City Council Work Session with Virginia Institute of Government - Pt2   4/2/2022

All this meeting and work session to order, I know for the record, all five of us are here, as well as the distinguished cast of characters joining us.

Thank you, sir.

Good morning, everyone.

I'm glad to be with you again today.

Ask a quick question.

I'm going to attempt that.

I think that's more than reasonable.

I think we gave that time, Blacker, just more of a hold to see how things went.

You guys did a really good job last night, so we got through a lot of stuff.

When we left here, these are the things we were going to start focusing on this morning.

We were going to talk a little bit more about, I want to hear from you guys, about our regional partnerships, nonprofits, other local governments, other entities.

We talked a little bit about UVA.

Anchor Institution at the end yesterday.

We talked a little bit about PVCC on a couple of topics yesterday as well.

So I do want to explore that with you so staff can get some feedback from you all on those types of partnerships.

And then just a little bit of time for things that we've not talked about.

If you remember one of the last things I mentioned yesterday was you guys have done a really good job of sort of hitting all the high points of your existing strategic plan that you've been sort of using since 2018.

I know that you guys will be working on an updated version of that, but

You were pretty good in covering a lot of different topics.

The interim city manager mentioned a little bit about talking about vision.

And I'm not saying that we absolutely have to craft anything today, but at least giving staff maybe some feedback on

what an aspirational goal is for council in this setting.

I think all that sounds great.

I was thinking about this a little

last night and this morning, I think the only other thing that I would add to what we talked about yesterday, and it did kind of permeate it around the edges, is just an organization that does the everyday well.

One of the things that I heard when I was campaigning was a return to normalcy or a return, and some of that can be hankering for the good old days, which weren't good for lots of people, but I think that

One thing I distinctly remember when I ran three years ago was talking with, you know, really passionate activists and also with folks on the Downtown Business Association, very different worldviews, but they were all unified in their frustration, to put it mildly, with how Charlottesville managed through August 2017.

And it wasn't so much a critique of

the police per se, it was the operational nuts and bolts of how to manage through something like that.

And granted, that was an event that swamped the city, but there was a common theme of doing the little things well and being excellent in that.

And I know we've already, I think the conversation yesterday on the CIP really was hitting that, like, are we doing the sidewalks?

Are we doing these basic sorts of things that

seem boring, but are very important.

It's nice to talk about potholes and sidewalks and infrastructure after managing two years of global chaos.

I mean, that's a good point.

Yeah.

And that's one of my takeaways last night is, you know, it

You got to take a breath.

This has been a challenging two years for everybody.

And you guys as a group, just the fact that this is literally now the second time that you've met in the same room together in a council meeting.

I think that's pretty big.

That's huge.

And the fact that you're doing this.

So yeah, I think that's a great perspective.

And I think aspiring for operational excellence, I mean, I can't imagine that's not what your staff wants to achieve.

I think that we're working on it now in terms of our recruiting and director of communication, but I think that we could benefit from an external communications program that lets the community know what's going on.

and what council is doing, what's going on in administration.

You talk about benchmarks, being able to share where we are in certain key service areas, et cetera.

And to let people know who we are.

I mean, do people really even, I mean, it's been so much transition.

Do they know who their government is?

And how can we accomplish that?

Some of it's town hall meetings.

and the schools would, you know, kind of have the kids go around like trick or treat it to get things, but also as a way to, you know, display the city as well.

Yeah.

And returning to some of the things that we used to do

that sense of normalcy that we are back.

So, Michael, as you mentioned that, and we talked briefly about this last Saturday when, you know, what I'm trying to, you know, I had to do

Leah and I, when we first got on the school board, it was a hot mess, you know, it was going through a rough time.

We spent a couple of years kind of rebuilding the trust in the school board, you know, the whole school board.

And it took some wins to do that, but I think we accomplished that.

But last Saturday, I had an opportunity to give us a

home presentations with three new homeowners for Habitat.

And afterwards, they had a Black Expo as part of the market on Saturday morning at Frank X. And so I went there.

It was like, here's the city.

We're here.

But the tourism bureau, they had invited, I think, six to eight

reporters from along the East Coast.

I think they're there.

They travel, you know, they're from cities that are basically within a day's drive so someone can come here on the weekend.

And they were kind of showing them around different areas in the city and the county.

And they were there kind of taking in all the sights and scenes of Charlottesville.

It was a great day.

It was a beautiful morning last Saturday.

And I had opportunity, you know, I didn't expect to, but

to talk with them about Charlottesville to kind of use that opportunity to say,

Here's Charlottesville.

It's a great place.

We're dealing with some very difficult issues, but this is Charlottesville.

It's diverse.

It was sights and sounds and families of all colors and shapes and sizes.

So this is Charlottesville.

And we want people to come here and witness this as well.

So there are opportunities out there like that.

To talk just a little bit about the problem of external communications, at the thing that the Chamber of Commerce put on, the state of the community presentation down at the code building, I was struck by how for Charlottesville's presentation, we were basically introducing our city manager team.

All three of you were new.

None of you have ever been before the Chamber of Commerce.

Of course, nobody's been before the Chamber of Commerce in a couple of years.

That's not faulting the particular aggregation, but it was a matter of introducing.

Whereas Jeff Richardson from the county could get up and he said, and here are the statistics of so many of this and this and this and this and this.

And there are things like, my initial thought was, we need to be able to have that same presentation of

the statistical measures of the fact that we're actually doing pretty well.

That people don't perceive the fact that the city government is actually functioning.

They see the headlines.

They see the dissension in the ranks over the last few years.

They don't see that we're actually doing pretty well.

And so last week, I went to talk to the Thrive Spring Neighborhood Association along with Thito Durrett, Chief of Police.

One of the things that he emphasized was that throughout all the troubles we've been having, and despite the fact that police officer numbers are down, they responded to 36,000 service calls last year.

And then I went back and looked at some things and said, you know, people are saying, well, Albemarle is doing so much better than Charlottesville.

Albemarle, with 50% more officers, responded to 36,000 service calls last year.

You guys need to regain your narrative and tell your community story, right?

So that's good.

The strategic communications person is hopefully coming soon as well.

Now, I think those are really good points.

Yeah, absolutely.

All right.

Anything else before we sort of roll back into talking about partnerships and regionalism?

The only other thing I would add, and I'm the one who brought up this morning the notion of return to normalcy.

It's the folding of socks.

It's the doing of laundry, that portion of the work that we've been very sort of mundane that's so important.

And I do agree that we need to reclaim our narrative like that.

But I also think that we, and I'm speaking loosely to myself, regardless of how it all worked out or whatever, the last couple of years, there was critique brought to bear on systems of power, on the way things had been, and former mayor

obviously was the point person for that in a lot of ways and activists were as well.

And I just want us as we move forward into a new normal or whatever to be humble enough to say, okay, much of the critique that was brought to us in terms of how power and wealth and so forth are distributed, that was a good critique and we need to take on board.

And we did that yesterday.

I'm glad we started with the whole

Along with that, yeah, I would agree.

And just that part of the narrative, I think, should be that we need to rebuild city government and city government effectiveness, but for a specific purpose.

So I know the last, I'm going to say the last five years have been rocky in the city, but that doesn't mean that they wouldn't have been rocky if there wasn't underlying reasons.

and there is the pressure of, and there's a lot of people who before five years ago thought everything was okay in the city because they didn't live someplace where they saw that it wasn't so okay.

And so I think we also need to, as Michael's saying, it is about getting back to doing the basics, but also really examining how are we doing the basics and where were we prioritizing the basics?

Were we prioritizing those basics in an equitable way?

And I know we haven't fully defined what equity means to us, but that's part of it, it's

Were we putting in storm drains because somebody yelled loudly or because there was water going into somebody's house?

Were we putting in sidewalks and bus stops because we thought because someone came to us about them or because we thought they would really do the most good for

the city and for those who need it the most because people who can, a lot of people don't feel their voice is heard if they've been disempowered most of their life or even after a year or two.

I mean, working in a homeless shelter, you see very quickly how somebody starts losing faith

and their ability to even advocate for themselves and if they deserve something.

But somebody who has a job and has a safe house and has food coming in and knows their children are safe, they have the time and the energy to go and say something to the government and actually think it's going to happen.

But

If you go to the WIC office and your appointment is moved around and you have to wait there for three hours and there's nothing you can do if you want to get that food, but sit there and wait.

And I'm talking from personal experience here on this, that you do that even after a few times, your ego strength starts crumbling.

And so I think part of equity and part of a good functioning city

is being very intentional in all of these nitty gritty basic details in where are we doing it?

And that we intentionally say, okay, this neighborhood has not had, they were the last to get plumbing.

They were the last to get this.

So we're gonna make sure they're the first to get broadband.

We're gonna make sure they're the first because

and looking through and making sure and prioritizing things on the drasticness of their effect versus

This is worse, and I can pull this up and show you.

This is worse over here.

And when that gets done, then we'll come back to your problem.

Well, and while Charlottesville's experience has been Charlottesville's experience, I mean, communities around the country

their own journey, obviously different from your roles.

I think a lot of communities have had those conversations of looking at strategic impacts in neighborhoods that have been underserved and trying to play catch up on basic functions like you talked about.

So that's not too uncommon.

And I think, you know, talking about equity and those things, you know, really what you guys are shooting for are the outcomes, right?

That's what we're here for, but you want to see the outcome.

So yes, you've got these aspirational goals and you want staff to be thinking of

all of these things when they're making decisions and recommendations to you guys and working with other boards and committees, which I thought we probably ought to talk about a little bit today, too.

So, I mean, I think that's part of it.

Anything else?

and talk about partnerships.

We just talked about the Chamber of Commerce, just talked about business communities a little bit yesterday, the downtown mall, we talked about that, the business owners, property owners down here.

Who else are folks that we need to be rebuilding relationships with now, but we're re-emerging from the pandemic and able to have some maybe different types of conversations you had before.

I think definitely with

the neighborhood associations and, you know, we know that Fry Springs or Martha Jefferson, you know, some of the big ones, more fluent ones that they are active and, you know, we know who to reach out to, but I think that we need to do more input from the other ones when projects and things come up to let them know that

that we're back open for, you know, kind of business and if they have issues and comments that they can, they know who to come to, whether it's

the planning department or the new communication instructor.

When I was doing transportation planning for the county, I was going back to my days, but I had, because the county has a lot of different neighborhoods, I don't know, a list of 30 or 40 different neighborhood association.

I had a contact person for each of those neighborhoods that I could call on or email

and even though they may not be that contact person anymore, they say, oh, so-and-so down the street is, you know, and I'm not sure if we do that or have that.

Now, I just found that valuable when something was coming up, I could, you know, reach out to them or, you know, I just, and I think it's more manageable here because we just really have, relatively speaking, a handful of neighborhoods that they're changing now because of gentrification and other things, but

One of the things we discovered last year in the discussion of the future land use map and comprehensive plan is that there were a number of neighborhood associations that had essentially been dormant for a long time.

and so somebody just stood up and said, I am now the chair of the such and such neighborhood association and I'm putting out this statement because I've talked to three of my neighbors and everybody else is saying, huh?

I thought I was the chair of the neighborhood association.

And so part of that is because we have not, I think, engaged with neighborhood associations over the last five, six, seven, eight years.

in a very effective way.

And so there may be some rebuilding of neighborhood associations that we can sort of encourage.

Obviously, it's got to be their ball of wax.

But if we can encourage it and say, yes, there will be lines of communication to pick a president.

I don't care.

Just tell us who the president is.

and we'll establish those lines of communication.

Well, we also have a city of 60% renters.

When you're a renter, having been a renter a lot, you tend to move around a lot.

You tend to move every year.

And you don't always tend to get involved in the neighborhood associations.

that might be changing some as I'm seeing a younger generation being more active in their communities, but also you don't always know to even look for it or how to find it.

I've tried to find my current neighborhood association and I can't.

And that's the other thing is some of them are very active in the state, very active, but a lot of them

are down to one person and their neighbors or they haven't met in years or they represent a very small part of the neighborhood and the rest of the neighborhood doesn't even know they exist.

Right.

I think that's the other thing.

Does Charlottesville celebrate National Night Out?

That's in August.

I think they do something, the police department, they do something.

They go to different neighborhoods and give out popsicles and things.

Really?

It's really public safety and city hall.

In Petersburg, it was a big thing that we coordinated.

with neighborhood associations with them.

And we put the council and department heads on a trolley and we would go visit the various neighborhood associations and they would prepare food for us.

Sounds good already.

And it was a way to interact and connect and people look forward to it, but it was a way to really tap into,

those neighborhood associations.

So that's one way that you could revitalize.

We ought to look into it.

I mean, anytime we can have a structured approach to connecting with part of our city infrastructure in terms of associations, I think is a good thing.

And it helps people feel that the government is looking at them, that we see them.

and that we are willing to partner with them.

Pre-COVID there was an event at Ix Park for that.

Another smaller thing is I think historically there used to be quarterly or once a year, I can't remember,

meetings between each neighborhood association with the city manager's office.

Yeah.

We fell off schedule.

We did have two meetings last year, the opportunity to participate in one.

And from that, a lot of what we're talking about has now risen to we got to do better.

We are actually, I was going to announce it on Monday, but we do have a scheduled neighborhood association meeting on the 21st of this month.

What do they want to see?

What do they want to participate in?

How can we better connect?

That activity goes back to the recommendation that I made to Chip when he was here as the interim, that we needed to pull our housing redevelopment and constituent services together, because one, we weren't really doing constituent services.

So that is what we do have right here that we call the Office of Community Solutions.

That is what Alex, Brenda, and Erin are tasked with.

being able to deal with the housing related activities and constituent connection as well.

And as others have said, you know, it definitely has to be a two-way relationship where we're just not following whatever neighborhood associate because I know there's obviously a lot of history there or some in the past, you know, have blocked affordable housing.

and opposed to those things.

And you have other, even in those times, you had decision within the association.

You also have some that have been advocating for other things.

But to the vice mayor's point, we also need to be sharing our perspective and vision with them as well.

Another partnership I would add is the Charlottesville Redevelopment Housing Authority, CRHA.

We've obviously made

some major investments for them to do some major projects, but I think there's a lot more work to do to be closely partnering with them, building up and improving their capacity and just building a much closer partnership because obviously, you know, they're going to be a major player in affordable housing locally.

Yeah, I think that they can play a much bigger role than they are playing.

You know, I did my senior thesis at Norfolk State with the Norfolk Redevelopment Housing Authority.

Lord, I know that was a long time ago, but I don't think that they're, that wasn't fun.

It's no longer going first.

But I don't think their duties have changed that much where they were playing a much bigger role doing some of the things that some of the other nonprofits here are doing.

And I just think if they can work together more cohesively, I think that we would have a bigger impact.

I hadn't thought about them being able to work in the county.

But anyway, I think

And I think they've also been faced with the same challenge.

We've been faced the last five years of just internal structure.

Exactly.

Well, and the final thing I would say is I think we've made some major

financial commitments to them and some transformative projects are underway.

But the piece that hasn't caught up is building up their internal capacity to handle the scale of what they want to do.

I'd also like to add on their

So there's there's two broad categories that partnership wise.

Well, so health care.

It's like, do we want to start branching it out to health care versus mental health care, too, because we have for for health care, we have the Charlottesville Free Clinic, we have

Well, that's mental health, but that's where I'm like, I don't like breaking mental health out of health care, but insurance companies do.

We don't have much in the way of dental care.

And frankly, the Medicaid, I mean, the Charlottesville does dental care, but it's very emergency-based.

I mean, it's usually a pretty long wait list, at least it used to be.

things might've changed on that level.

And then there's the UVA dental clinic, but they pretty much only pull teeth and treats and you've gotta be on a wait list for like six months.

So, and I know Medicaid supposed to be covering dental care now, but nobody will accept it because it doesn't reimburse enough.

So we've got partners in our

and it's beyond a free clinic.

I mean, in mental health, we have region 10, the women's initiative, SARA, Mental Health America on our own.

Martha Jefferson Centera is supposed to be doing something that's more targeted with clinicians of color.

And then in physical healthcare,

People like the birth sisters should also be included because they're helping infant and mother mortality rate decrease with doula services.

UVA, of course, is in both of these areas.

Then we have plenty of private practice doctors in this area who will take Medicaid actually as a part of their even though the reimbursement rate isn't really enough.

but this whole healthcare on this, that's, we have the West Haven nursing clinic.

There's also a clinic, I keep wanting to say the towers, it's not the towers, it's Preston Hall.

And then with emergency care, we have our fire department, our police department, emergency communication center, which is a partnership with Atomar County.

um we have the rescue squad um I know Albemarle is funding a an intervention program with region 10 and we're actually going to be learning more about that soon about we've got a meeting with the region 10 executive director about kind of trying to

take their steal their model from them so that we don't have to reinvent the wheel.

But to see how much we're thinking it might cost and if it's going to do what we hope it's going to do, we're hoping to watch that.

Because in services like this, Charlottesville can't always be the first to do it.

And we've often been the first to start something.

and then other people have followed behind us.

And I think it's really great to see that the county is doing something like this first, that we can then watch and see how that works and then modify it for our needs.

And especially because our ECC calls back and forth.

I mean, we share our rescue squad goes to both Charlottesville and Albemarle.

Our 911 system is Charlottesville and Albemarle.

Our fire department has, you know, we have joint agreements to help each other out.

So it's a pretty ingrained partnership on all these different levels.

So I wanted to ask you just to follow up on that.

So I actually understand the emergency care services that the city operates.

Tell me a little bit more what you believe the city's role is in trying to address the access

City's gaps in services where there is no care or not enough care or lengthy wait list.

I think part of the role of the city government in that is working with places like the health department and seeing where those gaps are disproportionate and then talking to our staff who are experts in these fields and seeing

How can we address these?

The data is saying we have more heart attacks in this area.

And I mean, our staff is doing some of this already.

And that's how I mean, that's why I'm thinking about is because we're already hearing about how staff is using that data.

But when I saw numbers the other day about how

mother and infant mortality rates have jumped significantly in the last year or two, and it's jumped across the board, but his black mothers and Hispanic mothers have always been higher, but it jumped even higher, like it was exponential jump, and that terrifies me at this day and age that not only is that there, but it's getting worse.

So looking at those and what is, I mean, we can't, we're not in control of how doctors get trained.

But when we see a local nonprofit that is working very targeted in that area, and again, this is coming then to the partnerships with the nonprofits and that data

helping us figure out where our priorities should be.

And utilizing that data to looking at these major discrepancies in places and then prioritizing the nonprofits who are affecting those major discrepancies.

And maybe looking at national data with that to say, to help us figure out if a nonprofit

is proving a negative.

If a nonprofit is keeping us below the national lines, well, they're doing their job.

If every place else in the nation is up here, but we're down here on this because we have a targeted place that's working on that.

So to follow up on his question, I am concerned about the issue that you're raising, but I'm also

wondering what the city's role is.

Historically, we have not been involved very much in, certainly not in physical health issues, more in the mental health side, frankly, just because of our association in the Region 10.

But, for example, if the idea would be that we want to, you know, you've got gaps in services circled, if we want to be as a

Planning Matter, identifying where the gaps are.

Next question is, okay, now what?

Do we provide services?

Do we get together with some nonprofits to say, hey, come on, people, let's figure out a solution here, which gets to one of the things that you had suggested we talk about, nonprofits.

I've thought for some time that one of the things that we don't do very well in the city is

is to find ways to sort of put coalitions together that involve nonprofits that we're not otherwise dealing with.

We have a lot of private philanthropy in Charlottesville.

It's not terribly well organized.

There are some places you go to where there's some broad committee, sometimes under the auspices of the United Way or something like that, where a lot of private

and figure out what needs are there, what can we as a private philanthropy community decide we're going to get to work on.

We haven't really done that very well here.

Well, and that's maybe, I mean, and that's what I'm saying about the data, like looking at this

Well, in the city to say that our role may be at the planning and organizational and conceptual kind of a thing.

But we're not expecting that the city is going to create an entity that will provide the service.

No, that's not.

Or a convener.

Yeah, an navigator to help get these organizations with air traffic control.

Well, and this also fits in with what I was saying yesterday.

We've got a lot of very smart people in Charlottesville and a lot of very committed people in Charlottesville.

And sometimes what we need to do is figure out a way to get them into the same room.

Is that something that the Office of Community Solutions is already sort of working on?

Eventually.

We've got to have more capacity.

But remember, I only have three people, and they have three existing jobs already.

Housing takes up a lot of that.

And that's honestly where their expertise lies, which I appreciate.

If you're looking at health and other human services, then you're touching on Department of Human Services and Social Services.

Those are the individuals you hire with that expertise and conversely, along with the Office of Human Rights, Job Center, Home to Hope.

That goes back to the very first conversation yesterday, right?

Staff capacity.

And I think the way that we can do this as a council is that we need to set the priorities, make it a strategic plan.

what we did when I was chair of United Way board is that we did a major change in our funding and we said that this is going to be our focus and so many of the long-time nonprofits that had gotten money they they didn't or it was reduced because this is going to be our new focus we couldn't do everything but we were going to try to kind of address this and so that is I think that what we can do best here as a council set our prop our strategic plans and then

Um, staff will, um

So once we set our strategic plan, I don't know how deep we're going to get into it, but if we do the priorities, but then the nonprofits, which I want to see as a partner with us, because they have means to reach out to those funders and things like that, that we can't, to say, this is our mission.

We're partnering with the city to move forward, you know, to address these particular issues, and they aren't.

Tons of nonprofits, but, you know, we have to decide that we can't do and be everything because we just don't have the resources to do that.

And so we can try to, but we can, you know, what it said, like a mile

and an inch deep or the type of thing that we can really try to address for, I don't know, five or 10 years, try to address particular issues and really go deep into it and then try to do something else.

I'm just kind of throwing that out.

It seems like the CACF, is that

Well, why don't we just ask if CACF, what if we gave CACF the money and said, these are our priorities.

when it comes to like the health care piece specifically, you know, some specific things seems like there are one, you know, that kind of partnership with region 10, which Albemarle County is exploring and do we want to and if so, how do we sort of replicate that model in our connection with the free clinic, the West Haven clinic, I know is a future phase in

The Friendship Port Project, one of the things the residents have discussed is possibly having some sort of health care clinic or service on site there, you know, that kind of partnership.

More broadly, you know, one of the things that comes to mind is I think our whole vibrant communities process is an unfinished

in a lot of ways, because at least my understanding is, you know, we used to have the same process for nonprofit funding as Albemarle County.

We changed in order to try to have a greater opportunity for newer or smaller nonprofits to have a chance of succeeding.

And that was new, and we started to change around with it.

But the main people who were involved in making those changes and running that have since left.

And as of our last budget cycle, I think there were a lot of open questions that we never answered on Council's end in terms of exactly how we want that structured and set up.

So I do think there are some unfinished thinking on the part of Council on even just the approach we want in terms of how nonprofit funding is

determined as part of the vibrant community fund process.

And the final piece that comes to mind for me on that is, you know, a lot of this work is underway, but, you know, we look at our nonprofit housing sector.

Obviously, there's no way for us to meet our housing goals without them

all kinds of things.

So that's critical.

Likewise, partnership with our nonprofits in the climate sphere.

How do we navigate the balance between allowing them to boost our own capacity and be part of implementing a lot of things and achieving things you wouldn't see otherwise, while also being able to have some accountability and push back and look at the effectiveness of the investments we're making

and what they're actually doing because our nonprofit sector is a huge asset.

I think we have one of the highest nonprofit densities in the country.

But the flip side of that is, you know, there's a lot of questions about how effective are a lot of these nonprofits using their money?

How many of them are making a measurable difference in outcomes as opposed to just getting funding because they've always been getting funded?

Whereas if we shifted that in another direction, we would have a bigger impact.

and just how, yeah, how do we navigate that balance between doing that while also recognizing that we have to be proactive, good partners with them if we're going to make a difference.

I frankly thought that we were going to get some of that on the housing and these things out of this add-on to the affordable housing analysis, and I don't think we got it.

There's more actual deliverables in the way of implementing changes, no more analysis.

Yeah, we're done on that level.

Okay, so

I thought we were getting, we're not getting.

Yeah, so we need to focus on getting clarity on what that is and determine if that is still capable of coming to you without having to do something else.

And Monday is a good place for us to start to figure that out.

We're really building up Monday.

I don't want you to be building it up to all complete clarity and all that.

And one more thought actually is just how do we be strategic about making investments that are going to allow them to leverage other funding sources?

Like when I think about why would we allocate money for Vibrant Community Fund?

Because a lot of grants you have to show that you've got a local government investment in order to unlock other matching funding sources.

Likewise, with our most impactful affordable housing developments, the investments we make in the CAF or other areas are allowing them to get potentially

Tens of millions of dollars in low-income housing tax credit funding or funding from Virginia Housing or DHCD.

One of the things that

because I share it, but because we need to talk about it, is that the city has been too close with Piedmont Housing Alliance, with Habitat for Humanity, that we're basically beholden to them for solving our problems.

We're not doing anything on our own.

We're not funding anybody else.

Now, personally, I might come to this after having spent 12 years on the board of PHA,

It's a pretty well-run organization.

It does a lot of good work.

It's got a lot of institutional history behind it.

And there's nobody else doing what they're doing in Charlottesville, at least.

So I don't share the criticism, but there are those who say you're spending all this money with PHA.

You're spending all this money with Habitat.

Nobody else has a chance to compete in this space.

has a chance to do anything because they're gobbling up all the money.

You all are too close to those people.

For purposes of time, and also I've sort of come together with a pretty solid high-level list of the

large, or excuse me, a broad brushstroke of priorities, but I want to talk just a little bit more about partnerships with Albemarle County, Planned District Commission, the region, the local governments.

We spent just a few minutes, maybe about 15 minutes or so on that.

I think that would be helpful.

And then we can sort of cover any other relationships that we've missed or which council would like to explore or staff has any feedback on.

and then we'll probably head for a break for lunch around noon and then I'm going to spend that last two hours for you guys.

We're going to take a lot of time to get your mind wrapped around it.

We're going to look at these.

First, we're going to make sure that these are six good topics that we've got for council and staff to look at.

We're going to have some action items under each one of these for staff, for council, for whomever under that, okay?

So we're getting there.

So when you say kids, are we talking about education?

Are we talking about health and safety?

All of it.

That's why I think it almost needs to be its own category.

People move to an area a lot of times considering their children, what school they're going to go to, what... It has a lot to do with that, doesn't it?

It does, and that's, I mean, and kids are a driver in a lot of that.

Once you have a child, where you go changes dramatically.

What you do in the evenings changes dramatically.

the cost of child care factors into your budget.

And we all acknowledge that child care around here is I was paying more in child care than I was on my mortgage.

So.

And that's in Charlottesville.

So.

I just think youth has got to be a factor in this just as a because it impacts everything.

And it really, it impacts people's decisions very much.

People, if they don't feel safe, they will lose money on their house and move their child if they have the privilege to do so.

We'll come back to that.

So I'll leave this as a placero here because we talked a little bit about, you know, mentoring programs and both education and vocational programs yesterday and preparing for the workforce.

But we didn't talk a whole lot about education achievement or anything.

Although I know that's not council's role to manage the schools and all that good stuff.

But it's definitely a critical component of all the things in your community.

It's a quality of life initiative, right?

Yeah.

All right.

Let's go back to

One thing I'll say about the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission is I think it's just a gem.

The work that they do and how they coordinate and the MPO and the Regional Transit Partnership.

When I first learned about them three years ago when I ran for the first time, I just impressive the work that they do and how they really interlink.

I guess I don't really have any criticisms really only good things to say about that and I hope that we are funding them to the degree that they need because I think the work they do is really important I mean you're in a regional transit partnership meeting with folks from the county folks from the university I mean they really sort of know how to bring people together and put out an agenda that forces you to talk about

regional type things like Lloyd and our committee just talking about a bridge over a pedestrian bike bridge over the river.

There's one issue that's kind of hanging out there that

and that is the future of a regional transportation authority and authorized in 95 and we haven't moved forward with it yet.

It seems to be a perfect vehicle for us to develop a dedicated stream of revenue for transportation supported by

Well, at least the first step in moving it forward is underway.

It was required that there be a study among the jurisdictions who would be a part of it.

And that study is underway.

Next year.

It's a regional transit partnership was, I think, sort of a half step or partial step towards authority and study that was a critical piece of that.

I honestly think what's really going to have to happen with that is there's going to be some very serious conversations with the university.

I don't think we're going to have a lot of difficulty getting the jaunt or the county or other folks, but

Who has the ball on that?

I think they've got a consultant engaged to prepare.

And part of what they're going to do, as I understand it, is to put together a proposal, a model,

of what they think we ought to be doing.

Most of the time, we think about the models and the proposals in terms of political subdivisions.

The university is not officially a political subdivision, though they function in many ways as one.

I do think we're at a really auspicious time to have those conversations with the university today.

You really want to do something about equity.

This is a way, you know, joining this and becoming a full-fledged partner.

It helps the whole community.

Absolutely.

I definitely agree.

The really explicit goal of that partnership is a transit partnership.

Have the long-term goal of the transit authority.

I think

It always, I was on the MPO and it struck me, it seemed like, I don't know if on the city's end, we were being as strategic as we could be in determining which projects we pick as part of the MPO process, as part of a bigger long-term vision of transportation projects in Charlottesville.

And it always struck me that Albemarle County was being a lot more strategic and being a lot more long-term than we were.

The Planning District Commission also has the Regional Housing Partnership, which I think in a lot of ways is an untapped resource.

One thing I will, and this is not a criticism of TJPDC, this is just part of being a regional thing.

David does a great job as far as a legislative advocate, but he's also representing Charlottesville, Albemarle, Louisa, Green.

He's representing places that have very distinctive different needs than the city does, as well as sometimes polar opposite desires.

So it's state legislation wise we might want to think about an independent lobbyist at some point because there are things sometimes that just David can't be in two places at once and he's going to have to pick

Right.

And he's going to have to pick which one appeals to the broadest.

Maybe a part of that, you know, looking at what is our approach and do we even have an approach to intergovernmental affairs in terms of connection with

State Government and the federal government, and I think we're seeing and going to see how lack of capacity there is, I think, almost assuredly going to cause us to lose some major potential opportunities with the bipartisan infrastructure law.

Yeah, I'm sorry, Michael.

I agree.

I think I mentioned in some meeting that I think some cities have an office of intergovernmental affairs and we may be at the point of meeting.

And I put that in the same avenue of that grants coordinator we talked about.

Ironically, I saw someone's

Yeah, the sign on the door there says Grants Coordinator.

Well, you know, until we get to office, question is,

Who's going to pick up the ball on that function?

Is that something in the past of the city manager's offices has done in terms of the governmental relations?

I think it's counselors.

If you look at...

Harrisonburg, Albemarle County might have even done this, I think, is they used part of their ARFA money to hire a staff position or staff positions that are purely focused on navigating and taking advantage of the recent congressional legislation.

So maybe that's part of a short-term

boost of capacity.

Okay.

No, no.

I just want we're running out of time and I've captured the legislative under staff capacity for consideration.

So let's give it maybe five minutes talking about the county and then we've got to get to work on actually coming up with priorities that council as a group is comfortable with.

Quickly, I would say Albemarle County, I think one of the biggest things is their urban growth area and how can we more closely partnership on what is growth going to look like in the areas right around Charlottesville, Pantops, just the whole growth area.

I think if we were able to partner on structuring that growth, we could see very different pattern of regional growth as opposed to just urban sprawl and suburbanization.

And

sort of as part of county, but its whole other thing is UVA and, you know, what is our long-term connection with them and goals.

And one thing I think should be part of a long-term conversation is some sort

looking at the financial impact they have on Charlottesville, as well as the amount of money and wealth they have and how transformative that that could be if there was a different kind of settlement and agreement between us and UVA.

Michael, given President Ryan's response at the community forum when that question of payment of taxes came up,

How do we move the question forward?

Because he essentially said, look, the state legislature gives us money and we don't think we can turn around and give what they give to us to somebody else.

I think that would be a very long-term lift, but it's worth beginning.

And the other thing I would say is I think it's like 10 to 15% of UVA's budget comes from...

The vast majority is not.

And then if you look at their endowment, yes, a significant amount is donor restricted, but they also have a percentage that is explicitly set aside as a strategic fund.

And as part of that strategic fund includes investments to benefit the community.

And so I think there's a lot more conversation to have if we're able to get together at the same table and talk it through.

I think that first of all, I think that President Ryan is

he has demonstrated since he's come to the university a real desire to move beyond sort of platitudes and really get down to helping people and making kind of partnership with the city and county something that's is tangible and I think the fact that Mr. Wade has been on some of those committees and so forth I think that really just continuing conversations with

with President Ryan, with others, we would find them to be open-minded and flexible and creative enough to do something.

Maybe it's not exactly paying to do it.

Maybe it's something else, some other way of structuring it to the same end.

I mean, but my sense is that President Ryan, he'd only like, and Nick, that was like the first couple

I doubt he'd have the time to think through it completely is all I'm saying, when he had that initial reaction.

I don't want to speak for him because I can't, but my guess is from what I've observed and what I know, having worked at the university for a long time, is that there can be some creative conversations that get to the same point.

It may not exactly be pilot, but it could be some other way of funding some of the education.

Because if you look at the plan

Maybe that looks something like this is just throwing this out.

One idea is maybe they invest in building B or whatever at Buford, or maybe they invest in some of the stuff we want to do at Walker.

They might have more space if you say, as opposed to just writing as a check.

And I think there's a smaller, even more immediate conversation around UVA made a pledge commitment to $5 million for the West Main Street streetscape project.

Obviously, that's a project which is very much in doubt, probably not going to happen at this point.

You know, is that going to vanish in the air in part because the city transferred portions of Brandon Avenue to UVA for free.

and as part of the reason that the city did that, we weren't on council at the time, they said, oh, well, we'll just continue that contribution to Westmean streetscape instead.

Well, now we've given them city-owned land for free and aren't even going to get any of this commitment.

Yeah, and I guess the only thing I would say is in all our dealings with all our partners, you know,

Particularly, I can understand how UVA is the 800-pound gorilla or whatever metaphor you want to be the largest partner we have and the most impactful in terms of how we live our daily lives in the city.

I would just always caution us to be, you know, even though they may have those kinds of resources to be as humble as possible.

I'm not saying to grovel, but

One way to think about it, I have suggested, is to think about it in terms of the 1980s agreement that we have with the university where they agreed at that point that they would not take any more city land

into the name of the University of Virginia and therefore off the tax rolls, but instead would put it in the name of the UVA Real Estate Foundation, which is a taxable entity.

My understanding is that in recent years, there have been not only in Brandon Avenue, but also in the area roughly between Emmett and the railroad tracks and

University Avenue and Old Ivy Road that the university either owns or has under contract, in some cases, a lot of land in there.

And some of it, I note, has been transferred into the name of the University of Virginia.

And therefore, I assume it's taken off the tax rolls.

And at some point, it seems to me that perhaps we could, would

could style some of what we're asking them to do as basically live up to the essence of your agreement from the 1980s.

Yes, okay, so you put in the name of the University of Virginia, and therefore the main advantage to them is they then don't have to abide by our zoning regulations.

But if you're going to get the benefit of not having to abide by our zoning regulations,

and you're also getting the benefit of not having to pay taxes to us on the land that you had been paying taxes before.

Yeah, and I think I absolutely agree with that.

One other thing I would say, and again, this is sort of where my regular job and this job sort of intersect, I've been very pleased with Mr. Sanders and others and

the work they're doing to streamline getting construction projects done.

If you can imagine, just like private developers and others are wanting to do things, it's been a real and significant issue over the last five years, just getting simple things done.

In the university, you said $2 billion operational budget.

I think their capital program is probably that large as well.

I think the university perceives the city as a competent, reliable, consistent partner, the same like with any other partner, we will see there'll be some sort of reciprocity just in terms of like being willing to work with us in

So I'm glad that things like plan reviews and all of those kinds of things, where we integrate utilities, these kinds of rural nuts and bolts, nuts and bolts conversations and just the practicalities of a large institution like that being right in the midst of the city, the more we can do to sort of streamline and be credible with those

the better all around.

I'll just highlight again, because I think it's striking, the property that UVA owns in the city, this does not include grounds, this does not include the areas that in Albemarle County, this is just the city, is over a billion dollars of assessed value that would be equivalent to over $15 million of taxes a year.

Okay, sorry, we're at a point where we need to pull back up and get up to the 30,000 foot view because I think our goal in the last little bit of time we've got together is to get some direction and guidance to staff on some very key issues that we've identified in the probably five and a half hours of conversations we've had in the last two days.

So let's take a minute to sort of stand up and to sort of, you know,

Shake it out, and sort of, yep, now we're really going to do some work, guys.

This is the important stuff, because you've got a staff here, but you've got a chat in place now, the senior leadership team, which is great, but we've got to give them some direction.

So, all right.

Take five minutes.

All right, folks, we are in the home stretch here, but this is where the heaviest lift is going to

We've learned a lot from council.

We've learned a lot from staff last night and this morning.

But now what we've got to do is really focus on, it goes back to the first conversation we had.

Staff capacity, people and money, right?

You've got a lot of things you want to do, but you've got to have horsepower to do those things.

And we've covered a lot of topics.

And we can't do everything now.

We've got to prioritize some things that are immediate

that this staff can start working on.

Some of that's going to be back to the conversation of building the staff resources they need over this next fiscal year and the fiscal year after that so they can do some of the things that you guys want to see happen in the community.

And the other part of this, we've talked about these big picture themes, obviously staff stability and resilience, community partnership.

We've talked about these lenses that we want to look at our operations through, such as equity,

climate change, housing in general, but talking about everything from affordable housing to the unhoused population, many, many things.

We've talked about economic development, talked about global economy, and we've spent a show talking about education and youth support today, but we also talked about mentoring programs and things obviously yesterday and getting people ready for the workforce through our educational programs.

And those are all great themes to talk about, but how we're going to operationalize those now.

What can we do now?

Not five, 10 years, because you guys are going to do a strategic plan update, and that's where you're really going to have a chance, I think, to inform, getting feedback from the community, getting feedback from staff, so you can have those sort of high-level updated thoughts.

But what I really want to focus on now is what we're going to do in the coming weeks and months, and what direction staff needs so they can come back to you guys with some of these

recommendations, programs, ideas, best practices, you know, not recreating the wheel, looking at what other communities are doing because you guys are not in a, you're not an island to yourselves.

There are cities, counties, and towns all across Commonwealth in the country that are facing the exact same issues.

Maybe it's a little bit different because everybody's community is different, but same issues.

So let's start with some of these staff issues.

So we talk about equity, for example.

you have a deputy city manager with title diversity equity inclusion but whatever resources do you have to implement equity throughout all the organization where are you you know focusing if you expect equity to be a core theme of every decisions made and whether it be at the council level the staff level you know what does that look like operationally so what is an immediate actionable item

that whether it be staffing, resources, funding, whatever it is, that can actually promote equity in a specific area.

So I think that if we see this as a priority, and I think that we do, but we have

resources as far as money from the federal government or the state government, and we can't implement what we want, and we can't hire at the level that we want because everyone is having problems hiring.

I think that we can look at either partnering with agencies and communities that are doing it or look at subcontracting to work out to other companies that might be

be doing it.

But I think that this is one of the things that Ashley is doing that maybe we can ask

I think that's what staff needs, though, is they need council to sort of coalesce around a theme or an idea, a concept that you want to see staff research and carry out.

So

while Ashley can obviously provide some background assistance or anything, it's really up to council to decide what is the primary focus to try to improve equity in the community.

What is one thing that we can operationalize, an actionable item with the staff that you have in-house right now to move forward in progressing and improving equity to the community?

Yes, and I think that what it is is that looking at the different proposals that we are looking at as we're making decisions, whether it's a comprehensive plan, whether it's approving a project on Scribland Avenue or whatever, that everything that we do should be looked at through an equity lens.

And that may take more capacity than right now Ashley can do because she's doing a lot of other things.

She's hiring a

H.R.

Director of communication person, so she may need to bring in some help to do it.

One huge thing that we're doing as a council right now that speaks to this is the school project that we're funding and the affordable housing projects that we're funding.

So are you asking

like what are large scale kinds of things that we're actually voting on and making, effecting making to occur like the schools or housing, more specifically what within the city management itself or city hall itself we feel like there should be a focus on this question because I feel like in terms of like really

I was just going to say, I wonder if one thing we could do that's

sort of piggybacking off of last night about how do you define a definition for equity?

What does all of that mean?

I wonder if we could monopolize on council McGill's idea that at a minimum for the council agenda memos, we start saying, how does this item

help us reach an equity goal or however we want to frame it.

But that gives sort of a perspective.

Number one, staff has to think about that.

And as council receives those, everybody's definition may not be the same, but it would help you help everybody sort of see where we are in terms of equity.

We just need to change our template.

That's really easy.

Well, I've really appreciated the change of actually writing down the suggestion of how to word something.

that guidance.

I just want to say that wasn't always there and that guidance on how to actually say exactly how to word something, I truly and utterly appreciate.

You know, you don't come into this knowing how to say these things correctly.

I think that even something that sounds as simple as changing a template still means that

Staff needs a definition that they can analyze to.

And so kind of ball back in council's court a little bit because without that definition and that guidance, it's hard to either have one staff member or to train the

At least when I think about it, you know, it's a question of like how would this agenda item

provide housing at specific AMI levels.

How would this agenda item contribute to reducing the wealth gap?

How would this agenda item contribute to reducing the achievement gap?

How would this agenda item contribute to lowering emissions?

some sort of valuation would be most impactful.

But even again, even in those sub issues, what's the range of emissions you're trying to achieve?

What's the definition of affordable housing?

How many of this, you know, how many units at this level?

Like there's so much, we all hear what you want, but there's still so much work to do to get those things defined

It's too nebulous.

I mean, staff can't guess on what council wants for equity.

It's just too broad.

There needs to be some sort of metric that's achievable.

So the question I have, I'm hearing both sides of the conversation.

So the question I have is, what do we need to give you to help you get there in giving us the direction that we want?

I mean, it sounds like there's not enough information that you have to enable you to frame

of the direction you want to give back to staff as to what you want to see.

Yeah.

So this is really where the rubber meets the road.

It's like, well, okay, council, what do you want?

And so like for equity, we were asked tons of times when we were running, what does equity mean to you?

And my answer would be like, well, it's different for each person.

It's whatever it needs to make that person equal to everyone else.

But I mean,

Man, as a city, we can't do that for 44,000 people or whatever.

So what I think that I know what I would need, because I don't think that we're today going to come up with a consensus goal for equity, is that you all can look at what other localities are doing and maybe make some suggestions that this is what, I'm going to say Seattle or Portland, I'm thinking of some more

kind of progressive type of cities.

This is what they're doing.

That's kind of where I am.

I don't know.

Maybe next, you know, that we could come up with a consensus definition of equity, but I'm not, I would need some kind of ideas to see.

That's one of those things I don't think that you can necessarily measure.

Even if you could just have an aspirational statement.

of something that just gives some direction of the core focus of equity in all decisions and recommendations, because we could spend a long time talking about what equity is to everyone.

That means something different to every person that lives in this community.

So again, back to the city manager's question, and to your point, Mr. Rice-Mayer,

A lot of other DEI offices and other communities.

I mean, this is not an age-old city or county department.

You know, these positions have literally just been created in most communities over the last two or three years.

Very few had anything of great substance before that.

I don't know if Ashley can speak to that anymore, but it's not like there is a ton of history on best practices and places to steal great ideas.

I think that's exactly right.

Something for you all to sort of put as a post-it note with that question.

So we'll use our colleagues in Norfolk.

In Norfolk, there is an entire economic development focus in Aaliyah's portfolio.

Is that something you want here?

In other communities, they may only be working internally.

That's okay too.

So it's not necessarily that we need a specific, I need more of a rudder than we're in a fishing boat.

I need the rudder to keep us moving.

I don't necessarily need the bluegill that's under the boat, if that makes sense.

And hopefully I've made my father proud with that one.

But that it is more of what I'm seeing in other localities is that there is a thought process of

We see that there is a lack of let's not even say just equity.

There's a lack of justice, diversity, equity and inclusion.

Pick any of those you want in this box, this box and this box.

And so then their equity officer is able to move towards those goals.

Internally, I already have a plan in my head because my job description very clearly defined fix our hiring.

That one I've got.

But it's the rest of it that is a little bit more nebulous as to what council would like to see in this role, place, and space.

And again, what I am seeing is that in a lot of our colleagues and

Charles, please correct me if I'm wrong, because I know you're going around across the country and looking at different things, is they have an economic development component.

They have a jobs component.

They may be looking at homelessness, for example, but there are kind of some specific rudders that they're giving that team, and most often it's a team, to complete.

So I don't know if that helps at all with

thinking through.

So not asking you all to define equity per se.

I'm saying, where are the gaps that you are seeing that constituents are giving you?

So two things.

One, I always saw Ashley's job as an internal job that then Ashley would define

As time went on, okay, we need a position that is out facing an economic development for equity.

But first we needed to deal with equity within the city and looking at different.

And I see the idea of putting something on our agendas as being that informing the council and also training our staff in a way of starting to train our staff to start thinking of equity.

at every point of things.

I just pulled up an agenda for Monday, and I'm sitting here going, so if each one of these, if the CDBG amendment appropriation, how would that work?

What is that about equity in there?

It might not have anything to do with equity in that particular amendment.

The KTEC kitchen floor repair.

How is that equitable?

I mean, that's what I'm, that's what I'm like, I want to see us start thinking equity and climate change in this folding the laundry.

If I can counsel, I think, I think we may have a starting point at least to get us pointed

I would just say again, at least for me, the most important thing is how is it rooted in measurements of metrics and being able to measure policy changes?

Because I've seen a lot of, particularly corporations that have started DEI work, and I don't think this is what we're doing, but it's easy for it to just become a bunch of cotton candy that doesn't mean anything.

And I want it to be focused on things that are leading to changing policy outcomes in the measurement

and the success can be measured.

And I don't want us to go through an effort that results in a lot of staff work that doesn't change policy outcomes in some way.

Because if we wanted to, we could go through a creative writing exercise to tie everything to equity and we get there in an agenda item.

But if it's not changing policy outcomes and we're not able to measure what's changing, I'm not interested in wasting time on doing that.

is what we're really talking about is addressing disparate impact of our policies and programs.

So as you bring my items to council, if there is an improvement, what we're doing now, if the status quo,

is shows a disparate impact and has a greater impact on one section of the community than the other.

And this change in policy will make it more than that's what you address.

I mean, the bus line

is a classic on that.

I mean, that's where you can make a major change.

You can look at it, you can see it.

You've got a group of people who are having lower service than other groups of people, and you can make that investment to change that.

So it's really about overcome disparate

delivery services so that as a value for the city, we're focused on providing equal services across the board.

Is that fair?

And I think one thing that we need to consider here is it goes back to capacity of your staff.

And so my question for Mrs. Marshall is to

Where is the organization?

Where is the rank and fall staff from the top to the front line workers that are doing services?

Where are they at on understanding basic tenets?

Absolutely.

You have a very broad range of knowledge bases here.

You have a Department of Human Services who on their own have become an anti-racist department have learned circle methods from indigenous individuals and have created workshops programs and policies.

Then you have some individuals who the definition of equity, they still haven't necessarily grasped.

So by asking someone to say if it furthers equity in an agenda memo assumes that they understand, number one, what equity means, that their definition actually matches the one we all wish to use, and that they understand how that program process policy or initiative can impact equity.

That's asking a lot for some individuals where they're at.

We have to meet people where they're at, right?

Trauma-informed person.

So I think that perhaps some investment in training will be very helpful.

I think that some investment and it's got to be ongoing training.

Implicit bias training is the footnote of the first paragraph.

of diversity work.

It is not the answer.

It is not enough.

It is the baseline to walk in the classroom.

And we tend to use that as, well, I have this thing.

It's not enough.

But what inevitably will need to be tied into that still, unfortunately, do it, will be what does council want to see as their equity goals?

Mr. Payne has given some very good goals that we may be able to tie some of our work into, but maybe not all of it.

So even when we look at our housing, if it's to build additional rental housing, is that closing the racial wealth gap or the gender wealth gap?

No, it isn't.

It is giving people shelter.

It is giving people a place to call home, a place to belong, but it is not resolving the achievement gap.

It's not resolving wealth income gap.

It might be providing housing at a specific AMI.

So I guess

Really, we could spend the whole retreat working on this topic.

For me, this is prompted enough.

I mean, I get it.

You all need us to say, this is what we wanted to work on, this sort of Catch-22, and I don't have the requisite subject matter expertise to really provide what I would call a full answer.

One notion for us to come back to staff in a month and say, okay, we've thought about this for a while and here are five things that Brian Pinkston, not a subject matter expert on equity, but thinks this would be a good thing to work on.

Give y'all and y'all kind of process it, maybe, you know,

put it in a stew and figure out what comes from it.

Can I make a suggestion, sir?

I don't think that's a bad idea at all, but I think what might be helpful is if there was a consensus of council that you give staff direction to come back and actually plan out what it looks like to train your workforce.

and get them where they need to be no matter where they are on this topic.

Because I think in my experience of working with localities across the state and outside of Virginia when it comes to these topics, every community is in a different space, every organization, every person, just like Mrs. Marshall said.

And I think the first thing you've got to do is bring everybody up to the same information level so they can make these decisions for you.

So my humble recommendation is

to direct staff to create a number one, identify the costs, the capacity, who's going to do it, you know, how long is it going to take to do this to reach every single employee of a city and what that looks like and then make that investment, make a commitment to make that investment in your staff so they can

I would say, you know, to try to answer that question, to me it would seem like the most important thing is looking, trying to analyze and figure out what the disparate impact of different policies is and having that informed

changing existing policies and creating new policies.

And also as part of looking at that disparate impact, really including economic class as part of that lens of what the disparate impact is.

But I think until we're looking at the policy end of it and the impact of policies,

And you're absolutely right, but I think to get to that point of having staff review policies and make changes, they have to be knowledgeable of what they're looking for.

So I think the first step, I believe, is investing in your staff.

Then you can go tell staff, okay, now we're all here on equity.

We understand what it means for our community and for our organization.

Now let's take a, that's a longer

view, right?

And I just, you know, while economic impact is a very, very important part of this, there is also social-emotional disparity impact.

And so I don't, and one of

and I'm not meaning to harp on this idea of being on the agenda.

That was a spur of the moment idea yesterday of just a way to also get a cultural shift because if you have to consciously think about it, just like in the 80s, everyone laughed at sexual assault in the workplace training.

I mean, that was a laughable thing for a lot of people.

It took

10, 20 years before people are like, yeah, you can't do that.

So I'm also trying to think of ways that this, again, this didn't start.

This is new.

We want to put in place ways to bring along people and start educating people on a constant level.

and to be thinking on a constant level, not an empty, I definitely don't want to see anything on an empty level of just checking the boxes, but to actually ask people to actively think, how does this policy affect climate change?

How does this policy affect disparities, whether it's racial disparities, sexual disparities,

LGBTQ, whether it's if we have staff who are Muslim, are we okay with them going and praying?

Do we have a place for mothers to express their breast milk?

These kinds of things.

It's not just, I mean, the socioeconomic piece is a very easily measurable piece, but there's other parts to all of this

And I don't disagree.

The final thing I would just say is I think this is a community which increasingly now, that's a little sidetracked, but I mean, we're just so dominated by the professional managerial class and wealthy, highly educated individuals.

You know, it's so easy for everything to cater to that class's views and interests.

And I just don't want us to get caught up in that and to break out of it and be thinking about...

the importance of class and how that intersects because of policies, how the working class in Charlottesville is disproportionately Black because of the history of urban renewal and intentional racist policies that have created that situation.

Class has to be a big part of it.

But I'm not disagreeing with what you're saying either.

And again, those are all

Absolutely applicable and appropriate, but we still need staff and everyone else to understand those concepts.

And not everyone probably does at the level that maybe council would like to.

And that statement right there is the most helpful statement anyone has made.

That's it.

That's all I need.

Is this what

This is something you all want, this is something that you're dedicated to, which means it's something that you're willing to invest in, even if I maybe throw you something a little crazy pants.

That is, that's extremely helpful, but I know Councilmember Payne, you and I speak the same language, same as Councilmember McGill.

Not everybody can speak the jargon that we can do.

I can ask you about the social determinants of health and how that impacts housing.

And I know, Council Member Payne, you can rattle off all of the things.

But there are individuals who have been classically trained in planning, for example, and that's not part of a planning curriculum.

And I know you've experienced that with your work in housing of having to kind of probably teach a thing or two to someone who

went to, you know, have 15 degrees in this thing, but has no idea about how walkability in a community can impact someone's health and outcomes.

So we have to get everybody on the same page where when I say someone has a high SPDAT score,

No one is looking at me like I've just spoke Greek to them.

They know that what I'm saying is there's an unhoused individual who is at extremely high risk and that person needs to be housed as soon as possible because that's all a high SPADAT score is.

But if you don't know how all of those things play in, if you don't know how ACEs, if you have eight of them, you're more likely to be one of our unhoused individuals.

If you don't know these things, you won't necessarily think about all the ways that our choices can impact

the capacity of someone to just live their life.

So I really appreciate you all seemingly being okay with a presentation of ways that we may want to invest in our staff and training to get everyone to the level where when they say this isn't just a sidewalk.

This could be the opportunity for a mother to have shaded trees to go outside and while she's expecting to have a better birth outcome.

And making the lead team aware of these values is part of the dialogue as well.

I mean, I think that we

We will work with the lead team to discuss the issues of equity and diversity and how it plays out in our service delivery.

And I think that, you know, that should cause to think about, you know, the services that they provided, are they doing it equitably?

I mean, even in the snowstorm, are you getting this out of town the same as you get the other side of town?

et cetera.

Or if we know that a particular neighborhood, most of that neighborhood is probably not working from home.

And that neighborhood needs to be supplied first because that's a neighborhood that tends to be more people who are working in grocery stores, working at the fire department or

And I would say 20 years ago, local government didn't necessarily think about those kinds of differences.

I've been rough on council the last few minutes.

I'm trying to get this out of here.

Now I'm going to be, I'm going to hold staff speak to a fire.

So because we've got to have accountability, right?

You've got to have timeframes.

You've got to have expectations.

So if we're going to put together a proposal, staff's going to put together, here's the scope of what we need to train our staff and get them where they need to be so we're making the best decisions possible in this land service community.

Give me a ballpark timeframe of when you can come back to council with that recommendation so they can understand costs, time, everything else.

Is that fair?

Realistic.

Those are the three topics that are very, you can look at hundreds and thousands of metrics.

These are complicated topics, and they mean different things to different people.

So...

I just want to throw this out there because we're looking at an affordable housing plan.

We're supposed to be working on a climate action plan.

Do we have an equity action plan?

This organization does not.

So what if we had those three plans?

I don't think we need to tie the employment plan.

And they do need to, I think they, I agree, I think they do need to stay separate for right now.

Because once we can get the plan into place, then, I mean, there will, equity is sort of the umbrella over all of it.

And so also to narrowly tailor some of the equity plan, I'll actually need to see their plans so that I could provide suggestions as to maybe where there's gaps.

So it'll all work together.

But I think that I know that I can get some of the training ideas as well as those definitions to you all in short order.

And I say short order only because I prioritize the hiring.

And just in terms of scheduling, I think that as we take a couple of months to work on this equity plan, working on the housing plan, working on the climate plan, that in a council planning session before we start the budget process in September or usually August, September, that should be teed up

as a way as we start to drive that down into the 24 budget process and fund it.

We give meaning to it, we shape it, we put metrics around it, and then it gets funded through the 24 budget process.

That's what it sounds like.

It doesn't mean that we're not

You can't pick up rush unless you've got the people in the truck.

You can't make these decisions until you have these tools for staff as well.

I'm just saying we want to have something in place so you're ready for the budget.

Yeah, I mean, we normally start, you know, sending out stuff to departments and start that process late September-ish.

Let's talk about what's in the equity plan.

This includes, I'm trying to stay in my lane, but I don't think I can.

That's fine.

And that is just as a note, that is not in your current budget.

Yep.

We have some seed money.

That's what operationalizing it means to me.

And so how much money, given that we've got a budget that we'll be passing next week?

That's what has to be figured out.

I think at this moment what we're saying is, and I don't want to also go too far speaking for you, but we may figure out a few tweaks before April 12, but maybe not.

but otherwise when you get this that's why not y'all I'm silent for August 1st it will have

Yes.

Well, and you get to, you get, this gives Council a chance to vet this and make sure that it's meeting what it is you are looking.

Is that fair?

Yes.

And I state that only because, you know, in the grand scheme of a super old SNL sketch, lowered expectations.

What we are finding across the country is that there has been a movement towards implementing DEIJ work, but not funding it as a normal funding stream.

It is not that work cannot be done with one time funding.

It absolutely can be.

But once that funding is gone, it is over and no more expectations can be held on those dollars.

So we can do what we can with the seed funding we have.

But when that next great idea hits you all at midnight, if the money is gone, it's gone because there is not a line item in the budget currently dedicated towards any of these initiatives.

Let's use training.

I'll be able to pay for training.

That does mean I can pay for training in the next fiscal year.

So those are all just things to consider in the presentation

is that, and it gives you all some more time to think about, I really want this thing, Ashley.

Okay, well, this is how much this thing is going to cost.

Can we do that?

But that's where we want to get to, because that's where the real work gets done.

It was the city manager's task force on equity, I believe is what it was called.

and part of that was the original creation of this role, which was more of a manager set, then it got changed, but also the creation of the Office of Equity and Inclusion.

It's gone through a couple names, but that's the name we sort of settled on at this particular point.

So part of my job is to build an office.

It was from 2019 document, but that office, due to multiple reasons,

The 2019?

Yes, sir, I can.

I had to find it myself.

A big thank you to Janice Redinger, who, of course, because I wasn't here in 2019, she sent it to me, so I was deeply appreciative.

I'm more than happy to send that document to you all.

Mr. Murphy and Ms.

Is it premature to just

go ahead and fund that now with this budget?

Or, you know, we look at where we are in terms of how close we are with the things that we've covered, and if there's more that we want to cover,

Yeah, I mean, I saw this past Thursday a number of other items that have been added, which made sense.

And maybe, and I don't know, maybe this is premature.

Maybe you all need more time to sort things out, to really sort of tee this up to be successful.

And it's been since 2019.

I mean, part of

The goals here are to see how priorities need to, how council needs to work with staff to come up with priorities that can translate into projects.

And it doesn't work to just say we're going to make this thing and not fund it.

So it's been since 2019.

It's fine if we can't do another spreadsheet, it's fine to wait another year.

But this is all part of the internal frustration with staff

First, just trying to find out what is it you actually want us to work on concretely to get you where you want to go.

So what about the third deputy position?

I mean, originally they're supposed to be a third deputy, right?

That is that that is more of Ashley's time was supposed to be dedicated to this with that third deputy doing

administration.

At this point, we haven't pulled from it, have we?

And we haven't eliminated the position.

So what if we took that funding and put it, that would be a way that's already in our budget, that's already in the city manager's office, that we are already budgeting for, and take that funding for that third deputy, if we're not planning on doing it, and putting it in this department and seeding that department now.

That's a possible solution, but that doesn't resolve the fact that right now the work Ashley's actually doing involves

Well, I mean, my overall thought on this was that maybe we ought to let our new city manager make these decisions.

Presumably, we're going to be hiring a new city manager in the next few months, and that new city manager will probably come to us with some ideas on their own, and we ought to be willing to say to that city manager,

Make some decisions, be the city manager, take charge of this thing.

Will that city manager have a roadmap, or are they coming in just with a blank slate saying, this is what I want to do for this city?

I agree.

I also say that some of the conversations in the last 24 hours have pointed out the fact that we have lost a lot of institutional memory.

We have no institutional memory of council except

of us remembers what may have happened beforehand, but we probably don't have access to the memos and the other discussions that people had.

Nobody in the current city manager's office, at least in the leadership positions, has that memory.

And, for example, I didn't realize that there was a 2019 memo that apparently is the basis for Ashley's position.

If I may, just for the purpose of continuing movement, because I think it's really easy to sort of have a stasis of the new city manager and everything else.

Budget is budget, it is what it is, but I feel like you're still making good progress if you can at least have staff, give direction to staff to go ahead and come up with a plan moving forward.

I'm not talking about staffing positions so much or deputy city managers, but

specifically on this item of equity in City Hall and your staff and making sure that everyone is at least trained up, giving staff an opportunity to say this is what that looks like, Council, this is what that costs, because no matter who your next city manager is, based on the feedback I've gotten from all five of you, equity is going to be a key driver in the organization and the community.

I think if you give staff the leeway just to go back, do the research and come back to you in this sort of timeframe, I think that's a good way to keep the ball moving.

That way you're not just in a sort of wait and see mode.

Is that fair, staff?

For the third deputy, I think that since we haven't used those dollars for this year,

The one thought I will offer is that typically we have not tried to make decisions

and the surplus we will recognize in December.

And to be clear, that wasn't to make decisions, that was just

an opportunity and a realization to you that you don't have to make those decisions within this budget.

You have the opportunity to wait until that materializes.

So those were sort of one-time things that we were dealing with that may be eligible for that surplus, but in no way was the suggestion that you make that decision.

I mean, I think, you know, and the other thing to be cognizant of is, you know, there's

a little under $4 million that was in that column that relates to the school reconfiguration project.

So even if you used, you know, the 1.9 of the extra revenue, that's only one year of the three that you need for that debt service.

So

All right, so for purposes of our time today, we've got about five more big picture topics to do some action on, right?

is that for our purposes today, there's a lot more discussion on this, but is this a clear direction?

So we're going to look at the cost and the efforts need to be done to invest in our staff.

City Manager's Office is going to come back to and also scope out what an equity action plan looks like for this organization.

And then we're also going to show you what an actually truly funded office of DEIJ looks like for this community.

Council, is that good for you all as a starting point?

For us, yes, but I also want to make sure that that is giving enough of a beginning of a roadmap to be clear for staff, because I do know this has been, this lack of definition, this nebulousness has caused a lot of confusion, it's caused a lot of, I don't want to say trauma necessarily, but it's hard when you don't know what you are supposed to be working towards.

I'll add to that, though.

One of the things I was hearing last night was a need for more information and all the options.

Shall we move on to another topic?

Yeah, I think you guys are in a good place here.

You're much better off than you were at 4 o'clock yesterday afternoon, yeah?

So it's good on this.

All right.

Next, another big one.

Climate change, you've got what?

We talked about earlier, we talked about a housing plan, we talked about climate change plans.

So there's a work session scheduled April 18th.

And that's climate change, and that is when?

They are in the position to be filled.

We have a staff person doing program related climate work, but there's a climate plan position that hadn't been filled.

That has been what I think when we talk about the nebulous, the confusion, the chaos, the changes, all of that has contributed to why we've been not as stuck as we think we are.

There's been two staff members that are part of a group that's met like once every five monthly or something like that that me and Sena have set on.

met bimonthly with other stakeholders to talk about climate stuff, but my impression has been that they've been working on stuff, but they've been unsure with all the turnover, like how the city manager's office wanted to connect to their work, or how it would all fully be fleshed out, so

Is there, in your mind, is there any direction that staff needs on this particular issue at this point, considering the fact you're going to come to council with an update, you're advertising a position to focus on this.

Council's already made the financial investment.

operations and in the community.

Maybe the 18th is really that was what I intended for it to be is really a check in to make sure that what you hear is what you expect to hear for going forward.

Give some reaction to what you hear.

Give some direction to what you want.

That is not being said.

Because Sam, you I think I'm sorry.

I think that you told us when we were asking about this is that there was some miscommunication that I think staff thought it was I forgot to turn kind of more operational or project orange and you know we're just like we can get some things done right instead you know you know because we at one point we were light years ahead of other localities and and now we're just

kind of either behind or in the middle.

And so we have resources.

We have staff doing things that let's praise what we're doing.

Is there anything that council thinks that staff needs to be considering or focusing on on this topic that you're not aware of?

Well, I don't know what's going to happen on April 18th.

The only thing I would add is I think this is more council decision, but we know whenever a climate action plan is finalized, it's going to take money to implement.

So how do we begin to make decisions as a council for how to have some money that we know will be available or in reserve to actually implement it?

I will say

mentioned last night, one of the areas that we have the greatest potential for very knowledgeable citizen input is on climate change.

We have people who are associated with sustainability efforts at UVA and engineering and other departments who really, really want to have a chance to

All right.

I would say encourage more.

Keep going.

What else?

One thing that I've thought about in terms of

wanting climate change to be sort of as part of the focus of every decision comes down to our current favorite topic, electric buses.

Because on the one hand, we could simply say to the transit director, go get a bunch of buses and

Maybe we end up with diesel buses and maybe we end up with CNG buses and maybe we end up with electric vehicles, though that's the more expensive option, so probably less likely to happen unless we say to the government as a whole, including transit, this is important.

It is important enough that we're willing to spend another X number, $100,000, whatever it is, it's important enough that we're willing to do that.

And yes, I understand that you may have some hesitancy.

I'll just pick on this one issue.

You may have some hesitancy about whether electric buses are ready to go.

We're saying as a council, it is an important enough priority to us.

We absolve you of any responsibility if things don't work right, because we're making what is essentially not only an engineering judgment, but also informed by a political judgment that this is important to us.

It's important enough that we're willing to spend some money on it.

and that's a decision that council uniquely makes.

Yeah, I agree with that completely.

And I also think that in other aspects of city government, that message has got to sort of permeate.

I'm not suggesting we wipe out the gas company, one tall swoop, but I think the ideas of

taxing those connections or being more transparent at the cost of the real cost of natural gas.

I think we just are going to have to like, the tendency with climate is always low.

It's easy to just kick the can down the road.

And I would just really,

If you're an engineer working in public works, your main goal is to try to do your project as efficiently, as cost effectively as possible.

Climate might be something that you sort of think about, but it's not like your feet may not really be held to the fire.

And I don't know those people that well really for me to say that.

I'm speaking from my own experience.

doing engineering work and project work.

It is always easier to say, well, the extra cost of doing a sustainable solution right now is just not worth it because we've got limited budget.

Yeah, so I just like to add two comments to that.

For someone who, with the county transportation hat on and for 20 plus years saw, you know, pretty much every other year the city do a transit study, talk to people and change the routes because people say, yes, I'll use transit.

but the routes would go in and he wouldn't use it.

I was like, well, when the weather gets bad, I'll use it out there.

It wouldn't run.

So I want it to be green, but I also want it to be usable and efficient and not just put it out there.

We said we got 15-minute route routes and it's empty half of the time.

And we could do five-minute routes that people will use it on.

and maybe 30 or 45 minutes route on those.

I just, you know, I just, I said I wasn't going to be one of those counselors to come in and change the bus route because every other one did, but here we are.

But I understand this is a different time that I wanted to be green, but I also wanted to be efficient.

I just want to say 15 minutes everywhere.

But 30 minutes are everywhere, and we take it to some neighborhoods because they just bought the $70,000 to $80,000 car.

They're not going to let it sit in the driveway for five days out of a week or whatever.

So that's where I am with transit.

I think we need to do it.

But I really want it to be where people will use it.

And we can study and ask questions and things and that as well.

but also one is part of the climate plan for us to have someone to be able to look at plans and not brought up again yesterday, the friendship court tree thing not to happen again.

It's like, no, we can't get rid of these trees.

Come up with another plan.

We can do better than this, you know, and just someone to, as part of their

responsibilities to look at projects and the number of trees that are coming down to see if they can or can't be saved.

That's something that simple.

I was gonna say, I wanna kind of build up, I mean, we're working on our new zoning code.

This is a time that we can really,

and things like mixed use, you know, things like mixed use development because if all we're building is housing and as much as we need housing, people are going to have to keep driving unless we're also building, I mean, I love

I love things where you've got the apartments over the top and you've got businesses in the bottom.

And I don't, I've never understood why that didn't just continue on and on and on.

Why, I mean, I think it's wonderful.

So, and when people can walk to the store down the street and they can walk instead of having to get in their car because they forgot the sour cream for dinner and so they can walk five minutes across the, you know, down and get sour cream.

and walk back, we've taken a car off the road.

We've, I mean, it might only be for that moment, but it's these kinds of things too that are gonna help build up and build up and build up.

And again, writing into the zoning codes.

If let's say we say, all right, you're gonna put your,

your apartment building here and you're going to market it because of where you're looking and you're going to market it mostly to people using the transit and using walking and biking.

So you instead of worrying about putting spaces for cars, let's have you instead take that funding that you would normally put into that and put into walkability, bikeability infrastructure.

and, you know, fighting work we're putting in if you're doing a development that's going to I don't I don't know how we can tell people you have a thing of land and we're telling you you can't cut down your trees.

Um, is that but if you're cutting down trees and digging into things and it's affecting the city trees.

We can make it part of the site plan.

Yeah, I mean, there is there is some limited authority under president site plan ordinances for that.

I think we should be

of more trees if you're having to take the tree down, that kind of thing.

I know that we've got some element of that in the code right now, at least we did 30 years ago, I assume it's still there, but we need to make sure that that's there and strengthen.

I see one of the most important areas being that cross-departmental work.

If our climate staff and action is siloed,

I don't think we're going to be able to make an impact.

I mean, I think the Friendship Work Project is an example of that.

So there's two mature trees that are going to be coming down.

And it's because of our setback requirements, sidewalk width requirements, and in working with departments, they just didn't provide any flexibility.

So the choice had to come between, do you have less housing or do you get rid of the two mature trees?

Because there was no flexibility on our code.

And maybe there's no way around it.

You know, those kind of actions within NDS and engineering seem pretty fundamental to our ability to execute a climate plan.

And likewise, as a council being able to prepare to make how much money do we need to be ready to invest in new staff positions and new programs.

Again, I just think there's a bunch of investments we haven't yet made.

that we're not thinking and planning proactively enough for how we're going to make it.

Transit is a perfect example.

That plan for the 30 or 15 fixed-month routes is Garland's plan for what it would take to increase ridership and reverse the decline there's been.

And there's tens of million dollars of federal money, but it needs matching money.

And what's our plan to have that ready?

And the final thing I would say with climate is, you know, you look to the infrastructure law, there's billions of dollars for bus electrification, electrical vehicle charging stations, also billions of dollars for climate mitigation plans related to floodplains.

So that's a very short-term, more immediate thing where if we want to make the biggest impact we can on climate change, we've got to identify at least some of those programs and figure out how we're going to position ourselves to at least have a chance of getting them.

I'm good, by the way.

That was my first question.

We talked a little bit yesterday.

Obviously, we're advertising for a position that's focusing on climate change.

But two things we talked earlier this morning, intergovernmental relations, and then yesterday we talked about grants coordinator.

And all three of these things sort of seem to go together in my mind as sort of part of a team that's working through a lot of these different challenges.

It's not just climate change, but that's a great example.

That's going to be applicable.

So to me, you've got council presentation on the 18th.

Staff position advertised.

There is a clear desire of all five members of council to invest in this.

I mean, I'm hearing that very clear.

I think staff is too.

There's lots of opportunities in the zoning rewrite and land use and transit and other things that the city does with fleets and buses and everything else.

But one of the things we'll have to consider in this FY24 pre-budget preparation later this summer is looking at that staff capacity.

of Intergovernmental Relations and Grants Coordinator to help out in finding this funding and navigating these things you want to do.

Is that fair?

Staff?

Yes.

I know.

And then the other thing is, you think about sort of this direction, I think it's important to, you know, from a staff perspective, is to think about, I think, Councilor Wade said this earlier, like, you know, what is your strategy?

Is it a mile long and an inch deep?

Or do you really want to, like, how do you prioritize all these things because it comes back to

How do we best address those issues with the limited resources we have?

And are you looking for a big bang in each, you know, three big bangs in each of these areas or a whole bunch of little things to get you there?

I think it's very helpful.

And also the fact that even though you're in some of these positions or focused on this, you're still going to have to do some training and refreshing of this knowledge for some of your subject matter

People are not classically trained because the master is in urban regional planning on how to navigate and reduce, you know, climate change.

That's not something you're going to be seeing.

So you've got to make sure people understand when they're applying this to their field of expertise that they look through that lens as well, just like equity.

Thank you all.

Housing.

If I can first count, do you mind if I just get a reminder for myself to reset on where we are, presentations, zoning rework, all those good things.

Can I ask the manager's team to help me with that?

So we have a work session scheduled on Monday on housing.

That'll go deep into the equivalent of what we just did in the climate space.

It is our review of the assessment work that we just did.

with the affordable housing plan that exists and a variety of decision points, heartburn questions that need to be looked at for how we can go forward.

I guess I will pose some of the nebulous questions since that's where we've been hanging out for most of last night and today.

We have not embraced a homeless strategy, an anti-homeless strategy in our efforts internally.

And I think we need to have some conversation on that.

And I really think that needs to be a regional approach because if we're the only one that's doing it, then we should just say that maybe we already are, that we're going to be the regional homeless

We are that technically, sadly.

I think it has to be directly in the center housing connected with addiction and mental health.

I would also say physical health.

We are often seeing our unhoused brothers and sisters being released from hospital with severe traditional

Can you give me an example?

Absolutely.

So an example from a few months ago, a gentleman, we will call him Tom, was released from UVA Hospital with severe uncontrolled diabetes, as well as recovering from treatment of gangrene.

The individual was released into homelessness.

He happened to own a vehicle, which saved him for a few days until he called the Home to Hope team, who he was also working with, saying very sheepishly, I'm so sorry to bother you.

I wasn't able to get to the Haven today and my insulin is hot.

Can I still take it?

The answer is no.

If you are released, however, into a vehicle as shelter, how are you supposed to keep your insulin cold?

So thankfully our team, they called me, they called others.

We wrapped around him services between Home to Hope, Office of Human Rights and Department of Human Services to replace his insulin, which Home to Hope was able to pay for.

And Office of Human Rights worked very diligently to try to find this individual housing.

We ended up paying for shelter in a hotel.

and between our Office of Human Rights lead, Mr. Todd Niemeyer, as well as a team member from Region 10, giving him the wraparound care that he needed for him to be successful.

I say this not as a slight, but notice how none of that conversation involved any of our nonprofits in the community.

It was Office of Human Rights, it was Region 10, which is a state entity.

It was Office of Department of Human Services providing assistance for him.

That individual is an example of someone who had medical needs that led into complications of also being homelessness.

So it's not just individuals who have undiagnosed mental health concerns, which sometimes could be substance use disorder, oftentimes could not be.

It can just be that that is a barrier for them.

to being able to be successfully housed.

If you have untreated bipolar disorder, it will be very hard for you without wraparound services to be successfully housed.

You will get kicked out.

I understand that in every locality is not as giving as we are because I know from several examples of my time on United Way Board that other localities they will give someone a ticket to Charlottesville one from Ohio and some from Southwest Virginia oh you got family in not even in Charlottesville but in the vicinity go there they'll take care of you

I'm glad that we can, but it's just not sustainable for one city to do this alone.

So we need a game plan, but we, again, we can't do this alone.

You know, we're going to run into capacity issues really quick.

And what gets people upset is that if someone who lives in the 10th and page for the last 40 years and their family member needs something and they go and it's full, then

You know, then that's another equity issue that comes up type of thing.

So we can't solve it here, but I guess we're going to have to because it stops with us, but we're going to have to, you know, I think we're going to have to realize that we can't do and be at all.

I hate to say that, but we just can't because mental health is very, very expensive because it's not just a one-shot deal.

Sometimes you got to go either 20, 30 times or

Some of the major, okay, some of the reasons we have to think regionally on this and we have to.

So when I worked at Papa Hacham, one of the things that would happen is we are in District 9.

District nine is Goochland, is all sorts of places.

But because we have the Haven here that has a physical address, people who didn't have other options would be released to Charlottesville, regardless of whether or not they were from this area even.

Many years ago, this doesn't happen as much now as it used to.

I mean, but we had a lot of people who used to get released from Western State to Charlottesville, regardless of where they lived before.

because we had good services.

When someone becomes homeless, they make their way to Charlottesville because you know if you can't afford your house and you do happen to be lucky to have a car, you're not going to probably have your car for long.

Additionally, even if you don't have a car, you need to be someplace that you can get to things.

You need to be a place that you can get to food and food banks.

And so people from all over come here.

And anybody that takes any federal money can't put parameters on where you're from.

Federal money doesn't care.

It says if you're homeless, you cannot have preferences for locality.

And we should be.

Not to take us too deep down the rabbit hole, but I think if we're going to think about what it looks like to operationalize some kind of strategy, I think if you look at successful models, you have a permanent shelter that's open 24-7, and then you have

housing opportunities connected to be having received and been receiving mental health and addiction treatment services and sort of the pipeline of a shelter to provide a place to be at and sort of a structured pipeline to getting permanent housing and obviously we don't have a permanent shelter and so the question is what does it take to be realistic

and one specific thing is the fact that, you know, when you look at the history of the haven, the haven is not able to operate overnight because there was opposition to the haven even existed.

And that was a compromise that they got to to have it constructed.

Thinking about permanent shelter, is that something to explore where there's not a limit on when they can even be open?

Anthony Heron.

Yeah, I mean, it seemed like in my conversation with him that he

or the issues that are being expressed now, he understood them and said similar things in my conversation with him.

I guess I would, I hear what my friend Juan is saying about we can't do everything.

You know, what are our options in terms of you can direct funding to the category.

You can direct staff to make sure that the scoring model rewards for reaching the most complicated populations.

You can make some different decisions as to who gets how much of what we give out so that there is enough available to do certain things.

You can choose to identify specific projects that you want to target as an attempt to resolve aspects of the problem.

I would also, I mean, one, I love that personally, but that's, I would also like it if we could start collecting some data from the organizations so that we can start presenting to our rural partners that we are serving their citizens as well.

and that we start, whether through TJPDC or other groups that we are in as partnerships, that we start addressing the fact that this is a regional problem.

Because I will say, again, this was years ago.

It's been a few years since I was working in homelessness.

But when I was, I heard people from other localities saying they didn't have any homeless people.

To Sena's point, I mean, is it an idea to have the TJPDC work with TJAC or whatever, is that a venue in which we could talk about a regional, not a solution, because you're not going to solve homelessness.

better ways to deploy our resources region-wide.

The Regional Housing Partnership is an opportunity to elevate it there.

We also have our home funds come through a consortium model, so we're interacting with

the regional contacts there as well.

It's just making sure that you're ready to receive the level of recommendations that can come as options.

I think that's ultimately, if we feel like

What we're doing in the way of dispersing it is satisfactory.

That's one thing.

If we are of the opinion that it's not, then that's what I'm asking.

Because for me, my answer is it's not.

I just think in order for us to be effective, homelessness is such a specific and unique problem that the solutions are going to be very different from the rest of our housing plan.

I really almost think it needs

a plan of its own.

And I think we've seen, you can look at localities like San Francisco or Los Angeles that have invested billions and billions of dollars, and the issue hasn't gotten better because they didn't have a coherent strategy with evidence-based grounding.

And anyway, point being, I think we're going to need some kind of more strategic plan that we have some data and evidence that would suggest to us that it's actually going to make a difference

So our investments are having the most transformative impact.

And you look at different localities, they have different approaches that have very different effect.

New York City, I think around 93% of their homeless population is sheltered and has access to a permanent shelter.

In an area like San Francisco or Los Angeles, that number is like 20, 30%.

But they're investing even more money than New York City.

So those are very, very different situations than us in Charlottesville.

But I think

And Mr. Pinkston, just to answer your question, TJAC is a regional entity.

It is already connected very deeply with the Thomas Jefferson Planning District.

However, just from my experience here and homelessness work in the Commonwealth, city centers are naturally the place where individuals who need services are going to gather.

We are unfortunately not a unique and individual snowflake in this particular area and even down to having individuals being bused to a location.

That is why Reynolds has a rescue mission that probably in total has about 500 bed opportunities because we're right off 81.

and there are other localities that will genuinely hand a one-way bus ticket to an individual for them to be dropped off at the Greyhound station and run up Virginia.

It is unfortunately an actual method of managing homelessness for some entities.

I think the goal

And then connecting that housing to a housing opportunity connected with addiction and or mental health treatment services for those who need it.

And I think that first step of how do we even have an overnight 24-7 shelter is not just during cold weather winter periods is like the foundational problem.

That's the point.

That's exactly the point.

And the question then is, and are we going to take $2 million to buy that property so that the debt can be available?

I think I have one.

If I may, this topic is extremely important.

It's immediate, and it's going to require a lot of partnership and work, but it's also going to require an investment.

to happen.

My recommendation is because of the nature of this and the diversity of topics that goes along with it and the expertise that's needed, would council be willing to dedicate a work session where staff take some time between now and that work session to work through some best practices and recommendations, come back to you guys, and you dedicate an entire work session to this topic?

Before a class or something like that.

I've been working very hard to get Anthony to come before you to present what we call the point in time count, or you may hear it called the pit count.

Pit counts occur in every locality.

Generally, it has a continuum of care for homelessness process in January.

I believe we are getting him in in May.

And that gives you that perfect time frame and planning for the next budget year and all those things.

You know, a medically fragile dedicated, Fredericksburg has one.

They partnered with their hospital.

The hospital found that it saved them money to do so.

And so I mean, this is a good chance to partner with UVA as well, because that's a very, again, having worked in homelessness, when you have a congregate shelter of 45 people and you have one staff overseeing that, having somebody who has extensive medical needs, you don't have the staffing to handle.

and you are actually risking 44 other people for one person.

And it is a horrible position to be in, but it is one that reality sometimes checks in of where I can help 44 people stay safe or I can help one person stay safe.

And I don't like anybody having to be in that position.

But medical fertility is a very, we get people who come to Charlottesville to use UVA from outside of the area and then end up staying because they can't get the treatment at UVA because they have no place to recover from the treatment.

We actually have an individual right now that is prepared and ready and that's asked to go to substance use treatment, but the requirement of treatment is that that person have a place to go after they are released from inpatient treatment, and we don't have a place for that individual to be able to reside after inpatient treatment.

So he's still here.

to clarify, we already talked about that so much.

That's great.

You've got a starting point on some council discussion and action.

That's fantastic.

If it's council's pleasure, if it's okay, let's move on to economic development, workforce development, business community.

One of the things we talked about yesterday, and this goes back, I think it was the mayor's comments earlier, and we've talked about this for

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operational things that are immediate action items that we can do over the next few months in preparation.

Well, one of the things that I mentioned last night that is a fairly immediate concern is as we do the zoning rewrite, are there going to be any

could be developed as housing or could be developed for industry or what, knowing that we've had loads of people suggesting, frankly, sometimes in the realm of don't put affordable housing in my neighborhood, but how about over there?

And the over there is sometimes in a place where we might rather have other forms of economic activity.

So the effect of land use and zoning rewrite, and if I can add another one we talked about last night, which I think

Mr. Sanders talked about the presentation on what the city actually owns properties and facilities.

I think that's going to be report out the council is very interested in.

Yes.

What else, folks?

Yeah, I may have missed this, but I would like exploration of

City buying of property for that permanent, you know, where we can house and house individuals year-round.

I'm sorry, say that again.

because you all talk about maybe purchasing some for two or three million dollars.

And so I think sometimes you can keep paying rent.

You know what, it might be even cheaper if you buy the place.

I would love an update.

Maybe it's just a matter of me going to the relevant board or commission.

But I would...

I think it'd be valuable.

I'd like more information about how to network to work and the work that I guess the companion programs that the city has.

I hope there's not duplication of effort with those initiatives.

I still believe that

The idea of Network to Work is a really amazing one.

We were going to wait for the update to the Orange Dot Report, which won't be in until fall, but I can share with you just very quickly.

The Downtown Job Center was created because oftentimes our more regional job workforce entities were focusing in on jobs outside of the actual physical 10 square miles.

And so think of the Downtown Job Center as a compliment.

They work hand in hand with Mr. Shuler.

Skyler, sorry.

I'm Southern.

I'm allowed to mess things up.

But they think of it as more of a compliment and a collaborative effort.

In addition to just if you think about sometimes where those workforce offices are, they are sometimes a little more difficult to get to.

And so the beauty of the Downtown Job Center is we know it is clearly on a bus sign.

It is accessible.

You know, even down to the fact that because you all have made the investment in the mall having wireless, we see people sometimes will sit with their smartphones because that's what they have to look for jobs if they're not in here doing that.

Good.

Yeah.

I know that talking with Frank Scolacci at one point, and this has been a year or two

This data is a year or two old, many things have changed, but it seemed like in some departments in the city, there is a little resistance to fully participating in network to work.

I would agree with that.

There may be smaller, more immediate thing, and I would definitely be interested, given all the turnover, to just get an update or a sense of things stand with the city's minority business programs, our GO program, and those initiatives that have been underway, and just status report of where they are now and what's the game plan to make sure that they continue to grow.

section three, which is about providing economic job opportunities to residents in public housing or any investments relating to HUD and how that connects to things like the GO program.

And more broadly, we have had a fairly decent foundation in terms of community investment collaborative GO program network to work.

You know, when we're thinking about affordable housing, how do we connect those opportunities to investments in public housing and friendship board and think about, you know, how to expand those opportunities for people to build generational wealth, become small business owners, be able to get, you know, good paying jobs in the industries that are coming here and recognizing that, you know, building affordable housing is critical, but people having the opportunity to have a good paying job and build wealth is, is

just as vital.

And the final thing, which is much bigger in long term is, you know, is there, do we have a vision of having a strategy of community wealth building in a long term vision of something like Richmond's Office of Community Wealth Building?

Because that is a very

I'm not sure.

Go ahead.

I think this is where also our mentorship slash internship program would want to fall under.

And how do we, because internships and mentorship programs within the city encourage our youth

to take part.

And I know we have the K-YIP program, but beyond that, and maybe even, I don't know if we have any sort of mentorship program that having kids coming in, or I don't know how it worked necessarily.

It's just, I'm sure other places have them though that could encourage kids to think about joining local government.

and taking part of that.

I would also say incubator space, either as part of our zoning, that SUP process, I don't know if that's allowable.

I know we can always write in, you know, there's affordable housing proffers, but what about incubator space proffers as well?

or new businesses, because it's not necessarily something that's negative to a new business to provide an extra amount of space to incubate a small business, which could potentially be or encouragement of that for our own properties.

Again, I'm going to keep coming back to this.

Then I also see the intergovernmental office being part of this.

I also wanted to just ask the city manager staff about

of wealth building notion that Michael has mentioned a couple of times.

It seems like that's like a compliment to the more classic traditional economic development.

Is there people within the city manager staff that, Ashley or Sam, if they have any kind of expertise in that, or is that something we could do a study on what wealth building looks like?

I mean, it

Yes, I think that that's something certainly we could do.

You also have the benefit of having two deputies who both have run bank-on programs, which specifically focus in on providing mainstream banking accessibility to individuals who are unbanked and underbanked.

It's what notification, if I have a right, it is on.

We technically have a bank-on program here that lives in the downtown job center.

It hasn't been nurtured to the level that it could be, but it would be a complement to PHA's Financial Opportunity Center, not a competitor.

So you do have that, but certainly there can be some perspective in opportunities for community wealth building that can include solo entrepreneurship.

I don't know the history, but I know we used to have an incubator space.

It's something that ultimately the whole notion of wealth building is intriguing to me.

Do you think it's something that could fit under

I think that's the point that I was making last night.

We need to talk about economic development because there is a grassroots tier to economic development that is very different than project execution and delivery of jobs and those specific metrics.

And again, in Norfolk, that would be part of Aaliyah's work in the Office of Equity for that kind of work.

So you can, there's various places and spaces that it can naturally reside.

Can I sort of summarize what we've heard so far on this topic?

Because it's a lot of stuff.

I want to make sure that we're not losing track of where some of these things are going to go.

and then if we need to add to it, that's fine.

So we've got an upcoming economic staff presentation to City Council.

We're going to look at this through the lens of the zoning rewrite and land use.

We're going to have a presentation to City Council on city-owned property and facilities.

And while we're looking at those city-owned properties and facilities, we're going to look for other opportunities to solve other needs with these existing properties potentially that we're looking at for housing and other issues.

In fall 2022,

We have presentation accounts on the orange dot report.

Once that's finished, we're going to talk about a little bit more about we need to spend some time working about, excuse me, reviewing workforce navigation with some of our partners in both internal of the city.

And then we council, I think, would like an update of the GO program, Network to Work, and also looking at the lens of the funding through HUD Section 3 and looking at public housing.

from a workforce standpoint.

We're going to review other community wealth building initiatives in other communities, and we're also going to make sure we're going to look at some of the initiatives that do like banking programs.

We're going to look internally here at City Hall for intern and mentorship programs, possibly for folks in this community.

And we're also going to look at the possibility of how we incentivize through proffers and zoning incubator space when we look at new developments or redevelopments.

Did I capture those things we've talked about accurately or if I misspoke or not?

I think one of the clear things here is, again, this is a piece that we're not showing

We're not approaching economic development and the traditional sense of economic development.

And I do, I mean, I think a lot of communities are changing in this area and stuff.

But I think one thing to recognize in this is a lot of this is we're looking at economic development in a slightly different way than it's normally looked at.

And that means some of it's going to take

again, investment potentially in some more staff.

One thing I didn't say out loud that I have recorded, grassroots economic development, where does it live?

Is that a good question?

I think one of the balance pieces on this is

How are we balancing the socioeconomic equity piece that we are encouraging with the very real need of a city to have traditional business opportunities coming in that are bringing the funding in to subsidize those opportunities to make them actually be able to happen.

So I just add a really good point.

The piece that staff might then feel a little torn about constantly having to

keeping in mind that, for example, Apex Energy's headquarters will bring us about $700,000 a year in tax revenue in the future.

We've walked away from more, depending on how you want to characterize it, not being good partners with developers who've wanted to be large buildings.

And I understand that there's

antagonism in some quarters against that, and I understand, but I think particularly in certain areas of the city, we've had developers want to build excellent projects that could, you know, for instance, I don't know all the details of why that fell through.

But he could have done a lot of things, including housing the market for long term, tax revenue.

So I don't want us to go into a detour about development because that could go forever.

But I do think being good, incredible partners, it doesn't mean we just do whatever a developer wants.

We need to make sure it's in the best interest for the city.

But we need to be credible when a person comes to us to spend a lot of money on putting site plans together or whatever.

We don't want to lead people on.

We want to be reasonable and professional about, again, being thoughtful as a partner.

All right.

And the purposes of our time, we've got a little bit left to try to get you out of here at a reasonable time.

At this point, in about another 20 minutes, you'll invest in a solid eight hours just to this retreat.

So I will be mindful of that.

So one of the things that I think we probably have to spend a little bit of time on, and we've talked about it in these individual areas, but I do want to go back and focus on staff stability and resilience.

I think that was one of the first things that council came together from a consensus, I think, yesterday evening.

Just to clarify some of the things we talked about and maybe make sure that staff's got clear direction on what those things mean, looking at positions, training, everything else.

Is that okay for council?

Yeah.

All right.

So we talked, if we remember last night, there were several positions or potential positions, shall I say, that staff and council discussed.

So we talked about, and city manager's team, if you can help me out here on some of the things that might be more specific, we talked about professional development, both internal and external.

So organizational development, you know, within city hall, but also professional expertise and training

for subject matter experts and folks like that.

Is there anything specific that council or you had in mind when we talked about that last night or something?

I know we're doing a lot of heavy lifting with equity here very soon and also making some similar investments for climate change for our staff as well.

Well, we need to look at

sharing capacity and human resources for professional development.

It's a function

to be a Charlottesville Academy, much like I've done in other jurisdictions.

And I guess it went, they say it went for a couple of cycles, maybe three cycles, but then it kind of just dropped off.

That's something that we want to take another look at and see how that can be stood up as a vehicle for professional development and training within the government.

It's not put forward in this budget yet because we haven't framed out what this should look like.

But I think it's something we should

keep in mind.

Okay.

I'd say something that I've experienced in another locality was just fundamental

Yes, yes.

That's not taught in fifth grade civics, is it?

Council should probably be required to take some of those as well.

I mean, I will say only from my perspective, for myself, I mean, I was lucky enough to have participated in the leadership pilot program thing that we had here many years ago, but I mean, so much of what local government does, I had no...

intention of being involved in government for most of my life.

So I wasn't, it's not what I lived and breathed.

I don't know a lot of stuff and I have been learning it, but it's really hard to know what you don't know to learn.

And so just, you know, basic core, I mean, again, in high school and everything, I wasn't taught local government.

I was taught the Magna Carta.

You mentioned last night the Citizen Academy, and we also had that kind of function in Petersburg.

It's a good way for the citizens to get engaged, and I think it's something that we could do here.

It's on the list, but we're not saying tomorrow.

Right.

Respect, understanding, right?

I think a little bit different.

I mean, I feel like for us, you know, one of the most important things is always is just how do we integrate this into our budget and how do we plan for making sure we've invested enough in these staff positions and

Part of this issue.

We're okay.

Maybe we can't do it this fiscal year, but next fiscal year, we know we need to be set up to invest in these seven new staff positions.

There is enough

diversity in the staff positions, and some of them we've talked about with equity and climate change, but some of these other things, we've talked about the branch coordinator, we talked about budget and finance, we talked about management analysts to help give horsepower to staff to do research, we talked a lot about data, and you've got to have folks to actually put that stuff together, that's a lot of time and effort to get good data together, to make a good presentation, an effective presentation to you guys.

We also talked about the need for a master's in social work level,

employee yesterday as well.

And just in general, just staff analyst for research and support for both the city manager team and city council.

It almost sounds like this is more of a, you know, a lot more bus drivers.

So it looks like this could be something that, you know, staff can go back and sort of rehash and come back to council with a specific presentation looking on staff capacity.

That way you're given plenty of time well before a budget to know, okay, here's what staff needs based on work we've done, you know, from now until whenever that happens.

And we know that if we really want to get these things done, we're going to need, we're going to need these folks.

So is that a good starting point to at least get council the information they need to make those decisions before we get in the budget process?