things relatively almost exactly the same, but certainly in electricity it seems there are about 20% fewer emissions per kilowatt hour in 2019 as opposed to 2016.

That's really all the questions I've got.

Well, certainly plenty of questions as we go through the process, but I know we'll be talking to you again.

Yeah, I was going to say if I could respectfully request, there's another second part to this presentation that I think also is going to address a number of what Council was hoping to hear today.

Great.

Excellent.

And could I also get a sense of a time check?

But I do want to be respectful of your all's time and when you were expecting for this portion to wrap up.

No, 5.30 is not a magic time now.

5.45-ish would be fine.

Gives us a chance to get a break before the next part of the meeting.

All right, so moving on, the next section that we're going to dive into is sharing with you all preliminary content that we put forward for what would be in the Climate Action Plan.

This is not a kind of, you know, 15 knots, top to bottom, going through every single section that we're envisioning We will share an outline of what we anticipate being all the different sections, kind of like a table of contents for the report And then also a sample of what we're anticipating will be in each of the sector chapters

The next section of the presentation is sharing with you all what we're anticipating for the key strategies and key actions that associate with each of the sectors that we're looking at.

After going through this, we will then speak about what are upcoming next steps that you can expect to see, and then that will be the end and we can come back for more questions on the second half of the presentation.

All right, so for the, this is where we are within the planning process based on like what we've been brought together.

We would love to have a full draft plan to share today.

That's not where we are.

As I went over before, there are still a number of different engagement and synthesizing different pieces of input to wrap into what this overall plan ends up including.

But what we have today captures where we are and what we plan to be building on as we move forward into developing a document that would be a draft plan.

So starting off looking at our buildings and energy sector, this represents about 60% of Charlottesville's emissions profile.

The emissions from this come from the energy that's used to power our buildings, keep us comfortable, power all of our devices, all of those sort of activities.

The primary fuel sources for this are electricity and natural gas.

I'm not going to read all the different words on the screen, but I will go through each of the strategies as we go through these slides.

So the first strategy is looking at moving new construction items to get closer to net zero.

Looking both at energy efficiency, onsite renewables, and looking at solar ready building standards.

Pairing with that is looking at increasing the energy efficiency and onsite renewables for existing buildings.

looking at supporting the increased energy efficiency and renewable energy through innovative financing mechanisms that look at enabling and leveraging use of private action and investment and then supporting the transition to a carbon free sources and carbon neutrality for building energy supply.

Within the transportation sector, which represents about 30% of Charlottesville's emissions profile, greenhouse gas emissions come from the fuels that are used to power our automotive vehicles as we're going around town.

The primary fuel sources for this are gasoline and diesel.

In terms of strategies, we're looking at increasing travel by walking, biking, and transit, also can be referred to as mode shift, looking at supporting the use of high efficiency vehicles.

Developing a community electric vehicle charging network.

We do have a high percentage of renters.

We have a high percentage of commuters and also visitors to our area.

So assuming that people have the ability to charge at home or to make that decision about installing home charging equipment is not something that we really can expect for the majority of our residents.

And then the strategy of encouraging alternative transportation behaviors.

Looking over at our waste sector, this represents about 5% of Charlottesville's emission profile.

Waste emissions come from organics that are decomposing the landfill.

Primary sources of organics are yard waste, food waste, and then some paper and packaging materials.

In terms of strategies to address this is applying a sustainable materials management approach to Charlottesville's waste system, diverting organics from the landfill,

and then reducing the amount of food and other organic space material that then become waste that have to be processed in some manner.

Pairing with all this is also looking over at our natural resources.

With emissions, there's what we're putting up into the air and then there's what we have the ability to take out of the air.

in terms of our natural resources, particularly in regards to trees.

These benefit on both the emission reduction side and also in helping to address our climate adaptation and resilience side.

This portion of the plan and what we're talking about on these slides is really aimed at those emissions reduction pieces.

The adaptation and resilience part will be coming following the results of our climate vulnerability assessment and that part of the planning on adaptation will be next year.

We do intend to have the two plans speak to each other, and that's part of what you're going to be seeing on here is that some of the strategies around natural resources will appear in both of those plans together.

So in terms of natural resources, maintaining a robust urban forest and city-owned land, looking at also at the privately-owned properties and encouraging healthy increased tree canopy there.

and recognizing that there's not always a good opportunity to use trees and so wanting to understand also what are these non-tree canopy actions that support emission reduction looking at things from the natural resource angle we spoke earlier and you know we answered some questions about within our municipal sector our municipal sector it represents about five percent of our overall emissions profile

The emissions come from the energy used to power our government and school buildings, our streetlights traffic signals, and then also our fuels for our city fleet, transit, school buses, and other mobile assets like our lawnmowers and things like that that go around that use fuel.

The primary energy and fuel sources are electricity and natural gas for our buildings and lighting, and then gasoline and diesel for our mobile assets.

In terms of looking at strategies for our buildings and energy,

looking at reducing energy demand in existing buildings looking at reducing energy demand for new construction as we do significant redevelopments or brand new buildings looking at achieving carbon neutrality for electricity use of city facilities by 2030 and then also incorporating internal process adjustments so that we can improve coordination effectiveness and collaboration

looking at converting our streetlights and traffic signals over to LEDs and then when we start looking at our transportation and mobile assets side really looking at planning and supporting the transition to zero carbon and carbon neutral fuel sources for our mobile assets in addition with these sectors there are a couple of items that still need to be further discussed

We will be bringing all of this forward and getting more feedback and then helping to assess these out further.

What I've put on the screen here are things that we don't have content to share with you specifically today as recommendations or preliminary content.

These are complex topics with many entwined and interlocked pieces that go beyond just our climate action goals and need to be discussed further with our colleagues and also hearing from the community.

We're listing them here to acknowledge their importance, but we are not trying to put forth preliminary content or recommendations at this time.

I can and would like to share some comments about what this bigger picture of context is that sits behind these topics.

Because Charlottesville owns a gas utility, it opens up more consideration for us to consider than other communities necessarily do when they're going through climate planning.

Some of those considerations include comments that were heard during the Seattle Plans Together process with requests to limit new natural gas hookups.

There's a recent IPCC report which clearly states that new fossil fuel infrastructure will become stranded assets before 2050.

In regards to strategies

where residents and businesses are putting up into the air, Charlottesville Gas has been an active partner in terms of funding and marketing energy efficiency improvement programs, particularly those for lower income and gas assistance program eligible households.

And considering what sort of fuel source alternatives are, there are discussions in the federal and industry level about the use of renewable natural gas and clean hydrogen.

Both of these are evolving markets and technology.

They are not readily available.

There are expectations that these will be expensive and there are also some predictions that there will be potentially too little supply nationally and regionally and that what supply there is may need to be directed over towards high intensity industry uses that don't have other alternatives, which means that demand for those will be going up and possibly costs will be going up or that supply will not be available for uses in our community.

Considerations of expansion of expanding gas hookups connected to things in question such as the limiting hookups for new construction, the affordability of quality of all electric appliances,

Looking at CAT's transition to and their considerations of alternatives to diesel for their fuel as fuel for their vehicles such as CNG and then also battery electric.

It's looking at transitioning from diesel to CNG could represent a significant increase in natural gas use.

There's also questions about how do we reach carbon neutrality, both within our city operations, within our transit operation, but also as a provider of natural gas to the community.

There's questions about whether or not the value of carbon neutrality should or could extend beyond to what we're then providing.

Oops, sorry.

Forgot that.

I didn't mean to skip that on the slide there.

And then also when we're looking at the idea of how do we reach carbon neutrality, there are questions about carbon offsets and credit.

So to what extent are these valid as strategies?

At what scale can we use them?

And also at what level of accountability or reliability exists for us to rely on and trust high quality offsets as part of how we end up reaching our climate plans?

And then one other piece is that this plan is meant to be strategic in nature.

It is aiming at both getting us to our 2030 goal and setting the stage that we are well on our way towards what we need to prioritize to reach our 2050 goal.

As a plan that's intended to be strategic in nature, we need to include guidelines for implementation that end up reflecting the values and priorities that we've heard from our community, from you all in council, and also as staff as part of this process.

And then so upcoming activities, what can you expect to see from us upcoming over the next several months and moving this process to bring a climate action plan forward?

For our climate action plan milestones that you can expect to see, the first two are this week, followed by the items I spoke about earlier with an aim to conclude before the end of 2020.

In terms of drafting our plan,

Looking at a plan outline is on the left.

So you can see what type of how we're looking at organizing the plan, the different sectors and types of content that will be included overall in it.

And then on the right outline of what we'd expect to see in the strategies and actions for each chapter.

In addition to this, just with our climate program, because we are still delivering program services and activities to help support our community in reducing their emissions while we're also going through these planning processes.

We are expecting to have increased staff capacity as of July.

There is the climate vulnerability assessment, which we are anticipating having completed before September.

The climate action plan, which we have completed before the end of 2022.

and then the climate adaptation plan with anticipated completion in 2023.

There is the ongoing delivery of climate action work, which includes the very generous $150,000 that council approved last week for this coming budget year, as well as bringing updates on our plan progress and other program updates to council over that time.

And so with that, that concludes the presentation.

I am putting another plug out there for people to sign up for employment action news flashes because we really do want people who want to know what we're doing to be able to stay in the know.

I have a few quick questions and then a few comments.

One is do you see any opportunities to connect this process with our zoning rewrite process that is going to be underway?

Yes, that is one of the pieces and underneath are the sections for the buildings and energy within our community.

Some of the key actions do speak to what we can look in terms of our regulations and where we fit within the zoning piece of that.

You know, I think there's, we are regulatorily limited in terms of some of what options we have available, but that is anticipated to be part of it.

And yeah, I know there's a lot of gray areas, but I've seen I think some localities in Northern Virginia have been doing a lot with building codes in particular.

Another question, is there any like coordinated plan or strategy for how to take advantage of the bipartisan infrastructure law?

I'm sorry, I was going to say as a starter, we're tracking some of the information that's coming out through some of our peer networks, whether it's Southeast Sustainability Directors Network, they've got a grant manager who's trying to help connect some of those upcoming funding opportunities with the various programs and initiatives.

I know Council talked previously about some form of coordinated grant work in the city and

And I know we're a little bit behind the eight ball compared to other localities on Council's end because of a lack of investment in

Grant Coordinators in those staff positions, but there's obviously just billions and billions there that we're not going to get for several decades at least again.

Last question is, you know, what do you see as sort of the internal process for how to develop and finalize this plan, you know, over the next several, you know, months?

Just curious, you know, what

Yeah, so I think in terms of the upcoming process, and I think you're asking about both on the community side when you say stakeholders as well as internally with staff.

We are going to have the surveys that are coming out both for the adaptation vulnerability assessment portion, but there will be a separate one specifically focused on informing the greenhouse gas reduction portion.

We'll have a town hall which will be community focused.

In terms of working across our departments,

We've talked about a couple of different ways of that of either doing some small group pieces with staffing or even doing an internal staff town hall sort of set up possibly some combination of that

There are definitely a lot of pieces within this framework that how the city goes about doing its business opens up opportunities or can open up opportunities into the community and so making sure that we can reach out with the department directors that understand what programs and other activities are happening that we're all rowing in the same direction would be part of it and as we get more meat on the bones of hearing

And then just some final comments quickly.

I do think it will be very important to try to have, you know, a plan finished in time for it to be incorporated in our next budget cycle.

I don't know exactly what, you know, month or timeframe that may be, but I think we have to ensure that Council is able to fully incorporate this into next year's budget and be thinking about it in that way explicitly.

would also echo part of what had been mentioned about our natural gas utility.

I think it'll be very important for us to think about that the future of that long term as well as its potential use as potentially a revenue source for climate programs or that be some sort of carbon tax or something like that and those are very complex long term big things but I think we've got to start diving into that work.

I mean you mentioned

The IPCC report which said, you know, a lot of these are likely to remain stranded assets by 2050.

We know that UVA is going to be making some substantial changes on their energy uses which could connect to our natural gas utility.

I just think we've got to start planning and thinking about it now.

and the final comment is you know I just I hope we're able to really rely on our community partners outside the city because that's obviously such a tremendous resource for actually implementing this I mean we're one of the sources of renewable energy industry you know in the southeast

I think we've got a lot of nonprofits that want to help with PPPs or other things related to installing solar panels and other green retrofitting to our municipal buildings.

And one final thought is, you know, I know when I was at the National League of Cities Conference, there was a presentation, I think, from Fort Collins, Colorado, and a couple other localities, and when it comes to that building side of it, you know, 60% of the emissions coming from residential and commercial, who had set up revolving loan funds for green retrofitting in their community.

and I think either next budget cycle maybe even with in December or January when we allocate our surplus I certainly think that's something we should explore think about because that's something that we could seed with one-time money that will you know come back to us and be recurring to hit that building side of the issue but those are all the thoughts I have right now.

Thank you.

Yeah, I guess I would largely echo what Councilor Payne just mentioned, and I would just urge you all to be bold.

I know that there's been a lot of headwinds over the last years, and I am grateful for you sticking with it.

I understand I'm an engineer and understand that

how COVID safety goes against energy efficiency sometimes in terms of MERV ratings on filters and so forth.

But the only reason I bring that up is I realize that the last years have been hard and sometimes you get conflicting direction.

Like we need to be safe with respect to COVID at the same time.

How do we have the bandwidth organizationally and then actually in doing the work and the kinds of things we do?

But I just would encourage you to be bold and push hard.

And, you know, I really feel like the end of 22 is too late.

I would love to see something by the end of the summer, the first part of the fall.

You know, and this is really more directed towards the city manager than the two of you.

I know you all are doing the best with what you've got.

But if we're going to be able to think carefully about our budget for fiscal year 2024, I guess, we need to go ahead and know what it is you all want us to prioritize and to be able to fund that.

I think about, you know, it's interesting how these things intersect and overlay, for instance,

You brought up the point about trees, and I think we put in a little more money for trees this year in the CIP, and it's the Greenbrier Walkway.

I was happy to see that on your list.

I think that is a great example of something that checks off a bunch of boxes, everything from helping refugee children that live in an apartment complex get to school to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

So thinking in those sorts of ways, I appreciate the fact that you're doing that.

You know, I would say, and again, I don't, I know the kind of work you're involved in is hard work and it's technical work and you want to be inclusive, but, you know, I personally respect your expertise and I would encourage you to not survey things to death.

there's there's a place and a time for stakeholder engagement and I know that that's important but you're also very smart people and I would encourage you to use your technical expertise to make good strong recommendations that we can get behind to move forward on I think that you know the notion of not letting the

The perfect be the enemy of the good is really applicable in this case.

Relative to the gas utility and that becoming a stranded asset at some point, I offer this just as a suggestion.

I'm not the city manager, but I offer this as a suggestion that maybe that is a complicated enough question.

All of the pieces involved in it, not just the technical part, but the financial part and the equity part,

Maybe it makes sense to have a consultant that does that kind of work.

And we just say, look, lay out some options for us of how this might work and get back with us versus trying to do all that in-house.

That's just a suggestion.

Yeah, and then, you know, at the university, they have something called the Delta Force, which is basically about reducing the delta in terms of the difference in temperature for chilled water is what it originally got towards in terms of energy savings.

But the point is, within facilities management there, there's basically a fund that's been set up that helps

pay forward investments in lighting and so forth, fixtures in the sort of retro commissioning that we mentioned about HVAC systems.

So if there's something, if y'all need like a fund, a pot of money, I don't know, maybe you already have this, $150,000, $200,000, you know, I can see that with our strategic funds perhaps, maybe it's a little too late this year due to the budget situation, but anyway,

If you need something to be able to sort of fund sustainably, work within our buildings to convert our lighting, to do those sorts of things, and thinking in terms of payback, like if you invest in these LED lights, you're going to save this amount of money over six months.

And if you can put together a plan like that,

I know that we'll find a way to fund it because it's important.

It saves money now and it's it's for our future.

Thank you.

I'll keep mine brief.

I just want to reiterate, even if the plan is not complete, even if some key spending components

by October, November would be really important for us so that we can start allocating funds and just knowing where the big areas are going to be and some of the, again, the best places we could focus

both in our municipal buildings and in our community as a whole and what we can use to either as seed money or also as matching dollars for various grants coming up.

and just I want to echo again I have I know my my for this has been in the past and I just want to reiterate that I am still for this that our climate action group being actually moved into a more holistic capacity more under this in the city manager's office area so that it is like equity looking at every part

of our city because climate affects every part of our city and greenhouse gas emissions are everywhere.

So we need to be looking at in our zoning plan.

We need to be looking at it in our schools, our maintenance, our buildings, our parks, departments everywhere.

And the I guess I have really two

I have two thoughts.

One is a very picky one.

That is, when I was running around the city knocking on doors three years ago, I was talking about the idea of LED streetlights and somebody said, well, that's all very well and good, but Dominion actually owns a lot of those streetlights.

I would like to get at some point some clarity about whether there are restraints like that because of agreements we've got with Dominion or anybody else.

I'm not just talking about streetlights in particular.

That's just the one that comes immediately to mind because it may be that one of the things that needs to happen, maybe there's some agreement that's expiring next year or something like that that

If we don't realize it's expiring next year, we won't do anything about it.

So just think a little bit about that kind of thing.

The other thing I will add is that I know from talking to a lot of folks or having a lot of folks talk to me that there are a lot of very smart people in this city who believe that they know everything about your job.

and they may know a fair amount about your job and I would like to make sure that we trap their knowledge and their passion

and find a way to channel that.

And so as you move to I guess the town hall is the next public engagement phase.

If there are ways perhaps to have a committee designated to go look at this issue or that issue, see if some of the people who express an interest on some of these things might be roped in because I think we would all gain by doing that.

The last point is to echo an earlier comment.

if there are in fact things that we can be putting into the zoning rewrite bill or the zoning rewrite ordinance that would make a difference for energy conservation kinds of things.

Some of them may seem obvious.

Some of them may not actually be obvious to those of us who are not in the field.

And I hope that if there are things that you identify for us that we ought to be paying attention to in the zoning rewrite,

Please contact me, contact other counselors, whatever, let us know.

Do not assume that we know your job.

I had one comment I just wanted to throw out for the general awareness.

When I started my job, and I think when Susan started her job,

it was not clear how critical policy work was going to be and that a point that you made counselor to talk about so much of the emission reduction being tied to things that are happening in the grid or happening through other forces that are not city decisions or regulations or control

It really does become relevant when Virginia passed the Virginia Clean Economy Act and Virginia committed to participating in RGGI, generating tens of millions of dollars for our residents to be able to do that kind of action work in their homes.

We're not the only locality.

All of our peer localities who are working in climate space and climate programs

recognize the importance to be engaged in state policy, federal policy in order to achieve it because getting from the 30% to the 45 is likely not going to happen with solely city activities.

Good.

Yes.

Thank you.

Anybody else?

Thank you so much for your presentation to us.

Okay, that's all we have on the agenda for the 4 o'clock portion.

All right, we will recess until 6.30.

We will come back to a different Zoom link, I understand.

Thank you.

Check, check, check, one, two.

Check, check, check, one, two, one, two.

Check, one, two, one, two, three, check, check, check, one, two.

Thank you.

Once upon a time I was given administrative rights, but then when they read

So it's 6.30, are we ready to roll?

Mr. City Manager, are we ready to go?

All right, so it is now 6.30.

The meeting is, we're coming back from recess.

I'm going to call the meeting back to order.

Councilors, are there any announcements to make?

I just wanted to note a few things.

This is an extraordinarily busy time in Charlottesville.

Every spring is.

We've got TomTom Festival starting up tomorrow.

We've got Dogwood Festival.

It's been going on for a while with a parade on Saturday.

and amusement rides at the Kmart lot on Hydraulic Road.

Just all kinds of things going on.

Recognitions and Proclamations.

We have two today.

The first is a proclamation recognizing the Charlottesville Band's centennial, whereas the Charlottesville Band, formerly known as the Municipal Band of Charlottesville, has filled the air near and far with symphonic music since August 17, 1922.

And whereas the mission of the Charlottesville Band is to enrich community life through excellence in musical performance and education,

and whereas through free concerts, varied repertoire and partnerships, the Charlottesville band provides its members and audiences with musical experiences that entertain, uplift and inspire.

And whereas the Charlottesville band is one of the oldest continuously operating amateur community bands in the United States, the band has played for seven presidents and the Queen of England and more than 100,000 local residents.

Its seven small group ensembles give dozens of performances every year, from pop-up concerts in public parks to tuxedo-clad recitals at the Paramount Theater.

Together, band members volunteer over 14,000 hours a year to make excellent music for the community.

And whereas Charlottesville has changed a lot since 1922, and so has the band, more than 1,000 members over the past 100 years representing many different neighborhoods, age groups, professions, and backgrounds

have found common ground through the power of music.

In 2020, when the pandemic made large concerts impossible, the band's small ensembles took to the streets and performed its socially distanced outdoor performances, boosting community morale and keeping the local music scene vibrant.

And whereas in 2022, the band, newly renamed the Charlottesville Band or Seaville Band for short, is celebrating its 100th consecutive year in operation,

and whereas the 2022 spring concert with Steve Layman as music director will open the centennial season this Sunday, April 24th with three selections written especially for the occasion.

The program will also feature a performance by the winner of the annual James W. Simmons solo contest and the Reverend Dr. Genevieve Murphy scholarship for young musicians.

Now therefore, I, Lloyd Snook, mayor of the city of Charlottesville,

on behalf of the City Council to proclaim April 24, 2022 as Charlottesville Band Day and encourage members of the public to attend one or more of the band's nine live performances throughout this centennial year.

We also have a proclamation for Fair Housing Month.

Whereas the Fair Housing Act enacted on April 11, 1968 enshrined into federal law the goal of eliminating racial segregation and ending housing discrimination in the United States, and whereas the Fair Housing Act prohibits discrimination in housing based on race, color, religion, sex, familial status, national origin, or disability, and commits recipients of federal funding to affirmatively further fair housing in their communities,

and whereas the City of Charlottesville is committed to the mission and intent of Congress to provide fair and equal housing opportunities for all and whereas our social fabric, the economy, health and environment are strengthened in diverse inclusive communities and whereas more than 50 years after the passage of the Fair Housing Act discrimination persists and many communities remain segregated and whereas acts of housing discrimination and barriers to equal housing opportunity are repugnant to a common sense of DCC and fairness

Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Council of the City of Charlottesville does hereby declare the month of April 2022 to be Fair Housing Month in the City of Charlottesville.

We reaffirm our commitment to do all that we can to end unlawful housing discrimination,

to advance equity for all underserved populations, to help all current and prospective residents of the city of Charlottesville find safe and affordable housing, and to fulfill the promise of the Fair Housing Act, signed and dated this 18th day of April 2022.

And on that one, Alex Icafuno was going to make some remarks.

Is he virtual?

There he is.

He's virtual.

He's virtual.

Good evening, Councilor, Mayor, and the City Manager.

Staff, we'd like to thank the City Council for recognizing the Fair Housing Month.

As all of you know, the city has been working real hard in terms of furthering the interest of affordable housing, both availability and accessibility of affordable housing and including investment in affordable housing creation.

and this proclamation is also another indication that the city recognizes the equity and discrimination effects of fair housing and is trying to support everything that will make it difficult for housing discrimination.

So staff is pleased that the council

had this proclamation this month declaring the month affordable housing month.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Are there any additional items for recognition?

If not, then time for the consent agenda.

Ms.

Yes.

Consent agenda.

Number three, minutes, March 7th, council meeting, March 10th, budget work session,

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

Second reading.

Five, resolution appropriating additional funding received from the Virginia Department of Social Services for the promoting Safe and Stable Families Program, $16,435.

Second reading.

Six, resolution.

appropriating Virginia Tourism Corporation American Rescue Plan Act supplemental funds for the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau, $280,000.

Second reading.

Seven, resolution authorizing a refund of $12,866.44 to a taxpaying entity or business for business license taxes paid in error for 2020.

Second reading.

Eight, ordinance.

Appropriating State Funds for the State of Good Repair Program Project Account for Dairy Road Bridge Replacement, $7,210,664.

Second reading.

Nine, Resolution, Charlottesville Affordable Housing Fund CAF Award Recommendations.

I suppose you should.

A, resolution, allocating CAF funds for the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority, CRHA South First Street, South First, Phase II, $425,000.

Second reading.

B, resolution, allocating CAF funds for Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville Equity Home Ownership Initiative, 2022 down payment assistance, $75,000.

Second reading.

C, Resolution, allocating CAF funds for Albemarle Housing Improvement Program, AHIP, Charlottesville Critical Repair Program, $100,000, second reading.

D, Resolution, allocating funds from the Charlottesville Affordable Housing Fund for Local Energy Alliance Program, LEAP.

Assisted Home Performance and Electrification Ready, Owner Occupied, $50,000, second reading.

E Resolution, allocating funds from the Charlottesville Affordable Housing Fund for Local Energy Alliance Program, Assisted Home Performance and Electrification Ready, Renter Occupied, $100,000, second reading.

10, ordinance amending, reenacting, and reordaining Chapter 30 of the City Code Section 30-283 to increase the meals tax.

Second reading.

11, report the calendar year 2020 annual report for the Human Rights Commission and Office of Human Rights.

Thank you.

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

Each speaker will have up to three minutes.

I'm not quite sure we've figured out, at least I don't know exactly how we're doing this for speakers who are here versus speakers who are appearing virtually.

Any event, in the Zoom webinar you can elect to raise

Select the raise hand option to be placed in the speaker queue.

If you're joining by phone and wish to speak on the consent agenda, you may press star 9.

We have a number of people signed up.

We should start off, I guess, with that list.

That's a different list.

You're right.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Consent agenda.

Is there anyone who wishes to speak on the consent agenda?

Anybody here?

who wishes to speak on the consent agenda.

Rory, you are on with council.

Earlier this afternoon, you learned the city has a much larger toolbox for progressive real estate tax relief than previously believed.

And if you read between the lines, you also learned that a revamp of these programs is not something to sit on until next year, but instead it's a matter of some urgency because the chat program as constituted does not conform with the legal authority you have to run it.

either under the city charter or claimed authority for it or under the social services statute suggested given that it's not operated by or associated with at all social services and it's instead run by the Commission of the Revenue.

All of that makes it especially egregious that you are now planning to raise the meals tax, our most regressive tax.

As you all know, the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Survey shows the second lowest income decile spends nearly twice as much, 82.6% more, on meals away from home as a percentage of their income than the second highest income decile.

You all know that the meals tax is the most regressive and I'm very disappointed to see you all choose that option because it's politically convenient and mostly invisible to consumers in order to raise revenue.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Stoltenberg.

All right.

So I'll close this public comment as to the consent agenda.

Well, just one comment is I know we don't have an answer now, but I think we should, you know, at least have a sensitive timeline of when we're going to discuss next steps regarding the information, the presentation about our real estate tax relief programs.

Okay.

Any other comments as to the consent agenda itself?

Ms.

Councillor McGill?

Yes.

Yes.

So that motion passes.

Yes, sir.

Mayor of Council, I referenced in previous meetings that we would start presenting financial reports on a quarterly basis, and tonight begins that process.

Hopefully you received earlier today a copy of the report we're presenting tonight.

Ms.

Hamill is here, and I'll turn to her in just a minute.

By way of introduction, we indicated that we had a new tool on our website called the Budget Explorer that can be found on the Budget Office webpage.

and it has been revised and now includes a quarterly report tab so you and citizens can go on to this site and see the city's progression in terms of revenue collection as well as our expenditures on a quarterly basis and see where it adds up.

This year we have so far this year we've currently collected 66.93% of our budgeted revenue and we remain on track to collect more than the adopted revenue budget of $192,212,843.

Only half of the city's real estate and personal tax has been billed and collected.

The second half billing is due June 6th and based on current trends the revenue team has revised many of the large tax revenues and the following revenue budget projections are projected.

The bottom line is in each one of the Chrissy are you going to put that up?

Sorry, shared the wrong screen.

Hold on one second.

You should have, but you didn't?

Just one second, please.

Mm-hmm.

Budget web page.

Okay so the budget explorer just real quickly this is the budget web page you can get to it here from the side menu or the icon here

Well, I want the main point I wanted to make is that the revenue team has in fact revised the revenues for this year and while we discussed during the budget process that we would end up with $12 million more, what I'm seeing now based on that revision is $13 million.

And that will mean a substantial surplus at the end of the year for us to begin to work on allocating and amending the budget in late November or December.

Thank you so as Mr. Rogers mentioned the budget explorer we have changed it if you'll recall when we first rolled this out there was one tab where you could actually go in and compare the 22 adopted to the 21 adopted and then we again rolled out when we were doing the proposed budget another link where you could compare the 22 adopted to the 23 proposed

my colleague Brian Ray has done an awesome job he's revamped the budget explorer so you now can go in one place you'll see these tabs across the top here that will allow you to sort of flow through the budget cycle throughout different times of the year and you'll see across the top that we now have two tabs for quarterly reports one is for revenue one is for expenditure

Here you'll see that these are the some of the major tax sources that we talked to you about and then we've also sort of lumped in some of the licensing permits and a lot of the smaller revenues this data comes directly from our financial system so it is based on actuals

this is the adopted budget so if you went back to the 22 budget book these are the numbers that you will see in the adopted budget anything in the budget changes or actual amendments that have come to you all that you have voted or approved during the year

to get us to what is our adjusted budget.

Now you notice that this number is not the same number that we've been talking to you about with those revised projections and again that is because you haven't taken an official vote to amend the budget that's just an amended projection and then here are the actual collections that have happened to date.

So sort of how you work with this is that right now for departments we're looking at the complete general fund itself.

You can actually drop down and you can pick by department and take a look at the different revenues.

At the bottom you'll see sort of this trend bar which gives you a look at four different years.

You can see from Parks and Rec this is a stark sight here at the impacts of COVID and just what it did on their revenues.

So the trend the blue bars represent the actuals to date at these various years and sort of the trend line it tells you how you are comparing to the adjusted budget overall.

and so if we go back to the all for revenues again you'll see that we are we're pretty much on target with the exception of sort of the COVID year we are tracking sort of where we track for third quarter in the other years however keep in mind as Mr. Rogers noted

our two biggest revenue sources both real estate and personal property the second half payments are due in June and so that would not show up until the fourth quarter which you can actually pick will be able to pick from a drop down menu once we get there this data will update automatically from our financial system so

you can come in and look at this at any point in time that you'd like but again because we're only updating quarterly it will be updated generally by the 15th of the month after the quarter closes.

so this is the revenue on the expenditure side you can do the same thing we're looking at the general fund in total you'll see the trend lines for the four years and how we're comparing to the budget overall you'll see we're looking at the general fund in total and the budget areas are correlate to the budget areas that are are denoted in the budget document

So again if we were to pick a department that spans several different budget areas such as public works over here you can see that of the total general fund they are about just under 10 percent of the total general fund and they have parts of their budget that impact these specific budget areas.

and then again the trend lines for over the last four years for the same time of those years as where we are now and how they're tracking to their total budget.

So those are the general fund moving on we also have another tab here

that looks at all the other funds that are not the general fund so the general fund is here but from the drop down menu but for example we could pick capital projects you can see in this pie chart

how much of the city's now this is total budget not general fund but how much of the total the capital projects is of the city's total budget you can look at the revenues and the expenses for there and you can see how we are tracking on in this case we're just looking at the current budget year for these individual funds

and then finally on the line item budgets this tab here is the one budget explorer that we've updated and it's a little bit different but pretty much the same information it's just easier to use than what was before so you can look pick a department and actually go down to the line item budgets

Chrissy, I want you to point out that with respect to expenditures this year, we're on target, which means with the great spread in revenues that we will end up the year with the kind of surplus that we talked about during the budget process.

And we thought as a part of this, we would share with you the cash flow that we experience it in the city.

Well, thank you.

Chrissy, I've got that too, as well, if you want me to pull it up.

I'm almost there, Jason, sorry.

If you want to do it, go ahead.

All right.

Great.

Well, thank you all.

Thank you for the invitation, Mr. Rogers.

As part of the quarterly update where you're reviewing revenues and expenditures, Mr. Rogers,

suggested that it might be a good time to take a look at the cash and investment portfolio as well just to get a sense for what happens to those funds in between the time they're collected and the time they're expended by the city so it's not something that comes before you that often but it but it certainly is is very important part of the city's business and I think if I remember correctly the last time this portion of our investment policy was discussed was back in 2019

when we worked with some citizens and council regarding fossil fuel divestment and a motion was brought by city council to support and encourage the treasurer's office to divest from fossil fuels.

So that's been a piece of the investment portfolio that's been incorporated since that time.

And I just wanted to bring that up as the last time that we discussed the investment portfolio and let you know that that restriction is still in place for the city's investments.

So I will scroll down just a little bit here.

And as we get going, of course, in Virginia, the responsibility of safeguarding and investing public funds falls to the elected treasurer in each locality.

And our office's policy is threefold.

The goals that we have, the first being safety, of course, to not lose any of the principal balance of the city's investments.

The second goal would be that of liquidity.

basically having the funds available when the city needs to spend them and then once those two objectives have been met the third objective would be yield so looking to find an attractive and fair rate of return for our investments based on the risks that we're taking and based on the duration of those investments so the first chart here

It's just a breakdown of the monthly cash flow and it highlights each investment type and we sort of bucket those into four different strategies.

The blue section at the bottom is going to be the most liquid investments that we have and that is just our cash and money market portfolio.

So those would be in local depository institutions that you would all be familiar with and of course that's the most liquid same day access to funds.

We want to make sure that we have enough funds to meet the city's daily cash flows and this portion of the investment portfolio make sure that we're able to do that.

The next most liquid area is represented by the orange area of this chart and those are our sweep accounts.

So those are similar to money market accounts but unlike a money market account where if we have a large balance at a single financial institution

Under state code, they're required to collateralize those deposits to safeguard the city's cash position.

And because of that, they're not able to offer as high a rate of return.

In these sweep vehicles, we're able to use reciprocal deposits with other financial institutions around the country, and they're able to stay under the FDIC limit for a single depositor of $250,000.

And so because of that, they're able to

take advantage of that FDIC limit insurance and offer a higher rate of return.

Those investments also have same day accessibility.

The next area represented by the gray bar would be local government investment pools.

And there are two available to the city in Virginia.

One you might be familiar with is the local government investment pool, LGIP, which is run by the state treasurer's office.

And then there's also a competing funds are run by the MLVACO known as the Virginia Investment Pool or VIP.

And the city has positions in both of those funds and they offer a higher rate of return.

You're commingled with other public investors.

It's only open to public investors, but they have varying maturities and state code sort of dictates, you know, that they have to have a certain percentage of those funds available for daily or weekly, monthly withdrawal.

to make sure that they are liquid as well for localities and then finally the yellow piece that is representative of a separately managed investment portfolio and we actually use an investment advisor to help manage that and within that portfolio we are purchasing individual securities and I will show you a breakdown in a few minutes but those are individual holdings in treasury bonds federal agency notes

corporate notes, commercial papers, CDs, those sorts of things.

And they typically offer the highest rate of return, but do carry a little bit more risk and are not quite as liquid since we are holding individual securities.

But as you can see here, our balances fluctuate slightly throughout the year, but we as a city are very fortunate that we're not reliant on a single revenue source such as real estate.

but we have a diversified cash flow each month and there are several things throughout the year as far as other four, you know, four weekly utility billing cycles.

We have monthly remittances for sales tax, meals tax, lodging tax.

We get funds from the state almost every day and so it's not just June and December but it's all throughout the year that those revenue sources are coming in and so we're very fortunate as far

as our cash flow to be able to invest those and have fairly steady balances throughout the year.

So just showing a little bit of the variation on a quarterly basis over the last three quarters, typically the city's cash position would range between 80 million and $120 million, depending on what time of year it is.

And that's excluding retirement funds.

So this is just city operating funds.

As you can see here, it does change between those as market conditions would change and demand for deposits might change between the LGIP versus local depository institutions as far as the rates they're paying.

So we try to take advantage of those as we can, but overall throughout the year, the overall balances don't change all that much.

So you may be wondering what kind of rate of return we receive on these deposits.

It does vary across those deposits, as I mentioned earlier.

It's as low as five basis points and as high as 2%.

It changes frequently, and I'm sure you're aware we are in a rising rate environment, and so each week we're

Taking a look at the portfolio and seeing what the best options are, speaking with our financial advisor and making sure that we're maximizing those returns so that you're able to utilize those interest earnings in the budget each year.

You can see on a quarterly basis, those interest earnings range from $150,000 to $300,000.

So between one and $1.2 million a year or about $100,000 a month.

So just looking at the piece that's the investment portfolio that we use a separately managed account for, it's about $40 million.

And you can see here that currently that portfolio is primarily comprised of US Treasury bonds and federal agencies.

Our investment policy allows us to invest in a wide range of options and including commercial paper and corporate notes.

Those corporate notes have to be a very high standard.

They have to have a AA rating from at least two of the three major rating institutions.

And so that does limit somewhat the names that are available, but they would all be ones that you have heard of, such as Microsoft or Intel or Visa, Amazon, names like that who are in the debt market, but are rated AA.

Relatively low risk.

They have very high cash flows and businesses that you're certainly familiar with.

So nothing too exotic there to report on.

And then another piece kind of going back to the liquidity that we talked about earlier, making sure that we have funds available when they're needed.

You can see on this chart, just the distribution of maturities that we currently have in the portfolio, about 40% of the portfolio is maturing within

the next 12 months, and that will enable us to take advantage of these rising rates.

As we have investments that are maturing, we're able to reinvest those at a higher rate.

So that's something that we talked to our advisor about to make sure that we're maximizing those yields and taking advantage of those opportunities when they come up.

So there's a wide range of maturity rates, and I'll show you here on the next

a little bit here, and this is the last part.

We can invest according to state code and in many of these securities up to five years.

Obviously, it wouldn't be very prudent to invest all of our assets in five-year securities.

So there is a pretty good distribution of maturities across the portfolio.

So we do have some guidelines from the state as far as what we're allowed to, as far as permissible investments.

and we further restricted those to make sure that we're protected as far as both sector limit and issuer limit but all of these are permissible and we've placed further restrictions beyond what the state has offered and of course those are in our investment guidelines that we provide to our manager and we also have approval on every trade that they make so they make recommendations and we get back to them the same day so that they're able to do that

and there are some times where we'll kind of go back and forth and find a suitable investment for the city.

Thank you, Jason.

That's a lot of detail, but I thought it was important at this point in the year to share it with you and to understand how soundly we are financially moving forward.

And the fact that our investments are yielding nearly $300,000

by the end of the third quarter, maybe a million for the year.

That means that we have funds to do other things with and that supports the mission of this government.

So thank you, Jason, you and your team for the fine work that you do.

Thank you, Ms.

Thank you.

Is that it, Mr. Rogers?

Yes, sir.

I just had a quick question.

With the revenues that we're looking at, that looks like it's going to be a permanent up in our budget versus one-time fundings.

Well, with the rate increase, some of that will be permanent.

That would add on to

the permanent increase, but some of it is, I think the bounce back from from COVID.

And so we may not be as high next year, you know, at that rate.

So I wouldn't count on that.

All right, thank you.

Other questions, comments?

No.

So the next item on the agenda is community matters.

We have eight pre-registered speakers, leaving eight slots for additional speakers.

If one of the first eight speakers is unavailable, a speaker on the waiting list will move into that slot.

Each speaker will have three minutes to speak.

there will be an additional public comment section at the end of the meeting and I'm assuming that these folks are probably virtual.

The first person on the list that I've got is Cabell Marshall.

Is that person available online or is that person here?

Ah, you're here.

Okay.

Hello, I'm Cabell Marshall.

Thank you so much for being in person.

I live in the county, but I have a studio on Stribling very near where the proposed PUD is located.

I'm very familiar with Stribling.

I'm probably in and out more than most of the people who live there full time.

And I personally almost hit someone a few months ago.

And then I almost got hit by a huge truck.

It's a very dangerous, particularly the intersection.

My accident happened where Stribling tries to enter, empty out into whichever JPA.

And I'm particularly concerned about the possibility of the 1,200 more car trips per day.

It just could end up being a very, you know, fatalities.

And in my mind,

increasing the density isn't worth that kind of a danger.

So I've been thinking about this for two years.

We need another exit off of Stribling.

So I have a fairly radical proposal, and that is, and I think it could be a win-win-win for the community, for the city budget, and for the developer, and that is to get the developer to design buildings that are much taller,

to get much greater density, maybe even 50% more, and then to use that additional tax revenue to pave the county, to pave the gravel end of Stribbling, which empties out on Fontaine.

We've been told by everyone there are no funds.

So this is the only way that I've been able to think of to raise the funds.

I've also been told that there's no one who can get the county and the city to work together.

This particular developer, I think, could be the magical person to get that to happen.

So we would also need to open the intersection, have the intersection from Stribling onto Fontaine so it can flow.

Right now it's closed so you can only turn one way.

And we'd also need to add a stoplight under the railroad bridge so that traffic could alternate going in and out.

And I'm familiar with that in other places around the country and it works fine.

If it's not feasible right now to do that, then I propose that we have a time set when 85 units have been completed in the proposed PUD, that there be a pause and rethink phase, and that would be that we can look and see, have there been a lot of accidents?

I mean, hopefully the sidewalk and the widened road will work.

I hope it does, but if we said, okay, we're going to stop at that point and look and see what's happening.

Are people getting killed?

Are there a lot more accidents?

That would give everyone an incentive to try yet again to work with the county

and get that done.

Oops, I'm over.

Just one last thing.

With the requirement for a PUD, if he built higher, he could hopefully go away from the street.

This is something that they built on Elliott.

And this is what zero setback looks like for those of you who may not really realize what that is.

And that's very different from what is on Stribling.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

Marshall.

Second person to sign up is Holly Hatcher.

Holly, not here.

Okay.

Well, if she comes back, we'll slip her back in.

Brandon Collins is next.

All right.

Ms.

Washington?

Good afternoon.

Glad to be speaking to you in person.

That's about the Crescent Hall bus stop.

We were told that

they would pick up on one side and when they come back they would let the people off in front of the door.

We need that.

Crescent Hall is a senior and disability building.

We have electric wheelchairs, we have the rolling wheelchairs, we have the walkers, we have canes.

People go to the grocery store

if they have a walker they can hang some of the groceries on that.

But if they gotta walk from way over here, over there, and some of these people is 80, almost 90 years old, it's impossible.

We need that bus stop in front of that door.

When we discussed it with Mr. Williams in person, he said we could get that and that's what we want, that's what we need and we will not do nothing other than that.

It would have to be in front of the door coming back.

We have...

and I counted from where the bus stop is right now to the front doors, 89 steps.

I went over yesterday and counted it.

Counted how many steps it would be.

Now you take somebody 80 years old, she got a walk or he got a walk or got groceries on him, trying to push this with the groceries on it, 89 steps to your front door.

then you got to get in the front door on the elevator and to your apartment that's not convenient for elderly people or disabled people we need that bus stop in front of the door in fact it has to be in front of the door coming back

going out, we don't mind it being on the other side, but coming back has got to be.

And if we use joint, if you say joint, yeah, they'll pick you up on time.

But you may be waiting at the grocery store two hours for them to come back to pick you up.

So I mean, you know, the bus is our only way to do it.

Thank you, Ms.

Washington.

Okay.

Next on our list is Susan Cruz.

Hello, good evening.

My name is Susan Cruz and I am the executive director of the Community Climate Collaborative or C3.

I've been attending council meetings for months, if not years, asking for increased attention to our city's climate goals, specifically for the creation of a climate action plan.

Tonight I want to take a moment to thank City Council for increasing its focus on climate, the Deputy City Manager Sam Sanders and Ashley Marshall and Interim City Manager Michael Rogers, City Staff Crystal Rudevold and Susan Elliott for beginning to outline some key strategies for climate action in Charlottesville.

While it may seem like our progress toward our climate goals is significant, the vast majority of the gains we have made come as a result of improvements in the emissions intensity of our electrical grid.

To reach our 45% target and ultimately carbon neutrality will require the incentivization of the private sector, improved infrastructure and a redesign of the delivery of city utilities.

I want to start tonight by addressing the incentivization of the private sector.

In all 49 different incentives for climate action are available to Charlottesville City and Albemarle County residents.

That may sound like good news, but C3's analysis demonstrates that 76% of all available incentives have lower than a $500 value and nearly half of them require home ownership.

Our incentives need an overhaul to enable deeper household and transportation emissions reductions that are accessible to all residents.

I hope this will be a top priority of the climate action planning list of considerations.

I was glad to hear that council and staff addressing the need to consider our gas utility infrastructure.

As one of only three localities in the Commonwealth to own a gas utility, it is imperative that we demonstrate leadership.

The city of Richmond is also grappling with this issue and has ambitious climate goals.

Let's develop a cooperative strategy with Richmond and present a united front as climate leading localities.

LED street lighting was mentioned this afternoon and I applaud this as a measure that could add a quick win in lowering city emissions and save city money in the long run.

Many Northern Virginia localities have already made this change and could share lessons learned.

Let's get new street lights into the FY24 budget.

I would be remiss if I didn't voice my support for Crescent Hall's residents who are concerned about losing their bus stop.

Safe, accessible, and equitable transit is an essential climate solution.

C3 supports keeping the Crescent Hall's bus stop as it redesigns its transit.

Please keep your focus on climate this year.

I appreciate your attention so far in 2022, but we can't afford to lose any more time on this.

You as council are the key to protecting this climate staff's time to continue their work.

Moving the climate team under the city manager's office would help keep climate front and central in the city.

We at C3 are here to support you, staff, and the community as we move forward to a cleaner future together.

Thank you, Ms.

Cruz.

Next, we have Catano de Campos Lopez.

Yeah, let me hear.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay, perfect.

and dear customers and city manager team.

My name is Caetano de Campos Lopez and I'm here to talk about the climate action planning process.

I would like to start by saying that I'm incredibly grateful to the efforts that you have all made to give this up to the attention and prioritization that it deserves.

I want to say that the update provided today helps address concerns that many community members had.

It was great to hear that like many municipalities, the emission reductions portion of the plan will be prioritized and concluded first.

It was also great to hear that the city is committed to make its facilities more sustainable and that

there will be a climate lens addendum to the study to determine the best fuel option for CAT.

It's also important to remember that a CAP is an evolving document and it's not meant to answer all questions and concerns, certainly not in its first iteration.

As Consular Pikston said, we must not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

What it needs to do, the documents, the CAP, is lay out the common sense goals and directions that would be needed for us, that we will need to follow so that our community can be reached, our climate commitments can be reached.

Concluding this document is a moral obligation

This is not a matter of complying with a deadline established by an external entity.

And we should just look at Albemarle County, who is not a member of the global government of mayors and have completed the cap months after setting their climate goals.

As Consular McGill and Pinkston mentioned, concluding this document, it's a necessity to guide decisions during the city's budget cycles.

It guides where to allocate resources and where not to.

For that reason, I urge the council

and the city manager to set a goal of concluding this document before November 2022.

This guiding complex will be very important in the coming years as the city's greenhouse gas emissions will become more and more difficult to reduce.

Just like when we are cleaning an object, water alone can do a great initial job, but the task becomes much more complex if we want to really clean it.

Proof of how the initial steps are much easier is how the city's emissions have been reducing, even though energy consumption have been constantly increasing.

This is even more complicated for the transportation sector.

Having the cap concluded, it is also very important for the city to be well positioned to not miss substantial and unique funding opportunities, such as those that will come from the bipartisan infrastructure bill, as mentioned by Michael Payne, Congressman Payne.

Lastly, I wanted to echo Mayor Lloyd's suggestion that the next steps of the climate action planning process include the participation of local professionals and organizations working in the field.

We from C3 look forward to collaborating with you.

Thank you.

Let's see.

Hey, good evening, Council.

I'm a resident of Stribling Avenue and I'm speaking about the PUD for 240 Stribling and also the loan for the sidewalks.

First off, I want to say thank you for hearing the neighborhood's concerns about pedestrian safety and the need for sidewalks on Stribling.

However, there are still some very critical pieces missing in order to really ensure pedestrian safety.

First is the intersection of Stribling with Jefferson Park Avenue and Robertson Avenue.

This is an already dangerous intersection especially for pedestrians but also for vehicles who often get stuck in the median and have long lines of the stop signs.

This is the only exit for Stribling Avenue and the City Engineer estimates this development will cause an additional 1,200 car trips on Stribling per day but there are no plans to improve this intersection.

There should be definite plans in place and funding approved for improving this intersection

before allowing 170 units to be built.

Second issue is with the loan offer from the developer, which suggests the sidewalks along Stribling won't be installed until the sidewalks within the development are installed.

This is way too late.

The development sidewalks may not be installed until the very end of the project, which is after all of the tree loggers, earth movers and construction vehicles have made thousands of trips down Stripling.

Those vehicles will pose extreme danger to all of the pedestrians on Stripling.

So please add language to the contract that says the Stripling sidewalks will be installed before construction begins.

Third issue is that the engineers expect the sidewalks to cost between $2.9 and $4 million, but the developer's loan only goes up to $2.9 million.

So what happens if the sidewalks cost more than that?

Does the city have cash that it can quickly use to finish the sidewalks?

Or could the development start construction without the pedestrians having finished sidewalks?

We should not risk having unfinished sidewalks if the development is going to be voted for.

So please make sure that up to 4 million is available for the sidewalks before voting on the development.

And candidly, councilors, you all are asking a low density neighborhood to accept a super high density development, a zoning change and a critical slopes waiver.

And all that we are asking for in return is guaranteed safety for our pedestrians.

it's a very fair request so please do not rush this decision and let's make a plan to improve the intersection let's make sure the sidewalks and drainage systems can in fact be built let's iron out the loan offers so that we know there is enough money to finish the sidewalks and we know they'll get done before pedestrians are endangered by the new construction

The developer might have to wait a little bit longer, but you cannot bring back the life of someone who has been crushed by a bulldozer.

So please postpone or reject this decision for now.

Thank you, Mr. Marshall.

Good evening.

Thank you for the opportunity to address the council.

My name is Bill Mendez.

I live in Charlottesville.

As many of you know, I serve as the chair of the Charlottesville Police Civilian Oversight Board.

My remarks are my own, although I'm reasonably sure they reflect the consensus of the rest of the board members.

In short, I'm here to ask you

to vote and approve our operating procedures with all due expedition.

First off, of course, sincere thanks for the hard work on the budget, human rights, housing, school reorganization, and other important issues you have been addressing this year.

In addition, renewed thanks to the council for passing the PCOB enabling ordinance on December 21st of last year.

This represented a major step in the process of allowing meaningful police oversight, the process which began in 2018 with the appointment of the interim board.

So while we now have an ordinance, the board cannot exercise any oversight functions until operating procedures have been developed and are approved by the council.

Since the ordinance was passed, we've been working with community stakeholders, our independent council,

and the City Attorney to develop procedures that will determine how we exercise the powers granted to us by the ordinance.

We submitted a first draft to the City Attorney in early March, incorporated her comments, and the full board approved a revised draft version for the City Council to review on March 23rd.

The version you have for tonight's discussion incorporates further format changes requested again by the City Attorney.

Originally, we were hoping that you would have discussed the procedures at your last meeting.

Understandably, given the press of other business, this didn't occur.

While it is very good that you are going to take up the procedures tonight, it is not clear that the council is intending to set a date for an actual vote.

Needless to say, this leaves the board in the lurch and delays the implementation of important reforms in police oversight.

Why we've been developing the procedures, the board has not been idle.

We're organizing ourselves into committees to tap gifts and talents of diverse board members.

Our executive committee meets monthly with the chief of police.

I believe we have built a productive relationship with the CPD.

Our executive director, who has extensive experience in police oversight, is developing a training course to prepare us for responsibly conduct hearings and investigations.

While we do have one outstanding review request to be considered, I think it would be a mistake to hold our caution in scheduling a hearing against us and to use it as a pretext for not passing the procedures.

I strongly urge that the City Council set a date certain in the near future for holding a vote on the operating procedures and of course to pass them.

Thank you, Mr. Mendez.

Okay.

So is there, I guess we now have additional spots available.

Let me first ask, is there anybody here in the room who would like to speak, who has not already spoken?

Okay.

What I was going to suggest we do is maybe take one from the audience and one from online if there's somebody available and we'll just go back and forth.

There's plenty of spots available.

So, ma'am, would you like to come forward?

Of course.

He didn't say come up.

He said with your hand.

Oh.

Oh.

I was just saying that because my neighbor was going to sleep.

Oh.

Okay.

I think Ms.

Sandridge was on our reserve, was our ninth.

Okay, you're Ms.

I know what you look like without a mask on a Zoom call.

I'm getting ready to move back home to Crescent Halls the last of August or the first of September.

And this man...

in charge of the bus, wants to take our bus stop away from us.

It's very important.

Could you see me with my cart here, my oxygen, and a thing full of food trying to walk 89 steps?

She walked 89 steps normally.

I can't do that.

It's important to us.

We're old.

And this is something we really need.

And there are some people that's in worse shape than me.

It's important.

And we need you to help us.

And I'll get behind you and help you if you do it.

Anything you need us to do to get this done, you let us know.

Thank you, Ms.

Sanders.

And let me just say, at least for a number of us, the first time we became aware of the issue was from an email from Michael on Thursday.

So this is kind of, to us at least, this is new.

I understand.

So we will be finding out more about it.

Okay.

Yes, Mayor Snook, Brendan Collins is now joining us.

Great.

Good evening, City Council.

My name is Brandon Collins.

I'm a lifelong resident of Charlottesville.

I have two young children and a grown child who grew up here.

And I'm happy to speak with you.

I'm sorry, I didn't speak earlier, but I thought it was of the utmost importance that Ms.

Sandridge and Ms.

Washington had a chance to speak with you first.

I am currently an employee of the CRHA and I've had the extreme privilege of

working with the resident council FAR for the past 10 years.

What I think is really special about this community and about what we're trying to do is that we've taken on a resident directed approach.

That means residents themselves make as many decisions as possible.

And I can say that Ms.

Sandridge and Ms.

Washington and many others have been there from the get-go when we first jumped into this idea

of renovating Crescent Halls and there's something in the development world that is really important it's called appreciative inquiry it's best practices which is when you go into a community instead of defining it by what's broken you work with them to identify what are those things that they really like about that community that at all costs must stay and I can say

from the get go day one conversation one that bus stop has always been the top priority.

Keep the bus stop in front of the building.

It is extremely important to the residents there.

And we have made that commitment that they call the shots.

And we've also made the commitment that

every turn we can, the things that are possible, we're gonna make sure those things happen.

That's why it's really difficult to understand because this idea of keeping that bus stop there has been communicated to CAT time and time again.

CAT raised the issue of moving the bus stop.

There were a couple of meetings about it.

Residents said, no, we need our stop in front of the building.

And we said, okay.

And we found a way forward, at least so we thought.

as early as a few weeks ago, there was a meeting with CRHA, our general contractors and CAT staff to look at the front of the building to make sure that the curb was gonna be at the right height to lower the bus so that people in walkers and wheelchairs could get on the bus in front of the building.

So we've been under the assumption that everything was good to go and based on what residents need and want out of this bus stop.

There's also been opportunities from CAT to chime in.

I don't know if you're aware, but there was a site plan amendment for Crescent Halls that took over six months to get through.

If you know how a site plan amendment works, all the different parts of city staff chime in on that site plan.

Not once did CAT chime in and say, no, you're going to have to change your site plan so we can build this bus stop there.

What that means if they impose this bus stop on the CRHA, CRHA out of its own pocket is going to have to build in a concrete pad and get a whole new site plan because there are additional handicap spots that are being built into the plan approved

Okay, well, we'll leave it at that.

This is a critical thing.

It has a cascading cost to it, and it could severely impede residents' ability to get into that building on time and the rest of our redevelopment effort.

Thank you.

We'll learn more about it.

Anyone back to this room?

Hello, everyone.

It's good to see y'all.

My name is Shelby Marie Edwards, I use she, her, and hers, and I'm the Executive Director of the Charlottesville Public Housing Association of Residents, also known as FAR.

Our mission is to educate and empower low-income residents in the Charlottesville area.

During a city meeting last week, we learned that the Charlottesville area transit cat is moving to 30 minutes, and while, you know, ordinarily,

We would be thrilled at this news today.

I'm here to reiterate what a lot of my colleagues have shared with us today.

Crescent Hall's residents have door to door service via a bus stop that was grandfathered in.

This door to door service is important when we are talking about a building that services all elderly and disabled individuals.

We are asking for CAT to keep the bus stop in its current location and to bring it up to ADA standards.

We need both.

FAR has hosted both private and public conversations with CAT about this topic.

We don't understand why this has been such a laborious task.

We know that CAT would like to move to the 30-minute service to increase ridership, but this means little if the people who switch over already have alternate forms of transportation.

Yes, we do want a world where everyone can use mass transit, but we first need one where everyone who has no other form of transit can continue to move around freely.

Secondly, this is not bus related.

I'd like to reiterate what I stated at the last city council meeting.

It is important that we ensure that we have spaces for folks of diverse backgrounds on committees, including and especially those who are marginalized as the amplifier of low income voices in the Charlottesville area far should have a seat on both the hack and the CDBG task force.

or at a minimum, please make sure that there is a designated spot for people who have lived experience.

And again, while I can appreciate the efficiency and efficacy that comes with working in smaller numbers, I also want to ensure that we are working towards goals that will improve the quality of life for our residents.

We are so incredibly close to getting Crescent Halls finished.

I don't know if y'all could feel it, but I could

feel Judy's spirit of happiness and Alice's spirit of happiness and being so close to doing something that a lot of people said is impossible, that people continue to say that this is something that is not important.

We are doing some amazing radical work that needs to happen in Thomas Jefferson, Charlottesville.

So, as always, thank you so much for the gift of your time.

I genuinely mean that.

This is a very, very difficult job, but I know that you will all use your power and influence to make sure that we can make some good things happen in Charlottesville.

Thank you, Ms.

Edwards.

Yes, Mayor Snook.

Joy Johnson is our next speaker.

Good afternoon.

My name is Joy Johnson.

I'm a public housing resident and I am the chair of FAR and I also work for CRHA as resident services coordinator.

I'm not going to be as nice as Shelby has been because I don't like people who say one thing and does something else.

Galvin

when he met with the residents the very first time, the first thing came out of his mouth after the residents said they would like to keep their bus stop is that Kat is not in the business of doing door to door service.

And with hearing that, we still sat and had conversation with him about the bus stop.

Now to hear on Friday at 10 o'clock

that this is a done deal and it's going to go in effect July 1st is very sneaky.

It's not transparent.

You cannot continue to treat or you cannot allow staff to continue to treat marginalized residents that way.

This is why they don't trust anything that they are supposed to be participating in.

So once again, I am supporting that the bus stop stays.

What I heard from the residents, I don't live in question halls, but what I heard from them was

I don't care what you do with redoing your time or lessen your time, but the bus stop needs to be there.

And I just want to remind you, Martha Darnell, who was on the CRHA board, board this to council.

Council approved.

this.

Also, they approved putting a stoplight there at Crescent Halls because it was so dangerous.

But I see on your...

Okay, so I see on your agenda, you have the CBDG participation thing to talk about, and I don't have enough time to talk about it, but I do think that it's wrong not to talk to or to have some participation in changing what you have to change, which is coming before council and probably for approval.

I will have second comment at the next,

at the end of this meeting on CBDG.

Ms.

Johnson, I will tell you that that's a public hearing.

Oh, I'm not going anywhere.

I would say there will be an opportunity for public comment on that issue in particular.

Okay.

Next in the room here.

Good evening, Council.

My name is John Sales.

I will not take that to heart or personal.

I wanted to come and talk to you about the Crescent Hall's bus stop.

And just like all the residents, the two residents that you've heard from have also said, we need that bus stop in front of the building.

Since the very beginning, over a year ago,

when Mr. Williams came to speak with the redevelopment committee.

The discussion was around creating a bus stop

or bring a bus stop back to South First Street, which was taken away years ago, and then adding additional bus stop at South First Street, but then moving Crescent Halls bus stop.

And so we went to the community and the community South First Street in Crescent Halls both said, hey, if you're going to impact Crescent Halls negatively, we don't want it.

We don't want the bus stop.

Keep the bus stop back where it is and we'll continue with the hour long ride because that was what Crescent Halls residents needed.

Garland Williams said that was OK.

He could just not make that a 30 minute stop and that it would impact everyone else on the line.

And then on Friday, I heard that the bus stop would be going away from directly in front of the building and would now be across the street.

And so you would have to cross South First Street, which cuts through Crescent Halls.

You will come in on one side and be allowed off on the other side.

And so that not only impacts the residents, but it also impacts the site plan because the building is currently under redevelopment.

Brandon Collins was generous when he said the city took six months.

City actually took 10 months to pass the site plan.

So if the site has to get a new site plan, you're looking at a 10 month delay and getting the residents back in the building and also over a million dollars hit to the CRHA unless the council or someone else in the city is prepared to cut a check for a million dollars to bond CRHA out because we will be negatively impacted by this.

I think everyone needs to get back to the table and talk about this bus stop being moved.

I went back to city council previous meetings and saw where the city council actually approved route changes and this route change never came to city council.

So I just want to make sure that any other route changes that are going to be impacted by this 30 minute transition gets discussed because not only will Creston Halls residents be impacted, but people all over the city are going to be impacted without anyone knowing.

And we would not have known unless we had that meeting on Friday.

which all of this would have happened, the residents would have came back to the building and the bus stop would have been in a totally different place and no one would have known about it.

And so I just think that city council needs to take a look at this, look at this plan that Kat has and make sure that no other residents are going to be negatively impacted like Crescent Hall's residents are proposed to be.

Thank you so much.

Mr. Sales, can I just ask you one question?

There wasn't.

Oh, you're talking about for previous meetings?

It was 2014, 2013, and 2012.

And I got that information from Ms.

I didn't go back.

Well, I asked Ms.

Robinson to help me on Friday and she was able to dig up some stuff today.

Thank you.

Yes, Mayor Snook.

Our next speaker will be James Groves.

Good evening.

My name is James Groves.

I'm a city resident and a member of the Seville 100 Climate Coalition Board.

Tonight's comments are my personal thoughts regarding this afternoon's climate action update.

First, think about the chart presented by city staff, which shows that since 2011, citywide greenhouse gas emissions have dropped by 30%.

From that chart, Mayor Snook asked a perceptive question.

To what extent is the 30% reduction the result of Dominion Energy's efforts to clean its electricity supply?

Well, Dominion's efforts impact emissions primarily in the commercial and residential building categories of that chart.

In those two categories, city emissions are reported to have dropped 35.1% since 2011.

In that same timeframe, publicly available data shows that Dominion has reduced the carbon intensity of its electricity supply by 34.4%.

That suggests that over 10 years, all other efforts to reduce carbon emissions in our community, public and private, have contributed 0.7% reduction in emissions in those critical categories.

Second, if we continue to study the chart on emissions, we can see several worrisome trends between 2016 and 2019.

In transportation, emissions have dropped just 1.5%.

In the solid waste and process and fugitive emissions categories, emissions are essentially unchanged.

In the industrial energy category, emissions have increased.

Collectively,

As a community, we are clearly not doing enough to reduce our emissions.

We need to embrace green transportation, to electrify devices across our lives, to support energy efficiency improvements, to conserve green spaces, and to practice energy conservation.

Finally, several council members encouraged staff to quickly complete a climate action plan.

I applaud those sentiments.

At the same time, city council should not wait for a published action plan.

For instance, there is no reason to maintain fossil fuel subsidies offered by the city.

Today, city code offers the installation of new gas lines for free.

The city also offers rebates for those who switch their water heaters to natural gas.

If you are sincere about climate action, eliminate those subsidies before summer arrives.

Stop paying people to install long-lived fossil fuel infrastructure.

Thank you, Mr. Groves.

So is there anyone else here?

Good evening, Council.

It's good to be back in chambers.

I too will rise in support of maintaining the bus stop at Crescent Halls.

No less than the World Health Organization states that society is measured by the way it cares for its elderly citizens.

It is absolutely impossible for me to fathom the removal of this bus stop from this location that houses elderly and disabled individuals.

So whatever influence that you as counsel or you Mr. Rogers have over Mr. Williams, I would urge you to push him to rescind that ideal of removing that bus stop.

Also I rise with Ms.

Johnson in support of the

some sort of public input before making any changes to the CDBG as it is currently composed and comprised.

But again, we'll have an opportunity to discuss that more later on.

As far as the $12 to $13 million surplus that's projected, I again would urge you all to come up with some sort of formula to pay some sort of stipend for the individuals who volunteer for your boards and commissions that you

so ardently request citizens to interject themselves into.

And also, I would hope that with the fifth year of the awful weekend from 2017 coming up, I would hope that some monies would be earmarked in recognition of putting together something viable to recognize that

that event.

I hate to say anniversary because anniversary kind of denotes celebration and there's certainly nothing to celebrate about that.

Lastly, I will say that each and every one of you all as elected officials, you made a commitment to the city and to serve the city.

So if we look at that commitment as an umbrella,

Each umbrella has a spoke or several spokes that go up there to hold that umbrella up.

One of those spokes has to be considered affordable housing.

So far from what I've seen, we have failed in the commitment of that spoke.

Short of Michael, and I appreciate and applaud your efforts, Michael,

We need to continue to push and press for some sort of some level of viable affordable housing here in the city.

If you fail to maintain the spokes in that umbrella, the umbrella itself is useless.

So I urge you to maintain the commitment that you made to the city and to affordable housing.

Thank you, Mr. Gathers.

Well, good evening city council representatives.

My name is Paula.

I use she, her, hers pronouns, and I am a community organizer with the Charlottesville Public Housing Association of Residents, also known as FAR.

Tonight I'm here in support of maintaining the Crescent Hall's CAT bus stop in the location that was agreed upon during the redevelopment proposal.

Public transportation is vital for the residents of Crescent Halls, which are mostly elderly and disabled.

Moving the bus stop a couple of feet might seem like a very small change, but it will greatly impact the redevelopment process currently ongoing in the properties that far services, not to mention it is only a small change for able bodied individuals.

Public transportation should be a commodity inclusive to all individuals.

And when decisions like these are being made, the voices of the people being impacted firsthand should be the ultimate decision factor.

We're simply asking you all to go through with the plans that had been discussed from the beginning of the redevelopment plans for Crescent Halls.

Thank you.

Is there anybody else in person here that was not previously spoken?

Okay, there are nobody else.

Yes, Mayor Snook, we will have Jane Mills now.

Jane, you are on with council.

I apologize.

Thank you.

Thanks very much for this opportunity to speak.

This is Jane Colony Mills.

I'm the Executive Director of Loaves and Vicious Food Pantry.

And as so many before me have already stated so eloquently, I won't take much of your time, but I also am calling to advocate on behalf of the residents of Crescent Halls for maintaining an accessible

We have an equitable ADA compliant bus stop for those residents to be able to access public services in our community.

They live there because they are elderly or disabled and they need to be offered equal access to reaching the services that they need in our community.

Thank you, Ms.

Mills.

We have room for one more, I believe, Mr. Dillahunt.

Yes, Mayor Snook, we will hear from Nancy Carpenter now.

Nancy, you're on with Council.

Thank you very much.