City Council Meeting   10/3/2022

Councilor McGill, send a notice to the Mayor and the Clerk today requesting to participate virtually due to a medical condition that prevents her from attending in person.

Second.

Second.

Okay.

Okay.

Congratulations, Sena.

You are legal.

And just to be clear, we should have done the same thing last time around, also when you still had a medical condition at that point.

We acknowledged that and we went ahead even though we didn't formally take the vote.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Motion passes.

Councilor McGill, you're looking puzzled at us, but we can't hear you.

Can you hear us?

Yeah.

I was just going to say also for the record, I know I am both this time and the previous meetings, I have been at my home in the city of Charlottesville.

Yes.

You're right, thank you.

Okay, so we have an agenda that's passed.

This meeting will be divided into three main sections.

First is a work session to hear and discuss presentations

that do not require a council vote, followed by a closed meeting roughly around 530, then the city council business meeting which will begin around 630.

There will be seating available here in council chambers for up to 23 preregistered attendees and media.

You may have received a presentation in advance, but I'll go ahead and just kind of go PowerPoint-less.

So anyway, I'm Jean Runyon.

I am excited and honored to be the sixth president of Piedmont Virginia Community College.

I joined on July 1st, and I've come from experience at three comprehensive community colleges, two in Maryland and one in Colorado.

And Janet Morrow, a member of our College Board, is joining us today.

And so this is just an opportunity for me to say, hello, I'm here, and I'm looking forward to really working with all of you and being part of the community

where I live and serve.

And so this is Piedmont Virginia Community College's 50th anniversary.

On last week we celebrated our birthday and it marked 50 years of having students join the college with impact and

opportunities to either come to us because they want to transfer with a associate's degree to a four-year university to enter the workforce or to come back and retool and retrain.

And we are really proud of all of our impact and we're looking towards the future as well.

and just a couple of things in the last 50 years more than 250,000 students have come to Piedmont Virginia Community College and more than 17,000 have actually earned associates degrees or certificates and last year alone we had 1,061 students who earned associate degrees or certificates

and 147 of those students said that the city of Charlottesville was their home.

And we're really proud of all of our partnerships with our local high schools.

Our students are earning early college credit with KTEC and also through our workforce.

And so this is also an opportunity for us to look to the future.

and Dr. Frank Friedman left us the opportunity to develop the college's next strategic plan, which we are doing.

And for me, part of my role as college president coming in first is to really spend some time learning and listening.

So I've been on discovery tours throughout our service area

and meeting with individuals who have a PVCC story and I'm asking questions about what makes PVCC unique, what are our strengths, what are our untapped opportunities and how can we better serve our community.

And so I'd like to get feedback from you and from those virtually as well.

Today you received a copy of our annual report and on the back is a QR code and that will take you to a survey so that you can provide us with some feedback on how Piedmont Virginia Community College

can continue to have excellence and impact in the years ahead.

So again, I just wanted to say hello.

I'm here.

Dr. Runyon, I just wanted to say all three of my kids have gone through PVCC and I've been very grateful for the education they've received there.

Thank you.

The next item on our agenda, and obviously Dr. Runyon, you're welcome to stay for as much of this as you like, or I'm sure you'll be so captivated you want to tune in from home and watch tonight.

Next item is our Charlottesville Climate Action Plan.

That's great.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Councilors.

My name is Crystal Rittervold.

I'm the Environmental Sustainability Division Manager in Public Works.

and we're pleased to be here with you this afternoon.

As you know, the City of Charlottesville committed to developing a Climate Action Plan or CAP to achieve greenhouse gas reductions of 45% by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2050.

The CAP presents a strategic framework to prioritize actions to meet the 2030 goal and to position Charlottesville to achieve its 2050 goal.

I will admit that we're a little out of breath from the work that's been done over the last five months since our last work session with you when we provided both a programmatic overview update and preliminary content for the climate action plan since then we've continued to work on and deliver climate related programs and projects conducted various outreach engagement and collaboration activities with community members and organizations as well as internal partners

and we've put together Charlottesville's first climate action plan.

I'm joined today I believe by Stacey Smalls our Public Works Director as well as Susan Elliott our Climate Protection Program Manager and in those months we've been fortunate to bring on a new team member Emily Irvine who joined us last month in our new in our recently established new position climate program specialist.

Emily has already made some great

contributions to our work in the short time she's been here, and she's going to be integral in implementing this plan.

The 2022 Climate Action Plan has background and guidance context, presents emission reduction strategies and key actions to be pursued and implemented over the next five years, including important equity considerations and progress metrics.

It identifies projects, programs, policies,

processes and some key resources needed to support action in the near term what we have is that now that we have established what we need to do we will turn to how to get it done this is a community climate action plan there are clearly actions that the city can and should take the lead on and there are actions that the community can and should take the lead on and there are some that we can do together council you directed us to bring a climate plan forward and here we are

I want to thank everyone who has contributed to bringing this plan together.

And I appreciate in advance the hard work and the effort community-wide that will be involved in delivering on it.

And so with that, Susan, if you would please go ahead with our presentation and then we'll welcome your comments and questions.

Great.

Thank you, everybody.

So we are here with our Climate Action Plan, which we have branded the

So, since we were here before, we did speak a bit last time about what our approach was to developing this plan and

We took a multi-layered approach to the plan development.

What that means is that we started off with Charlottesville's greenhouse gas emission reduction goals.

That is what we were tasked to develop a plan to meet.

We also included guidance from city council, two different resolutions that were passed in 2019.

The local climate action planning report was a collaboration between the city, the county and University of Virginia back in 2012.

We looked at the comprehensive plan and the recently adopted pieces of that that speak to the climate program.

We looked at the community input that was received through the various stages of the climate, sorry, Seville Plans Together effort.

We also had direct input from the community as well as staff.

And then we also looked over at what is the data that our greenhouse gas inventories are telling us?

Where are our emissions coming from and where do we need to focus efforts in order to reduce the emissions?

We also considered plans from peer localities, both within our local region, within our state and across the country.

And lastly, we also brought in policy guidance that we have from industry best practices, what is being researched, what's coming out and happening out in the field, as well as our Global Covenant of Mayors annual reporting requirements and the pieces of what they are going to be asking us about our plan and what it includes.

In terms of our engagement, our community involvement came in a number of different shapes and sizes.

It came from small group facilitated sessions.

It came from working with concentrated folks focused on specific areas of topic expertise.

We had large group community conversations.

We had direct input via surveys.

Again, we incorporated input from the housing plan and comprehensive plan updates.

We had a community town hall workshop

and two different listening sessions that were focused on bringing new voices and marginalized communities into what we were looking at with our plan.

In addition to this, community organizations and community members also reached out to us directly with what their recommendations and positions that they were supportive of.

All of this has led to the development of our plan documents and there will be more presentations, more education, engagement and cooperation on action moving forward.

In addition to what we had from the community, we also had a lot of cross-departmental staff engagement.

A large number of the departments you can see there are on the operation side of the portfolio and because those are the ones that really shape what are the fuel and energy sources that we are using within our own operations, within our own organizations running.

Those are also the departments that end up putting out things into the community that shape what the choices are that our community members can then make.

And so there's been a lot of different levels of engagement, a lot of different perspectives that we brought together.

And we think we've been able to bring it all together really well into this plan.

In terms of how our plan is structured, it is strategic.

What we mean by that is we have strategies that are aimed at meeting our 2030 and 2050 greenhouse gas emission reduction goals.

These strategies and actions are looking at both things that the community can do and things that the municipal government can do.

The plan is a living document, meaning that we can respond to the changing environment around us as things progress, as things change, new opportunities come available.

We did put accountability and oversight metrics into it in the sense that we will have annual progress updates and then there will be a full review and update of the plan every three to five years.

We also recommended that the first update comes in the next three years so that we can then have that update occur prior to the next comprehensive plan update.

That's in response to comments that we heard from the community and also from staff about being able to have these different plans that are able to speak to each other as they go forward.

This plan also looks at bridging into implementation.

So along with each strategy, we have identified key actions that are milestones for achievement to be completed within that three to five year timeline.

These are things where we're looking at a strategy that may be stretching out to 2050, but we acknowledge that there's actions we need to be taking now so that we are positioned to then know what our next steps are and to have informed next steps on how to get there.

Additionally, in the document, we have some guides for action.

These are things that reflect the values and priorities of our community, and they are aimed at shaping how we or community members and organizations go about implementation of this plan.

As a bit of background, when we look at our greenhouse gas emissions, we've made a lot of progress since we first started measuring those.

We are about two-thirds of the way towards achieving our 2030 goal, but we still have a long way to go, particularly when we look out to 2050 and reaching carbon neutrality.

When we dig into a little bit of what's behind these emission numbers, what we see is that 95% of the emissions are actually coming from within activities in the community, and 5% is coming from our municipal operations.

When we look into that 95% number, what we see is that about two thirds of that is coming from our residential commercial buildings.

And when I say commercial, that also includes nonprofits, businesses, houses of faith, anything that's more of that like organizational type building structure.

Another third of our emissions is coming from our transportation sector.

These are the emissions that are produced by all of us just getting around town to do what we do, whether it's for work, recreation, or other daily tasks that we have to do.

And then there's 5% that's coming from our waste.

These emission breakdowns, this is reflected into the structure of how the planned content is organized.

So we start off with a preface and introduction where we explain background about greenhouse gas emissions, what the targeted scope was for this plan, the council directive resolutions included, and then information just about what are the general type of actions that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, what are the different options available to us, and then some high level scenarios of what does that look like to try to reach our 2030 goal.

In chapters five through nine, we move into looking at what the strategies and key actions are.

And these sections are broken out by looking at what our focus is within the community, what our focus is within our municipal operations, what is the role for the city in various facets of being a leader.

And then it's starting to look at once we have emissions out there, what are our options for drawing this down and removing emissions from the atmosphere?

as well as some other items that are outside of our greenhouse gas inventory scope, but are things that are relevant to our community and are voiced by our community as values.

Additionally, in each section, we talk about equity considerations, we identify subgold, and we also note where there are connections over to climate adaptation.

One thing within our Global Covenant of Mayors commitment is we are developing both this admissions reduction plan and in parallel, we are developing a climate adaptation plan, which our climate risk and vulnerability assessment was completed over this past year.

And so those two pieces need to also be able to speak to each other and support each other.

Looking at implementation of this plan and identifying supporting next steps, we have included a project and resource needs list.

These are items that in the near term are restricting us from being able to take action and are things that are easily identifiable that we know need to be addressed in order to get movement.

Recognizing the city has its zoning update process.

We currently have a zoning alignment list in the plan.

Right now, these are in general topics.

Another next step for finding that is to put those categories in alignment with what the zoning approaches that's been put out so that there's a closer one-to-one match as people look across the two documents and the two processes.

We also included guiding directions about principles, values, equity considerations, and priority audiences that were identified that we need to make sure we're engaging and that we're developing resources and providing that support to within our community.

We speak to accountability metrics and outcomes that we are aiming to see.

And then for anyone who's newer to these conversations or who maybe hasn't been as involved in some of the more technical aspects,

We've provided five different climate action fact sheets in the document along with an abbreviations and definitions glossary to help make that connection for people who want to dig in a little deeper or maybe unfamiliar with some of the concepts we're talking about.

We also have citation links where people can click into the original whether it's a news article or a research study to really dig into some of the details further.

I'm now going to give you some highlights of what's in the document.

In terms of starting off with focusing on our community emissions, what we see really is that about two-thirds, that big green section, that's our emissions that are coming from our buildings and energy.

The next section is that transportation, that blue part.

And then it's followed up with where we have our waste emissions and then wastewater and process and fugitive ones.

Focusing really in on those two pieces, the green and the blue, because that's where the bulk of our emissions are.

That's also where we have the bulk of opportunity to reduce our emissions as a community.

The strategies that we have include focusing on increasing energy efficiency and renewable energy within our buildings.

There are strategies and actions that focus on new construction as well as existing buildings.

And then strategies that look at how to support and increase zero carbon and carbon neutral energy sources.

Two key focuses that were identified in looking at our buildings and energy is that we need to make sure we're developing programs and support that speak to both our single family type of properties, but also things that go up to our multifamily and our business type properties.

Additionally, Charlottesville has a 60% rental rate for households, which means if we're going to make progress in terms of how we're affecting our building, we need to look at things that are both owner-occupied, but also rentals and really being able to engage and find solutions that work for the property owners and the tenants in those properties.

When we look over at Tarch P&A transportation, the strategies speak to increasing travel by walking, biking, and transit.

So that's the idea of mode shifting.

And the key assets around this are increasing that safety, the availability, the connectivity, the reliability, and the accessibility of those different modes for transportation.

When looking over at what the vehicles are that we're using on our roads, there are strategies that speak to increasing the use of high fuel efficiency vehicles as well as electric vehicles.

And when we're looking at electric vehicles, this is both the vehicle itself as well as that electric vehicle charging equipment.

Going back to what I said a minute ago that 60% of our households are renters.

That means about 60% of our households can't necessarily guarantee where they are perking each night.

So if they're going to be looking at electric vehicles coming out in the market and reaching cost parity within the next five to six years, what we're going to start seeing is those vehicles come on the market for new vehicles as well as used vehicles.

It's people questioning, am I going to be able to use this vehicle and actually charge it or not?

And so that's where the focus on making sure we have the right electric vehicle charging infrastructure coming into play in this plan so that people then have that choice when they go to get a vehicle, what type they're using.

And then lastly on the transportation side is encouraging alternative travel behaviors.

So how are people choosing to travel?

Are they able to daisy chain what they're doing?

Are they able to maybe shift one of those types of activities that they're doing each week to something that could be less carbon-based?

Connected into this idea of how we're developing our buildings and our transportation goes into what our land use patterns are.

And this connects over into nature-based solutions.

So particularly if we're looking at densifying more, we have to also understand and look at what we're doing as urban heat and the materials that are then retaining more heat within our urban environment.

So nature-based solutions are one approach to being able to cool our urban heat.

particularly putting these in areas that are around the buildings so buildings don't need to use as much energy to cool themselves and along key transportation corridors particularly those that are active outdoor to corridors or access to transit these techniques for nature-based solutions include tree canopy and various types of green space and in terms of implementation what came up was looking at that getting more balanced distribution of green space and tree canopy across our city

looking at both how we're developing along those sites but then also what are those priority access routes for folks whether that's getting to their local community garden whether it is how they are getting to school or how they're then getting to that bus transit stop and then what is that situation like while they're there waiting on the bus to come another piece that ties into success in this area is looking at funding and financing

So the strategies identified looking and reviewing at alignment of existing city incentives and what's within the city's ability to provide incentives to the community.

It looks at leveraging federal, state and utility funded programs and then connecting our community to these programs.

It also speaks to support for new funding and financing programs, four of which are listed on the slide as things to either support, to move forward or to investigate further.

Along with our community emissions is also the waste category.

And these strategies speak to adopting a sustainable materials management approach, reducing food and organics from our waste stream, and then increasing the amount of composting and diversion of organics from the landfill of whatever remains in that waste stream.

When I speak to food and organics, there are a number of things, but the large two ones are food scraps that we have, as well as what our yard waste is and from landscaping on our properties.

The city also has a couple of other unique roles where it can exhibit leadership within the community.

One of these, which has been a topic of much discussion is also the city as a gas utility.

Charlottesville is unique from other communities that have developed climate action plans because it owns and operates a natural gas utility.

This presents some interesting challenges as we're looking at what we can do to go forward.

It also presents some unique opportunities as we go forward.

And the gas utility is committed to being a partner in helping Charlottesville and its other local areas reach their climate emission reduction goals.

Several of the things that are included in the section of the city as a gas utility include supporting energy efficiency within our community.

And there are some existing programs the utility already has on this front.

There's an action to review the gas main extension policy.

This is a policy that is in the city code and council can amend that if it so wishes.

There's also a commitment to assessing the decarbonization of the gas utility and looking out at our 2050 goal and how to reach carbon neutrality.

The gas utility has already issued an RFP to get assistance in doing a study on decarbonizing and what the options are and impacts of that.

Additionally, the question around carbon offsets comes up has come up in our community conversation.

The Charlottesville Gas has committed to a multi-year contract for carbon offsets right now and participating in that program.

In parallel with that in our community conversation, there's been questions around the complexity around offsets in terms of how reliable are they?

How are they verified?

What does that then look like?

Susan, could I interrupt you just a second?

On this particular page where you say you want to assess decarbonization of the gas utility, we got an email late last night wondering about what possible legal questions there could be concerning decarbonization.

So there is something in the General Assembly's legislation around choice of fuel sources.

And so I think there's a couple of questions that speak to what are process options that the city and Charlottesville Gas would have to go through if it wanted to stop providing that service.

And

That's about all I can speak to in the specifics.

So there may be some obstacle in the state enabling legislation?

Okay.

That gives me at least a little something to think about what our next steps might be.

Fine.

Thank you.

And that legal, what the legality is and the regulations around it, that is one piece that is included in the RFP for that decarbonization study.

Okay, thank you.

So looking at some other roles of the city in terms of its leadership opportunities within the region is also the city as a landlord.

The city has a number of properties that it owns and then it leases out.

And in this case, if we are asking our property owners and landlords in the city to think about their residents and what their role can be in terms of being able to help us move forward our emission reductions, the same is true for us.

What can we do within our leases?

What do we

And then I mentioned it earlier, but the city also has this zoning update process going.

And so we've identified in the plan what some items that connect between those two.

Going over into our municipal emissions section, this is from our municipal operations and some highlights from that.

When we look at the emissions just within our municipal operations, about 55% is coming from our buildings, about 7% is from our streetlights and traffic signals, and then 38% is from our municipal fleet and fuel use.

If you think of the streetlights and traffic signals and the buildings being the energies and buildings and energy sectors, you might notice this pie chart looks pretty similar to what we're seeing on the community side, where about two-thirds is coming from our buildings and energy use.

And about a third is coming out of our fleet and our fuel use for getting around.

Diving in on just that buildings and energy piece of it.

What we have mapped out is where we started in 2011, which is our baseline for measuring our reductions to our goal in 2030.

What our reductions were through 2016.

And then different specific strategies for reducing emissions within our buildings and energy portfolio.

What you can see is that with what we are able to identify for projects, we don't quite make it to that reduction for 2030.

There are other offsite and external factors that we can pursue.

But when we're looking ahead, really getting as much as we can with our onsite pieces and then starting to look at those offsite factors is going to be really important.

Taking these actions and laying them out as a potential timeline for what it looks like for us to get to 2030.

What we see is a layering of different actions and as well as looking at where we can then meaningfully get them implemented, do measurement verification, continue to do building improvement, things such as re-roofing projects that we need to do in order to then enable a next round of different projects going forward.

Sure.

So there's a couple of pieces.

So solar PPA stands for a solar power purchase agreement, and it is a specific type of contracting structure where you can get many different solar projects under one pricing group together.

As you're identifying those, there's a couple of pieces of what you're trying to maximize.

Are you trying to maximize your cost savings off of your utility bills?

Are you trying to maximize the amount of onsite generation?

Are there other pieces in terms of community engagement or other factors like that that you want to incorporate into there?

From a structural perspective, you want to be looking at what is your re-roofing schedule?

So if you know you're going to be replacing a roof on a building within five years, that would not be an optimal one to put a big solar system on because five years later, you're just going to have to pay to take it off, put the new roof on, and then add the solar back onto it.

There's also considerations around the structural integrity for the building and how much additional weight it can have on the rooftop.

A couple of the other factors once you're then looking at where once you've identified which buildings can support solar you also want to look at what does that mean in terms of laying solar out on the rooftop.

So if you have a lot of, for example, shading on the roof or entering exit points off the roof or HVAC rooftop units that shade a large portion of your roof, that may not be the most economical one for you to include as you're looking at where you want to put your solar.

And so when you're doing a solar PPA, usually it's a batch of buildings that get looked at together.

And so some of those price considerations can balance each other out.

I guess what I'm wondering is what you've described is the physical process for, I guess, for getting solar on a roof.

If I could jump in real quick, I was just going to say there's, it's basically there's a contracting process

piece of it, and there's a financing piece of it.

And so it's a question of do we establish what we want for the program goals and issue our own request for proposal?

Do we evaluate the ability to use a cooperative procurement mechanism for a program that's already being deployed by another peer jurisdiction?

And then what are the financing pieces of it?

So what does it take?

Is it takes some interdisciplinary city team

Well, I guess part of the reason for my question was I remember a few years ago

Right, you're exactly right.

Yeah, I mean, it's called subscribing to the program, and at the moment, that's not the barrier.

Yeah, I got you.

And I think that timeline really is for discussion purposes.

Probably the biggest limiting factor on when we would do another one is when we have a roof that's ready for it.

I got you.

If we can, you know, I'll be honest, Charlottesville High School is the biggest roof that is next up for re-roofing.

Ideally, we would be right behind it with the solar system, whether cash funded or PPA.

So those are the kinds of strategic planning decision making that needs to happen.

And then there's another school that needs a roof.

And then there's another school that needs a roof.

And so I think if we could establish a formal institutionalized cadence, we can do this.

We can't snap our fingers and deploys solar on every roof

overnight because most of the buildings in many communities where they're deploying them fast, they're putting on them on new construction where the buildings designed for solar.

And so that would be the approach for the Buford Walker projects, right?

Those buildings will be designed to hold solar.

One of the other things that has come up as I've been driving around the country recently is a number of schools in particular have used their rather extensive parking lots to cover them over with solar power panels.

We've looked at a very sort of desktop level at where there might be parking lots that don't have shading where that might be an option.

Okay.

I didn't mean to interrupt and get us offline, but since you had the PPA thing up there, I wanted to jump on that question.

And one of the other pieces of saying you're looking at a PPA, this goes back into what Crystal was saying about the different contracting methods.

And you also need to look at, for example, a ground-mounted system or a canopy.

There's different construction requirements of that that can raise that cost up.

And so as you're looking at across your portfolio as a whole, what your aims are, if you need it to be cost-neutral, for example, or you need it to be less than what we would be paying out to our regular utility, all of those factors come into play.

One of our local solar installers actually had several years back looked at the Charlottesville High School parking lot and they were super excited about it until they realized that the Dominion electric line there put little faint lines of shadow across the parking lot over the entire course of the day.

That would basically, even though it's just little lines of shadow, it would significantly decrease what the panels could produce to the point that they decided that it probably would not be cost effective or worthwhile for us to do solar panels

What we're currently talking about are on-site power purchase agreements

And so then as we go looking over at the plan, looking at these different actions, the different sort of timelines, the strategies that the plan lays out for our municipal buildings and energies is looking at increasing that energy efficiency and on-site renewable energy within our both new buildings, new major retrofit and construction projects, our existing buildings.

Converting all streetlights and traffic signals, whether they're owned by Dominion Power, whether they're owned by the city over to LEDs.

And then looking at just the amount of electricity that our municipality uses and aiming to get that to carbon neutrality by 2030.

In order for these to move forward, this is where some of those funding and resource needs have been identified.

These are all projects that are capital improvement projects.

And so whether we look at funding them through the CIT project or through alternative funding structures and courses, there are CIT projects that need to have some sort of funding decisions made around them.

As VIP projects, they also need some sort of project management capacity.

And that right now is limited.

So either that means we need to look at assessing what the different priorities are within our existing project management capacity, or the city needs to increase the amount of capacity it has to be able to support the project moving forward.

In terms of policy and process improvement, the plan also speaks to updating our green building policy.

Looking at how we can capture and allocate the operational energy cost savings from these different projects so that we can then help support their funding as well as different opportunities and needs for cross-departmental collaboration and integration into different work plans Sorry, my Zoom controls are getting mixed up with my PowerPoint controls

Looking at our municipal transportation and fuel use side of things, looking at the plan recommends adopting a green fleet policy and management approach.

This means we need funding for vehicle replacement.

It also looks at the EV charging equipment.

And as I noted on the previous slide, anything that we're doing on equipment installed, anything that is doing improvements on our capital projects, we need then project management support for those as well.

Additionally, we would need more staff capacity for introducing and overseeing a green fleet management program.

In regards specifically to our transit buses, there are different requirements that the FTA is putting on any sort of alternative fuel transition and so Charlottesville Area Transit has an alternative fuel study underway currently.

The results of this will then be used to inform where the city goes in terms of transitioning as buses off of diesel.

These considerations will include looking at both what the vehicles, what those vehicle capacities are and capabilities are compared to current operations, as well as potential site improvements that would be needed

What those investments are could also include like a horizon of what is a met time investment if we're going to do those site improvements and those investments in those vehicles.

What does that mean in terms of looking out over 2030 and 2050 timeline for what those fuels are and what sort of emissions we would be seeing from those.

Additionally captured in our municipal transportation and fuel use section are other mobile assets.

This is largely our landscaping equipment or backup generators that are mobile that we move around within the city.

The support of improvements and emission reduction in this area is looking at funding and assessing what equipment replacement options there are for equipment options are for electric power replacements, as well as looking at operational changes that we can do, such as reduced mowing.

When we look across the plan as a whole, there's a lot of things that are strategies that we're speaking to along with those key actions.

So in terms of a quick summary of things we've talked about today of what does the kind of action plan look like in action?

Here's a compiled list of some of the items we've talked about.

At the top, we have things that are focused specifically on our city operations that are within our city organization, its responsibility and roles and abilities.

On the bottom half, we're seeing things that are out in the community that support reductions of emissions within our community.

Actions in this space can be led by the city.

They can also be led by community members or by community organizations, or they could be done through a partnership between the two.

but there's definitely nothing on here that is necessarily dependent on the city having to take that lead or only the city taking the lead there are options for many people in the community to take action and we're very excited as we go forward to also work with folks and hear what it is that they want to take ownership of or that they wanted to lead and move forward and then as we look forward after tonight for next steps

We will be rolling out this plan, speaking with different advisory committees, different organizations within the community, and hearing from different community members directly as to the department of what is in the plan, what they see that they have as priorities, how this most closely relates to their work, and then which parts do they see a role that they would like to play in helping to implement this plan.

As we start to hear this more, and we're confident this is all gelling, we'll be moving it out into a document layout and design and then initiating the comprehensive plan amendment process.

One other thing to note is that this is a living document and so

This while it will be integrated with various organizations work plans we will also be coming back to you all with updates at least annually before we then come about with that three to five year full review and update

So moving into discussion, we wanted to open it up for you all first in terms of comments, reactions, and thoughts, the same thing we're going to be doing when we reach out to others in the community.

I'm good.

I just, well, the only thing I would like to see is what's our, once we're moving past this, this is, I really like the presentation.

It's, you know, I had read through the whole plan.

This really, I feel kind of pinpoints and summarizes some things much better for me in a more understandable manner.

And I appreciate the work that's been going into all of this.

Yeah, so in terms of community comments, we've already started getting some things in from folks since we announced last week that the document was out on the website.

It is a living document and so I think it somewhat depends on what it is that we're carrying back from folks.

We do have our ongoing climate program and so depending on what the comments are it may be things that we can roll into our activities in terms of implementing the plan in terms of what we're doing with our program activities over this year before we then get to that one-year progress update piece.

If it's something substantial that we've just completely missed that would warrant us trying to do an update prior to that.

And then the second piece, I noticed there was a lot of comments about in the chat about how can we address other opportunities besides CIP.

I know that Mr. Sanders has been working on, there's been a grant.

We've had a position for the city for a grant writer, which we are trying to fill and

this would fall under my understanding in that area as well because the Build Back Better plan in particular has quite a bit of access.

We are very aware of that.

I know Mr. Sanders and Mr. Rogers and Ms.

Marshall, Ms.

Marshall have been working very hard to try to bring someone in to only focus on the grant piece.

So one example in terms of funding piece, and this I think speaks to one of the other comments that was in the chat, what we were speaking about earlier, solar power purchase agreement.

That is one type of project, it's one type of example.

So I don't want to say this is applicable to every single type of action we may go forward with.

But many of those, you can structure it so that the city does not have to put any upfront money down.

What it is is that someone else provides the financing for the panel and then the contract is structured in advance that we know how much we would be paying per kilowatt hour of energy that those panels are generating for us.

And this goes back to what we're talking about, what is the cost to actually construct and install those panels onto the building.

For many of these contracts, that cost that we'd be paying per kilowatt hour can be equal or less than what we would be paying to our electric utility each year.

becomes not so much what is that upfront amount of money that we need to contribute to the project.

It becomes a question of our internal budgeting that when we're looking at what budget lines those cost savings are existing on over across many, many different budget cost centers, are we able to capture those and consolidate them in a way that we can then pay for that solar PPA for the length of its contract each year?

So it's more of a

of shifting where the money is coming from on operational side rather than needing to do a capital improvement investment.

That said, all the other things that tie into capital improvements on how that flows into project manager work time and capacity, where that fits in terms of priorities of other capital projects.

All of those pieces are still at play.

It's just shifting that funding and contracting mechanism to something that doesn't need the CIP dollars associated with it.

One of the other projects that we currently have the technical audits for is the Energy Savings Performance Contract, also referred to as an ESPC.

Okay.

So I want to make sure I didn't forget you this time around.

Yeah.

I mean, a lot of this we discussed the other week, but I guess some of them, again,

What can we do to have a process, you think, in terms of prioritizing for this upcoming budget cycle, some of the investments we can begin to make?

Councilor Payne, that was actually, I think, what

really expedited getting this plan in front of you all so that it would be right in front of the CIP and the operating budget cycles.

There will be some CIP requests in, and I think part of that will spur the conversation of does it get funded through the CIP?

Are there some other financing alternatives?

This is new territory for the city, right?

And so while I think we have a pretty

awesome team.

We need a lot of other team members to really complete the process of figuring out how we make this happen.

We know just enough about all the financing to be a little bit harmful to ourselves, but really these are big city leadership decisions and so we need some resources brought to the discussion about who and how and what.

Yes, there will be some CIP requests.

I expect there may be some operational budget requests.

Some of this, again, needs to be sequencing, right?

Perfect example is you need to have a robust, aggressive, in the best way, roof replacement program in order to put solar out there.

So one doesn't come without the other.

And so that's a sequencing decision.

Clearly, there are decisions in the transportation transformation space that may not happen this fiscal year, but some of those studies and some of those evaluations and some of those resources, those are the steps we have to do now.

And it could be that the big investments are, you know, maybe five years on the horizon or maybe over a period of a decade as these things, again, they don't get transformed overnight.

I think those are the studies that are happening.

But to Susan's point, the city has been involved in climate work for over a decade now, and we have made some progressive policies, commitments, cities the first of many XYZs.

Yeah, and that's all very helpful.

And that to me is the biggest thing I've just continued to think through is because this really involves almost every single department in the city, if you think about the whole plan, how do we on council

figure out how we begin to take that action in a strategic way.

Because I don't think we're heading in this direction, but my fear is it's such a big plan with so much in it that it could almost be easy for council to not figure out how we begin to implement it just because it's so much.

if that makes any sense.

Because it's kind of like, as you said, none of this is going to happen overnight.

So how do we pick in our CIP what we begin with?

A smaller thing is I think the tree commission had made a recommendation about a tree ordinance I believe as part of our zoning code to try to stop the reduction in tree canopy that we've been seeing that hasn't come up so far in our zoning rewrite process but I'm wondering if that's one area where there could be overlap on the tree canopy related parts of

Yeah, there is a relationship there.

And in the section on nature-based solutions, we do set a green space goal, including tree canopy.

Green space commitments is also one

The Mayor touched on this a little bit.

But when it comes to the natural gas utility, what is the thought about not only doing those studies about future connections, decarbonization of it, but recognizing that it's a municipally owned utility?

Is there a way to diversify the work that it's doing?

email last night that referenced if the natural gas utility could get involved in selling community solar as part of its work or taking advantage of some of the programs in the Inflation Reduction Act which could maybe help diversify the work that it's doing to not only include natural gas but community solar and other electrification.

Is that

Well, I would respond to that.

The word decarbonization study is kind of wonky.

But if you look at the scope for that work, it requests that the consultant, in fact, take a look at these various types of programming.

whether it's expanding the energy efficiency work that they currently do or exploring some of these other suggestions.

I think at the time that went out, the bipartisan infrastructure law wasn't passed yet.

So the opportunities that come with that aren't listed out, but it's not, I don't think it's exclusive of some of these ideas that can be recommended for consideration in this process.

So I would suggest that those, I mean, I'm happy to forward recommendations to the gas utility.

The public can.

Whatever comments you've received can be passed along.

I was going to say also in the section of the plan where we talk about carbon offsets looking at it as a broader topic of just carbon offset considerations across the whole we do have a little bit of a discussion on how to choose between making investments locally that reduce emissions such as improving the energy efficiency in buildings where it's a one-time installment that then stays in perpetuity versus a different

types of ways of diversifying your emission reductions, but you might have to continue issuing purchases for those year in year out.

Two final things.

One, Councillor McGill touched on this a little as well, but the Inflation Reduction Act includes a number of programs related to municipal utilities and climate more broadly.

Do you feel like you're currently positioned to be able to take advantage

of those programs and be competitive and applying for and implementing them?

Okay.

Right.

It's very helpful.

And then the final question is, again, Councilor McGill touched on this a little as well, but we've heard from a lot of community organizations that C3, Southern Environmental Law Center, who wanted to be able to give feedback.

I think you addressed it in saying that this is a living document.

This is not like a cut and dry final draft.

Yeah, well, you mentioned C3, and they've worked with a handful of other community organizations and provided input to us over the last couple of weeks for that.

They, you know, they and anyone else can continue to do so, whether they have our direct email addresses, they're welcome to use that.

For anyone else in the community who doesn't have that, if you go to charlottesville.gov slash climate, there is a link to a contact form that people can contact us via for that.

We will also, in addition to doing outreach to different of the commissions and advisory groups within the city as an organization, we will be doing different outreach to the community.

And Commissioner Saleh Yates

just put in the chat, can we lean on the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission for any grant writing for this work?

Just note that.

But yeah, that's all I have.

And I just do want to acknowledge, I think this is an enormous step forward.

And I think this really does include a lot of the stuff the community's been talking about.

Great that this is lined up before our upcoming budget cycle.

So I really think a lot of great work has gone into this.

And I do think, as you said, it's a living document.

This is never the kind of issue where we'll have everything.

But I do think that there really is a substantial amount in there that

already what's in it will take the city a whole lot of money and resources to implement, but we need to and we need to figure out how we're going to do that on city council's end.

But thank you.

Yeah, I agree with what Councillor Payne had to say.

I think it's an excellent document.

I appreciate all of the hard work that went into it.

Looking, you know, where we were six months ago versus what I see now is it's a really dramatic and substantial amount of work.

I did have a couple of questions.

So on page 88,

of the document.

I really appreciate this.

It basically, the top of the page identified projects and needed resources.

It looks like a lot of the things that, you know, there's at least a list here of things we could fund this year.

and especially I think you brought up the point about not having enough project management capacity or other staffing those those things are there and I hope when the city manager brings us a budget we'll we'll see we'll see those aligned out

other pieces here about vehicles and equipment.

So I appreciate this.

I realize this is only part of the story of what we'll need to do, but it's good to have something that's like, okay, this is the next thing.

A couple of other questions.

So the state-level VECA,

That commits Dominion to be fully Can you tell me what the VECA does again?

It's actually a commitment by the state for the Commonwealth, so it's not targeting a

a specific utility, but there aren't that many utilities in Virginia, so you can just buy extension.

When that announcement was made, Dominion also made some pretty aggressive announcement about some power generation goals as well.

So the point being, there are

Like we said, there are things a community can do and there's things that the city can do.

Okay.

All right.

Yeah, and I guess the last thing that I had was it's very clear the distinction between municipal and the rest of the community and, you know, doing our 5 or 10 percent of the total is obviously very important and that's what, you know, the resources that hopefully we can provide you will go towards.

And I know that you laid out in the document various things that the community will need to do, including the piece about working with landlords as well as renters and how that works out.

And maybe if I want to go back and reread the report, maybe this will be clearer to me.

Are we going to have like an office or a liaison or someone that will kind of be a broker or figure out ways to help the larger community in terms of

There are a lot of departments that interact with the public and would have an opportunity to communicate or connect with different folks on different actions.

Our climate program specialist, Emily, who just joined us, a large part of that position is intended to help with implementation and critical initial steps of implementation are going to be education, communication, the liaising work.

We are also rapidly recognizing that Emily by herself can't do all of the things that are in here.

So we're also going to have to do some prioritizing of, you know, what are the best things to get started with?

Now that we have, you know, goal one was to get a document over this line, right?

And if we're all in agreement, then the next step is how do we do this and what do we start with and what are the things that make sense to

Push, Virginia is still fairly limited in the tools we have to require things.

And so a lot of it is incentivizing, explaining, educating.

And I think that's where the development community can come up with some ideas.

The planning commission can certainly come up with some ideas.

Right, right.

Yeah, I guess is there sort of a council of really smart people like yourselves that meet on a regular basis to talk about this for the entire community?

I know there are a bunch of different groups out there, but is there, I mean, I'm assuming that you all are at various tables, metaphorically speaking, and, you know, pushing or will be now that this document is approved.

pushing forward like this is what the city is saying we need to do.

These are the goals that we're saying we need to have met if we're going to get to where we need to be.

Are you all on board?

Yeah, so I think part of that is what Susan was referencing with this rollout is to get some of that initial sense of

You know, are there other entities, players, partners who will take ownership of some of these things?

We come back from that and realize that there's a lot more work that needs to be done in that engagement space.

And I would also suggest that we not go

We love to go down the rabbit hole of how to get all these things done, but I think that's another conversation.

And so right now we want to be able to talk about what we need to do so that we can then organize ourselves.

As one of our team members said, do we get to huddle for a month after this and really like work on the details?

Yeah, one last thing.

I know I've talked probably too much.

I mean, the difference with, I'm at the university, and the difference between the university putting a plan like this together and the city putting a plan like this together is the university can basically say for every building that's there, you will do X, Y, and Z, and then we'll roll it into funding for projects, and then you get the board of visitors providing clear direction, and the city's obviously in a very different direction.

Vice Mayor Wade Yes, thank you again.

Thank you all so much for this report.

I think it's excellent.

I think Brian can concur when we were out campaigning that this is one of the top topics that we heard about from the community.

What is the status of it?

Where has Charlottesville with it?

So it is awesome to get this plan and

and I like the fact that it's dynamic and Brian your point as far as how we can help get the word out.

I know that some of the groups that everyone mentioned the Southern Environmental Law Center, C3 that I know that you know with someone who's worked with nonprofits in the community that that

their willing allies to help with this, particularly something like this.

So I haven't talked with them, but I'm sure that they would love to help to do whatever we can.

So I know we're short on time.

I'm just going to kind of summarize some of my comments as far as

the approval of the plan or the next steps.

It looks like it's going to definitely take place before we do the zoning ordinance.

And so we just have to make sure.

I just hate to have something in either report that conflicts with the other.

And I think that that could easily happen not knowing because we're going to get so focused on one or the other.

But I'm glad that both plans

are going to be dynamic that we can change them as we need to.

I think that's fine and we need to be able to move that forward.

Working with being on the school board for many years, I'm glad that we're working with the schools.

I know some of the buildings are really old and they may not have the infrastructure for them, but we have taken care of the buildings and I think that we could be in a good position to do that.

It was kind of ironic that you're saying that

The parking lot may not be a good location because of Dominion power lines, you know, the poles and things.

I thought that was pretty ironic that that was said.

But it really comes down to we could do everything we can.

I think it's only say just like 5%.

I think that we really need to support organizations like AHIP and LEAP and things like that because it's our homes that we're in.

I think that we can have the biggest impact and we can set policy for new buildings that we want to see as make them as strong as possible.

But for the individual homes to to winterize them, I think that so much energy is lost there and we're going to produce more to keep them warm.

And if we could just have an impact there, I think that, you know, you know, our efforts will go a long way, but I understand what we can control.

As far as new buildings, I know that Friendship Court, they're going to have solar panels on their new buildings.

I think that's awesome.

Those are the type of things that we need to do.

I know that C3 and others will be reaching out to you with comments as well on this.

I know that they're happy that this is done.

I did have one question, and it may have been said, but the presentation was kind of muffled a little bit, but what is the Virginia Green Bank?

That was in one of the slides.

It's one little bullet out of a lot of them.

Got me now?

Okay.

Sorry about that.

So Green Bank is a financial structure that Connecticut is the one that I know the best where it is funding specifically programmed at meeting energy efficiency and renewable energy goals across the state.

And so it's money is loaned out for those projects.

It goes through similar with any other sort of financing process assurances to mitigate risk to ensure that those funds can be returned.

And then those funds are available for other energy efficiency and renewable energy projects.

One of the things that Connecticut has done is in addition to looking at its financing structures to make sure that risk mitigation, that the money is going to come back, that it's a reliable investment because it is on energy efficiency and renewable energy.

They're also looking at what are those environmental and economic benefits that are coming from those projects, both to the household, but also in terms of emission reductions.

And then they are able to also screen across the demographics of the state to look at who are actually receiving these grants, these different loan products and these projects to make sure it's also aligning with public policy goals.

So in Virginia, the General Assembly has authorized the state to create a green bank, but they have not authorized any funding for it.

And so the state is in this kind of a, it's not backwards progress.

It's a step forward.

Okay so just to kind of just to wrap up I think that what I'm hearing just in general

overall is that we really have a capacity issue as far as staffing to do a lot.

So that is something we either have to, you know, bring in temp staff or hire new people.

I know we have something budgeted, but that is something, you know, because if we want to do, we want to

We don't want to tap out staff and we want it to be done, you know, so that it's long term.

And so that is something we have to take into consideration as we apply and things like that.

And the last one is the the the next step as far as the

comment period, you know, just want to make it clear.

It's like when is the last date you want to get input from from the community, from those you listed several organizations or groups that you're going to be reached out to.

I think that at least three or four weeks or so, you know, would be ideal on a big project like this.

But so

That's it.

I'm supportive of this.

So I have a couple of questions.

The last two pages of your presentation I don't think duplicate anything that is in the report that we received.

It was a list of climate action plan in action things that you were suggesting.

and maybe it was just that it was different formatting and I was looking for something with the same formatting, didn't see it.

I thought that the next to the last page with that list of things that I interpreted as being a list of things that we basically could and should be starting with.

And if that's what your intent was, that's certainly the intent that I took away from it.

I love that.

I hope we can get first of all can we get a copy of that list presented that way because I thought it was very effective.

Second, that seems to me to be the basis for any statement that we would make going forward about what we think the city as a whole should be doing.

I mean if that's either that or that list or a few things from that list and maybe a few other things that might come to mind but that to me as I looked at the initial draft of the report that we got my thought was this is very comprehensive but it doesn't tell me what to do tomorrow.

and I want to know what I need you all to tell me what to do tomorrow or next month or whatever and that was the place that I saw the list and I thought that was excellent.

I will also say I really, really, really appreciate the fact that we're receiving this in October.

I've only been on council now for three budget sessions or three budget preparations, and every time it's been enormously frustrating that somebody comes out with a grand and glorious plan in March.

We have no ability to process a plan in March.

We may be able to process it now in October, but we can't in March.

And so I really appreciate the fact that we're getting this in time to think about it before it has to go into the comprehensive plan, before it has to go into the CIP, and we can begin to make some tradeoffs and do some deciding before we get there.

I didn't notice whether there was anything in here that talked about how often we would sort of update the greenhouse gas inventory.

So the commitment to updating our greenhouse gas inventory is not spoken to specifically within the plan because that's part of our ongoing commitment to the global

So we actually do update that every year.

Okay, because I remember, and it may have been two years ago, when I asked about it, I was told, oh, we don't do it that frequently.

So anyway, I'm glad that for whatever reason that it's

that it's going to be done more frequently.

I wonder if you could comment.

I had been told, and I have been telling people since as though it was gospel truth, and I hope it's true, that most of the reduction that we have actually gotten to claim has been because Dominion Power has been changing its carbon mix in how they produce power.

And so we get to claim significant savings in power

in carbon expenditures, largely because Dominion is now moving to better means of preparing power.

So the changes on Dominion

supplying us, that is definitely a big influencing factor.

Every time they make their fuel sources less, more decarbonized, less carbon intensive, that means every single kilowatt hour that we're using in the city without anybody here doing anything differently, we're reducing our emissions.

So there's definitely a big piece of that that is also connected into the Virginia Clean Economy Act that was spoken about earlier.

And on that slide, the teal kind of light blue municipal options, that's one of those off-site factors that comes into play with that.

That said, we have had a variety of different things in terms of emission reductions that have been happening within our locality.

Some of the things that it makes it hard to see that in the data is that

If we are increasing our growth, so like let's think about the number of additional computers and devices and everything that we're using in our homes now, even if we're decreasing energy use in some areas, if we're increasing it in others, that starts to come through in our data, so it's neutral.

Similarly, if you think about increased housing developments that we've had.

Those new housing units are bringing on more energy demand.

And so other housing units that we've made more energy efficient in the data, that's all starting to look neutral.

And that's a level of detail within the data that it's opaque to us.

We get a big aggregate number of what the energy usage is within our building.

We can't tell you which type of building it is or what area of the city that energy is being used or not.

We know there's energy efficiency work being done by organizations within our community.

We've supported that.

We've helped fund some of it.

The reason I make the point is simply that I...

I want us not to be too self-congratulatory about the fact that we have achieved reductions in our carbon footprint in the last 10 years or so, because it has not really been because of a lot that we've done.

There's a lot more that we need to be doing.

And if we start thinking, oh, well, we were able to accomplish two-thirds of our goal without even breaking a sweat,

We're going to get complacent.

I had two other very quick points.

First is relating to the greenhouse gas inventory.

Is there any way that you calculate or take into account things like the new construction techniques at the Apex Energy Building?

No, no, that's not one of the things.

Okay.

Right.

And the last thing I will say is when I campaigned three and a half years ago, I went around the city saying, we need LED streetlights.

And people said, you can't do that.

Dominion Power will never agree to it.

But you can.

I'm glad that we can and I hope we will.

Those are my only comments.

I do think, as I said before, I'm very much encouraged that we have

a list of things we can get started with.

And I know that at the four o'clock meetings, we don't make decisions and take votes on things.

But I suppose one thing we can do is to say to the city managers, hey, before

you know either maybe it maybe it'd be reasonable to say the first meeting in November can we have some some way of moving forward with this that if we need to have a letter if we need to have a resolution something like that that's fine if we need to come up with our own little list of things that's fine but let's figure out what our next step is going to be okay okay so

It's not a public hearing, but anyway.

So is there anything else on our agenda for right now?

I'm happy to talk to you.

Okay pursuant to section 2.2-3712 of the Virginia Code I hereby move that the City Council close this open meeting and convene within a closed meeting as authorized by Virginia Code section 2.2-3711 a a7 and a8 for consultation with legal counsel and briefing by staff pertaining to pending litigation

Federal Court Case No.

Okay, we have a motion.

Is there a second?

Second.

So this is, we can just do by voice vote.

All opposed?

The motion passes.

Council will now be in closed session.

We will return to a different Zoom link for the 6.30 meeting.

So if there are folks out there who are watching who want to tune in at 6.30, it's going to be a different link.

Tina, is that a motion to get back out?

Okay, Brian.

Well, right now, we don't have the camera in the city council chambers on.

Oh.

Are we ready to go, folks?

All right.

All right.

Is there a second?

Second.

Okay.

Ms.

Thomas, will you take the vote on this motion?

Councillor McGill yes Councillor Payne yes Councillor Pinkston yes Mayor Snook yes Vice Mayor Wade yes all right so we are now out of closed session and into back into open session for the 630 session and first of all I apologize to folks that were about 10 minutes late getting back we were not just sitting around eating bonbons but we're actually doing

doing important stuff.

We'll begin the 6.30 business meeting with a moment of silence.

Thank you.

One announcement, Mayor, I was asked to make earlier this evening.

The Green Grannies on October 22nd at 11 a.m.

at Ix Art Park will be holding a Get Out the Vote event for the climate.

So October 22nd, which is a Saturday, at what time?

11 a.m.

at Ix Art Park.

Okay.

Thank you.

Anybody else?

That's next up.

Okay.

We're getting some feedback someplace.

Okay.

There is one other announcement that came out this afternoon that the city is seeking a holiday tree donation for the 25th anniversary grand illumination.

as the date for the grand illumination Friday December 2nd 5 to 8 p.m.

quickly approaches the city of Charlottesville is seeking donations for a holiday tree looking for a conifer a white pine spruce or fir 15 to 20 feet tall 10 to 12 feet in diameter hopefully without obvious disease wounds or bear spots if you know of such a tree please contact Steve Gaines urban forester with Charlottesville Parks and Rec

Let's see.

Next was going to be, oh, I guess, are there any items for recognition?

Is there a motion regarding board and commission appointments?

Who's going to?

Yes.

Yes.

CACVB, we were going to nominate Danny O'Shea.

Okay, Danny Shea, thank you.

Is there a second?

Second.

Any discussion?

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any nays?

Next up Ms.

Consent Agenda 3, Minutes, August 15th, Council Meeting, 4, Resolution, Virginia Department of Social Services, Temporary Aid to Needy Families Grants, $100,000, Second Reading,

Five, Resolution, Housing Opportunities for People with AIDS, HIV Grant Agreement, $3,981.

Second reading.

Six, Resolution, Blue Ridge Area Coalition for the Homeless, Reimbursement of Funds for Staff Costs to Support the Homeless Information Line, $15,381.60.

Second reading.

Seven, Resolution, Appropriation of $656,000 of CARES funding for the Charlottesville Area Transit.

second reading eight resolution appropriation from Charlottesville area transit local funding to Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission to support the governance study $30,000 second reading nine resolution appropriating Charlottesville supplemental rental assistance program funding for the acquisition of 818 Montrose Avenue $355,000 second reading

10, Resolution Appropriating Fiscal Year 2023 Fire Programs Aid to Locality, Fire Fund, $186,776, one of two readings 11, Resolution Appropriating Funding from the Virginia Department of Social Services for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education and Training Program Laptop Loaner Program, one of two readings

Okay, so we will now take public comment regarding the 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, just press star 9.

And this is only for those last ten items that were read and that were shown up on the screen.

If you are one of those who has signed up

for the regular community matters section.

This is not your time.

That will be in a few minutes.

Is there anybody who would like to speak on any of the matters on the consent agenda?

Anybody in person?

All right.

So we will close the public hearing aspect of the consent agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Okay.

Any further questions or comments from Council?

Ms.

Councillor McGill?

Yes.

Yes.

Vice Mayor Wade?

Yes.

Okay.

Yes, sir.

We have provided a written report.

This is the first meeting of the month, so we have that report, but I have some other announcements I'd like to make.

First, the bus driver shortage facing the entire country has presented so many colleagues challenges for communities for a few years now, and only those communities with careful planning and resources have been able to remain attentive

to the issues this shortage causes.

Charlottesville continues to be a city where additional steps are being taken to stabilize the workforce and demonstrate to our team that we strive to be the employer of choice in the region.

In addition to the two recruitment and retention bonuses,

that was implemented last year with council support.

I am today announcing a major shift in the compensation structure for operators, transit and pupil, bus aides, transit bus technicians, transit maintenance workers as well.

These changes will be effective today and the staff has been notified.

Operator pay for transit and pupil drivers will now start at $21 per hour.

Bus aid pay will now start at $18 per hour.

All bus drivers with more than a year service along with technicians and maintenance personnel will receive a 12% market adjustment to demonstrate the city's support for their continued efforts to provide service to our community.

The city of Charlottesville and the region needs public transportation.

and I'm proud of the efforts of the men and women at CAT who stood by us and worked with us and we hope that this pay increase will continue to provide incentive and will draw back the people we need to assure that we have a stable, reliable public transportation system for the citizens in this community.

And so we need

20 in transit, 25 in pupil operators.

So let the word go out.

Kat is hiring.

Yeah, if I could just say a word or two.

Thank you and thank staff, Sam Sanders in particular and Garland Williams.

Yes.

Thank you and I thank the support of Council on this and let me just add a caveat.

We are able to fund this from CATS budget because of the vacancies that we have

However, we are enjoying some success in filling those vacancies.

So the extent to which we are truly successful in filling the positions, we will be back for some more money from Council to fund this going forward.

Understood.

All right.

I have one question on that 12%.

Is that 12% of what people are making now?

That's 12% based on the current pay because we're dealing with compression on this.

No, sir, that is correct.

It's a 12% increase to ensure that as everyone

So we will make sure I mean I just want to be very clear with the public and everybody that we are making sure that

previous employees will be above the starting, the new starting.

That's correct.

So that, and if for anybody has ends up that not that case, that is not supposed to be the case.

Continuing Chief as you know it's been reported that Fire Chief Smith has plans to leave us and go back back to Florida.

We will be meeting Deputy City Manager Sanders and I will be meeting with him this week to discuss transition

and we will focus on identifying an acting chief as well as developing a process for the selection of a recruitment and selection of a new chief.

So we'll be getting back to you on that.

Today we launched a new City Hall Ambassador Program.

All visitors will be greeted by the ambassadors upon entering the main entrance to City Hall from the Downtown Mall.

If you are conducting business with the Treasurer's Office, the Commission of Revenue, or the Utility Billing Office, you will be able to access those customer service areas directly.

All other guests will be asked to check in and receive a visitor's badge.

this is part of our post-pandemic opening for sure.

And I note too that the entrance to Neighborhood Development Services from 7th Street will, from Market Street will be

will be open and those having business there should go to that door and be greeted to a new conference room set up so that people are not standing in the hall.

We have

As Council has recently supported the lifting of the emergency order, I have asked our leadership team to achieve a reopened status effective today.

We will continue to afford some staff the opportunity to work in a hybrid posture.

These employees have been asked to develop a hybrid work plan and execute specific agreements to support their in-office and remote schedules.

My last statement is the city manager's office is in constant communication with the Charlottesville Police Department about any incidents that occur in our community.

My ultimate goal is to ensure that our community and its residents are safe.

Please know that I am aware of the incidents of firearm violence,

that have occurred in the recent month including the tragedy that occurred on the 17th and the most recent incident on the 28th where those victims are in stable condition.

Our officers are currently investigating both cases.

and would like to ensure the public that the incidents pose no immediate threat to our community.

I'm thankful to announce that Charlottesville Police Department and the Albemarle County Police Department are working together to address the current uptick in firearm violence within our community as they both

realize that there are no jurisdictional lines with offenders.

Both departments are working together to have more intentional informational sharing on these incidents.

In addition, I am aware of the two swatting incidents that occurred within our city's school system last week, the last week on the 19th at the Charlottesville High School and on the 20th at Beaufort Middle School.

It is an unfortunate act of cowardice that multiple school districts in the Commonwealth had to work through this.

and the acting chief, Durrett, has given me notice that the FBI is looking into these incidents across the state and our own investigation is ongoing.

I would like to thank our police and fire departments for their quick response to each school's perimeter for conducting thorough searches to ensure that both reports were a hoax and for the Charlottesville

City School System's desire to continue to work alongside our public safety departments to ensure safety of our students and teachers.

Swatting is a deceptive tactic wherein an individual prompts an emergency response from first responders by calling in a false report.

This illegal act, often as we saw in our two cases, involves a threat or possible danger to public safety.

I also recognize that swatting can create needless trauma and emotional distress in our community.

These incidents can be frightening for all involved including our parents.

Please know that I have confirmed that our police and fire departments are engaging in these incidents using 21st century best practices that we will continue to work along Charlottesville schools to ensure that all parties are ready to respond and aware of what the response may look like.

To enhance that

work, my office continues to work towards engaging an emergency manager to work alongside several other professionals to ensure that the city continues to be ready to respond to emergency and natural disasters or not.

or other disasters in the community.

The city has already engaged in much work focused on these issues, including working on the update of our continuity of operations plan.

Finally, I would like to remind our community that if they have any information on these incidents or others, please call our Crime Spotters hotline, 434-9789.

374,000.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and Council.

Thank you, Mr. Rogers.

I just wanted to add one other little detail that folks might find of interest.

Not only are we saluting Chief Smith for his service to our area for the last two years, but we also have some new leaders in the Charlottesville Fire Department, new battalion chiefs Chad Bingler, Lance Blakey, and Mark Ellis.

And Lance Blakey has the distinction of being the first African American to serve in this capacity in the Charlottesville Fire Department.

they're all highly qualified folks to hold these positions and we're in good hands so I'm sorry that Chief Smith is leaving us I think he has as I said to him shortly after his departure became known I've been impressed since he's been here at the level of detail that we get from him about how how quickly the response came and

and just what the department has done in the very critical area, of course, of fire response.

It's actually the thing that they do the least of all of their activities, but it's the one that everybody notices and if something gets screwed up, that's the one where there's hell to pay.

Mayor Snook, I just wanted to note that for Battalion Chief Blakey, that I think he's the first African American in 166 years.

I just wanted to note the length of time and that it's an excellent promotion.

He's been out in the community doing wonderful things, but we had a meeting Friday night

Mr. Mayor, could I ask a question, please?

I know this is not one that can be answered on the spot, but I'm just wanting to put it out there and ask you and others, Mr. City Manager, to just think about this sort of

Blue Sky ideas about protecting places like Tenth and Page from what I'll just call terrorizing violence that's happening that seems to be random or it's unclear what even the point of it is except to shoot up an area.

I'm sure there are more causes than what I'm alluding to.

I don't know how we prevent that sort of thing, but it seems like that it's coming from outside of the community into our community.

Maybe that's wrong.

I don't know.

But I would be interested in future conversations that we have with you if the chief has any suggestions about, I don't know, additional forces we could bring to bear, maybe someone from the state who could help us.

I don't want to make a bigger problem than we've got, but I'm getting

emails with bullet holes in the window seals and things like that.

Absolutely unacceptable.

And let me say that

this is something now almost every community in America is facing really and so we have to lean on each other in terms of looking at the practices that are being utilized that are effective in tracking and predicting and stemming the violence in communities and I'm glad that the chief has stepped forward

with this conversation with the Albemarle Police Department, the two working together because the crime has no boundaries.

I think that will have some tremendous benefits for us as well.

But I'm having a conversation with the chief about what can we do?

What are the best ideas that we can bring forward?

Okay, so let's move on then to Community Matters.

We have six preregistered speakers leaving ten slots for additional speakers on Community Matters.

Each speaker will have up to three minutes to speak.

We will now open the floor to the preregistered speakers.

Is our first speaker available?

I've got Susan Cruz as my first.

Is Ms.

Yes.

Yes, I'm here.

Perfect.

All right.

So good evening.

My name is Susan Cruz and I am the Executive Director of the Community Climate Collaborative, or C3.

I've been periodically attending council meetings since 2019 asking for increased attention to our city's climate goals, specifically for creating a climate action plan.

Tonight, I want to take a moment to thank you city council, the deputy city manager, Sam Sanders and Ashley Marshall and interim city manager, Michael Rogers and city staff, Crystal Riddervold and Susan Elliott for getting Charlottesville to this critical milestone.

We now have a climate action plan to guide the work ahead.

And that is indeed something to celebrate.

Over the last few months, C3 has been working with a wide range of community partners to provide recommendations to city staff and council as you have developed this plan.

We partnered with Cultivate Charlottesville and the Food Justice Network on food justice recommendations, with Livable Seville on recommendations for municipal gas decarbonizations, sorry that's always a mouthful,

with Cultivate, Albemarle Housing Improvement Program, Piedmont Housing Alliance, Charlottesville DSA, Lowe's and Fish's Food Pantry, Move to Health Equity and the Food Justice Network on climate smart zoning recommendations and also transit equity recommendations with more than two dozen community partners.

We will be providing further comments on corporate sustainability and energy equity in the coming months.

While we are very excited to have a plan to work with, I think we could use more definition around the public's ability to provide feedback.

Following the staff presentation, my first questions were, is there no formal public comment period?

Is council going to vote at some point to adopt this climate action plan?

If yes, when?

As I mentioned previously, C3 and others have been providing recommendations, but this is the first time that we have seen the city staff's incorporation or exclusion of our comments.

We still have not been able to address all topics that we know are critical to climate action.

We are so grateful to the city team for their work, and we have no doubt about their deep commitment to climate.

Still, I am concerned that no formal public comment period signals to the community that the city will continue to rely on its old ways of planning for climate behind closed doors when the entire community is needed to reach our goals.

With that being said, the impacts of climate change are mounting, as was further evidenced by recent hurricanes Fiona and Ian, which devastated Puerto Rico, Florida and South Carolina in recent weeks.

I firmly believe that the city can still provide an opportunity for meaningful input while moving forward with implementation and funding for what staff presented here tonight.

One of the reasons for completing its climate action plan by October was to inform council's budget decisions.

C3 recommends that council staff and the city manager's office work together to set clear funding priorities for implementing the climate action plan as soon as possible.

We can't afford to lose more time on this, but let's not leave the public behind in the process.

Thank you, Ms.

Cruz.

Good evening, City Council.

Okay, great.

My name is Caetano de Campos Lopez, and I'm also a member of the Community Climate Collaborative.

Today, as we celebrate the recent release of shovels to clamp action plan draft, I want to highlight the following relevant and major commitments established in the climate action plan.

Reach 100% carbon neutrality electricity in city-owned buildings and facilities by 2030

reduce energy consumption by 10% across community buildings by 2030 and aim for 10% of Charlottesville rooftop solar potential to be installed by 2030.

These commitments are evidence of well conducted behind the scenes negotiations between the city's climate team and other city's departments.

However, it's also important to observe that the current version of the climate action plan includes recommendations that are not relevant, which suggests that more and better coordination is still needed with certain departments of the city before this document is considered final.

For example, the climate action plan draft includes apparently strong natural gas and public transit recommendations that in reality are redundant from a practical perspective.

For example, the natural gas one states consider a commitment to make sure that you got fully neutral throughout its service territory by 2050.

The public transit says initiate the transit pathways to carbon neutrality by 2050 assessment.

These recommendations are redundant because both the city and the county have committed in 2019 to community-wide carbon neutrality goals by 2050.

And these goals already imply that from a community-wide perspective, solids and gas will have carbon neutral operations by then.

In order to make recommendations relevant, the GAP should offer more clear guidance and milestones as to how and when Charlottesville gas and CAT should decolonize their emissions, for example, reduce emissions by X, Y percent by 2025, 2030, 2035, so forth.

Not only that, but it would also be relevant to set qualifiable metrics for tracking progress.

and suggest practical strategies for achieving them.

In reality, establishing time bound commitments on determining measurable metrics should be widespread applied in all areas of the plan.

For example, again, transportation, the plan says evaluate and begin integrating electric school buses or increase public transit ridership.

Both of these recommendations as they are

without more clear definitions might be wrongly interpreted as an attempt to set a powerful goal that in reality is an empty one.

My time is ending, so thank you so much for the opportunity to speak.

Thank you.

Hi, how's it going?

Yes, we can.

Great.

Good evening.

I'm Katie Ebinger, a Charlottesville resident and the climate policy analyst for C3.

Thank you all for the opportunity to speak and for the time, commitment and work that you and the climate team have poured into the climate action plan.

It's a really impressive document and it gives us a good framework to address the climate crisis from here in Charlottesville.

The final iteration of the cap which we hope to help build here tonight is our community's opportunity to rapidly shift away from fossil fuel dependent infrastructure and to use climate action as a vehicle to promote justice.

This evening I want to speak about two topics that sit at that intersection of climate and social justice energy and transportation.

For energy the cap draft among other things reviews finding a replacement fuel to natural gas and recommends reconsidering the offsets offered by BP.

We want to urge focus on person-centered tangible benefits such as in the buildings and energy section.

We want there to be more specific recommendations around weatherizing homes, electrifying appliances, and adding solar to every eligible rooftop in Charlottesville.

In this process, we need to prioritize homes that are the most energy burdened or who may be in need of other repairs like new roofs.

At the same time, we need to build battery storage into individual homes or microgrids citywide so that we have weather events like a lot of the Southeast experience this weekend, we can minimize losing power.

Public transportation is another good example of the intersection of climate and social action.

When it works well, it can connect people with their work, their doctor's appointments, maybe even their city council meetings in a safe, fast and climate friendly way.

We want to drastically reduce trips taken by single occupancy vehicles.

So we prioritize recommendations.

Let's start with actions like electrifying Charlottesville area transit and creating highly targeted strategies for increasing bike ability and walkability.

Pedestrian access is clearly highly valued throughout the report, but when it comes to the recommendations themselves, there are about one and a half times as many recommendations relating to EV adoption as to pedestrian access.

So when we increase recommendations, the increasing recommendations around pedestrian access will more equitably spend city resources than some existing recommendations in the document, which include things like providing financial incentives for personal EVs, particularly in view of the recently released inflation reduction act.

As we decarbonize our city, Let's takes us an opportunity to democratize our energy and transportation systems and create transformational changes that address the root causes of climate change.

Thank you, Ms.

Ebinger.

Hello?

Thank you.

Thank you City Council for allowing me to speak.

My name is Margaret Rose Byrne and I'm a person with a disability.

I live in Albemarle County.

I'm particularly interested in the CAPS treatment of public transportation, which I consider essential to meaningful action to address climate change because of the large contribution that our transportation sector makes to area greenhouse gas emissions.

Expansion of public transportation and increased ridership is essential to achieving the goals of the Climate Action Plan.

One of the constituencies which must be served by public transportation is people with disabilities.

Many of them cannot drive because driving requires many physical abilities.

They therefore have more need for public transportation than other citizens.

They are disproportionately affected when crosswalks near transit stops are absent or inaccessible and weight limits for vehicles are insufficient to accommodate their mobility equipment, such as power wheelchairs.

It has come to my attention that the locations of CAT bus stops sometimes require riders to cross busy streets without a crosswalk.

This is hazardous to transit riders and is a disincentive to using CAT.

The CAT routes need to have well-placed accessible crosswalks not only for people with disabilities but also for all transit riders and all pedestrians including children walking to school and people with baby strollers and the elderly.

Pedestrians need to stay in the crosswalks.

There is recent regulatory action concerning crosswalks and people with disabilities at the federal and state levels.

The fact that cat and junk can accommodate a wheelchair and a rider up to 600 pounds and therefore can accommodate most power wheelchair users needs to be publicized to combat disinformation and circulation that cat and junk do not allow power wheelchair users.

Why should you care about a minority of citizens who have disabilities?

Well, first, when you consider that most of the elderly have disabilities, there are more of them than you think.

Second, adult onset disability can happen to anyone.

Old age happens to everyone who does not die young.

You'll be on the receiving end of these policies sooner or later and sooner than you think.

Third, ADA is not, Amelia's suggestion is the law.

And fourthly, although ADA and ADA have been relatively recent, the idea that the community includes its most vulnerable members is ancient.

Thank you very much.

Next up, we have Terry Jo Bischel, if I've pronounced your name correctly.

Okay, the next person I've got on the list is Bill Emery.

Let me call back on the phone.

All right.

So while we're waiting for that to happen, is there anyone in the room here who would like to speak on something in part for community matters?

Note that we've got a public hearing scheduled to talk about the collective bargaining ordinance

also to talk about the air rights conveyance to the University of Virginia for the pedestrian bridge.

So if you're here to speak on either of those topics, now is not the time.

But if you've got some other topic, I'm not seeing any action here in the room.

James Groves is the next raised hand.

James Groves Good evening.

My name is James Groves, city resident and co-chair of the Seville 100 Climate Coalition.

Thanks to the city staff for producing a climate action plan.

I sincerely appreciate the work and I'd like to share a few observations.

First, city leadership should note the plan's comments about staffing and funding.

Quote, accomplishing these actions will require both staff time and funding resources, both of which are currently constrained, unquote.

Without additional investment, the strong ideas in this plan won't be realized.

In staffing, the city should hire a data analyst to track progress.

I support the plan's equity focus but wonder why there's no mention of the city's authority to set up its own green bank.

The plan hopes Virginia will fund a statewide green bank but is that realistic given the power balance in Richmond?

Separately for rental equity consider strategies to spur green leases and similar rental ideas.

The plan should push more strongly for electrification.

In transportation, the plan says too little about school bus and transit electrification.

In buildings and residential, while electric grid resilience concerns are valid, much of our future will be electric, not renewable natural gas or hydrogen.

In this area, the city should remove gas system subsidies now.

In transportation, the plan has modest suggestions for investments in street infrastructure to support bikes and walking, but no mention of software infrastructure for transportation.

In March, Ted Reek of Jaunt organized a presentation on mobility as a service, which would be a great addition to the plan.

Elsewhere, the plan extols the benefits of rezoning densification, but does not acknowledge the climate risks, for instance, tree canopy loss and carbon emissions growth from more city residents.

Recall Susan Elliott's answer this afternoon to Mayor Snook, emission reductions in one place can be canceled out by emissions growth elsewhere.

Pages 90 and 91 of the plan include good thoughts about how rezoning could support climate action.

Finally, the plan could strengthen its emphasis on education, both community wide and in schools.

The city should spark better education that motivates citizens to contribute to the clean energy transition.

Thank you, Mr. Groves.

Mayor Snook, I see the original instance of Bill Emery in Zoom.

Sure.

Can you hear me now?

Yes.

Technology.

I wanted to speak to you this evening about the Rivanna.

Great cities take care of the rivers.

Mayor Snook, you will remember, and Michael Payne will remember when you first were running for council.

My first question was, what about the Rivanna?

Since the early 1990s,

People in Charlottesville have asked city planners and political leadership to protect the Rivanna River.

The value of the river corridor became abundantly clear during COVID times.

Use of the river residents of the city skyrocketed and has remained high.

But sadly, decades of asking for river corridor zoning reform have not prompted action.

The results of council and staff's inaction

is bearing fruit.

The results are bearing fruit now.

A corporate entity has filed a site plan with the city of Charlottesville to build 245 apartment units and two plus acres of asphalt parking in the flood plain just downstream from the free bridge.

Atmore County doesn't allow building in the flood stream, but Charlottesville does.

I don't mean to portray the unknown developer as misguided.

They're just going for the main champs to make some money.

What is disgraceful is the city's lack of regard for the importance of this river to its citizenry and the city's failure to plan and enact river corridor zoning.

It's critical to avoid negatively affecting the environmental quality of the river system.

or devaluing the important natural attributes and cultural resources that make our home, Charlottesville, a place worth caring about.

I urge the Council to avoid this brewing tragedy of the common situation.

Council, please, exercise your power of eminent domain.

Provide the current owner of the property with just compensation.

buy this land and transfer stewardship of our river to the Department of Parks and Recreation.

Thank you, Mr. Emery.

Is there anyone else online?

Yes, Mayor Snook.

All right, Ms.

Hi, everybody.

Bill almost said everything I wanted to say except that I'm sure you all heard about the green space invasion.

Not just any green space, it's the green space that pulled us through the pandemic.

Let me tell you a story about Jackie Onassis, the first lady who in 1963 was President Kennedy's first lady and that was

you know the 35th president which was just 10 presidents ago anyway Jacqueline passed away in 1994 but her legacy they named the Central Park Reservoir after her and that is by the way the fifth largest park in New York City 840 acres 42 million visitors a year

and most filmed location in the world.

It's open 6 a.m.

to 1 a.m.

And it started in the 1840s where somebody came up with an idea proposal and took 10 years, 10 years, not like two days.

And not so good news because they did create a black

Settlement in Eminent Domain, but so did a lot of parks.

However, she, Jackie, enjoyed jogging and two reasons why they named the reservoir after her.

First of all, she was the one who got the historic Grand Central Terminal restored

and then also she protested against the building of the structure that would hinder Central Park's beauty and ecological any towering building and now at her death they did build the towers and those towers are killing the infrastructure and the ecological health of the of the whole Central Park

And these towers, by the way, that they built are housing people that aren't even paying taxes.

These are internationals that say they only live there for six months of the year.

My moral of the story here is let's look at this river and its health at this point.

that so many people have in Nature Conservancy, Rivanna River Alliance, the Rivanna River Company have put in native plants constantly and they're trying to bring back the health and it takes a lot of work and it takes time, but certainly not cementing and housing.

It's really crazy.

You should see the site plan.

Thank you, Ms.

All right, Ms.

Hi, counselors.

Thank you for having me on tonight.

I know there's a hearing on it later, but I do appreciate your work on the CBO.

Related to that, I am a city school parent and a mom to a child at CHS and Walker.

My partner and I have spent the past month

Trying to figure out how to get our kids effectively to and from school and it has been a major challenge.

Currently my kid from Walker walks over to CHS and we pick up both.

We wait in the car in the car line for a half an hour to do that but that turned out to be the best way to do it for our busy family.

One of the things that's happening, though, is that the children from Walker, when they get out, they're crossing the pedestrian bridge over 250 and entering that four-lane stop that leads to the Martin Luther King Performing Arts Center.

My daughter reports having to run across the road every day to avoid cars hitting her.

There are major backups down Grove Road because of that stop sign and people being unable to turn onto 250

I don't think there's anything you can do about that.

But I can report that from the Walker Walker gets out from the time Walker gets out at 315 until the time CHS gets out probably around 415 or maybe later.

That stop sign is very dangerous for students and they're not able to

to walk across the road the way they should be.

Cars are not yielding to them.

So I appreciate what you're doing to try to increase bus driver pay and alleviate this situation.

Parents like me are in a horrible situation.

It's literally taking over an hour of my day.

And I'm one of the lucky few who has a flexible schedule so that I can even accommodate doing this.

So I appreciated

the Acting City Manager's comments earlier and I appreciate you raising pay.

I hope that a solution happens very soon because the situation is dangerous, as you know, also along Rose Hill Drive for students and cars.

Thank you, Ms.

Stark.

as well as on a couple of the action items.

And the first thing up is a public hearing, second reading on air rights conveyance to the University of Virginia for a pedestrian bridge over Emmett Street.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and members of Council.

So the item before you tonight is a request from the University of Virginia for air rights for a new pedestrian bridge that would run from the under construction Contemplative Commons building on the west side of Emmett Street on UVA campus over Emmett Street to the Newcombe Plaza area.

So it's just north of the existing pedestrian bridge.

That existing bridge is proposed to be removed.

And normally, we would have had the public hearing component of this last time the issue was raised, but there was an advertising issue, and to get it right, and so there'd be no question, we've said that the public hearing is tonight.

Anybody have any questions for Mr. Freeze?

Councilor McGill, do you have any questions?

No, I do not, Mayor.

Okay.

So I will now open the public hearing.

Is there anybody present who would like to speak on the matter?

I see nobody present wishing to speak on the matter.

Good evening, Mayor and Council.

Thank you for letting me speak.

I wondered if there is any remuneration that the city will gain from this generous offer that we're seeming to accept.

I don't oppose the offer, but I think maybe the city should get some money for it.

That's all I have.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Does anybody have an answer for Ms.

I can speak to that.

There's not a direct payment related to the air rights conveyance that's being requested, but we

down the road at the intersection of Ivy and Emmett, where we have a VDOT-funded SmartScale project in the works.

Part of that project has involved the need for the university to grant an easement or land conveyance to us in order to complete that project.

Just looking at the design, it's not one that enters a building and exits a building.

The short answer, Councilor McGill, is yes.

Yes.

Yeah.

So, okay.

Councilors, any other questions?

Is there a motion on the ordinance?

Oh, I'm sorry.

We will close the public hearing.

There being no other public who wishes to speak on the matter.

Thank you.

Second.

Any discussion?

And just to be clear, when you say to accept, there is a resolution, an ordinance set out on page 76 of the materials.

That's what we're accepting.

Is that correct, Ms.

Oh, you know what?

That's the wrong one.

I've got it.

Okay, and that's as set forth on page 73.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Still seconded.

Okay.

Any other discussion?

Ms.

I need to read one quick thing, please.

In the interest of full disclosure relative to this project, I work in the Facilities Management Department at UVA, which is leading this work.

I am not directly involved in the project.

Yes.

Next item up, request for vacation of unaccepted right-of-way for Oak Street.

This is actually a third reading.

It was deferred from August 15th, and we've been trying to make sure that we could get everybody able to be present and to participate.

So here we are again.

Ms.

I believe that I am.

Good evening, everyone.

As noted in your agenda materials, the city has received a request from Portia Boggs and Vignesh Kapusamy, the owners of a lot located at 321 6th Street Southwest.

They're asking the city to convey to them a strip of property adjacent to their lot, which was platted many years ago, somewhere around 1888 as part of a 20 foot right of way that was identified on that old plat as being Oak Street.

The subdivision plat that created that right of way was recorded actually in the land records of Albemarle County

and subsequently this area of the city was annexed.

Many years later, back in 2010, City Council closed a 77-foot section of that same street beginning at 6 1⁄2 Street Southwest and continuing up to the eastern property line of the lots currently identified as 316 and 322

to 6 1⁄2 Street Southwest.

And City Council did not require those landowners to pay for the extra square footage of the land or otherwise to provide any sort of compensation or quid pro quo.

The 2010 ordinance by which

that vacation was accomplished, stated that there were no utility easements within that portion of Oak Street that was closed.

So at the current time, there is a portion of the originally platted street that basically goes nowhere.

It goes up to the

the edge of the area that was closed or vacated by City Council in 2010 and the property owners on one side of that platted street are asking for the city to vacate this remaining portion

of Oak Street.

And in front of you, we have simply passed along the landowner's request for that to happen.

And we have given you an ordinance for consideration.

The

The ordinance recommends that if the area is vacated by City Council that there be an acknowledgement that there is a utility service line that services the property across the street from the applicants but it is likely although we're not sure at this point that that service line

is located on the portion of the property that would actually become the property of that other lot owner if you were to close this.

So if City Council vacates the remaining portion of this plaited street, half of that street to the center line goes to the applicants who have asked you to do this.

The other half of that plaited street goes to the owners of the lot

opposite the applicant's lot.

Over the last two times this has been presented to City Council, it has been pointed out that over the years the city has had different processes or procedures or perhaps sometimes no

real processes and procedures for doing this and that there is some desire to see a consistent approach taken, in particular a consistent approach to providing information to applicants about why they are receiving responses that they receive, why they

why their application might be rejected or why their application might have to go through one process versus another.

City staff is currently in the process of updating and reviewing all of those procedures that we have.

The city does have a number of procedures but it has become

a little bit difficult to follow them because we have one set of procedures that apply to alleys we may have a different set of procedures that apply to subdivision plats because those subdivision plats may be governed by certain state law procedures

related to how you abandoned something that was created as part of a subdivision plat.

And then there's a different set of procedures that may apply to streets that have already been improved and accepted into the city system for maintenance.

that for one reason or another somebody wishes to close or vacate.

And the most recent example of that type of request was a couple of years ago when there was a request to close Brandon Avenue.

So there are a number of different postures in which these cases come forward.

and quite frankly over the years city council's own procedures for considering and handling them have changed from time to time depending on which city council was in place at the time an application came in.

The staff is working on a set of procedures but they have they are not ready yet and so this matter is sort of hanging out there so from a staff perspective

There's no real firm recommendation one way or another.

City Council can approve it.

City Council can deny it.

City Council can defer it or table it indefinitely.

We don't have a specific date in which a completely overhauled new set of procedures might be available.

And so we just we really don't know

How you might like to resolve this, but any of those dispositions would be fine from a staff perspective.

Any questions from Ms.

I have one.

It's so not all the people who are adjacent to this piece of property

Correct.

So at one point, in order to get all people who were adjacent to the property that was being asked to be closed,

So the state law provision that talks about how you vacate a subdivision plat

allows for city council to consider requests either or for for handling requests to handle those either by adopting an ordinance which is what's being brought to you here or by leaving it to landowners to resolve among themselves so there was a time in the past where the city's the city council approved procedures allowed people to

to vacate an area like this if everybody agreed to it and it was done by collecting signatures and everybody would execute a deed that would accomplish the transaction.

But then at some point along the line, another city council believed that we shouldn't simply allow people to do this, that the city council and the city in general

has an interest in looking at each one of these from the perspective of whether or not the city might itself have a use for it down the road.

So the reason I'm asking about this is because I do know some of these these border territories become almost community spaces where one neighbor kind of starts planting a garden starts putting things in place and again until I've made myself really clear about where I stand on the whole process but

In particular, if not all of the property owners, we don't know how that property owner who has not signed on to this is going to be affected.

Well, we do know that half of the other half of the alley would go to that person.

So to whatever extent.

So the other thing to keep in mind here is many of these platted alleys

sort of encumber the area with an unperfected right that the city has to use it at some point in the future.

But one of the reasons that title goes to the adjacent

lot owners is that in many cases they may already have technically owned title to that land.

It's just sort of impressed with

In a lot of cases, not all of them, it's impressed with a right of the city to say, hey, we want to put a public street here.

And if and when the city is ready to move forward with that project, the city would be able to perfect its interest and turn that into a street that's owned and constructed by the city.

But in many cases, if not most,

of the situations in which you're dealing with a plat from the 1800s or early 1900s.

While we say title is going to the adjacent lot owners, in many, many cases, they already technically own title.

So it's already their property.

I guess my only question is, yeah, this is something I'll be waiting with great anticipation for these set of rules that are promulgated about this.

I know it's got to be a lot, but in this particular case, are the folks that are listed here, are they really super urgent in getting this resolved, or could we...

Could we wait until these rules have been promulgated?

Or can we just defer this for now?

Occasionally when a landowner brings this forward, and you actually had a couple of these earlier this year, occasionally someone says, I'm trying to

Close on the sale of my property to somebody else, and the title company says this needs to be resolved.

So you occasionally run into something like that, but that is not the case here, to my knowledge.

I think the property owners in question

But that's been there for a while.

Yeah.

There's no suggestion that the city is about to start construction of a public street in this area.

Right.

I would just say,

I would favor just indefinitely deferring it.

I feel like for these, this seems like the agenda item that just never goes away.

But it seems like to me, just to boil it down

is it seems like to me to vote on it I would need to have a sense is there any kind of coherent scoring process that is getting at would this have any negative adverse impact on people's ability to access their property or potentially in the future any adverse impact on for example if someone is going to build like an accessory dwelling unit these unplatted alleys could be an important part of access to those properties or an important part of like bike pet infrastructure and I feel like without any

One, scoring mechanism, or two, not anything confirming whether every adjacent property is okay with it.

Of course, the adjacent property is going to end up getting the other half of it, which includes their own driveway.

I acknowledge there could be circumstances that you've raised

that could suggest a reason for some caution.

Neither of the ones you mentioned are at all likely in this case.

We know that the driveway doesn't connect to anything because we already vacated the other half of this road.

It has now been vacated and given to the adjoining property owners, and it's not that we need it to get to

some affordable dwelling unit or accessory dwelling unit because, in fact, the folks who want access to their garage confirmed, that's exactly what we're trying to do is to give them access to an auxiliary structure.

I understand the desire to have a comprehensive

scoring system and so on.

And just a final thought is one that makes me a little uncomfortable is also that there was a scoring process created in 2018 that we are not following at all.

And I don't know how specific or accurate their concern is, but I would just note that the Housing Authority did reach out to me during this conversation to express they had some concern whether it could impact nearby redevelopment, but they have

not looked at this specifically, so they're not sure.

Correct.

And I'd also just like to point out, and this is part of the reason why there's so much confusion around procedures, because now we have variations of procedures depending on what the nature of the area is.

The procedure that has what's called a scoring rubric is only for alleys.

It's not for platted public streets.

If I were the property owner and my garage was on a city street, I would want that situation resolved and I would think that the three months it has been on our agenda was probably time enough for Council to figure it out.

As far as risk, probably not much because the city isn't in fact going to do anything.

If they want to refinance their property, some title insurance company might sit there and say, hey, wait a minute, your garage, you don't even own your garage.

What do you mean?

The advantage, of course, is that if we dedicate this, if we give it to the folks on either side, we get to collect some tax revenue on it.

A couple hundred bucks a year.

Well, to be clear, it may actually technically be their property.

It's just that if and when the city ever decided they wanted to build a street there, they would have had to remove their garage.

So the underlying title to the land may already be with them.

Just as we did for the other half, the 100 feet behind them, so that at one point, this went someplace.

with the hope and expectation that among all the other incredibly important things that the City Attorney's Office is working on, we'll get at some point more clear direction on how to handle these things in the future.

Okay, is there a second to that motion?

Second.

Discussion on the motion?

So, just to remind you then that this is going to set this up.

We now are saying that it's also okay to give that land away.

Whether, I mean, again, in the past, some people have had to pay for this.

But in this case, isn't it essentially literally recognizing the facts on the ground?

I mean, are we going to ask, in this case, the homeowner to demolish their garage?

I guess we could, but if I saw, like, as the mayor's point, if there was some other place this might get to in the back where this might be like a

if there was a real possibility something might happen in the future.

These are just all over the city.

There's a lot more of these than people realize and they're very confusing.

People have built in some of them.

People have gardens that take the entire easement up in some places and it kind of zigzags.

It's not just this one parcel and there's people who have tried over the years,

to claim the property in between the houses.

And it's been very confusing and it changes and it depends on where you are in the city sometimes.

And I just was hoping, and I know we're gonna be working on this for the future,

But again, this has changed so much sometimes that you have to pay about three grand for the property.

Sometimes it's, oh, well, yes, you can just have it for free.

Well, let me ask this question.

Is it possible to get some sort of, I guess, direction from the city attorney's office about do you think you all could have something for us in two months for us to sort of approve and then we can, because I get what Councilor McGill is saying.

On the other hand, I feel like we have dragged this on for a while with this particular person.

So I want to be sensitive to them.

So let me do this.

So there is an approved set of street closing procedures.

This current city council isn't the council that approved them, but there is an approved set of procedures in place.

What we're trying to figure out

and get a sense of is what the current council how how council who's sitting presently wants to handle these things but maybe what I should do while we're trying to talk amongst ourselves and bring an integrated set of things together is I should send the the currently approved procedures to all of you to look at and and and

Note for you in those procedures the places at which compensation might be implicated so that you can look at them and then we can figure out together what needs to be changed if anything going forward or whether the troubles we're having relate to the fact that

A lot of these things just don't fit well within just one peg or one hole.

So you can have an alley that's a public alley.

You can have an alley that's a private alley.

You can have a platted street that the city owns Title II.

You can have a platted street that the city may not own Title II.

You have streets that have been improved and accepted into the street system that somebody still wants to close.

There are different iterations of things and I think the main thing that causes confusion is that the circumstances in which alleys are often different from plaited streets.

It is rare that there is a public alley.

It is common that a plaited street was, you know, in one way or another reserved to be used by the public in the future.

So there's just

Everything doesn't come forward in exactly the same posture.

No, no, no, not tonight.

I would like to I would be particularly curious to know what procedure we were using when the other piece of this section of Oak Street was given to the neighbors.

Because if we're looking to try to be consistent, the single greatest

So is it possible to withdraw a motion?

Sure.

Okay.

How about the seconder?

Yes.

All right.

So we no longer have a motion on the floor.

Do you want to just say we'll continue it generally or take it up in

Oh.

Yeah, I think we could do that.

That's not an hour and 90-minute presentation, I don't think.

I hope not.

Is that enough time for you, Ms.

Well, if you're asking, am I going to have a complete overhaul of everything ready?

No.

If you're asking whether I can give you a presentation that talks about

the procedures that you currently have and that we can discuss what procedures might have been in effect back in 2010 and why there may be different procedures for different situations.

Yes, absolutely.

I get that together by the first meeting in November.

Okay.

That sounds like a plan.

It's fine.

All right.

I think we'll pass it by for now.

However you want to write that up in the minutes, Madam Clerk.

Continued to the November, what's that, November 1st?

Continuance.

November 7th?

It's going to be tabled.

It's not coming back.

Yeah, okay.

Mayor and Council, on September 15th we presented a proposed collective bargaining ordinance.

This is a journey that started with me on February 22nd at that meeting where you authorized me to pursue consulting assistance to help frame and shape a collective bargaining ordinance and we did that.

The journey for two of our organizations, the firefighters and the amalgamated transit unit started before that in the fall of 21.

And they've been consistent and diligent in this process.

We presented you an ordinance in September that was in our judgment within our capacity to do as a city of just barely 50,000.

And we looked at the jurisdictions that had enacted the law and ordinance.

They were all much larger than we, have different economics than we, larger budgets than we.

and we proposed a shall we say a walk before we run kind of approach, a more moderate approach.

We had a public hearing

and we heard from the public.

We heard from our friends in representing the employees.

We've had conversations since that time.

We've listened to the various points of view.

We come to you tonight.

with a proposed amendment, series of amendments to the September 15th ordinance, proposed ordinance.

And those amendments are represented in a document that you received today and we posted it also, the clerk posted it as a part of the, I guess a supplement to the agenda.

and that executive summary includes 30 amendments that we are proposing to the September 15th ordinance.

Some of those amendments came as a result of our listening to the public hearing and our dialogues with you.

but I've had the opportunity to meet with Representative Mr. Ertle of the Amalgamated Transit Unit and with Dorsey representing the firefighters and his colleague Scappo Scopoletti.

and we had a good, frank, robust conversation and I asked them to, okay, they were appreciative of the progress that we'd made but they said not quite there.

I asked them to prioritize the changes that they wanted and they came back with 20.

But anyway, we have come tonight with an ordinance proposed that has 30 different amendments to it.

It's contained in the document, the executive summary, and the way that I propose that we do this is that there are two motions that have been prepared by the

City Attorney, one approving the amendments contained in the document, and then approving the ordinance.

I think that as I understand it, we are there.

We didn't agree on everything in our conversations with the union, but I

I think that as I understand it we are pretty good.

All right.

And so we ask you to adopt this ordinance so that we can move forward.

with building the infrastructure for collective bargaining in this city, and that includes preparing our managers and supervisors for the new environment that they are going to be working in, and that's going to require some training and education as well.

So we submit that for your consideration.

Let me say, getting to this point, there were a lot of contributors, all of you, and especially Mr. Mayor, thank you for your diligence on this.

You really dove in and helped us through some issues and put a different point of view on it, and that was very helpful in moving this process along.

Our team internally, Lisa Robertson and Mary Ann Hardy and our outside counsel, Robin Burrows, which I think Robin is on, and Robert Ames and Claude Bailey from Venable and the department directors that work with us that were part of the think tank.

They all got us here with a lot of hard work.

So thank all of them and thank all of you

Yeah, I don't have any questions.

I'm just totally impressed.

I just want to say this is what communication, compromise, just good governance looks like, you know, just

working through the details.

And so I'm totally impressed, and I haven't had time to thoroughly read what you sent this evening, but I'm glad that the representatives are here to show support, that we've

I think it would be helpful for the public at some point to see this PowerPoint you put together is pretty impressive.

I don't know that we have to go through it now.

It's posted.

Yeah, it's posted, but I think it does a very good job just summarizing where things stand.

If you like, it's Robin Burrows.

Ms.

I am here, Mr. Rogers.

Good evening.

Sure, I can take us through those very quickly.

Thank you to the magical PowerPoint wizards.

So as Mr. Rogers was just describing, you know, there was extensive conversation in the revision process, both from the members of the city council, members of the public,

the leadership of the two unions who have brought forth proposals just from many avenues.

We took all that input and additional input from departmental leadership and synthesized all of that into the changes that have been given to you for review tonight.

Go ahead to the next slide.

I'm going to try to go speedy as requested.

So in the original ordinance, there were three units specified for bargaining police, fire, and transit.

The opportunity to expand the number of those bargaining units was built in after two years.

Based on those comments, the revised ordinance now has six total units.

The three that we previously presented, police, fire, and transit, as well as labor and trades, administrative and technical and professional.

In an effort to build the city's capacity, we've staged the implementation of these units so that the first three would be certified in the initial year of the ordinance.

and then the next three in subsequent one year, each in one year after that.

And the order in which they would be recognized would be the order basically in which they achieve election.

So we're no longer prioritizing any particular employee group, but whoever organizes first will be in that first year with the others to follow in subsequent years right after.

Go ahead to the next one.

Thank you.

The original ordinance had a basic set of employee and exclusive representative rights that you can kind of see on the left-hand side, the right to organize, form, join, assist, and pay dues to employee organizations or to refrain from doing those things.

The revised ordinance keeps the employee rights that we had previously and then adds these new rights to it.

And again, all of this is spelled out with specificity in the ordinance text.

This is just to kind of quickly represent what's been added.

But one right includes the right to request a representative during a disciplinary interview.

The employee option to use city technology for union communications, understanding that the city has other obligations for reviewing and sometimes releasing email.

That's up to the employee whether they'll use their city email address for those things or another email address for that purpose.

Employees and employee organizations can meet on city premises and the exclusive representatives have the right to periodically get a list of bargaining unit employees from the city.

Go ahead to the next slide.

Under the previous version of the ordinance, what would traditionally be called unfair labor practices or prohibited labor practices were all implied in the language of the ordinance and would have been subject to judicial review.

Part of what we heard in the revision process was that folks wanted a more specific enumerated list and wanted those to go through an administrative review procedure.

We've added two new sections dealing with those.

They outline the specific prohibited labor practices, which include for both sides, bargaining in good faith and a prohibition on discrimination based on union membership.

If there's an alleged violation of these prohibited practices, it will go through an administrative hearing and be subject to the limited standard of review that accompanies most arbitration awards.

Next slide.

One of some of the feedback that we heard was that

The certification process could be improved.

The original certification process required signatures valid for 60 days and the costs of an election would be borne by the union requesting the election.

And in the revised ordinance, signatures are valid going back to any previously held election.

to sort of counterbalance the length of time that that may be, which can be 10, 20 years or longer depending on how long

We added that employees can be permitted to revoke their signatures if something changes during that lengthy period of time.

We provided explicit procedures for runoff elections and that the cost of the elections will be shared jointly between the city and any prospective union seeking certification.

Next slide.

Based on comments that we got, we expanded the authorized subjects of bargaining, wages, hours and certain terms and conditions of employment remain subject to bargaining.

We've expanded that to include a subset of benefits, including health and dental insurance premiums, deductibles and copayments.

It also now, although it's not on this slide, includes retirement for active employees is a part of the authorized subjects of bargaining.

The revised ordinance expressly allows for official time, which is the kind of common term for when union officials can perform certain work on paid time for this

The revised ordinance also expands bargaining to allow for negotiation of disciplinary procedures, which includes a grievance procedure to be negotiated by the unions, which may include binding arbitration at the party's choice.

And if we go to the next slide, I wanted to talk a little about this difference between grievance resolution and impasse resolution because in the various conversations that we've had and comments that we've heard, it seems like there was some confusion about the use of arbitration in grievance resolution versus impasse resolution.

Resolution of a grievance really looks at the terms of a contract that has already been negotiated.

So the types of questions that might come up in a grievance hearing would be, was this specific employee fired for cause?

Or did this specific employee receive proper discipline?

Or did the employer violate the contract by either doing something or not doing something?

You know, for example, offering overtime to one employee maybe should have offered it first to another under the terms of the contract.

So the contract is already in place and a grievance arbitration would resolve whether the contract was followed in a particular circumstance.

The revised ordinance allows binding arbitration for this left column of disputes, the grievance resolution kinds of disputes if the parties negotiate it.

So the city and the union would have to agree on a grievance procedure.

And if they agree that it should include binding arbitration, that would be the procedure used for analysis of that contract with that union.