City Council Meeting   8/1/2022

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

Ms.

Here.

Okay.

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

So moved.

Anybody second?

I second the approval of the agenda Okay, all in favor say aye Aye Opposed?

Good evening, Council.

We are here this evening to talk to you a little bit about the budget process and development.

Hard to believe we're already ready to start talking about the FY24 budget.

But as we've said before, that process doesn't stop.

It's never ending.

And so with that, we wanted to talk to you about a few things related to that.

So we're going to talk about some key dates

the budget process review, some budget guidelines, look at a historical perspective on the general fund, as well as some trends, and then to talk about some key drivers.

And then finally, we wanted to end up with an opportunity for council to ask questions or discuss anything about the budget

to also use this time as a chance to debrief from the cycle we just finished.

And again, just to get your overall impressions, not looking for any decisions tonight, but rather just to get you start thinking about this and let you know what we'll be looking for from you going forward.

So jumping right in, I want to talk about a few key dates.

Again, right now, February 6 will be the date that, for all intents and purposes, the budget will be balanced.

That is largely being driven because of the state requirement to advertise any

real estate tax increases and also a required rollback calculation has to be advertised a minimum of 30 days before the public hearing.

And then any other taxes only require a seven day advertisement.

So February 6 will be the date in which pretty much the general fund will be balanced.

On March 6th, that will be the presentation of the city manager.

He will formally present the proposed budget to council and the school board will present their proposed budget as well.

There will be a public hearing on March 20th, a second public hearing on April 3rd, and then council will formally adopt the budget on April 11th.

We also, during this time, we'll have a series of work sessions.

We have been working with Ms.

Thomas to get those on your calendar and get those firmed up.

We'll also be publishing a budget public calendar soon on the website, but right now we're looking for the first budget work session to be held on January 24th, and that will be more of a discussion about developing the budget.

and then the following work sessions will be held once the city manager has presented the proposed budget to council.

We have four of those scheduled, March 9, March 16, March 30, and then if we need the final one, that would be held on April 6.

Talking about the process itself, the capital improvement process comes first.

Request will be due the end of September, early October.

We plan to include a planning commission member on the review team.

And also we are tentatively looking to hold a work session with the planning commission on the proposed CIP on November 22nd and hold the public hearing with the planning commission and council on December 13th.

City departments will also be working on their operating budgets, preparing those packages and requests.

They'll be due the end of October.

The city manager and the budget team will be meeting with department heads and their team to discuss their budget requests and those are in the process of being scheduled and they'll be held in the month of November and early December.

In addition, the nonprofit and outside agency applications will be underway.

I think the current timeline being discussed will be to have those due around the end of October, early November, and then those applications will be reviewed and recommendations will be completed in early January.

We'll have several opportunities for public engagement as it relates to the budget.

We've added a new opportunity this year, which is the city manager budget forum.

This will be held on January 10th at the Carver Recreation Center.

And this will be an opportunity for the city manager to make a presentation as well as for the public to have an opportunity to express its feedback to the city manager before the budget is actually finalized and presented to council.

In addition, there'll be a community budget forum that will be held on either March 22nd or 23rd, and this is an opportunity for the public to discuss directly with council its desires or wishes regarding the budget.

And then finally, we will offer public comment opportunities at least two of the public hearings that are scheduled, and there will be public comment available at the end of each budget work session.

So as we move along, some of the things that drive the budget and that we look to when making decisions for what's in and what's out are the budget guidelines and the strategic goals.

These are things that we ask council to review and to comment on each year.

Make sure that we're making the mark as we prepare the budget.

And so some of those guidelines and goals are whether or not you want to maintain the current real estate and personal property tax.

We look to develop operational budgets within projected available revenues.

That means that we are required to adopt a budget that is balanced, meaning that expenditures must balance to available revenues.

We also try to include things that focus on Council's strategic vision.

Some of those breakdowns have been economic sustainability, a center for lifelong learning, quality housing opportunities for all, Charlottesville arts and culture, a green city, America's healthiest city, a connected community, community of mutual respect,

and smart citizen focused government.

Again, these are areas that council can weigh in on.

We can change those.

We can move them around.

So we want you to start thinking about that as we start into this budget season.

Again, we also using these strategic visions, we want to incorporate performance measures to make sure that we are making the mark on the priorities that have been set forth or to discover the ones that we're not and figure out why we aren't.

Additionally, we want to continue the strong commitment to education.

We have for years used the 40% of new city real estate and property tax revenue formula in determining the additional local funding that goes to schools.

We want to invest strategically in our employees by providing adequate pay and benefits, training, support and appreciation.

We also annually review the Living Ways Ordinance, which is the ordinance that dictates pay in city contracts for non-professional services.

We also need to decide how we're going to fund new programs or major expansion.

Will that be with only if they're fully offset by revenues or will we reduce in other areas to add those expenses?

Finally, as we look to the CIP, we want to make sure that we are not only doing the bright new shiny things, but we are also investing in our existing infrastructure and facilities.

We want to transfer at least 3% of our general fund expenditures or PAYGO to the capital improvement program.

We want to talk about whether or not we want to build in a reserve for council strategic initiatives.

You all have an account that you have used for years to draw down on sort of one time types of things.

Do you need more funds there?

And then finally, we

budget for the fund balance target adjustment pool.

As you know, we maintain our fund balance policy of 17%.

And while that percent does not change, as the budget grows, that amount that is required to maintain the 17% does increase.

And so we budget an offset to that to help make sure we meet that mark.

We also look to the budget to make sure we are in keeping with our long-term financial policies.

Again, items one and two here are addressing our 17% policy, 14% of which is required in the fund balance, but also the downturn reserve of 3%, which as you recall has

some fairly specific restrictions on what that can be used, when that can be used, and when it must be replenished.

We also maintain sufficient working capital in the utility funds.

We want to make sure that all non-general funds are stabilized with a positive fund balance.

Our debt service policy, which we've talked about a lot, is our ratio of 10% or less with a target of nine.

And then we transfer an equivalent of one cent of the meals tax revenue to the debt service fund to help offset future debt service needs.

So keeping all this in mind, what does the future look like?

What might this budget look like?

We wanted to take a look back at a historical perspective of the general fund.

And in this graph here, you will see the bars represent the size of the general fund from 2014 to 2023.

The blue bars indicate our years in which there was sort of an uptick from the year before.

and they indicate years in which either we passed tax increases or in the case of 2018, we had a significant increase in commercial property assessments, which was largely due to new construction, which added $7 million.

So as you see, this trend line tends to kind of ebb and flow.

And then you'll see here from 20 to 21, 22, this is the COVID effect.

And then from 22 to 23, both we are recovering from COVID with our recovering revenues.

But then also we had two tax increases that were passed in the budget, the penny on the real estate tax.

the half percent on the meals tax, and we also had a significant real estate property assessment increase as well.

So if we look at that just on a percent change from year to year, 2008 was the last recorded recession, if you will, and you'll notice that this trend line is very similar to what our budget trend line looks like, where we have

and uptick in 2008, we kind of ebb and flow all the way through, and then we have a pretty big uptake again in 2023.

The average of all of those over time is about 3.9%, and that's this trend line that you see here in the middle of this graph.

So interestingly enough, if we take a look at the CPI trends, which is an indication of inflation, you'll see that that graph or trend line looks very similar.

Again, there's sort of this uptick in 2008 with the shaded area being the last recorded recession.

There's a lot of ebb and flows.

And then on this high end here, we're back up.

So what does that mean in terms of going forward for the general fund?

It means that we anticipate that FY23 will sort of level off without this.

Again, this is assuming no tax increases here.

We are assuming that the general fund will grow at a more modest projected growth of about three to four percent a year, which would equate to roughly seven or eight million dollars.

And as we know, if you choose to keep the normal school formula with 40% going to schools, if we were to have a budget of $7 million growth, that would equate to just over $4 million at $4.2 million for the city.

If we made it to $8 million, that would be about $4.8 million that we would have in new funds to add

to the general fund going forward.

So, how would we spend that money?

What will we spend it on?

There are a few drivers that we already are aware of that will be significant factors in the 2024 budget.

We know that cost increases due to supply chain issues and inflation are a real factor, both in capital projects, but just general operations as well.

It's not clear what the revenue impact of any potential recession will be, but we need to keep an eye on that.

Employee compensation, both collective bargaining and compensation study are underway and will have significant needs that will need to be addressed.

There will be funding needs for the city schools.

In addition, the ability to fund new requests from city departments.

We know that we

We'll also be absorbing recurring costs that we've added with one-time ARP and other grant funds that need to be absorbed in the general fund budget, as well as looking at funding other needs and priorities that may come out of Council's strategic plan or other things that will come up during the budget cycle.

Any one of these bullets could easily use up the $4 million that we are anticipating that we might be working with in terms of growth for 24

And that concludes the formal part of my presentation.

At this point, we wanted to open this back up for council feedback to talk about any big issues that you have on your mind that you think may be drivers of the budget.

What information would you like to see?

Debrief again from the process we just went through.

Are there things you'd like to change or any other items that you would like to discuss at this point?

Brian, you want to lead us off?

Ms.

Hamill, it's very nice to see you.

Yeah.

The first question I had, so we just received an email from Councillor McGill about the

changed the budget deadline.

She says the April 15th deadline is a self-imposed deadline and does not really have a reason I can determine.

Another reason is that the first week of April is Charlottesville spring break.

So I'll forward this on to you and maybe you can think about you and others how that might, what impacts that might involve.

We'll be back soon.

We haven't talked about it.

Got plenty of time, don't we?

Yeah, and then I guess the other question I had, and this is really more broadly, has to do with the strategic plan, updating our strategic plan.

It's not supposed to be.

I'm trying to make sure it's off.

Okay.

So these budget points that Ms.

Hamel has made, they all reflect what I guess we would say at this point is a pretty old strategic plan.

I'm having a hard time remembering.

I know we had our retreat in April.

Does anyone remember what sort of the next steps were on or had we even thought of next steps in terms of rebooting our strategic plan?

Well, if you recall in that session we had, we made good use of it because you were able to identify a number of items that were important to the council for funding and we came back and presented those to you and you voted on those.

In terms of rebooting the strategic plan, we've included in the ARP allocation tonight

an amount of funds that would allow us to acquire the services of a consultant to work with us on doing that.

And so I think that the time is ripe.

You've got a lot on our plate, but in doing the strategic plan right, we'll get a consultant who will engage you individually and collectively

over the next few months and by the time we get to April we ought to have a new direction or at least some themes if we're not finished in terms of where you might want to allocate additional dollars.

That's fantastic.

Yeah, thank you.

I mean, I think it's good that we're even discussing it this early.

I guess some more specific thoughts I had are in terms of things I'm thinking through with priorities is one, how do we get a dollar amount on what it's going to take to deal with the wage compression issues throughout the organization as part of the wage and compensation study?

I'm guessing that's a number that's going to come with

a little bit of sticker shock but it's obviously an investment I don't think we have a choice to make and just curious how we get a hold of that early in the process to make sure we're incorporating it.

In addition to that the climate action planning process

Do we expect that we're going to get estimates for new programs or initiatives that are recommended as part of that process in line with this upcoming budget process so we can incorporate them?

And finally, a discussion of how can we get our adopted affordable housing plan and that $10 million a year into a more stable

place in terms of expectations of how we'll fund it at $10 million a year, which is what the plan calls for, rather than sort of trying to figure out each budget cycle, whether we can do that or not.

And along with that, the regional transportation, regional transit vision and our public transit plans long term, how do we get in a place where we have some clear numbers and making sure that's incorporated into our budget process.

These are some of the specific big ticket items I'm thinking about.

In terms of the process, I think it sounds like those public community forums I think will be very positive.

Obviously, we couldn't do those with COVID, but I think that will be positive, yeah, and just kind of like what we're doing now where we're starting the conversation as early as we can.

Let me respond to a couple of items that you raised.

One, with respect to wages for the employees, there are two drivers.

One is the compensation study that is underway, and we are well into it now.

We expect to be completed with that by the end of the year.

That will tell us where we are.

compared to other jurisdictions in the region in terms of our salaries.

It will define a competitiveness gap and we have to decide within that where we want to be.

Secondly, collective bargaining is coming right behind that.

We will be coming to you on August 15th with a proposed collective bargaining ordinance.

then there will be some public hearings after that and it will be up for first reading at the first meeting of September and second reading the second meeting of September and we expect that there will be a push to begin to recognize collective bargaining units after that as we implement but the

The compensation study will define a certain level of where we are.

We decide what we do about that.

Whatever we have done in terms of increasing the police department wages and what we are proposing with the fire department and the sheriff's department and whatever we do in transportation, all of that is a down payment, if you will, against the gap

in competitiveness of our salaries overall.

And I think it will all work out in the end.

And what we do on the front end has to be recognized at the bargaining table when we get there.

And how much that will be

How much our gap is at this point, it's too soon to tell.

We have presentations from our consultant.

I'm looking for them to share that with me, but we're not there yet.

And I would not want to estimate or forecast what that gap would be yet.

When do we think we might have some

Yeah, that's the current schedule.

And so it will be on, as we are preparing for the budget, it will fall right in line with the budget schedule.

So it's something that we will have to deal with in 24th.

Well, if it comes in December, that's early enough so that it can get incorporated into the budget.

Yes.

Do we know if the,

the climate action planning process.

Yeah.

Is Sam Sanders nearby?

I know we talked about that this afternoon.

I know that the climate team is working.

Yes, sir.

What I'll say to you in regards to the question is, yes, there will be an ongoing effort as we advance to the finalization of the document that will be presented to council.

We're anticipating that coming to council at this moment in October, early October.

And they will, the team will continue to work from that document being received by you and responded to by you to formulate any requests from a budget perspective within

Public Works submission in the upcoming round with Ms.

So one of the other topics that we, seems like every year we just, we don't have time to actually deal with, but we sort of gripe about it in passing, is the 40% figure for the schools.

Yes.

And sometimes it's on, with the idea that that's not enough money for the schools,

and other times it's with a sense of resentment that we're having to give them 40 percent of our of our new revenues.

And other times it's particularly now when we're looking to be plunking sixty eight million dollars into things for the schools.

There are those who have said to us, why are you promising to give them 40 percent, 40 percent and 40 percent?

when you're giving them $68 million, can't you figure that in there somewhere?

Has there been any thought about revisiting that formula?

Right.

Well, I'll say a couple of things.

One, the 40% we looked at last year that was determined long ago.

But the other reality is

We are the source of school needs.

We fund them.

And we they come to us like you know for the reconfiguration

We understand that there will be some additional needs this year.

Most of it should be covered in the 40%, but council has the, you know, it's your decision whether you want to maintain that level and if so, with what conditions, you know, over time and what's included in it.

You could cap it.

And I would just add to that that if that's something that council wishes to do, you know, schools are developing their budget at the same time that we are.

And so that would be something that you would want to tackle ahead of time and not wait until we're in the midst of our budget work sessions.

I'm not even sure how to begin that discussion, in part because I'm not familiar enough with how the original formula was derived a decade or so ago.

And maybe at some point I should be looking through all of that old material.

The discussion has been most pronounced in terms of trying to figure out obviously the school has capital needs as well as operating needs and we have just committed ourselves

to a huge capital addition to them.

That's right.

And I don't know, I certainly don't want to be hamstringing their operational needs, but I also know that it is, there are a lot of taxpayers who write me letters and emails saying if you didn't give all that money to the schools, you could cut our taxes.

and clearly that's one.

But you don't even know why they're spending the money.

I mean, we can see that we get a budget presentation.

It's an hour long.

But that's obviously not even scratching the surface of what's going on.

And so all I can say to folks is, hey, you all vote for the school board members just like you vote for us.

And we're going to deal with the constraints that we're

or that are created for us.

Right.

I wonder if it would be worthwhile having a preliminary sort of conversation with Ms.

Powell, perhaps.

Ms.

Hamill, wasn't it the case that this last time the incremental tax revenue we raised with the one-cent real estate tax increase

We didn't give 40% of that to them.

The whole thing went basically to pay for the school capital piece.

Remember, there was something unusual about this last.

In the most recent budget, we had some arrangement where the revenue that we raised went specifically for the capital project.

You are.

So I have a chart that I can share as well.

And we did end up with the, because of the tax increase, the contribution, the total contribution that went to schools was slightly less than the 40%.

But to your point, we used some of that to put in the debt service fund.

to help fund the additional debt service that would be required for both the school project.

It's seared right here in my cerebellum.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mr. Mayor, we will, with you having raised that issue, we'll tee this up for a deeper dive.

come back with you because I think this would be a major change and I'm certain that we all want to know what the implications long term will be if there is a change in current policy.

So we will budget team and we'll talk with schools as well and at some point the council probably should have that meeting with schools to discuss

You know, an issue like this.

What is the normal process in terms of when we meet with the school board?

Late January, typically.

I don't

Because obviously there's the flow, in order to not be wasting each other's time, they've got things they've got to do first.

The question is, if we look at things and we say, we know that we're going to sort of project the same 3% increase

and the general fund that's going to work out to another six to seven million dollars and they would probably get 40 percent of that.

That's going to turn out to be roughly three million dollars.

That's going to leave us $4 million if we don't raise taxes, if we don't raise tax rates.

If we look at $4 million and we say we know that the wage and comp study is telling us that we've got to have $3 million more added to wages, now all of a sudden we've got very little room to deal with the rest of our inflation, and then we have to start looking at

at tax increases and so on.

If we have another year where car taxes, where car values rise 20 or 30 percent, which I don't think we will, but I think we may well see the same 20 to 30 percent persist for another year, and or if we have another year where we've got an 11 percent

increase again in assessments, I think that we would have a lot of opposition from folks if we said, oh, and we're also going to raise rates by two, three cents or whatever.

I mean, we saw that already this first year.

Right, and this past year we had a really clear reason which was the schools project was really what was we needed to push that through the sort of tunnel.

One thing I would also like to and it was in the progress I was just looking one thing we should certainly keep in mind in terms of risk

Mitigation is the impact of construction cost escalation on the schools project.

We'll see.

I understand they're getting pricing, should have pricing back on this set of drawings in the next month or two.

We'll have to see how that looks, but that could certainly be a, there could be a hit there.

Yeah, and I would just add also, along with the school discussion, you know, in 21, they were able to not ask for any additional funding from the city because they had one-time CARES money they were able to balance with.

And when we got to this year's budget, we were able to close, that was roughly $4 million, and we were able to close a lot of that gap.

I believe I recall from Ms.

Yeah, and I would like to second what Councillor Payne mentioned in terms of transit and housing.

I know that the regional transit vision plan and all those things are moving forward, but

the horizon always seems to be slipping a little further and further away and so I do hope and my expectation would be that Mr. Williams I'm sure is working on what he needs for his part of that and I hope you know we'll be proactive in thinking about what that looks like and then the same for housing

We've made a commitment of $10 million a year, and so I'm hoping that we'll see really solid requests and proposals for that.

I know we're going to talk about the hack later on tonight, but those are some of the larger things to think about.

And I know you all are doing this, but I

When I talk to people out in the community about the city, one of my major impressions is the fact that I just feel like we're still understaffed.

There's so much work to be done, and this community wants a lot of good work done, and it takes people to do that.

I'm not saying go nuts in terms of requesting staffing, but I would just encourage people to think clearly about what is it going to take to operationalize these things that we say we want as a city.

Also, I've noticed in a lot of my conversations with

with people who are concerned about taxes and their tax rates in particular that they want plenty of services but they think that city employees are overpaid.

And those are very serious issues that partly the compensation study will help us sort through.

And I think that in transportation particularly we have a serious challenge there.

We need more drivers and we need to be more competitive with surrounding transportation agencies.

Maybe some of our employees will come back, or we keep the ones that we have, you know, and we're working on that.

I've spent half the day today working with Sam and Mr. Williams discussing those issues, and we'll be coming forward with an approach to address that immediate issue.

But then the long-term issue of

financing of transportation, you know, using the federal annual federal dollars that we get in a way that is beneficial to us is that's another part of the conversation that we have to have and need to work on in the coming weeks.

So I guess the question that I've got for you, Mr. Rogers, Ms.

Hamill, is there something that you need from us in the next two or three months?

Well, I think that

You've raised some issues here and thinking deeper about this and what you want to see.

Like on affordable housing, we can try and make that commitment that you've been able to do over the last several years and continue that commitment.

But what's your benchmarks?

What does success look like in the application of those $2 million to you?

And how do we set that up in a way that it is successful going forward?

In terms of regional transit,

The long term play is probably the discussion about a regional transit agency.

And what are the dynamics that need to be in place for us to move that forward?

And it's been talked about a long time.

But if the community is really in favor of how do we move it forward?

And what are the steps?

And what's the timeline?

That's a really good point.

Lloyd, you're on the RTP, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, we're both on, sorry, we're on some different things, but the regional transit partnership, and that is itself another study that's ongoing in terms of governance.

And these things take, I think that one is like 18 months out, maybe a year out.

So it is remarkable how long these things take to sort of get.

Right.

and the city's going to have to be positioned to, you know, what at stake, you know, what does success look like for the city and for this to happen, you know, as we discuss governance and position the operations going forward.

I mean, we have assets and what happens to those assets going into

of a new authority.

How do we position that?

A little separate, but adding to initiatives that have sort of begun but aren't finished that came to mind is

How do we tee up the Marcus Alert system?

I know we allocated a little bit of money this past budget cycle, but is there going to be additional money that we're going to need to invest to stand that up quicker, as well as stand up like crisis intervention teams, as well as implement all of the recommendations from the two criminal justice reform work groups from

All right.

There's a place to tee that up as well.

I'm glad you added that to the list.

Chris, Ms.

Sir, I think we covered it.

I mean, I think if, you know, we can definitely the question about the schedule or the calendar is probably one we should talk about sooner than later.

You know, I will add that while it is

perhaps a deadline we can change.

There is a fair amount of work that needs to be done once the budget is passed in terms of getting bills out to get them out timely so that we meet our due dates for June 5th as well as loading budgets and so there's a lot of stuff that happens in the background.

Doesn't mean we don't have room to change it but we would want to talk about it and I guess in particular if I'm not mistaken

I have brought this up every year that this meeting keeps falling into Charlottesville school spring break and it's just one more way that it makes it harder for some people to serve on council and so and while it's a meeting that may or may not happen so far it's happened every year I've been here and so I just want to

and when I brought this up last year I was told that we set the schedule and that's why it happens then and if we pushed it even just a few weeks we could change a few things.

So I just want to bring that forward that this is a clash that does make it harder for anybody with children who go to our public school system

My impression is that most places are at least a month ahead of the Charlottesville schedule in terms of how they prepare a budget.

Well, in terms of the adopted date, I mean, there are places, particularly in Northern Virginia, where council is involved in budget discussions by December.

They're not waiting until February or March.

And the practical effect of what we do is that our opportunity for actually commenting on things is compressed into about four weeks.

and there are a couple of meetings in the meantime and people have been having public comments talking about things in many cases talking about a budget that hasn't been produced yet and we have very little opportunity for the public to react to the city manager's budget

and for us then to ponder in any meaningful way any changes we might wish to make to the city manager's budget.

And so I'm just wondering whether there is a way for us to decompress that schedule a little bit to make things happen a little bit earlier instead of having the city manager's budget come out the first week in March, maybe it comes out the first week in February.

and then we can have our discussion about what we want to do before spring break, not after.

Recognizing that if we get much beyond April 15th, as Ms.

Hamill noted, there are all kinds of problems for the tax folks in getting out the tax bills.

Unless we want to take the position as we did in 2020 that we were going to set the amount of the revenues and we would sort out the expenditure side by June.

That's not really a good way to do it.

Well, having heard your concern, Ms.

Hamill and I and the staff will go back and look at it and see what, you know, submitting the city manager's budget in February, that means that we will roll right into the new budget preparation right after the fiscal year closes, you know, after we adopt a budget.

And it would have to be in order to

to move it back a month.

Well, there's definitely always the opportunity to have work sessions to discuss budget development as well ahead of time.

Sometimes it feels like as we are preparing the budget, to your point about that compressed time for discussing things in February,

As much as you are reacting to the city manager's proposed budget, a lot of times that's the first time we're discussing issues as well.

And so there might be some opportunities, you know, to have some work sessions ahead of that, i.e., you know, if you want to talk about

the school formula or if you wanted to talk about some of these other more lofty goals about you know to Mr. Rogers point earlier what does meeting the mark for affordable housing plan look like to you I mean we could certainly have a lot of those and

past April 15th gets us into trouble in the Commissioner of Revenue's office and various other places because there are deadlines that we cannot move there.

If we're going to try to make it so that we have that decision made at a time that is not

School Vacation Time.

I would note, I don't know if it's a better or bad idea, but just looked it up.

I don't know if they were anomalies, but the past two years Albemarle adopts their budget the first week of May, so.

We'll look at the options.

We'll look at the options and come back.

Any other questions or conversation on the issue?

By the way, welcome.

Thank you.

Okay.

We're in recess.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

Counselors, any announcements?

I have one.

The Commissioners and Cairns Food and Fund Drive, an annual partnership between the Commissioners of the Revenue Association of Virginia and the Virginia Federation of Food Banks, will span statewide once again throughout the month of August.

Commissioners of the Revenue across the Commonwealth will take on the fight against food insecurity.

Now, in its fourth year, the Commissioners and Cannes Food and Fund Drive is a month-long competition for commissioners of revenue offices to join together to raise food and funds for their local food banks throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Offices compete to collect the most food and funds during a time of the year when resources are in short supply and the need remains great.

This year the Charlottesville Commissioner of the Revenues Office with a huge assist from the Charlottesville Fire Department plans to out-raise our colleagues from around the state.

We are honored to participate yet again in such a worthwhile cause and we appreciate the assistance of Chief Smith and the CFD and Chief Durrett and the CPD with collections and helping spread the word.

Thus said Todd Divers, Charlottesville Commissioner of the Revenue.

Drop-off locations outside Charlottesville City Hall, main entrance, downtown mall side, Ridge Street Fire Station, Fontaine Fire Station, 250 Bypass Fire Station, Charlottesville Police Department.

Online giving, you can do that at www.brafb.org forward slash commissioners.

Every $1 donated helps provide enough food for four meals.

So that's exciting.

I do.

This is for the CHAP program, the Charlottesville Homeowner Assistance Program.

In an effort to promote and preserve homeownership, the Charlottesville City Council offers grants of assistance to qualifying low and moderate income homeowners.

These grants are intended to assist qualifying recipients with the ongoing cost of homeownership.

The application period for this program runs July 1st through September 1st.

You may qualify for a grant of $1,000, $1,500, $2,000, or $2,500 depending on your household adjusted gross income.

Applicant must be a legal owner and occupant of the residential property as of January 1st of the current year.

Applicant, spouse, and co-owners residing in the home cannot own any other real estate.

The current year assessed value on the applicant's residential property is $420,000 or less.

Applicants household income using the IRS federal adjusted gross income for the 2021 tax year is $60,000 or less.

You must be currently enrolled in the real estate relief program for the elderly and disabled.

Oh, you must not be, repeat that, not be currently enrolled in the real estate

Relief Program for the elderly and disabled.

Documentation, you will need to provide, applicant must provide a copy of the 2021 IRS Form 1040 for any adult relatives and or co-owners residing in the home.

If the applicant or any adult relatives or co-owners residing in the home are not required to file or have not yet filed the 2021 IRS 1040 tax return, further steps and supporting documents will be required.

so apply online at charlottesville.gov backslash COR or in person by appointment at the Commissioner of Revenue's office.

Remember to bring income documentation for your household.

Call 434-970-3160 for more information.

Thank you.

Okay, so time for the consent agenda.

Ms.

Consent agenda number two, minutes, June 21st, special meeting, July 18th, special meeting.

Three, resolution authorizing a refund of $8,132.19 to a tax paying entity or business,

for business license tax paid in error for 2022, second reading.

Four, resolution approving settlement of disputed real estate assessment, Omni Hotel, second reading.

Five, resolution COVID homelessness emergency response program, community development block grant amendment, $250,816, second reading.

Six, resolution

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

Each speaker will have up to three minutes.

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

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

We'll alternate in person and virtual speakers.

And let me remind you, this is only to talk about the items that were just read on the consent agenda.

All right.

Any further questions or comments from Council?

I move that we adopt the consent agenda.

Okay.

Ms.

Councillor McGill?

Yes.

Yes.

Mayor Snook?

Yes.

Yes, Mr. Mayor, a couple of items.

This may take a little bit because I want to cover some ground from past council meetings where questions were raised.

It is my pleasure to share with you that the Government Finance Officers Association, GFOA, has notified the City that we have again received the Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting for the FY21

Annual Financial Report ending June 30, 2021.

This is the 42nd consecutive year the city has been awarded this honor.

This award acknowledges the dedication and professionalism of the city's financial management team, especially our comptroller and accounting staff.

Congratulations to our finance team for a job well done.

Also like to report that Charlottesville is ranked number 22 out of 2,300 cities as best places to live in the U.S.

by Livability Magazine.

Only two cities in Virginia were rated, and Virginia Beach came in 43.

The Office of Economic Development is excited to offer a fourth round of building resilience among Charlottesville entrepreneurs brace grant.

This program is a matching reimbursable grant up to $2,500 to help offset qualifying expenses incurred by city businesses.

The business is required to provide a 30% match for the city's contribution.

Applications will be accepted from August 15th at 9am to September 2nd at 5pm.

Interested city businesses can learn more at the OED website.

Also, on July 19th, the City closed on the purchase of a parking lot at 921 East Jefferson Street.

The additional spaces will become a part of the City's public parking program and be available for monthly lease soon.

Following the recent update to City Council, the Office of Economic Development has issued a request for proposals for a qualified consulting team.

to develop a comprehensive economic development strategy plan to help guide the city's development activities for the next five years.

The project is expected to commence in the fall.

attended the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority and the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority board meetings.

The highlights were a presentation on their cybersecurity preparation and report out on their strategic planning process.

Both were very interesting, and we will be visiting both aspects, cybersecurity and the strategic plan, from that model.

The Committee for the Preservation and Maintenance and Security of the Downtown Mall convened last week to begin evaluating some of the longstanding issues on the Mall as shared by many of the business owners and residents.

The Committee will assess

some immediate changes and hold discussions with business owners as we seek to plan for the 50th anniversary of the Mall.

We will present an update on actions to be taken over the next several months.

As we approach the 5th anniversary of August 12th,

Questions have been raised about our readiness from a public safety standpoint.

I have a statement that we've prepared that I'd like to read to the citizens and to you, and we will post it on the website.

Members of the Charlottesville community,

With the anniversary of the violent events of August 2017 approaching, I write to provide an update regarding the City of Charlottesville's safety and emergency preparedness efforts for the weekend of August 11-13, 2022.

There are no specific credible threats identified that the Charlottesville Police Department is currently following and we constantly monitor.

The Charlottesville Police Department is working with Teen Pavilion as they are hosting a Friday After Five event on August 12th.

To ensure adequate coverage, CPD is maintaining a status of heightened situational awareness and monitoring chatter from intelligence sources to be prepared to increase available coverage downtown

and in parks which can be activated quickly in response to any pop-up emergencies that might occur.

CPD is having ongoing communications with state and regional partners to prepare to quickly respond to any incidents that may occur.

At this time, the City of Charlottesville will initiate the following street closure.

from 6 o'clock p.m.

August 11th through 6.30 Sunday August 15th.

Heather Hire Way, 4th Street Southeast from East Market Street to East Water Street will be closed.

Public transit provided by Charlottesville Area Transit and all buses will run on normal schedules.

In addition, the city would like to ensure that every member of the community has access to the community mental health, wellness,

Coalition's Behavioral Health Crisis phone number should they need assistance and support.

Please dial 434-230-9704 to access the Regional Crisis Call Center.

Further, members of our community can dial 434-227-0641 to connect with the Health

Help Happens Here information and a referral line to help find services that will best fit your needs.

The safety and well-being of every member of the Charlottesville community remains our top priority.

If at any time there develops a public safety concern, the City will provide an updated communication to the public.

Okay.

Also, the search for the police chief is underway.

Polyhire is the recruitment consultant that is working with us on this project.

Palihai will establish a portal to access a survey that the community can use to give confidential feedback on the traits experienced residents would like to see in the next chief of police and the issues they would like the next chief to address.

Feedback from the survey will be used to develop the recruitment profile that will be used to attract candidates and define who would more closely match what the community is looking for and achieve.

The recruiter will submit five candidates to our internal committee to review.

The committee will select two candidates to present to city council.

After the council's input, the manager will make a selection and council has final approval.

The link to this survey has been posted on the city's webpage.

It's active now and we encourage people to go on.

It will be active beginning now until August 15th.

Poly High will also initiate a series of focus groups with stakeholders throughout the city and we will be providing them people to contact and we are looking for people's input.

To wrap this up.

There was a question about employee salaries at the last meeting and some actions that we are taking.

After consultation with the council, the city manager approved a pay plan for the police department that increases salaries for department personnel and make their salaries more competitive with surrounding agencies to which we've lost a number of our officers.

From the savings in the vacancies in the department, we were able to increase salaries without increasing the department budget.

Tonight, through the recommended ARP allocation, we are proposing to increase the salaries of the Fire Department and the Sheriff's Department.

We are also evaluating our ability to address the salary situation at Charlottesville Area Transportation.

as well, where we have a very serious situation in terms of vacancies there and losing employees to other surrounding agencies, but we're working on that and expect it to be resolved soon.

We are also, as you know, engaged in a compensation study, which we will have at the end of the year, and that will address the remainder of the employees.

And at the same time, as you know, we will be bringing to council on October 15th a proposed ordinance for collective bargaining.

And that, after public hearings and discussion with employees,

publicly.

We will bring the ordinance to council for first reading at the first meeting of September, I think that's the sixth, and then the second meeting in September for the final ordinance.

So we expect the process of collective bargaining to begin late fall.

There was an issue raised about

the number of employees in the police department who were not present on January 6th.

I looked into this matter and I discovered that there were, for January 5th, 37 people absent.

January 6th, there were 31 police officers absent and on January 7th, 25.

But they were mostly on schedule days off, the regularly scheduled days off.

and there is nothing that we see that raises any alarm.

There has been no question raised about any of these members having used their day off to go participate in other activities that landed some people in jail.

So there's nothing further to look at there.

During the weekend, another question was raised about another employee.

During the weekend of January 16th through 17th, CPD received information from a city official reporting that a CPD officer responsible for information technology issues had been at the Capitol on January 6th.

That was not correct.

The city's assistant chief investigated the matter and determined that one city employee who was employed in the IT department had been in the Capitol on January 6th.

The assistant chief reported his findings to the city manager at the time and the chief of police on January 20th.

There were no city records available for me to review other than the assistant chief's report of his conversation with the employee.

I have located an email showing that CPD notified the FBI.

in Richmond about this employee on about January 21st.

I've spoken with the employee who has never been charged with any criminal offense.

He has been interviewed by the FBI three times over the past year and a half.

The employee reports that no further contact from the FBI.

The employee has not been charged with any action stemming from his presence at the Capitol on January 6th.

It's reported that more than 800 people who attended the rally and entered the Capitol on January 6th have been arrested and charged.

80 of them to date have been convicted.

in this group are individuals who are pictured and filmed by themselves and others engaging in destructive acts or being disruptive.

The rest stem from their criminal activity, not merely their presence in the Capitol.

The employee in question admits he attended the events at the Capitol.

He posted his presence on social media.

page.

He shared this information with the FBI, and he was not arrested.

And as I pointed, I tried to reach the FBI, and the agent has retired.

So at this point, having looked at all of these factors,

I and the employee having provided a letter of apology to the city manager which I will not share.

He is very sorrowful of his activities.

He's experienced a great deal of personal loss and considering the totality of circumstances including that it's been a year and a half without any action

I conclude that no further action or review is warranted in this case.

And I hope this settles this matter.

Thank you, Mr. City Manager.

It's now time for Community Matters.

We have four preregistered speakers, leaving 12 slots for additional speakers on Community Matters.

Each speaker will have up to three minutes to speak.

We're now going to open the floor to the pre-registered speakers.

Let's say there are four of them.

Others wishing to speak may select the raise hand option in the Zoom webinar to be placed in the speaker queue.

If you have joined by phone and wish to speak during community matters, you may press star nine.

In-person attendees may raise your hands to be recognized and will alternate you with virtual speakers.

Mayor Snook, I do not see Tameka Durrett on Zoom.

Tameka Durrett here?

Ms.

Okay, I'm Qua Farah Humes and I'm speaking on behalf of the people that voted you all in office.

I believe that the engagement of the comprehensive plan is what would benefit Charlottesville.

Having the comprehensive plan will provide the city with affordable housing.

We would be able to create triplexes, duplexes, stack townhomes, make more room for rental spaces instead of the one-on-one lot.

One house on one lot, excuse me, which makes sense because Charlottesville is growing and with growing comes poverty, homelessness and uneducated children who are our future.

I'm asking you to hold the developers accountable as well as the city.

Developers intentionally change their minds with the dollar signs increases their pockets.

They go from creating affordable housing to creating expensive housing.

All a developer has to do is pay into the contingency funds, which seems to be a savings plan.

But who is being saved with these contingency funds and who are you saving the funds for?

It's clearly not the low income of the white, black, and brown people in Charlottesville.

We would like to see that poverty line decrease.

Mayor, you were the former defense attorney and in your former role, which was the career path that you chose, you've locked up majority of the black, excuse me, more than enough of the black, brown, white, lower income people.

How do we know that we are able to trust you and that you will provide affordable housing for them?

Charlottesville is filled with plantation land and we're so intrigued with redeveloping the lower income housing.

for the people in this area.

And someone just stated that we're number 22 on the list for the best places to live.

Who's voting for this and how is that affecting the lower income people here in Charlottesville?

Having the comprehensive plan enables more opportunities for lower income families to develop futures for their families.

And it provides stability, creating better education and more jobs for the people.

It also creates investments for Charlottesville.

It helps bring together communities creating family values.

Thank you, Ms.

Humes.

Next on the agenda is Ms.

All right.

Ms.

Yes, hello, my name is Rosia Parker and I have a couple of things I want to speak about.

I would like to speak about these streets on Fifth and Dice and Seventh and Main Street, I mean Seventh and Hardy Drive.

A lot of these streets are very dangerous.

They're two-way intersections.

I mean, two-way where people can drive and that's dangerous because it's going to end up being serious accidents with other cars being presented on one side of the road where you're going to have to go around to be able to drive.

So I asked y'all to look at some of these side streets so we won't have a serious accident.

I would really appreciate that and then also 2017 community members came together to create something that would make police accountable for the actions regarding police brutality dating back generations for black communities and public housing as well as disadvantaged communities coming from the DMC report as well as the Heathen report where the police abused the community J8 and by gassing them A12 standing down

The People's Coalition created a resolution dated back December 2017 specifying asking for public housing residents as well as disadvantaged communities to also be on the board.

Then we also created a community form to get community members involved in the process of creation of the community, I mean the police civilian review board.

Okay and with that being said I have been violated

numerous of times I've applied to this board I don't know how many times Gwendolyn Allen was chosen in 2020 to the board she resigned so I applied five times being rejected for whatever reason allowing the city council to violate the ordinance and bylaws section 2453 board membership appointment terms and appointment process and board compensation one

Also, they violated community engagement, section 2465A, community outreach, B, community meetings, C, included in reports So there has not been any meetings involved I want to go back and say that y'all violated the laws by now allowing me to be on the

PCRB, now PCOB, which I have completely violated me not being on there because we were supposed to have two public housing residents and one from a disadvantaged community.

I am a low-income public housing resident in which I helped create the resolutions which was specifically asked for two public housing residents and one disadvantaged community member.

Well, as Bellamy Brown was an applicant in 2020, which was chosen to be on the board in the place of me, which did not come from a disadvantaged community nor a PCRB.

So that is definitely violation.

So y'all need to do something or I will be coming with a lawsuit because that is definitely violations and I just gave you the sections to what you violated on.

Thank you, Ms.

Our next speaker on Zoom is Tanisha Hudson.

So I want to follow up by saying Mr. Rogers and Charlottesville was on the list looking at livability.com.

Charlottesville median income is $59,598.

and home value is $445,000 house with a $60,000 salary.

Not going to work at all.

I don't know why you all decided last minute to do the raises.

You should have did that from the beginning.

It's unfair for certain departments to get increases and everyone not get increases.

And I believe you only did that because you know I was aware of the person from Parks and Rec.

who brought an issue to Mr. Rogers and she was giving back pay.

So again, y'all be playing about the wrong stuff.

I don't know why.

And then number three, the safety plan, you didn't have one.

You just went into your police department and got a list just last week of who was going to be off, who requested vacation, and who was going to be here and who wasn't going to be here for August the 12th.

This is unacceptable, and while it may not bother any of you on council that are not of color, doesn't make anybody else feel safe who was in those streets on August 11th and 12th.

or July 8th for that matter.

The lack of transparency, Lloyd, because you're the mayor, the lack of transparency at this point is just ridiculous.

Michael, you claim to have ran on being transparent and being open.

You being a little secretive too.

Same goes for you, Sena.

Brian, you and Juan Diego, y'all knew, but understand, y'all been secretive about a lot of stuff.

I don't know if it's the little gag order y'all under or what, because you're being sued left and right, but you don't have to be secretive to this community.

The people who vote you in there, elections are coming.

You know that.

I don't know why y'all choose to play with the very people who vote you in.

It's disrespectful at this point that you all just don't even care or bother to want to even deal with the community members.

You don't respond to emails.

You don't respond.

Anytime somebody write, I could write Sam, I could write counsel, I could write Mr. Rogers.

Y'all don't even respond to emails.

It's disrespectful at this point.

Thank you, Ms.

Hudson.

So, we're now on to, that goes, has Ms.

All right, so now we come to the in-person speakers.

Is there anyone in person who would like to address counsel?

We've been told that we should participate in number nine, which is the plastic... Plastic bag tax?

Okay.

You can participate now if you want to, but the plastic bag tax is actually the next item on the agenda, so I'll leave it to you.

And for those who are not able to see what's going on, we are having a visit from the Green Grannies.

All right, we're the Green Grannies of Charlottesville.

We have been singing in our community for over seven years.

You could tell we are seniors and we are activists.

We have been concerned about the environment.

from many, many years ago.

And we are here today to support the $0.05 tax on plastic bags.

The county has already approved it.

The plastic is all over.

It's destroying our planet, and Charlottesville needs to do its part.

The one part of the tax that we're a bit concerned about is that people who are struggling already financially, and maybe you guys could be a bit creative on how to assist that.

A tisket, a casket Bring your bags or basket Plastic fits on everything And what they do is drastic Drastic, drastic Plastic's problematic Please refuse them at the store Cause all facts are fantastic

Fantastic, fantastic Don't pollute with plastic Use fabric bags wherever you shop I hate to sound bombastic Bombastic, bombastic Recycle bags of plastic Keep them from the atmosphere

Thank you so much.

Now pass the tax.

Please.

Thank you.

Yes, Mayor Snook.

Robin Hoffman is our next on Zoom.

Hello, everybody.

I just want to make a couple announcements.

CPA TV news segment.

So Michael Payne now has a Community Matters segment.

It is aired on Wednesdays at 7 p.m.

on your CPA TV phone, which you can stream by going into the government website.

it's so cool you just press tap on the stream part and you see it live and also 4 p.m.

on Fridays

he is amazing he he offers a whole bunch of information and I just implore everybody to get on CPA TV we hope that in October so we can have an opening and get everybody on board so it will be our new Facebook then also the Botanical Gardens

I'm hoping that they will get on the center will get on and of course all the climate action people so that people will be informed like up to date what's what what policies and all that and also I'm advocating for telemedicine for schools opening this semester telemedicine I've actually written up a proposal

It was submitted in 2009 to Virginia Tia Campbell.

I've been trying to get people interested.

I will be going to the county and delivering that proposal to them.

It will help the health care situation, the attendance situation, the COVID situation.

And it's very cheap to do because we have everything online, including the

School nurses that are certified in the city and the county are doing a fabulous job getting all that information on the computer so just a little bit of a tweaking and then people can actually talk to people trainers that can Dickinson and anything else resource wise including STDs Planned Parenthood all that stuff

especially the kids in the high school they don't want to talk to the counselors and in-house they want to be able to do it on telemedicine with a secured encrypted board certified providers instead of using their cell phone and getting some bad information and the next thing is

that the post office now is being tweaked.

Thank goodness for Creed Deeds and Sally Hudson.

They're looking into making sure that we have secure voting and everything else.

And also, I just want to put a shout out to the communications department again, because we do have the state of the art

and I do have one question is how does an IT person who went to the

to the January 6th attendance.

How is he secure?

I mean, he must have, you know, he wants to advocate for these people that are insurrectionists.

There's no doubt about it, and he's on IT.

We should know the name of this person, and we should also know that he should not be working in IT.

Thank you, Ms.

Thank you.

Katrina Turner, as you know.

I'm bringing this.

Mr. Rogers wants to know what we want in a new chief of police.

This is what I want in a new chief of police.

After five years, I finally got records of what happened to my son.

and when I got these records, I had meetings with Chip Boyles and Mooney, Lisa Robertson, Ashley with lots of people.

When Mooney gave me these records, he told me I was going to be very upset when I seen these records.

So I just want to quickly say the first page is the complaint I filed on officers Hickey and Pleasance.

The second page is the decision letter that I received when I filed that complaint.

The third one is the first statement that Officer Hitney made.

Everything in this statement is perjury.

Everything that he wrote in here other than the supposed victim

hitting my son as my son said.

Everything in here, he perjured himself.

I've been saying this from the beginning.

Mr. Snook, I'd like to ask you a question just looking at the third piece of paper that's there, the report from Hickey.

how this does not mention one word about me being on the scene that night and witnessing every single thing they did to my son that night.

Not one word of me being on this report.

But in the decision letter saying that I heard and seen what I wanted to see and hear and that I

knew my son was uncooperative that night.

Now, if I'm nowhere mentioned in this police report that I was there and witnessed everything that happened that night, how did I file a complaint on these police officers?

There's another piece of paper.

It's the next to the last piece of paper.

It's from Region 10.

and I highlighted a part for you and I'd just like for you all to just read this part that I highlighted for you to let you see who those children were in danger of that night.

Okay.

This right now is waiting for the next chief of police yet again.

Now, I've been told that nothing can be done.

Thank you, Ms.

Mayor Snook, Nancy Carpenter has her hand raised.

All right.

Thank you very much for this opportunity to speak tonight.

I must say I was surprised by hearing that there had been a conversation or a meeting last week among myriad people regarding the downtown mall and a celebration for what it is or what it isn't.

I'm very concerned because in attending the national conference this past week to end homelessness and reading a lot there is a definite increase in the criminalization of being unsheltered in cities and towns and counties across this country.

I'm hoping that you have the right people at the table

that will maintain this focus as these business people and these other entities maybe there's some government employees I don't know continue to have this conversation about what a proper celebration looks like for this community because as you know the downtown mall is the living room of people who are unsheltered and as such they shouldn't be barred from their living room

A lot of times what happens when people are criminalized, they lose their papers, they lose their documents.

You have no idea how damn hard it has been during this pandemic for people to get a picture ID, to get a social security guard, damn to even get their birth certificate when these sweeps and activities happen against people who are unsheltered.

So I hope, like I said, you have the right people who are speaking and maintaining that focus so that these folks don't get lost in the mix as you move forward with whatever activities are decided on.

Because I do know that there is concern about the Friends of the Downtown Mall Group that has subsumed or assumed the Downtown Business Association members as to where their hearts truly lie.

and one last comment I'll make in reference to the report back by interim city manager Mr. Rogers is that someone who

provided security for Alex Jones at a Stop the Steal event.

Someone who was a few seconds behind the breach into the Capitol in one of the entrances.

You know, they can be sorrowful all they want to, but it doesn't change a leopard's spots, okay?

So just saying that those folks that we understood five years ago

that were coming into this community.

We also understood that they were a part of the process.

So thank you so much for this time.

Thank you, Ms.

Carpenter.

Is there anyone else in chambers here?

Okay.

Okay.

So we will close the community matters portion.

And we'll now move on to the action items portion of the agenda.

The first action item is the proposed plastic bag tax.

Yes, sir.

Good evening, council and members of the community.

I'm going to give a brief revisit to the plastic bag tax ordinance that I introduced at the last meeting ahead of the public hearing, just in case any individuals who would choose to speak during the public hearing may not have been able to hear details of what's been proposed.

The ordinance that is before you is set with the projected effective date of January 1, 2023.

That causes it to be in alignment with the county's proposed tax as well.

It's a five cents per disposable plastic bag levy that would be collected in the stores.

It's collected by the individual retailers.

Grocery stores, convenience stores, and pharmacies are the three retailers that are required to participate.

is very similar to their collection of retail sales and use collections that they would then remit to the state tax division and the tax division would then audit and remit those funds back to the municipalities.

We are providing that our program would simply focus on providing reusable bags to SNAP and WIC recipients, which is one of four eligible uses provided in the state statute.

The other three eligible uses is education to reduce environmental waste, mitigation to pollution and litter, and environmental cleanup.

The reason for focusing on the first item is to of course make sure there is no disparate impact to low income households and because we need to actually see what would be generated by the levying of the tax it's best for us to focus there to ensure that we're not creating a hardship on individual households before then moving to the climate action that can result from any additional funds that may be available

The work that's been done thus far has been at my hands to get this in alignment with the county to get it in place so that it can go active January 1.

The next steps for us would be, of course, after the public hearing in your vote this evening, if we were to pass this item, I would immediately submit the ordinance, the pass ordinance to the state tax commission.

They will then certify that they are ready to begin receiving the tax collections from the city of Charlottesville.

retailers, and then we would be in the process to begin to receive those reimbursements from them.

For what we have to do at this time is to simply just get ready for that process.

We are doing additional research on bag types.

As mentioned in the initial presentation, Councilor McGill referenced

Request to consider bags on wheels so that we could actually support the elderly and disabled individuals who may have difficulty carrying bags to see if we might be able to offer this intervention on their behalf.

The statute does not state for sure if that is permissible, so we need to make sure that it is okay for us to go that far with the provision of a bag.

But we hope to be able to prove that that is possible and to make those available as well.

That is basically all that I have for you at this moment of just giving a general overview as to where we stand.

But with any additional suggestions from you, we'll fix that and we can bring it back for the next meeting.

Thank you, Mr. Sanders.

So let us now open the public hearing.

Of course, we've already had one comment on the topic from the Green Grannies.

Mayor Snook, I see one raised hand at the moment.

Michael Pillow will be our first speaker.

Thank you very much.

Good evening.

My name is Michael Pillow.

I'm with the Piedmont Group of the Sierra Club, and I'm a resident of Crozet, and I am speaking in favor of a disposable plastic bag tax.

The Green Grannies are obviously a very tough act to follow, so I'll keep this short.

And I do want to say we appreciate the work that Mayor and Council and Mr. Sanders and his staff have done to date.

Just a few points.

One is, unlike a lot of taxes, this tax, people have a choice.

If they really need to use a plastic bag, the option to pay five cents per bag.

but there are other choices as the Green Granny's very nicely laid it out.

Reusable bags, basket, a backpack, a box, or like many stores already do, no bag at all and just take your groceries out to the car in a cart.

One of the concerns besides the effect on lower income people or probably a supplement is the timing, the economic situation right now, maybe not ideal.

I don't know when the situation will be ideal, but I think, as with many other things, it's time to get on with it.

The pollution is not going to get any better with age.

And as Martin Luther King once said, the time is always right to do the right thing.

So not to minimize how every dollar or penny counts, but if someone uses 10 bags a week, that's 50 cents a week.

Again, it can add up over time, but people have a choice.

And reusable bags are available.

The Sierra Club has distributed bags already at a couple of food pantries, at least one supermarket, and a couple of other locations.

And we're willing to continue doing that.

We can also help organize a redistribution as a UVA student group did last year.

There are a lot of extra bags available.

In fact, that's one of the things we've noticed when we've done bag distributions.

People say, look, I already have a trunk full.

I just have to remember to take them out.

So

I think these Mr. Sanders alluded to, we need continuing city and county coordination on communications, community involvement and bag donations, enlist businesses and other groups to help with that and the Sierra Club along with many other environmentally concerned citizens stand ready to support you to implement the tax.

Thank you, Mr. Pillow.

Good evening.

My name is Kirk Bowers.

I live in the Pantops area.

I'm speaking as conservation chair for the Piedmont Group, Sierra Club, and to reinforce Mike Pillow.

who is our plastics committee chair.

And we enthusiastically support the adoption of a plastic bag tax for Charlottesville.

It's obvious there's substantial environmental damage caused by plastic bags.

Plastic bags litter our land and waterways and harm aquatic life.

It is predicted that by 2050 there will be more plastic in the oceans and fish if we don't stop using plastic bags.

Plastic takes hundreds of years to decompose and break down into microplastics, which then pollute air, water, and soil and enter our food chain.

Most humans already have a lot of microplastics in their systems.

A bag tax can incentivize reduction of the use of plastic bags.

The city will benefit from using revenue from the plastic bag tax and they can use it for environmental cleanup, educational efforts about pollution reduction and to provide reusable bags for federal aid recipients.

What I've observed in local stores is clerks automatically hand out plastic bags.

It's just instinctual and it's company store policy unless you ask them not to give you plastic bags.

So I think the adoption of these orders would help stores change their policy for distribution of bags.

Consumers can simply avoid the tax by using reusable or paper bags.

As Mike said, Sierra Club is already distributing pre bags.

We'd like to thank you for your consideration.

And Nancy Carpenter also has a hand raised.

All right.

Thank you.

I do support this tax, but I did want to maybe make a point about connectivity.

Perhaps Deputy City Manager Sanders could connect with Mr. Harrow at the Blue Ridge Area Coalition for the Homeless because there are a lot of people that go from the street

to housing that are not eligible for SNAP, that are not eligible for Medicaid for various reasons and won't have that resource to be able to get those reusable bags and there are also a lot of people who are unsheltered that purchase food items

Thank you, Ms.

Just want to also remind you that in Europe,

They couldn't afford the oil that goes into the plastic bags.

So they haven't had plastic bags, no plastic containers, no nothing in Europe since the 80s.

We are very spoiled here, but also we're kind of dumb because we're actually feeding the fossil fuel industry.

They made more money during this pandemic with their oil products and their plastic products.

So if you really want to change the way

Commerce is going for, you know, all the things that you use in plastic, etc.

Boycott the plastic products and certainly bring in your bags.

And even if it's a bag that's, you know, old or whatever, it doesn't matter.

You know, that it just adds so much to the climate that we don't have plastic, you know, and that's what I want to say.

Thank you, Ms.

Rosea Parker has a hand raised.

All right.

I understand that they want this plastic bag tax, but also I am a public housing resident as well as a low income resident.

And if some of us don't receive money and just have snap benefits,

that doesn't pay for plastic bags and just recently going into another part of Virginia is already the plastic bag tax and if it hadn't been somebody loaning me that change I wouldn't have been able to take out my items

because I didn't have a bag.

So that puts us in a very detrimental situation because, like I say, a lot of us don't even receive money.

Some of us just receive benefits.

So that leaves us with having to drag our groceries out in a basket and having to put them in a car, which some of us may not have or some of us may be riding a bus.

So it makes it very hard for low-income people

And like Ms.

Carpenter said, especially the homeless or houseless community, that's going to definitely be hard on them because a lot of them also use these grocery bags to transport any items that they have, such as clothes or blankets or anything.

So I think that y'all need to really take this in consideration or make it a way that we're taking care of because, like I say, it's very hard for us.

So I just hope that y'all make the right decision.

Thank you, Ms.

Okay, so with no further speakers, the public hearing is now closed.

The matter rests with counsel.

Is there any discussion before we turn to a motion or somebody want to make a motion and then have discussion?

Well, I know we've been considering this for quite a while and that also we have been very concerned about making sure that those in our community who will be adversely affected

due to income issues are looked out for.

So I think it's really good that we have heard some areas, those in our community who still might need some of the free bags but might not necessarily be receiving SNAP benefits so that I'm hoping we will continue to work and team up with FAR and neighborhoods

and if people know of somebody who needs the free bags we should hopefully have a phone line that they can call to request them even if it's just our main phone line as it comes up.

And one of the things that I think we need to think about in terms of how we're going to

and end up rolling this out is that there's a specific exemption for durable plastic bags.

And by that, we mean bags that are designed where they have handles that are manufactured.

The intent is for multiple reuse.

They're at least four mils thick.

And so there ought to be a way to have those sorts of bags be used and maybe use some of the funds that would be generated

to purchase bags like that and have those in stores and so on.

I mean, there are ways to do it and certainly it's something that people all around the country have figured out ways to do it.

And I can't believe that we are stupider than they are.

I should note, by the way, we have gotten a number of letters from people like Lobbyists for Food Lion and

and so on, saying that if we do this, then people are going to end up using paper bags instead of plastic bags.

And there are some legitimate concerns about that.

For one thing, paper bags, to get the same number of paper bags into stores is a lot more weight, and it's a lot more gas and oil used to get the

the bags to the stores.

But ultimately, our hope is that nobody needs bags, be they paper or plastic, that people will say, and I've said just personally, I've got one of these great cloth reusable bags in my car, and I just need to

have an incentive to remember to take it into the store with me.

And the hope is that this tax would not raise a penny.

We hope that everybody would change their behavior and stop using these sorts of plastic bags, in which case we are a little bit closer to solving a problem.

So I say that only because I want to acknowledge

the fact that we have received some arguments against, and I at least have read those arguments and have thought about them and not simply dismissed them as coming from somebody with whom I disagree, but I think that there are legitimate points that can be made in response

Yeah, and guessing, you know,

Jesse, we know which way it'll go, but we just, you know, note that where they've been, they've been successful.

I mean, in San Jose, looking into it, the numbers are 89% reduction in plastic bag pollution and storm drains, 60% in creeks and rivers, use of reusable bags doubled, or more than doubled, and average plastic bag, or bags in general used per trip, went down significantly.

So I think it is effective.

I think the concerns about it being not

not as big a burden as other taxes we considered, but really an annoyance to some community members is true.

And I'll defer to staff on the best way to set up that program to distribute bags to the community.

But certainly, I know Councilor McGill has worked in homelessness services and social services.

Is there any way we can help connect you with groups or provide any perspective on how to make sure there's as few gaps in doing that as possible?

Just let us know.

No, I just would echo what has already been said.

I think that this is something that we can do here in Charlottesville.

There's so many things that are outside of our control when it comes to the climate, and we're working on those as well, but this is something that's specific, tangible, and I think will make a difference in our community, and I

I also credit and am grateful for the City Manager's Office.

All right.

Ms.

Councillor McGill?

Yes.

Yes.

Next item is a public hearing on a resolution for the American Rescue Plan Fund allocations.

Yes, Mr. Mayor and Council, at our last Council meeting at the 4 o'clock hour, we made a presentation on our recommendations for the allocation of the remaining ARP dollars that we've received.

As you recall, we received two tranches of funds, both for about $9.8 million, total amount being about $19 million.

There were allocations made, appropriations made in the course of the year, and there was amount remaining.

For this resolution,

We are proposing an allocation of $14,779,565.

And we laid out for you last week the categories, the items.

This memorandum contains a fuller description

of each of the categories that we are allocating the funds to and even down to leaving an amount unallocated as we pointed out in anticipation of further needs in the course of the year.

Thank you.

So this is a public hearing.

Let's first see if there are any people in the audience who would like to speak on the matter.

I don't see any actual members of the public here in the building here.

Actually, let me ask you, you're sitting there looking at us.

Is there something you needed to add to all of this, Mr. Cullinan?

Okay, all right, so let's talk about public hearing.

Sorry, now they're starting to pop up.

Here we go.

Nancy Carpenter is the first raised hand.

Thank you.

I did read the different proposals this afternoon as to how to spend the money and I apologize I don't have these actual requests in front of me but I really think with that money and with the

increase walking zones that a lot of young students will have when it's dark outside because right now we're starting school and it's light at both ends of the timeline but that's not going to last very long I think that a lot of this money ought to be put towards putting in sidewalks in those areas

even more so than what I think one request calls for because these littles will need every safety precaution when walking that they can possibly have because we know that when there's a snowstorm the school will open but the walking routes will suck

I mean they don't need to be walking on ice or slipping on ice and slipping out into traffic lanes or even the bicycle lanes whatever so anything that that can be done to perhaps you know decrease funds in one area perhaps some of these you know law enforcement recruitment or retention bonuses or whatever might be a way to look at that

but I really think that you know in the area that this money ought to be used for the betterment and for the safety of residents here in the city and those things that will go towards doing that should be paramount and those things not so much

Maybe that could be put back into that balance that interim city manager Rogers was talking about.

I think a little under $2 million will be unappropriated at this time.

But anything that helps with even purchasing some housing and

Hi, I'm just, this is a repeat of what I've said before is that I don't, it's not clear to me like who, what departments manage these funds once they are allocated.

That's number one.

Number two is really about how

little information there is on some of it.

So like the number four one says, request number four, responding to the public health emergency

and then blah blah blah potential focus areas have been identified as homelessness supports critical case management support as well as mental health and wellness supports it seems kind of vague like that's a five hundred thousand dollars so is there background information somewhere for us for the public to know exactly what this is going to be spent on and

Or if it's not decided yet, is there a way the public can influence how those broad areas get the money?

Or what creative ways those funds might be used within those broad areas?

So I don't know if you can answer that question right now.

I don't know the answer to that.

Yes.

The $500,000.

And as I understand, it's

But knowing that we have increased issues with those who are not who are falling through cracks and services, especially seeing people on the downtown mall.

And this is this is not trying to kick people off the downtown mall, but realizing that

there's people on the downtown mall who are falling through cracks.

And that was what I believe the community health outreach was about originally.

But whether that is the right, but as my understanding is this 500,000 could also be used potentially for that or Marcus Alert work or other mental health or homeless community work

That's right.

So there's a reason why you may not understand exactly what's being proposed.

Send me an email.

Okay.

Best way to email the council at charlottesville.gov.

It goes to all of us.

It goes to the city manager.

Right.

Thank you.

Appreciate the thoughts.

All right.

So we'll close the public hearing.

Yeah, so to the sort of last point that was raised, I know that Mr. Cullinan has sort of overall oversight in terms of this portfolio of money and that it's being spent in accordance with the U.S.

Treasury's requirements.

as it were on the hook to make sure that we're doing our fiduciary duty in terms of how this money is spent.

Sure, thank you.

You're correct.

At the end of the day, the buck stopped with me, so to speak, in terms of reporting to U.S.

Treasury

on a quarterly basis the use of the city's funds in terms of the more sort of nuts and bolts for lack of a better term depending on how those monies are being used we either develop a funding agreement with the external agency that might be receiving funding spelling out both the ARP requirements as well as the city requirements for that and having

signed copies of that.

And then in terms of staff members, the various subject matter experts that we have who might be managing those funds work to ensure that they have an understanding of the rules, the regulations, and the items that you have before you this evening and that you've received in the past, both with ARB money and CARES money, that's part of that process is ensuring at least at first blush that they do meet the various federal requirements associated

with those funds.

And we account for them separately.

We have a separate grant account.

Each project gets its own internal order.

So we can track those things on a regular basis.

And as I mentioned, we do follow quarterly reports as required by U.S.

And Mr. Cullen, it's my understanding that the ARPA funds are also much more restricted and strict as to what they, than the CARES money was.

Correct.

ARP funds are more permissive in the broader spectrum of what they can be used, but you are correct in terms of then the requirements of folks who might be receiving them.

There are more rigorous reporting requirements, more I would say on the back end than perhaps with the CARES

funds.

And maybe this is something that's already in place.

Would it be appropriate and or straightforward enough to do for your office or the city manager's office to update us sort of on the drawdown of these funds quarterly?

Maybe that's something you already do.

Sure, so I can actually report to you as of last Friday when our last quarterly report was due to U.S.

Treasury, we've of the approximately, I believe it's $4.8 million that council has appropriated already.

We've spent about $3 million of that to date.

In terms of implementation of these projects, the one that was raised is a human service issue that would fall under Deputy City Manager Ashley Marshall in the Human Services and Social Services Department.

I do notice that we have one or two items in here that will need to be continuously supported in future budgets.

This is one-time money and we're talking about putting in support that will need continuous support.

That was the initial thought.

And as some other items, you know, came along, we did some reallocation.

I think we can get it done for about 200,000.

That's lovely.

One question, I mean, maybe it's different for each different pile of money, but for all the unallocated money, you know, the strategic investment fund, agency investment fund, the larger unallocated pool, the COVID contingency fund, if that's not ended up being used, is there a rough sense of the timeline of when decisions would be made about how that money is allocated?

Is that going to be something that staff is going to be coming to

Council with recommendations for how to spend?

Yeah, I think that with the COVID reserve, we just have to see how things go as time demands.

given the situation in town.

With respect to the strategic investments, yes, we'll come back.

When there's a project identified, we'll have to come back to council for further consideration.

I was just going to build on that.

So with the potential of the COVID contingency fund, if we find that our pathways funding is just not holding up for our community need,

And my only other thought, you know, I think there's a lot of really

Good, important investments in housing, homelessness, community services.

There are still two I'm unsure of, particularly the Meadow Creek Trail and the CACVB investment.

Not that those investments don't have any value, but just given that there's a limited pool of money, the cost benefit analysis of those investment versus other alternatives for impacts created by COVID-19

I'm not sure I fully understand or agree with that those would be the best use of these funds compared to other potential uses, either incentive pay or getting a head start on dealing with wage compression issues with

Bus drivers, housing or homelessness supports, gun violence prevention, I mean, just a whole host of other possible investments that are still dealing with from the pandemic.

Like with the CACVB, I'm just not sure I understand what

what measurable benefit for even small businesses that has.

Is that going to help any businesses who are struggling compared to even just spending that money directly on brace grants to small businesses?

So again, overall, I think there's a lot of really good stuff.

We'll have some further discussion on that.

Other thoughts?

I would just offer the thought that this is a way of this particular allocation that has been recommended

I think allocates some funds to a lot of different categories, all of which are basically good investments, good categories, and in some cases we actually made a little bit of a trade-off in terms of things we could put money in from here as opposed to the end of the year surplus or something like that.

I think we have to kind of keep in mind that it's a package deal for what the city is spending its money on.

And if we did not spend, just as an example, if we didn't spend the money on the Meadow Creek Trail, I think that that money had originally been thought of as perhaps coming out of the end of the year surplus.

And so this

I'm not sure that it makes a lot of difference which category it comes out of.

I will say this.

One thing that concerns me is, and it's not a reason to vote no, but it's a reason to ask for some greater degree of clarity.

Looking at the $1 million strategic investment fund,

I have not been I've been complaining for almost three years now about the so-called strategic investment fund that City Council is supposed to have.

It's roughly 200,000 or has been roughly $200,000 and in many cases has been used for things that were neither strategic nor investments but seem to be sort of a

a council slush fund, if you will.

It seemed like a nice idea.

Where else can we find a pot of money?

I know.

Let's use the strategic investment fund or strategic initiative, I guess, is what the account was called.

I would hope that we would get some sense of what we mean by a strategic investment fund.

What kinds it says would be set aside to help the city quickly respond to unique opportunities having strategic value.

I think I may have some sense of what kinds of things that might mean.

Question.

This specific strategic investment, is this distinct from the sort of council strategic investment?

Think economic development opportunities.

That's what we were looking at.

An investment that investing in it could yield greater revenue

to the city long term.

A million dollars, it's not a lot, but it's a start.

My first cut on that was much higher, but we backed off of that, but thought we should make a statement that something should go toward positioning us to take advantage of opportunities to acquire

for land or a building, you know, for housing or whatever.

Distinct from the council's strategic initiatives.

Right.

My only point was going to be that I hope that we will all have a sense that the Strategic Investment Fund will, in fact, be used for activities that are both strategic and investments.

Right.

And not merely, oh, there's that pot of money over there.

Yeah.

Could I pose a question?

Sure.

So I'm wondering, Councilor Payne, are you wanting to pull those two items out of the list, or are you just raising them sort of as general concerns?

I would pull them out in favor of other investments we've discussed even about gun violence prevention and community services and just other investments related to COVID.

Both CACVB, and I may be alone on it, and I know Councillor Snook mentioned the Meadow Creek Trail as part of the allocation of any urine surplus.

I'm not in a point where I would say I would vote against that, but I'm in a place where I would really want to weigh it against what are other alternative investments to see.

Again, what's the cost benefit analysis?

Not that that has no value, but is it more value than what we're choosing not to invest in otherwise?

And I'm mainly coming from that perspective.

If I may, recall that the Convention and Visitors Bureau, $750,000 was matched by the county, you know, by agreement that both would put in that amount, and the county has already put in their amount.

So if we don't make our contribution, then one half of the agreement is not being fulfilled.

Is that a written agreement or a verbal agreement?

I'm not familiar with it.

Okay.

We'll provide you documentation on it.

I support the entire list.

I can appreciate Counselor Payne's perspective, but I personally support the entire list.

There's already $2.5 billion of other sorts of things.

Yeah.

It's something that has been promised to the neighborhood for a

Mr. Mickey would say 50.

But there's plenty of other things that have been promised for decades that also haven't happened that we're also not investing in.

But I do appreciate the point.

And as I said, I think overall it is good.

But I'm going to nitpick.

And that's what I nitpick on.

Well, at this point, of course, it's first reading only.

We don't have to have a formal vote on any of it tonight.

In fact, we can't have a formal vote on any of it tonight.

And so the and one of the things we had talked about was the fact that obviously Vice Mayor Wade is not here to offer his thoughts on the matter.

And so if we continue it on to the second reading two weeks hence, we will have the ability to have Vice Mayor Wade involved.

And in the meantime, perhaps if there's some nitpicky things we can

Yeah, and that's one of those things where we take it out of this pot of money, we take it out of that pot of money, but either way, we've got to do it.

Okay.

Yes.

So the next item is 415 10th Street rezoning.

Mr. Hluska, I see you up on the camera.

Mr. Mayor, members of council, good evening.

This is a rezoning ordinance to change the zoning of property located at 415 10th Street Northwest.

from R1S, which is currently zoned to B2 commercial with proffers.

Those proffers are assigned by the applicant and are in your packet.

The effect of this zoning would be to add several additional uses available to the owners of the property.

Those uses are art gallery, auditorium, private club, music hall, educational facility, technology-based business and office.

As we heard in our public hearing,

This property is currently a church, a historic church, but it is zoned R1S and church properties zoned R1S if they are no longer being operated as churches have very limited amounts of use.

The applicant wants to preserve the building as it is and is asking for these additional uses as a means to do so.

I am happy to answer any questions you have on the matter.

That is correct.

R1S zoning is extremely limited in the number of uses.

It's a low density, single family residential zoning.

There are, I think somebody could go through the ordinance and find maybe a few potential uses that you don't see very frequently in any R1S zone.

But for all intents and purposes, R1S is intended to be single family residential.

Houses of worship are allowed throughout the city.

But we do have these situations where, you know, a church potentially comes up and is no longer viable as a church, no longer has, you know, church attendance is declining in the country.

And so there are these properties that are coming up.

And in a lot of cases, their zoning prohibits kind of any,

The, if you'll recall at the original meeting when this was heard, staff raised the point that while there seemed to be for all the applicants intent seemed to be to preserve the project, the property as it was, there was no legal ability for the city to require that the building stay as is.

And so there was kind of the, you know, admittedly outside chance.

that an owner could get this rezoning and then at some point in the future demolish the church on the property and use it for one of these other uses that they were asking for.

So the applicant and the city staff with assisting that applicant

deferred for a meeting so that they could bring forward an additional item that is actually next on your agenda that designates the property as an individually protected property.

Anybody else have any questions?

Mr. Hluska before I guess the next thing would be to hear from the applicant.

Unless anybody's got any questions for Brian right now.

Okay.

So do we have the applicant on?

Hello, Mr. Dillahunt?

Do we do we have anybody trying to get on?

I see one raised hand is Joe Reg, the applicant.

OK.

Good evening, everyone.

Oh, absolutely.

Sorry about all that.

Let me see.

I can share my presentation.

All right.

Sorry, I got two things popping up here at once.

Background on this property, the Old Trinity Church is located on 10th Street Northwest and Grady Avenue.

It was originally relocated to its current location in the spring of 1937.

Originally it was in Palmyra, Virginia.

It was relocated to this location by the Charlottesville Episcopal Congregation and has been set in this location since then.

The property also has deep roots within the community.

Over the course of its

residency here in the Charlottesville area.

It's been known as place of worship.

It's been a school, a daycare, an outreach ministry, and a location for community gatherings.

In 2018, the current property was acquired by its current owner, Derry Holdings LLC.

At the time, the church was no longer in service as a congregation.

Its last congregation had actually decided to move away from this current location.

I believe at the time they had started to outgrow the size of the church.

Several of the community members approached the owner and asked them to revitalize this vacant property as a community center.

In 2020, we went ahead with some maintenance items with the church, mostly regazing the glass exterior, removing some vines that had started to grow up.

on the house we updated the inside mostly with new lighting fixtures HVAC most of your plumbing systems we also made the interior of the building ADA compliant so that the parish house and the church were connected with ADA access

That's mostly what we did throughout our construction process.

The current zoning is, as Mr. Haluska told everyone, it is a R1S, which prohibits the space from being utilized for weddings or any type of community event unless we actually have a church congregation in the building.

Our hope is to move forward with a B2 zoning.

Mostly this is so that we can be able to implement community gatherings within the 10th and Page neighborhood as well as the Rose Hill and surrounding neighborhoods such as Venable.

Mostly what we're looking to be able to hold are neighborhood meetings, weddings, social gatherings, local art displays, utilize it as an auditorium or a music hall, even as a house of worship if it's so desired by the community

With what we're trying to do, we're willing to proffer any additional residential uses in the excess of one dwelling unit per acre that currently exists on the property.

That's the home that is now located there.

As I've said, we're going to waive all non-residential uses allowed under the B2 zoning other than art gallery, auditorium, house of worship,

music hall, educational facilities, technology-based businesses and offices.

shall be permitted on the prop of the premises basically what our hope is here is that whatever the the overall community decides they need to utilize this space we want to fit that mold however we can see the possibility of doing so we're also profiting out no additional vehicle or ingress and egress to the subject property as well as designating this property as an individually protected property

Any questions that you all may have?

Well, some of the questions I have actually come to, so I lived in that neighborhood for 16 years.

Yes, ma'am.

Our intent is to hope that this is able to be utilized by the entire community.

The owners and those that I represent have been more than willing to say and do what they can for the community.

There has been some proposals to assure that

at least an amount could be a sliding scale for community members.

We understand that obviously the developers are not nonprofits.

Developers are in this because it comes down to their bottom line and they're investors.

But I am also curious what assurances the neighborhood

could have because the neighborhoods already had a little bit of pushback when they felt that there was going to be some more affordable housing than actually took place with the dairy market itself.

I do know that the dairy market has been great about providing a free place for the Neighborhood Association.

I think the main reason we did all of this to this piece of property was not for a profit reason.

It was to look at a location that means something to this community and to be able to bring it back to life so that it can be utilized in that facet.

The intent is 100% to do that.

The reason why we're even going through this zoning process at this time is so that we can utilize this property because since 2020, it's literally had to sit with nobody in it not to be able to be utilized.

The community even approached us to do a lot of this work so that they could hold their meetings there.

We could have gathering places.

We even talked in the initial aspects of what can we look at for just music hall or community upbringing, storytelling locations, that kind of thing.

And we're going to do everything that we can to

to make that happen.

Most of my questions had been answered during the Planning Commission meeting when this was discussed.

You already answered this at the Planning Commission meeting, but I'll admit to have I forgot.

So mostly this would be looking more as like a co-working space is what we're looking for.

Typically, you know, with the way that modern technology is for a lot of the area, people need somewhere that they can jump on calls such as this and be able to converse with you fine people.

We want to be able to utilize that space.

Thank you.

Again, that's all I had.

Just, I guess, a comment.

So the point of the next item on the list, the IPP, I think it is, Individually Protected Property, one of the reasons you all offered to do that was to sort of, as it were, tie your hands in the future to commit this property such that it would be available for the community.

That's correct.

A large majority of the reason we also went the IPP was so that this property was going to be able to stay as a staple within the area that if somebody decided to for any reason make changes to the property, especially on the exterior, that they would have to go through another facet in order to do so.

The Architectural View Board would be something that they would have to pine on to show them what their plan was for this church if they were going to change any of the exterior facade in any way, shape, or form and have them approve that.

You know, we really wanted to make sure that we satisfied people's concerns with any chance that this property may for any reason be demolished or removed.

In no way, shape or form is that the current owner's intent.

The only other thing I wanted to make is just an observation from my own experience.

I guess this was two years ago.

Somehow or another, I had the opportunity to walk through that site when it was being renovated.

And that building was in really, really dire shape.

And the amount of investment that your company has spent in preserving, frankly, what was there and also in improving, I think,

I think that the money that was spent was a good investment.

And I think, you know, at least from my perspective as a member of this community, I appreciate the fact that this asset was preserved.

It is an important place in Charlottesville.

It's civil rights.

a movement has important connections to that building and so I'm glad that we still have it and that the owner spent the time and the money to preserve it not only for now but for years to come.

Do we have to do that for the IPP as well?

That's a separate agenda item.

Okay.

Any other questions or feedback from Council?

I am.

Okay.

So let's move it to the consent agenda for August 15th for the second reading.

Now the second piece to this is the IPP.

Mr. Werner?

Is Jeff Werner going to present this to us?

Well, okay.

So this is our ordinance and if Jeff jumps in, he can take it over for me.

So this would be an ordinance designating the property as an individually protected property.

As you know, this would designate it as a historic property within the city.

We have a list of individually protected properties that are outside historic districts, but are by their nature individually protected.

Yeah.

I have no questions.

Okay.

Is there agreement then to move it to the consent agenda?

Yes.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you, Mr. Hluska.

Tell Mr. Werner you did your job great.

Next item on the agenda, resolution of support for four TJPDC and MPO grant applications.

And this is Christine Jacobs and Ryan Mickles.

Are Ms.

Good evening, Mayor Snook and City Council.

My name is Ryan Mickles and I'm with the Charlottesville Albemarle MPO.

I have with me Mr. Michael Barnes from the Virginia Department of Transportation.

to help answer questions.

The NPO Policy Board approved the submittal of four Round 5 SmartScale applications.

SmartScale is a statewide program that distributes funding based on an evaluation of projects.

The Round 5 projects are primarily multimodal bicycle and pedestrian projects.

Those projects are Avon Street,

multimodal from Druid Avenue to Avonport, District Avenue at Hydraulic Road, Cedar Hill Road, a two-lane roundabout is proposed.

Fifth Street multimodal improvements from Harris Road to the Holiday Inn site, sidewalks, shared use path, and the Rivanna River bicycle and pedestrian bridge cross at Willa Mills.

Back in February of this year, the NPO held a public webinar on these projects.

The most current sketches that you have or what you have are the most current sketches and some preliminary cost estimates.

The final applications are or were due today at one o'clock at five o'clock August 1st.

We have submitted those projects and we're just looking for the council to support these projects.

Just one clarifying question.

No, sir, Councilor.

This project was, I believe, initiated or birthed out of the Route 29 Hydraulic Road study a few years ago.

I do know that there are a set of improvements that came out of that study.

Okay, so yeah, I guess I misspoke.

It relates, but this is only that one piece of it, not other sections.

Yes, sir.

Well, now would be the time.

Yeah, if I could weigh in, I think the ones you're talking about, Councilor Payne, you're talking about the other ones impacting the hydraulic.

Right.

I think that those have, we can let Mr. Barnes answer this, but I believe those are with VDOT at this point.

They've already sort of passed through the scoring and are moving forward, but Mr. Barnes.

Thank you, sir.

Yes, Michael Barnes here.

Yes, indeed, I guess all of them were part of the Hydraulic 29 process that was undertaken, the planning process, you know, four or five years back.

The funding for the ones you all are referencing along 29, the roundabout that's over at Hillsdale, are part of a separate smart scale project that's already funded, that's moving through the bid, I mean, the design build process currently.

I'd say it's part of a larger system of improvements in the area, but from a more technical standpoint, yeah, one is one project that's moving forward, it's funded.

Yeah, they're really...

Great thing about this particular roundabout that I'm excited about is that it's going to give more access in and out of the meadows.

So that northwestern part, really the northern part of the meadows, is going to have a whole lot more

Freedom to get in and egress and ingress through Cedar Hill Road.

Okay.

Any discussion?

If not, Ms.

yes Councillor Payne yes Councillor Pinkston yes Mayor Snook yes so that passes and passes for nothing next is the sister cities commission annual report was provided to us in writing counselors have any feedback that you want to offer at this point no

I will say the only thing that I'm a little unclear, and maybe I was just not understanding the report well enough to know, I'm a little unclear about where we stand with Weiwei Tenango.

So a positive rapport was established, but that doesn't sound like anything is happening yet.

Does anybody know any more than that?

All right.

Okay.

Any other questions or comments about the report?

Okay.

Are there any other business items for consideration?

Nothing else on the agenda.

Counselors, any questions for the city management to follow up on?

I appreciate the follow-up that you gave us on a couple of matters from last month.

I did want to add one thing, if I could, Mr. Mayor.

Sure.

A few weeks ago I received an email about a wreck that occurred near the corner of Trail Ridge and Shamrock.

I'm sure Mr. Sanders is already hard at work on trying to find a resolution to this among the many other things on his plate, but I just wanted to mention it because

You know, like a lot of things, it depends on who you know and the connection you might have.

A number of friends of mine live in this neighborhood, some people I go to church with, and they were just describing to me the other night, the other morning,

the impact of this.

A person was driving 60 miles an hour or something.

Maybe I've got that number wrong.

A person was driving far too fast, hit a car that was parked, which went across the sidewalk.

A child was pinned under a car.

And so, you know, I'll be following up with Sam about, again, Sam's probably already working on it, but

I just wanted to sort of put this out there for all of us and anyone that's listening at this late hour in these neighborhoods let's just try to drive a reasonable speed accidents can happen people can lose control and we're really fortunate in this case that no one was seriously hurt

We will make sure we follow up on that.

Thank you.

Speakers, again, throughout the three minutes, you may join the speaker queue by selecting the raise hand option in the Zoom webinar or by pressing star 9 if you have joined by phone or by raising your hand if you're here in the council chambers.

There's nobody here in council chambers.

So that's easy.

Yes, Mayor Snook.

So, Mr. Rogers, I want to know, when did Allen Grove apologize to you, the exact date?

Also, this may not concern any of you, but this is a major security risk for this city.

Mr. Grote has access to Virginia State Police records, your local police, Charlottesville Police Department records, and many other things working in IT.

He has access to numerous city data.

Whether you want to admit to it or not, this is kind of my field of work, so I definitely know what I'm talking about.

This is a major security breach.

He has the access to compromising your data and anything else.

Michael, do you remember when the chat was compromised during a live meeting?

I think I posted it on Facebook and you commented or said something.

He had access to doing that.

He was also convicted of a road raid incident in June of 2020 or July of 2020, which involved an African American female, which he was on probation at the time of the insurrection and was on two-year good behavior.

So did you investigate that?

Did you investigate his relationship with Mooney?

Because Mooney was his character witness in court, which Mooney was also the captain for the police department who worked closely with Chief Brackney.

Was this man a part of compromising emails between Mayor Walker and Dr. Richardson when they were there?

I mean, y'all spend so much time firing people for doing their jobs that even when stuff is right in front of your face, you don't even look to investigate that.

Sam Sanders and Ashley Marshall, Michael C. Rogers,

I don't see y'all going as hard for this white man the way y'all go for black leadership.

That goes for you too, council, Mayor Snook.

You and everything but a church sometimes.

And you didn't think about this and you sit in court and you fight cases all day.

This is just so unacceptable in this city, the corruption that goes on.

This was not this man first rally that he attended.

It wasn't.

It wasn't.

He's an open racist and people that work at the city of Charlottesville knows it.

And you accept a measly apology?

Did he leak any emails to Mike Wells?

I mean, this can go so many different ways and y'all not even thinking about it like that.

You know why?

Because as long as it's a white male doing whatever they want to do in this city, you're absolutely okay with it.

You're absolutely okay with white men doing dirt and then sliding by and landing on their feet every time.

But as soon as there's somebody black, y'all ready to off with their head.

This is not okay by far.

It's not okay.

And I will report it to the FBI.

Thank you, Ms.

Robin Hoffman is next.

Hi, I wanna say that this is, first of all, thank you so much, Tanisha.

Then the second thing I wanna say is, this is really a crucial time for people returning to school.

Mental illness, there's a high suicide rate, especially right now.

Telemedicine is amazing.

Dr. Rubin,

Karen Rubin at UVA is asking you, city council, people and the public to include telemedicine in schools.

She put out a thing for a grant and all that kind of stuff.

It is very inexpensive to do this.

So what happens is if they're on Medicaid or they have no insurance at all, the providers are in the telemedicine

Purview instead of them clicking on their phone trying to figure out from Google search how they can get care for mental health and all that kind of important things that are happening now including food insecurities that sort of thing telemedicine is all encompassing and it's already been accomplished in Kansas City

When I was in the public schools in Patterson, I was an advocate for that.

Anyway, so I came up with a proposal that's very unique to the school system in Charlottesville and Albemarle County, because I worked as a school nurse sub in both capacities for a couple of years.

So I know what the capability is.

What I'm trying to say is I'm giving you this, but also if you need me to show you the logistics of things, Willowtree can do this for like no money at all.

We have so many IT people here now who can do AI and all that kind of stuff.

It is incredible how cheap this could be to engineer.

and this would afford a lot of kids healthcare.

I mean, you don't have to go through insurance company for that because you would have the school board approved providers accessible through the internet, through the telemedicine system, which would be secured by the school board and the parents and everybody else.

Anyway, I think I'm talking too much, but I just want to say, please look into telemedicine.

Karen Rubin at UVA is asking you at telemedicine.

She's the cardiologist pediatric, but she's also the head of us and she's asking you to tap into the grants there.

Thank you, Ms.

Hi, I'm calling in.

I want to voice concern about the increased number of tenants facing eviction at Mallside Forest Court Apartments in Albemarle County and also just across the city in general.

My question is, is the city in discussion with Albemarle County in providing eviction relief funds, such as like prevention or whatever through the Pathways Program?

because I believe what was reported was 162 units that are on that have payer quit notices which are five-day notices to pay a certain amount ranging from various a thousand up to twenty thousand dollars that's unacceptable

What that's going to do is increase the population of unhoused folks in our community.

There already is only one shelter here.

There's not an emergency shelter.

Landlords have increased their rents and eviction is a barrier.

to accessing housing.

So I do have that question.

My next concern is that the city employee who works in the IT department is currently on your payroll and you have no problem with that.

It is an apology and it's like, okay, yeah, okay, you can be a white supremacist that have access to all of the records that you want and do what with it as you may.

That's unacceptable.

That is just unacceptable.

I've seen people lose jobs for being late three times in a row.

This person was part of the January 6th insurrection, and it is just unbelievable.

Well, not really.

Not really, because you all

cover for each other a lot.

But it still is unbelievable for some that this person is still on payroll and you all are just okay with that.

Like, yes, are you comfortable having a white supremacist access your data, knowing where your family lives, knowing where you work, knowing what your billing account information is?

That's not okay.

That's not safe for the community as a whole.

And you're talking about making plans and keeping the community safe for the fifth anniversary of A11, A12, January 8th, and the Summer of Hate.

That's not okay.

That's not safe.

Safety isn't increasing police presence.

Safety is getting a white supremacist off your payroll.

That's what safety is.

They have access to all of your records, all of them.

It's not safe.

Thank you, Ms.

Our next speaker is Nancy Carpenter.

Thank you.

I'm gonna do a little education right now.

The National Low Income Housing Coalition just dropped their out of reach annual report about states in the country and what hourly rates should be in order to afford different things.

And I'd like to drop a little bit of Virginia's information to you.

Virginia ranks number 14 in this country as to the expensiveness of housing costs.