City Council Meeting   3/20/2023

The clock in here says 3 o'clock, but that's another issue we're going to have to deal with at some point.

Councilor Puryear has pre-scheduled travel, so she'll be absent today.

Second.

Any opposed?

So this meeting will be divided as always into three sections.

First is a work session to hear and discuss presentations that do not require a council vote.

That's what we're doing now.

Followed by a closed meeting typically around 530.

Followed by a council business meeting which will begin around 630 with seating available.

in Council Chambers for up to 23 preregistered attendees and media.

So the first item on this afternoon's agenda is the kickoff of the decarbonization study.

Ms.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Councilors.

I'm Lauren Hildebrand.

I'm the Director of the Department of Utilities.

And as most of you know, the City of Charlottesville owns and maintains a natural gas utility.

Fossil Fuel Utility, which we recognize, and we've been operating this utility for over 150 years.

Currently, the utility provides service for the City of Charlottesville as well as the growth areas of Almar County, serving over 21,500 customers.

We recognize that City Council has as a major priority the Climate Action Plan,

and we want to ensure the utility helps reach those reduction goals by seeing what we can do.

We recognize in the short term the Charlottesville gas has continued to participate in carbon offset program as well as promote our energy efficiency programs.

But we also recognize we need to look for the long term and how we can align

with the city's climate action goals.

So we solicited an outside consultant to help us look at that for the long term and we want to make sure that we

responsibly and accurately determine how the gas utility can be part of the solution in moving forward.

We will ask the consultant to provide us information to look at things from a legal standpoint as well as an economic standpoint.

We've hired Black and Veatch.

and Dr. Wei Feng is here with us who's going to give the bulk of the presentation tonight.

Thank you, Lauren.

Good afternoon, everyone.

I really appreciate the opportunity to speak to

Is the presentation

I see, okay, thank you.

Can we go to slide two of the presentation?

So I'm going to discuss several aspects tonight.

The first one is going to be giving you a little bit introduction about background of black and rich, what we do, what services we offer, and I think then we will turn back to the objectives of the decarbonization study as well as the key scope of work and timeline for the study.

And I will be happy to answer any questions you may have at the end of the presentation.

Next slide please.

So Black and Veatch is an engineering and consulting company, a headquarter in Overland Park, Kansas.

We are a company with over 100 years of history, and we operate in critical infrastructure projects.

So we operate in the fields of power, infrastructure, gas, fuels and chemicals, water, wastewater,

as well as telecommunication.

We are about 9,000 people globally and I think that we have about 2,000 located within the United States.

And currently we have about 120 operating active projects around the globe and we have a revenue level of about $4 billion in 2022.

In our history what we have been trying to strive is to really understand the needs of the current society and trying to really be on the leading front of infrastructure technology for critical human infrastructure so that for the whole society to progress.

I think, next slide please.

Right now

what we currently have a strategic advisory division we have provide supporting advisory services in three fronts mainly one is for strategy and planning which basically for all the aspect that regarding infrastructure

we provide consulting services and economic analysis regarding power infrastructure, water infrastructure, liquefied nitro gas, as well as hydrogen, the new decarbonization emerging technologies.

Read and regulatory, we basically cover

provide rate and regulatory support at various levels.

We provide services in front of FERC at state commissions as well as for municipalities.

We actually also provide support in terms of designing fire and adjustable rates to customers.

The last service area is transaction support which is

really providing the technical and market due diligence for any investors who are interested in buying or selling any infrastructure asset.

I think we are involved in all technologies in our assets.

including all kinds of power generation such as conventional fossil generation, renewables, solar, wind, battery, hydro, and we're also involved in kind of natural gas infrastructure such as pipelines, storage facilities, liquefaction facilities, and recently we are also involved in a lot of emerging projects such as hydrogen or ammonia.

Next slide please.

So I work for the Global Advisory Division and I think in the past few years we have had a lot of requests supporting natural gas utilities such like the city that have decarbonization goals while trying to balance

the routine operation and reliable serving their customers with the objective of trying to decarbonize their service.

We have supported in terms of really looking at the service territories situation, understanding what are the decarbonization tools available to the utility and trying to really assess the alternative

options from the perspective of reliability, the goal of contributing to carbon reduction as well as customer impact.

So we have did that analysis.

We currently are supporting so-called gas in their decarbonization strategy and we are also helping Hawaii gas to file an integrated resource plan

to really meet the state's decarbonization mandate, and we are also helping Black Hills Energy, they have operations in both Colorado and Arizona, and I think we are helping them, trying to figure out how to reach their decarbonization goals, understanding they have different operations situations in different states.

Next slide, please.

Beyond decarbonization planning for gas utilities, what we also want to bring to bear for the city in this study is also our leading edge position in the engineering and technology aspect of the emerging decarbonization solutions.

So, for example, we are Black and Witch is the key engineer in a couple of really very leading edge carbonate hydrogen projects.

One of them is the Delta Hub, which is in Utah.

We are the owner's engineer where they were converting an old coal-fired plant into a hydrogen firing.

Power Plant, so we are responsible for the above-ground engineering for the power generators and all the balance of plant facilities to be able to kind of using hydrogen to fire for gas for a combined cycle unit that provide power to Los Angeles.

We are also helping a couple of hydrogen developers trying to design and establish projects that use renewable energy to produce zero carbon hydrogen.

So we are very familiar with the potential solutions that the city can draw upon in order to reach their decarbonization goals, both from a technical perspective and also from a

a capital cost requirement perspective.

Next slide please.

We have also supported a natural gas utility in the Midwest where they wanted to explore the option of blending zero carbon hydrogen into their natural gas stream so that they can reduce the carbon intensity

for their natural gas supplies and I think then we look into the potential technical requirement and their pipeline systems understanding what will be the appropriate position or location for them to start the injection process and what will be the capital investment required to get a hydrogen blending project going.

Next slide please.

We also understand electrification is another alternative that the city can deploy to explore for decarbonization purposes so we actually had experience hyping the different parties to understand the economics of electrification especially from a transportation perspective and we also provided economic analysis

looking into the comparatives for customers from the perspective of if you want to switch to heat pump versus using conventional natural gas for heating.

Next slide, please.

So the next slide, thank you.

So essentially the study was designed trying to be as part of the solution for the city of Charlottesville's decarbonization objective which is 45% reduction of the carbon emission levels from 20 to 2011 by 2030 and then by 2050 reach carbon neutral.

The objective is really trying to

have a review of all possible solutions that the city can undertake in order to meet the carbon reduction objective and also estimate the potential cause and benefit for each of the solution and highlight the potential impact on the city's operating system as well as on the customers or repairs.

so that will highlight a potential portfolio of options so that the natural gas utility can meet the objective but with manageable and very clear optimal solution for the customers as well as for kind of the community as a whole.

Next slide please.

Next one.

So I think essentially the scope is really structured very extensively around kind of the question of how do we review and evaluate possible solutions that the city can undertake to reduce the carbon emission levels of the gas utility.

So the first one is the legality question.

In that perspective is that the

The study tried to understand whether the ban that was undertaken by some cities around the country that really banned new natural gas distribution or new natural gas connection, whether that's legal.

Black and Veige is going to be playing a supporting role here.

We'll provide a review of what's happening with other cities around the city and they

around the country as well as the regulatory framework for that.

There will be a legal firm, the law firm who actually going to produce a legal opinion regarding that question.

And I think then the next several scopes will be mainly undertaken by Black and Veatch.

The first one is a thorough review of all possible options and pathways for the city to decarbonize.

so that will include energy efficiency, electrification, carbon offsets, renewable natural gas, and certified natural gas as well as zero carbon hydrogen.

We will also kind of like the first pass for us is to really undertaking an evaluation from a technology and availability perspective of each of these options see how much is available to the city in order for each of those front and then the second criteria that the second analysis we're going to undertake for each of the solution will be

really to look at the financial and economic impact of each of the solution.

What will be the requirements of the capital involved in order to bring those solutions to bear and what will be based on the current kind of rate

design what will be the impact on customers so that what we want to maintain is that when we are evaluating different options we'll make sure that we keep the customer impact in mind which basically think that

is going to be going to the equity question is that making sure that the customers will be affected fairly and equitably without really discriminating toward a group of customers or a class of customers.

and the next is going to be for us to look at the energy efficiency program that the city is currently undertaking and trying to use our experience elsewhere to see whether there are any potential new programs or new programs that the city can undertake or there are any potential

measures that the city can undertake in order to improve the efficiency of the city's operation and reduce the requirement of the natural gas requirement.

The study was planned for a year.

I think what we will go through each of those analysis and we're going to have periodic reviews with the gas utility to really understand kind of the situations that are actually facing the utility and really customize the study to really meet the goals specifically for the city.

Next slide please.

So as I said earlier is that the approach we're going to undertake is to really for all possible solutions that could be part of the portfolio of tools that the city can use to reduce carbon.

So we're going to put everything on the table and we will evaluate the

each of the solutions from the perspective of technical readiness, making sure that it's technically feasible.

We also want to understand or estimate the extent of the tools that could be available to the city.

For example, if we look at renewable natural gas, we want to estimate how much renewable natural gas can potentially be bring onto the city's system.

And we also want to kind of keep in mind that all of those solutions will be evaluated on three perspectives.

One is their impact on emissions reduction, whether it's going to be zero carbon solution that you bring in or it's going to be for renewable natural gas.

For some feedstocks it's actually negative carbon.

Intensity, and we also want to evaluate from other two criteria.

One is reliability of service.

So each of the solutions we discussed should be able to really meet the customer needs reliably.

And the third is the cost to customers or the repair impact is that

we want to understand for us to bring the for the city to bring about each of the solution to reach a certain level of emissions reduction what will be the impact on customer rates and I think we will make sure that we pick the solution that's achieve the carbon reduction goal but with the most cost-effective approach.

Next slide.

I think that's everything I have prepared so far.

Thank you, Dr. Penn.

Questions?

Yeah, thank you for that presentation.

It was very interesting.

Just a couple of things, and I could look these up myself.

I suppose renewable natural gas?

Renewable natural gas is actually natural gas, so the chemical component is exactly that gas, but it's not mined or like get out of from the fossil deposit.

So it really can be used to generate it transformed from

Methane, yeah.

Thank you.

Very natural gas.

Yeah.

Sometimes called biogas.

Yeah.

Okay, yeah.

I think we can discuss that with Lauren and the city.

The understanding is that we will require, I mean, the analysis itself is, once we have the data, the analysis itself is quick, but I think what we would like to be doing is that we need to want to understand everything related to the city, the gas utility, what their current situation is, so we customize the study.

to meet the needs.

Yeah, I mean, I want obviously to be a quality report, which I'm sure will be.

I'm just hoping we can move quicker than a year is all.

Thank you very much.

Yeah, I had a couple of questions.

Again, thank you for your presentation.

You mentioned the term technical feasible for Charlottesville.

You said technically feasible.

Yeah, I think this is a very good question.

It actually covers both the state of the technology development globally

and particularly too shallow so maybe we want to we will focus on both so for example if we want to discuss whether the city can use zero carbon hydrogen to reduce the the carbon intensity we want to understand we actually going to get review the technology of producing zero carbon the the level of projects that's been going on we know there are different colored hydrogens so you can use

green energy to split water.

So this electrolysis produce green hydrogen and then you can also use natural gas through SMR process but you actually capture the carbon at the end so that give you what we call blue hydrogen.

I think we want to talk about different technology

What I was really kind of getting at is that I know that a lot can be done.

What I want to get at is that I just want to make sure that part of the study is wanting to make sure that our staff has the capacity to carry it out.

If we have to hire more or whatever, I just want to make sure that that's part of it as well.

Yeah, like if we need to hire a new engineer or whatever.

Definitely, yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, we'll touch about that front.

Okay, I just got two other questions.

So another one is, you may have mentioned this, but I may have missed it.

Are other cities trying to do what we're doing or have done what we're doing?

I think I would just say in general, as I said earlier in the slide, we helped a couple of large utilities.

We are supporting them.

From a city perspective, we have not had, we actually had a city, we work with a city as a city in Colorado.

They want to, they have a combined electric and gas utility.

So their focus was really trying to procure 100% renewable energy.

to meet their decarbonization goals because of their gas footprint is smaller.

Okay.

So my last question is, and these are some terms that maybe everyone may be used to, but I'm still learning it.

You said certified natural gas and renewable natural gas.

It's a little bit different.

Renewable natural gas is sometimes like it's biogas.

It's gas generated through some process of either using different feedstocks such as coal manure, agriculture, waste product, and then you have landfill or construction debris.

All of these, you put them into a big like a lagoon.

and then they ferment them somehow, you actually get natural gas.

So that's renewable natural gas.

You are taking some of the emissions away from the environment.

For example, coal manure is supposed to emit methane into the environment.

If you make them into natural gas, you are reducing the existing emissions.

So renewable natural gas coming from coal manure actually have a negative carbon intensity.

just because you're taking some existing emissions away.

Those were renewable natural gas.

Those were really low carbon intensity or zero or negative carbon intensity natural gas.

Certified natural gas is a little bit different.

Those were still natural gas you produced from underground.

from the gas fields.

But I think what they have done is that in the process of producing and transporting the natural gas, certified natural gas makes sure they have gone through a relatively rigorous process to control the leakage.

So they're basically saying that will produce in a really responsible way to minimize what we call the meson leaks during the production and the transportation process.

I'm already more enlightened today than I mean right now than I was 30 minutes ago.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

It is a year from today, but we are assuming the analysis could be done a little bit earlier.

We budgeted a year for us to deliver our preliminary results for the City to comment, for the Council to have a chance to review and comment.

I think it's the final date.

It's similar to Councillor Pinkston's question.

Yeah, I think we definitely had planned for intermediate review with both the city.

I think that's going to be more frequent.

And as part of the study

We definitely will consider that and I think one of options we could consider is the kind of if we look at hydrogen we can really incorporate the cost of hydrogen being able to be eligible for the IRA's tax credit.

Yeah, because I mean, one of my concerns about the timeline is there's billions of dollars, including for programs specifically for municipally-owned utilities, and that totally changes the cost-benefit analysis.

And if we're not pursuing that, we're going to miss out on those opportunities.

Yeah, I think we can consider some of the options that's available to the city and maybe just, like,

Because I think we're really trying to find a solution for the natural gas utility, I think right now we have not directly considered those as part of the option solution, but we are going to be really looking at the impact when we're doing the electrification study, which basically means that you integrate some of the renewable solar projects, get some credits or funding from outside,

and then try to offset that, the cost of electrification.

Because I would – however it gets incorporated, that would seem really important to me.

I mean, one of the – I'm a little concerned about the heavy emphasis on hydrogen just because, from my understanding, blue hydrogen is not carbon neutral and hydrogen technology

is pretty far away from being able to be deployed certainly in a way that's carbon neutral on certainly the scale of like a municipally owned utility.

Yeah, no, I think I totally agree with you on that assessment of hydrogen.

So what we are looking for is really we are not excluding anything off the table and we are looking for the timeframe.

The objective is try to reach carbon neutrality by 2050.

So we will consider different technical material level.

and the cost associated with different solutions.

And just a few more questions.

One is the Inflation Reduction Act not only has that money for municipal

owned utilities.

It also has a ton of money for homeowners, renters, and landlords for electrification.

We are currently doing the study for

And I know I believe that I'm not sure if the city was involved in this, but at least C3 had done a study on financing models for our utility to incorporate electrification.

Is that plan to be incorporated as part of this?

I think what we will talk about essentially is a different funding mechanism.

I think from a federal perspective how that will apply directly to the city because as a municipal there were some tax laws or tax rules that you have to maneuver.

Okay, and final two questions.

I think the first part of the study is really trying to get as much information as possible, understanding the city's, the gas operation situation, the footprint, customer class,

of different end users of natural gas.

And similarly, there really are a lot of national experts in our community on these issues.

We have the Southern Environmental Law Center located here.

I would like Lauren to answer that question.

I think right now what we were trying to get is trying to

customize the analysis from a perspective of how to come up with implementable solutions for the city.

Thank you.

That's all the questions.

And just final thought is I know I think us having a municipally owned utility is an enormous opportunity.

We have an extremely well-worn utility, which is a huge asset for us.

And I know

It's not easy to make any change and no one is expecting we're going to snap our fingers if something's going to happen in six months or a year.

But I think if we all can approach this in good faith, I really think there are some transformative opportunities with the IRA that I just really hope we don't lose out on.

The only thing I wanted to ask about because other counselors have already asked most of the questions I would have asked is that I know that the Department of Energy has a lot of focus on hydrogen in particular and a discussion here at the University of Virginia about

locating a hydrogen research hub nearby and having people in the chemistry department at UVA doing research specifically on hydrogen.

That's very correct.

So really the rush and the focus of hydrogen actually started before the Inflation Reduction Act.

The law that was passed, the bilateral bipartisan infrastructure law, they basically have allocated $8 billion to establish what they call the hydrogen hubs across the country.

So what they were

advocating to do is to follow the government to sponsor certain hydrogen projects which right now at the current level may not be profitable based on private investment only.

So we are currently involved.

I mean, Black and Rich has been supporting, I would say, three or four of those hubs.

They're trying to get DOE funding.

I think part of the structure or the objective for the hydrogen economy is that, I mean, the government is trying to use hydrogen as a means to decarbonize those, what they call the hard to decarbonize industries.

And I think by hard to decarbonize industries.

So for example, it's like some of the industries really

are not productive to other forms of decarbonization waste.

And what they were thinking is that the purpose is trying to build a skeleton of the hydrogen economy using government funding, the $8 billion of hydrogen hub funding, so that to facilitate a basic infrastructure and when a lot of projects has been

tested and I think over the time the cost will come down then private capital will be assumed to come in to increase the scope and the reach of hydrogen and I think if the university is participating in any of those funding programs I think it's a perfect opportunity to really study the impact and the

maybe the potential benefit that the city can use that as a way to decarbonize because if you are studying really very economic or cheap ways to generate hydrogen from

using electrolyzers from renewable energy.

I think then that will be used to say okay I think that you have a supply source of hydrogen that the city can easily incorporate.

Well I say

All the rest of you already asked all my questions, so I'm good to go.

Yeah, I think Vice Mayor touched on this, but are there other cities that are doing this beyond what Black and Veatch is doing, but other comparable sorts of cities that are wanting to

We were involved in – we kind of learned a few of those cities because we know the city of Berkeley in California, they have stopped new natural gas connections.

So essentially any new buildings are not allowed to natural gas hookup, so you have to get all your energy from electric sources.

But I think so far as we are doing what we know,

is the city has not really, not all of the natural gas utilities on the municipal has started to really look into how they can decarbonize specifically.

We have, as I said, we have a couple of cities they were trying to reach, they have their own decarbonization perspective, but I think for now they were, they seems to be really trying to reach using the, to decarbonize their electric source of energy use.

And the decarbonization study that we have been doing mostly were for IOUs.

The big companies, big utilities, they have an objective

I think then they actually have a big business to decarbonize.

So their size is much bigger.

Okay.

Then the last thing is, can you describe the deliverables we'll get at the end of this?

Is it going to be...

I know some of this you're still working out, but what might we expect?

I mean, are we going to see like cost estimates and schedules or is it more just sort of like high level options analysis?

Yes, you're going to get a report.

So we're going to write all the analysis, do the analysis and put them into a report that really says

So, for example, if we look at electrification, we want to really assess or evaluate each of those potential solutions.

We want to see electrification.

What is the scope?

How much the city can electrify?

What is the customer's economics that if they have any potential incentive to electrify?

and I think what is the cost that if they switch from gas to electricity, what will be their cost?

So that will give us an understanding about to an average natural gas user on the gas system

whether they have a potential incentive to electrify.

But then we also want to talk about alternatives that if you choose to electrify, the only way it reach your decarbonization goal is that your electricity is going to be provided by 100% zero carbon or renewable energy.

So we want to look into the electric service territory to see what will be the expected carbon intensity of the electricity

So that will give us a ballpark of understanding the carbonization goal that can be achieved by electrification.

and then we also want to look at the cost of electrification is that to the to the system because if we electrify a certain we allow certain customers to electrify their gas demand basically they exit the gas system so you have smaller customer base to pay for the ongoing operating cost of the system then whoever will left on the system will be will have to like bear a higher cost right

on a per unit basis.

And we also want to make sure that we have some like really recommendations or strategies so that you do not really because you do not create inequity on the system because typically electrification requires an upstream like upfront investment for a new electric furnace.

and I think people typically with means are economically well off.

They can afford to do that and customers who may not be as well off may not be able to afford to do that.

So we don't want to create a situation where you have rich customers leaving the system and settle the poor customers with less means paying for increasing cost.

So we want to balance the two.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So thank you, Ms.

Next up is John Sayles, CRHA Executive Director, going to talk with us about the sustainability plan and the status with HUD.

Good evening.

Good evening, Madam, I mean Mr. Mayor, Vice Mayor Wade, and City Council and staff.

I'm here to talk about our sustainability plan update and also the proposal that I previously sent to you.

I should have Gina Merritt on to give the actual presentation for the sustainability plan.

It was a large process undertaking where we looked at our actual housing stock, current housing stock, the condition of that housing stock and

looked at what it would take for us to continue to maintain that property and also what would happen if we redevelop and the options available for us to redevelop based upon the market.

And so Ms.

Gina Merritt is here to present that study.

We're getting to the tail end of it.

I think we're slated to have the actual document by June or July this year, which will be presented to you all and also the Board of Commissioners.

So Ms.

Gina, are you ready?

Merritt.

Yes, I am.

There we go.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for having me, Mr. Sayles, Mayor Snook, and city councilors.

Next slide.

I'm Dr. Gina Merritt, your presenter today.

Next slide.

So our organization is both a developer and an advisor.

We have developed over 7,500 units of housing, over 7 million square feet of development,

valued at $2.1 billion.

We've served over 19,000 residents and we have won 27 awards and pretty much have worked in at least 10 or 15 markets states around the country.

We're known for our affordable housing expertise as well as our expertise in creative financing.

Next slide.

So again, we are actual developers.

And so that's the great thing about working with us is that we are practicing development every day.

And this indicates essentially we have over $400 million of projects in our pipeline, including consulting work, construction work and development work between Cleveland through the mid Atlantic.

Next slide.

And here are the awards we just won last year.

We do a lot of work in community development where we help find

people from underserved communities employment.

And so through that practice, our innovation in that practice and our real estate, we won seven awards last year.

Next slide.

Okay, so today we're going to go over the sustainability study framework.

and its component parts, which is our physical conditions assessment, market analysis, best practices, also known as case studies, project roadmap, conceptual design work and redevelopment strategy.

Next slide.

Next slide.

Okay, so these are the components.

Physical conditions assessment, we have already performed a site visit to each property and assessed the condition.

Market analysis, we evaluated the market looking at existing affordable housing and housing demand and a few projects have delivered since we completed our initial market analysis, but we will update that for the final report.

Best Practices Research again also known as case studies we've researched award-winning projects in order to study the best practices and determine what great ideas from those developments might work for CRHA properties conceptual plans we working with CRHA and the residents of two specific development sites we develop some initial conceptual plans which we'll share with you today

Our roadmap essentially is that, you know, meeting with the CRHA and FAR to develop goals, objectives, strategies for the properties still to be developed.

The goals and objectives also relate to the SWOT analysis that we will highlight today.

We will also create a phasing plan that will guide the execution of the overall redevelopment effort.

And then finally, we will formulate the redevelopment strategy.

The team will take the work product from all of these tasks

and run financial models using a variety of financing sources and deal structures to determine the best financial approach to redevelopment and income generation.

And then finally, the sustainability plan overall, which is incorporating all of these tasks into a final deliverable and that is called the sustainability plan.

Next slide.

So physical conditions assessment.

So this is really

outlines both requirements and renewals.

And essentially what requirements and renewals are, are the requirements represent the cost, and I'm going to show you this on the next slide in terms of a summary, but the requirements represent the cost

of addressing the deficient condition of an asset, which include deferred maintenance, code issues, functional requirements, and capital improvements.

Renewals are an automatic calculation of the building's asset cost of renewal or replacement based on the remaining useful life of the asset.

The condition of the asset happens to be irrelevant.

So essentially requirements have to do with the existing conditions and renewal just has to do with whether you replace the asset or not.

Okay, you can change to the next slide.

So this is a snapshot essentially of our physical conditions assessment.

And what you see here is that the requirements for each are less than renewals.

The requirements just happen to deal with deferred maintenance.

So essentially you can put some more money into these assets.

and you will sustain the life of them but if you're going to replace it overall you see that that cost is more than the requirements and then the FCI is an indicator essentially that shows the condition well actually basically the needs of the of the facility so essentially the higher the index the greater the need right so in five years

you will be 60% of the way through what is required to be replaced and 10 years obviously you see those numbers go up so it's kind of logical right requirements of deferred maintenance renewables renewals are replacement and in five to ten years you see over the period the longer you go the more likely the asset will need to be replaced next slide

Okay, so some of the things actually that we also looked at is what can you do with an asset if you are not going to redevelop it right away, but you'd like to save some money, right?

So this again is part of the sustainability.

So if you had capital improvement dollars, for example,

and you needed to wait five or ten years to actually redevelop a complete asset, there are things you could do in the interim to save yourself some money.

So these are some of the examples of the things that we looked at.

You could update lighting with LED and motion sensors, right, that would reduce energy costs.

Same thing with replacing door and seals to better insulate, replacing windows, replacing water heaters, and replacing thermostats.

So if you spent some capital dollars on small things like that,

For example, if it took five years to redevelop West Haven and you had some extra capital dollars, you could spend those now in order to reduce your energy costs and make your properties more sustainable, at least in the short term, until you redevelop it.

Next slide.

Next slide.

So we looked at the existing tax credit properties and really what you, the essence, in essence from this slide, what you can see is that

tax credit properties are really outside of the city center, right?

Which is really, you know, troubling for Charlottesville and that all of the public housing sites are interior to the, you know, closer to downtown to the employment centers.

And essentially the

The tax credit developments serve between 46 and 60% of AMI, whereas CRHA sites, as you know, are specifically for people who just contribute 30% of their income, no matter what it is.

Next slide.

So this is a summary analysis of the income levels in the Charlottesville City, Albemarle County, and the Charlottesville DMA.

That's just a sort of marketing designation where any provider of services or products, when they look at Charlottesville, they look at what's called the DMA designated market area and it makes up parts of Flubana

Green, Madison, Albemarle Counties and Charlottesville City.

So the numbers are a little bit different.

But as you can see from Charlottesville City, over about half of the population makes below 60% of AMI, where around a quarter make below 30% of AMI, which is around $33,000.

And as you can see, Albemarle County is only 13% earning income at the lower end and about 34% under 60% of AMI, again, compared to Charlottesville City, which is nearly half.

Next slide.

And this just gets into a little bit more detail in terms of the absolute number of units, right?

So 4,600 units serving people under 30% of AMI.

Next slide.

So now we're going to look at case studies or what we call best practices or case studies.

Next slide.

So we looked at, this is just a summary, because we looked at about, I think we pulled together about

and case studies.

Actually, I guess here are all the places that we looked at, Pittsburgh, Salem, North Carolina, Camden, New Jersey, Flint, Michigan, Alexandria, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.

And we looked at a number of developments.

Half of them were led by housing authorities.

Half of them were led by large developers, mostly nonprofits.

And we just, again, looked at award-winning projects and what they delivered to market.

And most of them were mixed income developments.

which included program spaces like clubhouses, fitness rooms, playgrounds, communal kitchens, dining halls, rain gardens, community labs, and retail.

And then the income mix over all of them was between 30% to 80% AMI which is 80% issues workforce and market rate units as well as public housing replacement units.

Next slide.

Next slide please.

Essentially, this slide shows you our analysis of what each site had the potential to be.

Now, some of the sites were, I'm sorry, the Housing Authority is looking at using capital dollars to redevelop, just to renovate, and then we have two specific sites, and those are highlighted in red, of where we are going to develop plans

and financial feasibility studies to determine the highest and best use for those sites.

And that would be Avon Levy, right, which we know is like a garage right now.

And so we have the status of all of these properties on other sides.

But this is just a zoning analysis to show you the full potential.

Next slide.

These are three other sites, First Street, Madison, and Michie.

Next slide.

Riverside, West Haven again in red because that property is slated to be redeveloped that we're working on the plans for.

Next slide.

Okay, so now we're just going to look at those two sites, Avon Levy and West Haven in terms of a SWOT analysis and what makes those sites, what opportunities are really there for redevelopment.

Next slide.

Okay, so Avon Levy

Excellent location, right?

Six minute walk to downtown.

There's no grocery store within two miles.

So that is an opportunity.

The challenge is that the site is small and compact.

And because of that requires structured parking.

And then the other part of this is looking at the construction costs, right?

Because structured parking can be expensive and COVID impacts are still here and still very real.

I have several projects that should have closed last year that did not close in fact because of construction costs and the gap that they created.

Next slide.

Okay, West Haven.

West Haven is a large site.

So there's a huge opportunity there to create many more units than exist.

I think right now there's about 126 units there.

and based on our zoning analysis you could probably get to 400 if you wanted to so that also there's no direct access to Main Street and as you know the site sort of backs up to some parcels that that that do connect to Main Street so that's a challenge so definitely looking for opportunities to connect there there's a site that one of the CRHA's

Partners owns that hopefully we can work that to be able to connect to Main Street.

We also will need some most likely additional utility infrastructure support because having 126 existing units and then perhaps tripling that will definitely put pressure on the existing utility system.

And then

Also, it will take some time to deliver that to market.

Obviously, if we get to 300 units, that will have to be delivered over time, both because of economics and to just managing that level of development.

And again, construction costs are still excessive.

Next slide.

Next slide.

Okay, so now we're going to look at the conceptual plans we developed.

for both Avon Levy and West Haven.

We developed a couple of options.

Next slide.

Next slide.

This is option A. Next slide.

Okay, yeah, this one.

So option A is about 100 units, and this is basically an overall site plan showing you some of the elements, you know, the setback, the residential loading, where the grocery loading would occur.

The lot is about 48,000 square feet.

And again, there's a legend here.

So hopefully if you don't have a copy of this yet, we'll get you a copy so you can look at it in more detail.

But essentially for these 100 units plus grocery we're projecting 29,000 square feet, you would need 230 parking spaces.

Next slide gives you a better idea of massing.

and so this is a four-story residential building again with penthouse and retail and actually we also I forgot we also included in terms of commercial a clinic and so you see that space inside of the the massing view in pink and then the you know the other components the grocery is the light green and again the multi-family is the four-story periwinkle blue lack of a better term okay next slide

This is just another view of the building.

Next slide.

Okay, option B. Next slide.

Option B is a little less dense.

75 units, a fewer parking spaces, about 200, but it also includes, again, a grocery and clinic.

Next slide.

And so this just shows a different scale, three stories of housing versus four and a different angle.

Next slide.

Just another perspective.

Next slide.

Okay, now we're gonna look at West Haven.

Next slide.

Option A, next slide.

I think we have three options for this.

So this is 354 units, which includes 553 parking spaces, 8,900 square feet of commercial, and you can see the different product types.

So the yellow is a multifamily building, the green are single-family homes, I guess more looks like duplexes, and then the blue are townhomes.

And then here we have some other kind of interesting

sort of case study uses.

The orange we cited as a farmer's market or some flexible retail space.

And then you see the black, we were trying to, the black strip is, could we create a pathway from the site up to the parking lot and then be able to cross into Main Street.

And then the dark green would be some kind of retail area for the residents to own and have their small businesses.

Next slide.

Okay, this is just a massing view.

So you can see how the stack.

So you see those are pretty tall buildings.

Again, this is 354 units.

And that's why we came up with three options to sort of show how we could come up with three different master plans.

And, you know, this would be expensive, but this just demonstrates a way that you could get density to be able to create some low density units as well as some high density units.

Next slide.

Next slide.

Option B. Okay, so this one is 274 units.

And so the pink or the salmon color is a lesser scale of multifamily garden apartments.

And again, the blue are townhomes.

And I talked to you already about the other uses, the orange, at least in the black.

And here we have an indoor rec center or clinic and a basketball court.

and that's 274 units with 349 parking spaces.

Next slide.

Again, this is just a massing view.

So you can see those four story garden style apartments, four stories on grade.

So you're just parking it essentially on the site.

Next slide.

Option C. Next slide.

This is 250 units, so we removed some of the multifamily.

And again, you see you have towns and singles and pretty much the same other uses.

397 parking spaces this time.

Next slide.

Similar massing.

Next slide.

Okay.

Next slide.

Redevelopment strategy.

So for the sites under development, next slide.

6th Street and South 1st Street.

Essentially, 6th Street, the Housing Authority is contemplating two phases of development.

Phase 1, construction will soon begin, and Phase 2 is in the planning stages.

For South 1st Street, in the planning phases, the idea is to maintain the low density

and it's zoned downtown extended corridor.

So you could go up to 101 feet and 240 dwelling units, although that's not going to happen.

But again, this is about talking about what the full potential is.

Next slide.

So now the sites using the capital redevelopment program.

Next slide.

These sites are Riverside, Madison, and Michie.

Again, that's just about using your existing capital dollars to renovate.

And so the idea for all of these sites is to maintain the low density, again, to redevelop the existing housing stock, and really, for the most part, add a green program to improve energy efficiency.

And then for Madison, also looking at the opportunity to perhaps add a little bit of additional density.

Next slide.

Crescent Hall renovation is complete so folks are about to move in in the next couple of weeks and again that was an opportunity just to redevelop an existing building and then all of the single-family homes that would just be renovated under the existing capital program next slide okay now the sites to be planned that's West Haven and Avon Levy next okay

So for these two, again, we just showed you the plans.

We looked at best practices.

Essentially, you know, we still have to finalize what the actual density is going to be on both sides.

We met with residents and leadership for CRHA.

And part of the way we're going to do a final determination of density is by running the numbers, which is essentially the next phase of our work.

So now that we have multiple options, we'll run numbers on all of the options and then figure out, you know, what makes sense.

especially since West Haven is so large and we have to do it over time and there's a variety of product types.

It's going to take a little bit of time and effort to play around with the numbers and figure out what works.

Next slide.

Okay, next slide.

So essentially, again,

We're going to do the financial feasibility for the development options.

We're going to present that to CRHA and leadership and residents.

We're going to prepare the final report and then present the final report.

And so I'm sure somewhere in there

probably closer to June, we will represent it to you.

But the next slide essentially shows the schedule, which might be a little hard to read, but it shows you that beginning in April here in the next week or two, we're going to start working on the funding strategy and going back and forth with CRHA and the residents about what's possible, and then we'll craft that final deliverable.

And again, looking at the developer fees that are generated, the

the income that's going to be generated from a redevelopment effort and how that can create sustainability for the long term for the housing authority.

Next slide, I think that's it.

Yeah, thank you.

No, this is all I have on the sustainability.

I will add that CRHA is dedicated to developing West Haven itself, but we are open to the Avon-Levy lot.

That is an opportunity that we see, the Housing Authority sees as,

Way to ensure the financial sustainability of the housing authority for the long term and the ability to do more of this work, the deep affordable work.

We don't see that as an opportunity for a lot of affordable housing due to the cost of developing that site.

So we do know that that is probably going to be a market rate development with close, maybe a little bit more than minimum, but close to the minimum number of affordable units based upon zoning.

So I do want to throw that out there.

We will not be coming to the city looking for funding for Avon Levy to develop it.

I'd like to jump in on that one because, yes, as a developer and a consultant, we've seen that multiple times where housing authorities or municipalities sell their

Land in order to facilitate other development or just to have cash in the bank.

I worked on a project actually in Alexandria.

It was a similar thing that the housing authority essentially did a, in their case, they did a capitalized ground lease.

Oh, no, they did two things.

They were trying to do a ground lease, but they also did a fee simple sale for part of their land in order to get the maximum

dollars per square foot for their land.

Because if you do a capitalized ground, sometimes there'll be a discount in terms of price.

But that can generate a lot of capital for housing authorities.

I'll make sure I send it out as soon as I get back to my commuter.

So this presentation was to give essentially an overview of all of the projects that you all are hoping to do.

Yeah, so the sustainability study looked at our current conditions of all the properties that we own and manage today.

We started a little over a year ago, so at that time.

And then, based upon that analysis, determined the financial cost of maintaining that property over time, and also depending on how close to the end of its life, depending on some of the assets, like Sixth Street was one that was really close to the end of its life.

Taking that step of looking at the units and also looking at the market.

So based upon our wait list, voucher and public housing and the studies that have been completed by the city, how many units are needed and at what income levels, AMI levels are the units needed.

and then how does CRHA's mission fit into the number of units needed and then what resources we can bring to the table to provide those units.

So what we did know was the public housing, just managing public housing does not work.

Every housing authority is going through the same issue that has not changed their business model to

a business.

They've ran it as a housing authority.

And so we know divesting from public housing where we only receive on average $250 per month on a unit, even though we cover all of the utilities.

So if I'm receiving $250, I'm still losing money on that unit because I cover water, sewer, trash, gas, and electricity and pest control, which is a lot of money.

And so

We're changing that model and doing transitional vouchers.

So when a housing authority exits the public housing program, they're given opportunities to build either new units or they can receive a voucher as a replacement unit for that public housing unit.

The housing authority has opted into receiving a voucher and then we're using that voucher to place it on that site.

So a good example is Midway Manor and Friendship Court.

The current Friendship Court, which is 100% project-based voucher.

So the federal government is cutting a check for the difference of what the tenant can pay, the 30%, and then what the actual rent is set at, the set amount of rent.

So public housing, the rent changes all year long.

So if someone gets a job,

today, we recalculate their rent based upon how much earnings they're making.

But they can quit that job or get fired in a week.

Then they come back to us and say, hey, I no longer work at that job.

Can you recalculate my income?

When we recalculate the income, what they pay goes down.

And sometimes it's like $35, which is our minimum rent.

And so each year it could change.

You may budget it at one amount, but it's definitely going to change.

We're doing

I want to say we probably do 10 to 15 interim changes a month in a public housing program from folks getting jobs, changing jobs, adding family members, removing family members.

The entire housing authority.

And you're basically looking at all of your assets and whether they need to be recapitalized or, I guess, torn down and something built in its place.

And while you're doing that, you're also looking at new funding, the new funding streams through, as you just mentioned, with the voucher.

Yes.

Okay.

Yes, that's the current schedule.

Okay.

So I know we're tight on time.

I think Brian asked a lot of my question.

Because of the first presentation, when I first saw sustainability, I had a different mind track, you know.

I understand what sustainability you're referring to now.

I just want to say that two things.

One is that I think that you're all the only game in town that really deals with the deeply affordable residents and I'm asking, Joy may be asking this later, but we need to make sure we define what affordable is.

She's watching.

I'm channeling this through

Joy to ask that.

So thank you.

Thank you.

This is really good.

Just a temperature check.

I know we've got the closed session at 530, which is just board's appointments, hope we can get through.

Just because I think this is important.

An hour late.

Five or ten.

All right.

So you referenced part of the financial stability is pairing units with vouchers.

So on average we receive $250 a month for any size bedroom public housing.

With the one bedroom with the voucher is $1,231 a month.

for a two-bedroom is $1,471 a month, for a three-bedroom is $1,829 a month, and for a four-bedroom is $2,267 a month.

So with Crescent Halls, we did a split between public housing and voucher.

Because it's more protections for the tenants than with the voucher unit.

That's really the big difference.

But we know as an agency that it's not financially feasible to not

or to only build public housing and to not take advantage of the voucher.

And so at all the sites, we've taken advantage of the vouchers.

And at South Forest Street Phase 1, we actually added 24 additional vouchers from our own portfolio.

Well, we can build new public housing, just not over our cap of 376.

And so I know you've acquired duplexes recently and you've explored acquisition of other portfolios.

Yeah.

So what I'm sharing with you is a pro forma for the development acquisition, portfolio acquisition that I did discuss with you.

Well, I've sent an email about it in the past.

And it shows I plugged in some new numbers based upon what we could rent the units for.

The first page is the pro forma.

with the new rental income that could be produced from renting the markets with a voucher.

And the second and third pages show the current rents for those units and then the voucher rents for those units.

So based upon our math, it's about $400,000 in unearned rental income that's available putting vouchers on those units.

which is what we would do naturally over time as the unit becomes available.

We did the same thing with Montrose and Coleman where we provided those units for the voucher holders that were getting vouchers and each of the units are renting at what we have.

on the voucher if the individual is not on the voucher such we had a couple hangovers that were already living in the units we kept the rent at its current rent but as the unit becomes open we'll make them available for voucher holders which is a big big big barrier here there's a lot of barriers to housing folks credit check

is a big one when they check individuals credits they typically want nothing less than like a 650 is what I've heard I've heard some as high as 700 criminal history I had an individual that had an assault on a record from eight years ago and was unable to lease up a voucher and

Oh, and rental history.

So individuals that have been evicted are having a hard time.

Yeah, on average it's zero to 30% AMI.

For the units that will not have a voucher, we're committed to housing at 60 to 80% AMI.

just because we're going to have flat rents on them.

And your voucher waiting list has a priority set aside for homeless individuals, correct?

It doesn't yet, but we are adding it now.

And so it's going to be in front of the board.

I want to say at the end of April, maybe middle of May to add a preference for homeless and the preference for homeless will allow the wait list to stay open all year long.

Yes, in all three of our programs.

Yeah, I know the mayor had raised some questions in some earlier discussion about just the status of CRHA in general in terms of I know there's been sort of a history over the last few years and you've been involved and have moved the organization in some really positive ways.

I think, you know, particularly as we're considering some investments perhaps, you know, if you could

Yes, so when I took over the Housing Authority in August of 2020, the Housing Authority was in trouble status for a plethora of reasons.

Management, financial management, the Housing Authority was losing money because they weren't collecting rent.

and they were overspending in areas such as security.

I think Crescent Halls had a security guard but they were losing money every year because their occupancy was really low.

and the physical condition score was low as well.

And so when I came in, what I noticed was we had over 70 vacant units.

We had four maintenance guys and over 100 or so open work orders.

So I immediately hired maintenance guys, created a turn team that just focused on turning vacant units.

So we had that under control and I had a team that was just focusing on addressing open work orders and completing inspections.

HUD, we did our last scoring about a year ago now.

We exited out of trouble status.

We still have a physical substandard score because the physical conditions of the buildings, they're old.

It's been neglected.

HUD has its hand in there.

They do not provide enough capital funds to maintain the buildings.

Rents are low.

We're going through a pandemic where we weren't inspecting units because the individual could say they have COVID and we would walk away and not touch the unit.

And people had COVID eight times last year.

And so since we had some of those challenges, the fiscal score was rough.

The financial score, I don't have it in front of me, but I believe Mr. Sanders provided those scores.

I believe it was 23 out of 25 for the financial scoring.

and the management, I believe, was 23 out of 24.

And so management, they look at your occupancy, which right now is a 98.3% occupancy.

They also look at your TARS, which is your tenant accounts receivables.

We've received full points for that.

We were able to get that number down to like $20,000, which was less than 2%.

and the rest of that scoring is the number of months of operating reserve.

So last year we ended with three months of operating reserve which is far above the HUD's goal of two months of operating reserve.

So we have another physical inspection that's scheduled.

It's not scheduled yet but will happen this year.

If it happens before May, we'll be doing the old inspection, which is REACT.

And if it happens after May, then we'll be doing a new inspection called INSPIRE, which will be our first one.

HUD was modeling it a couple of years ago, but we did not get picked for that model last year.

I expect us to exit the substandard score because we put in a maintenance plan that required quarterly inspections.

Thank you.

Mayor, you had some questions about just- Well, I have a number of questions that I raised over the weekend after looking at the pro forma.

Many of them are questions we probably ought to talk about in some other time.

But the overall concern that I guess that I've got is in thinking about a sustainability plan,

Maybe it has been done and I just haven't seen it or maybe it is about to be done by Ms.

Barrett and we'll see it in another month or two.

But I'd just like to see sort of the functional equivalent of the pro forma but for the agency as a whole.

And because one of the concerns that, I'll just be real blunt,

If we're going to put $5 million into a project that is by far the most expensive per unit project that council has contributed to in all of this, I want to have a real plan for knowing first of all that that money is going to be well spent and is not going to be simply

going into things that should have been taken care of a long time ago.

Second, that if this plan is going to create the kind of

Well, for lack of a better term, sustainable source of income or source of revenue that will help make up for some of the other shortfalls.

I would feel a little bit better about it.

Maybe that is the plan.

The one thing I note in the pro forma is that it assumes that rents would rise at 2.5% a year.

And I know that one of the problems that CRHA has had in years past has been an unwillingness on the part of the board to take the actions necessary to preserve the financial health of the agency when it is balanced against the potential problems for individual tenants.

The overall concern that I guess that I've got is seeing this overall financial picture for the agency as a whole, identifying the sources of revenues and perhaps this is one of those sources of revenues.

Perhaps Avon Levy is another source.

Let's figure out what all those things look like so that

We have a real plan for the next five or ten years that we can all look at and say, okay, I see that.

It makes sense.

It doesn't rely on magic beans.

That's a good plan.

And like I say, some of these things are questions that I'm going to want to ask more directly about

the proposal that was given to us this weekend.

But it all fits into a broader concern that I've got about the financial viability and what the conditions are going on.

I shouldn't put it viability is the wrong way to put it.

What conditions have to be met for the long-term financial success of CRHA?

We've done a lot of work to change some of the previous practices of administration.

I think we give too much credit to the board when we talk about rent collection because that's not a function of the board.

It's a function of the previous administration in their decisions not to collect rent.

and so those are things that we are addressing and we have addressed.

It shows with our tenant accounts and our financial scores with HUD and I will say I have a staff that has been focused on that and just the last week we've collected $26,000 in delinquent account rent and that's from the tenant.

It's not from a rental program, it's from the tenant coming in.

and making payments on their account.

And so we've created a process to ensure that those funds are collected and we're going to make sure that that happens in the future.

The percent that I used on the Performer is, I would say, conservative.

The voucher rental percent typically increases between 5% and 8% a year.

Mr. Sayles, does it make sense what the mayor was, in other words,

Is there a way to look at sort of from a, and perhaps your consultant could help you with this and maybe she already has this worked out, but a way to look at sort of the

It will.

That's the last part.

I think if there's a way that just,

We can take a stab at that.

I will say everything that Gina has worked on has not included this portfolio, so none of this information.

Let me sort of state broadly a concern I've got about spending $5 million on this particular portfolio of properties is that virtually none of that is going to be a direct benefit to the zero to 30% AMI people.

Any time we put a voucher on it, it has the ability to directly affect zero to 30% AMI without jeopardizing the financial feasibility of the Housing Authority and sustainability.

And so we, I can put numbers to that to show that, that will improve the Housing Authority's financial position,

while ensuring that that family is still able to afford that unit no matter what income they make and no matter if their income changed one day after signing a lease or 70 days after signing a lease.

HUD will make the difference in that rent payment and that's guaranteed money.

That's in CRHA's bank.

Go ahead.

So if I'm looking just to take the one at the top of the list, it says studio apartment, current rate 945.

I take it that that, and then HCV rent 1223, is it fair to say that it doesn't matter what the tenant is making?

We're going to get $1,223 out of it?

Correct.

Yes, that's why public housing and redevelopment is going to put us in a great financial position.

So housing authorities, their operating fund works in two ways.

They receive money from the voucher program, administering a voucher, leasing it up, and they receive money for leasing up a unit.

Here we're going to receive the money for leasing up a unit and for leasing up a voucher.

Those funds go directly to the central office.

And the $1,200, in this case where CRHA owns the unit, the actual rent goes directly to the housing authority.

At that $1,200 amount, no matter who's in the unit, as long as they qualify for a voucher and we have a voucher there, no matter who goes in that unit, if they make $0 a year or make

$10,000 a year, we're going to collect that $12,23 in your ring.

And so, yeah, and because your plan is to pair it with vouchers, you're going to be directly increasing housing supply for people at zero to 30%.

We have a 56% success rate with vouchers.

So a lot of families are turning in their vouchers because they can't find units.

And the other thing, too,

As my understanding, and I'm new at all of this, but if you all are able to purchase a portfolio that you can use basically as collateral, you can begin to grow your own.

If you have help purchasing a portfolio that can then be used as collateral to help expand.

Yeah, so that's one of the big things why it's important if we're going to have an opportunity to do something in the future.

Future portfolios are going to come online that are currently affordable.

Acquiring one of these portfolios with the amount of debt that we're talking will allow us to leverage that portfolio for other portfolios.

The same thing we would do, like if we acquire this portfolio, we would add the other properties that we purchased and make it one total portfolio that we've agreed to give the city council and the city interest in that portfolio, 50-50 interest.

So just like we're owner, the city will be owner and have a right

to know what's going on with that property.

And I know there's some relevant deadlines and staff needs direction from us.

You know, I would say we need to tee up for the next city council meeting, give staff direction that we would like to have this for consideration next council meeting.

I don't know if others support that, but that's the relevant timeline.

Staff needs direction from us.

Do others agree?

I think we discussed that the only way to get it done on the timeline that's necessary involves bringing it up in detail in the next meeting.

Yes.

Okay.

Just make it clear.

Yep.

And then very quickly, finally, just a final thought is I think in terms of financial stability, the other thing with CRHA that I think is an important consideration is the operational capacity in terms of funding.

You look at similar housing nonprofits, they have three, four times the number of staff of CRHA despite managing

fewer units.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

We will be talking further.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

Merritt.

Okay, folks, we're a little bit late for going into our closed session, but we will go into closed session now once somebody reads the appropriate resolution.

Put it away accidentally.

All right, so motion for a City Council closed session March 20, 2023.

Pursuant to section 2.2-3712 of the Virginia Code, I hereby move that City Council close this open meeting and convene in a closed session as authorized by Virginia Code section 2.2-3711A1 to discuss the following appointments to boards and commissions for the City of Charlottesville.

Board of Architectural Review, Charlottesville Affordable Housing Fund Committee, Charlottesville Economic Development Authority, Charlottesville Development Block Grant Task Force, Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee, Community Policy and Management Team, Historic Resources Committee, Housing Advisory Committee, Jefferson Area Community Criminal Justice Board, Jefferson Madison Regional Library Board, Local Board of Building Code Appeals, Minority Business Commission,

Social Services Advisory Board, Towing Advisory Board, Tree Commission, Vendor Appeals Board, and Youth Council.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Nobody is opposed, so we are now going to go into closed session.

We will come back to open session at 6.30.

If there is somebody who is still online, it's going to be doing a different Zoom link, so check your Zoom link.

Thank you all.

See you again in 45 minutes.

Okay, shall we reconvene?

yes so we have one two things to correct so the community police and management team actually that appointment is being postponed to June and we had don't we first have to oh I see I got you never mind is that okay yeah yeah

And then we had not mentioned region 10 community services board.

Any discussion?

Ms.

Yes.

Mayor Snook?

Yes.

Thank you.

Hearing no announcements, we have one proclamation.

This is Women's History Month 2023.

And whereas women of every race, class, and ethnic background have made historic contributions to the growth and strength of Charlottesville in countless recorded and unrecorded ways, and whereas women play a critical economic, cultural, and social role in every sphere of life in Charlottesville, and whereas women of every race, class, and ethnic background served as early leaders in the forefront of every major progressive social change movement,

and whereas women have been leaders not only in securing their own rights of suffrage and equal opportunity but also in the abolitionist and emancipation, industrial labor, civil rights, environmental and peace movements which have created a more fair and just society for all.

and whereas despite these contributions the role of women has consistently been overlooked and undervalued in the literature, leadership, teaching and study of American history and it is therefore fitting that we recognize their numerous accomplishments and whereas the 2023 theme of National Women's History Month is celebrating women who tell our stories encouraging recognition of women past and present who have been telling their and our stories

through print, radio, TV, stage, screen, blogs, podcasts, and more.

And whereas the City of Charlottesville honors women in our community who have devoted their lives and talents to producing art, pursuing truth, and reflecting the human condition decade after decade, now therefore I, J. Lloyd Snook III, Mayor of the City of Charlottesville, on behalf of City Council,

to hereby proclaim the month of March 2023 as Women's History Month in Charlottesville.

And we call upon all residents to acknowledge and honor the contributions and accomplishments of women.

Signed and sealed this 20th day of March 2023.

So to the Board of Architectural Review, Kevin Batke.

For the Charlottesville Affordable Housing Fund Committee, term ending in 2023, end of this year, LD Perry.

Charlottesville Economic Development Authority, Steven Johnson.

And Jay O'Donnell.

Yep.

The Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee, Patrick Healy, Ethan Heil, and Sarah Medley.

For the Jefferson Madison Regional Library Board, Anne Hemingway.

For the Minority Business Commission,

Tara Farley and Nicole Hawker.

And for the Regent and Community Services Board, Francesca Diggs.

And last, but certainly not least, the Tree Commission, J.D.

Okay, is there a second?

I move that these folks that I just listed be appointed to the respective boards and commissions.

Okay.

Ms.

Yes.

Okay.

Passes four to nothing and congratulations to those who have been selected and we thank everybody for their willingness to serve.

Councillor Pinkston made a

comment about the Tree Commission.

It's funny, we get more applications for people who want to be on the Tree Commission than any other body.

It's a popular group.

Now it's time for the consent agenda.

Ms.

Consent agenda?

Number three, minutes, February 21st, regular meeting, March 6th, regular meeting, March 9th, budget work session.

Okay.

So those three items, we will now take public comment regarding items on the consent agenda 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've joined by phone and wish to speak on the consent agenda, you may press star nine.

We'll alternate between in person and virtual speakers.

And this is only for those last couple of items.

It is not, if you were one of those who signed up in advance, this is not your time.

Anybody wishing to speak on the consent agenda items?

Nobody in person.

Yes, Mayor Snook, there's one raised hand.

Ms.

Evans, I note you're on the list to speak at Community Matters.

I think you are.

I beg your pardon, you're not on that list, but if you're going to talk about the tax rate, this is not the time to do that.

Okay, yeah, it was about the tax rate.

All right, so any questions or comments from council?

I move that we adopt the consent agenda.

Second.

Ms.

Councillor Pinkston?

Yes.

Yes.

There is no report tonight.

Thank you.

I should add, in case anybody's wondering why we don't have a city manager, we have something like ten budget meetings this month.

And so there are plenty of opportunities to hear from the city manager, and he's got a lot of other things to be talking about.

Community Matters generally, we have five pre-registered speakers leaving 11 slots for additional speakers on Community Matters.

Each speaker will have up to three minutes to speak.

Same rules, a raise hand option on the Zoom webinar or star nine if you're on phone.

We've got, let's see, the first registered speaker is Wayne Hazlett.

Is he with us here?

All right.

Next up is Susan Cruz, who is not here.

Is she online?

She is indeed.

Susan, fire away.

Hi, this is Susan Cruz, Executive Director with the Community Climate Collaborative.

For the past several years, I have come to you to request a plan for action on climate.

Tonight, I am not here supporting planning.

Tonight, you have the opportunity to act directly to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in our community.

I'm speaking tonight in support of the First United Methodist Church's appeal of their solar panel installation that was recently rejected by the Board of Architectural Review.

The vast majority of our community's emissions, 92 to 95 percent of them, are not directly within city control.

These emissions come from our homes, our businesses, our cars, and our churches.

That means individuals and organizations will need to act on their own.

The last thing that the city should do is to be a barrier to that action.

The First United Methodist Church has done everything right.

They have raised money.

They have made a plan.

and they are ready to take action.

Unfortunately, they were stopped in their tracks by our very own Board of Architectural Review, relying on city codes last updated two decades ago.

The rejection was not a unanimous decision.

The Board of Architectural Review was nearly split.

Tonight, I hope you will weigh in in favor of action.

Climate cannot wait.

Tonight, let's take the first of what I hope will be many actions to get our city on the path to carbon neutrality.

Please vote in support of the first United Methodist Church appeal.

Thank you, Ms.

Cruz.

Our next speaker, pre-registered speaker is Matthew Gillikin, who is, I don't see him here in the hall.

Ms.

Good evening, councilors.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

I'm speaking on behalf of Livable Seville in support of First United Methodist Church's appeal to place solar panels on their roof.

We have three requests.

First, approve the appeal and allow the church to move forward.

It is obviously the case that solar panels should be allowed and encouraged on their roof and others throughout the city.

First United Methodist Church should be applauded for their efforts to use their resources to shift to renewable energy.

Your second request is that you amend the Board of Architectural Review's guidelines to include the Comprehensive Plan and Climate Action Plan.

This should happen as soon as possible to help prevent this from happening again.

The members of the BAR appear to have differing interpretations of whether the current guidelines allow them to approve a project like the solar panels on First United Methodist Church.

A quick amendment by Council will help avoid a repeat of the appeal you are hearing this evening.

which is a waste of everyone's time other than it may possibly result in better processes in the future.

And third, we ask that you direct that a review be done of the BAR guidelines to update them to ensure they are consistent with the comprehensive plan and serve a productive rather than obstructive purpose.

Numerous examples exist where the BIR decisions prevented the city from achieving its goals.

A thorough review and update of BIR guidelines will help ensure that the city's goals are met.

Separately, with respect to the zoning rewrite, we'd like to express our appreciation to council, the planning commission and city staff for the hard work being done on the zoning rewrite.

The city is closing in on a historic accomplishment that is a key piece of addressing our affordable housing crisis, addressing past injustices and establishing a path for opportunity in Charlottesville.

This phase is involving a lot of nuts and bolts, and it's very technical, but we encourage you to continue pressing on through these details, and we look forward to continuing to work with you throughout this process.

Thank you, Mr. Gilligan.

Next up, Tom Gallagher.

Well, that's true.

I think we had someone with a call.

Mr. Gallagher could you wait a few minutes?

We'll discuss it all at one time.

Okay.

Appreciate it.

You'll be on the list.

And then the next person up is Martha Smythe.

Is she online?

I see she's got tax calculation.

If that's also going to be about the property tax issue maybe we should defer her too.

Okay.

Is Ms.

Okay.

And then we had Ms.

Evans, who we just talked to, and again, I had forgotten that we actually have a public hearing, which we'll come to in a little bit.

Ms.

Mayor Snook, my apologies.

Martha Smyth is in the Zoom with us.

Ms.

Great.

Thank you for joining me in this discussion.

I'm not speaking about the tax assessments or the potential of a rate change.

I do want to speak to you though this evening about questions I have.

What is the basis of

the calculations of the taxes.

If GIS is used, I have noticed that the file really does need to be checked.

I just looked at half a dozen or so properties in my neighborhood and the acreage is listed as different numbers depending on whether you're looking in the detail tab under GIS or whether you go over and look at the dimensions under the map.

In my case, it goes from 0.161 under the details to 0.23.

Now, using 0.161, the value of my acreage, if I were to ramp it up to a full acre, would be over $900,000.

And when it was at 0.23, it was, of course, down in the mid-600,000s.

So that is a peculiar situation.

Moreover, as I looked at some of my neighbors and did the same calculation, their value per acre was as low as 611 and some were well over 800,000 again per acre.

I also noticed that we have different additions that are listed in the details of the properties and they seem to be rather inconsistent.

One home does not add up to its three quarter second story plus the first story or the main square footage and so that's you know like how did that happen?

The total square footage is listed in detail.

Some of the houses do not include permitted features, additions, and it's hard to understand how these calculations are based.

So since there were absolute inconsistencies that I did uncover, I would ask that council direct someone in one of the finance department areas

to work on this and clean this file up.

If I totally misunderstand where the numbers come from, then we all need an answer to that question.

Thanks for hearing me out, and I also would like to endorse the appeal of the United Methodist Church.

I think that's it for me now.

Thank you, Ms.

Smythe.

Is there anyone in person who would like to speak in public matters other than the tax rate question, which we'll come to in a minute?

Yes, Mayor Snook, we have a few raised hands.

All right.

Good evening, council members of the public.

I'm Peter Krebs from the Piedmont Environmental Council.

I'm a Charlottesville resident as well.

I'm speaking in support of the two grants to acquire the case and property that's toward the end of the agenda.

Those two grants add up to about $350,000.

it's a lot of basically free money from the state but it is also important to acknowledge that it's the result of probably a decade or more of work so like to salute the staff for their creative thinking and for their intuitiveness this piece is really important for a number of reasons number one

It's a key link in the string of properties that PC has been working with the city to acquire along Morris Creek.

So it would build a greenway really from Bryce Spring all the way to Fifth Street and Fifth Street Station.

So you've seen the piece of that go in between just to the west of it between Old Lynchburg Road and Sunset Avenue.

There's a lot more going on in that area as well.

First of all, there's a ton of housing that's in the county right across the creek from there in Eagles Landing and several affordable housing sites.

And in fact, it's a strategic priority for the county.

They're working on building a sidewalk underneath the 64 at Old Lynchburg Road.

So you know, I love it when the city and county work on the same set of problems together.

So that's great.

and also another benefit of this project is that I think it's going to help promote the future of the IRC gardens that are there.

Let's get that into public hands, not in private hands if possible.

So that's it.

Thank you City Council.

Thank you.

Good evening Council and thanks for the opportunity to speak tonight.

My name is Rory Stolzenberg.

I'm a resident of West Water Street and I'm speaking tonight in my individual capacity.

I'd like to express my strong support of First United Methodist appeal of the BAR decision to reject their plan to power their building with clean rooftop solar.

The current BAR guidelines are clear and I quote, nothing in these guidelines should be construed to discourage green building or sustainable design.

At present, our primary source of electricity in Virginia is the burning of methane with a substantial portion from the burning of coal as well.

It's critical that we shift to zero carbon energy sources in order to meet Council's adopted climate goals.

I urge Council to send an unequivocal message to BAR that they must issue COAs in accord with their guidelines, including the clause overriding other aspects of the guidelines to explicitly allow sustainable building practices.

and that the BAR must refresh their guidelines as required by ordinance every five years.

In addition, consider taking a lesson from this situation and following our current zoning rewrite efforts, explore removing disincentives to changes that our own climate action plan calls imperative by removing binding COA review of clean energy projects from BAR's purview and thereby removing their ability to block them.

Thank you, Mr. Stoltenberg.

All right.

Ms.

Good evening.

Thank you for taking my comment.

I'm talking about something that Martha was talking about with the math is off on assessments.

This is related to the tax rate but not exactly the same thing.

When looking at the price per acre on the GIS map,

the it's all over the board and for example in ours our lot that is rather normal and our squeaky old house we're priced at over a million per acre the price per acre but if you look at other lots that are both nearby and then citywide even the price per acre is less

Even though they have larger lots, bigger houses, some of those houses have been updated, renovated, and some of them are even using their space to either rent apartments or as Airbnbs.

So again, the math is off somewhere.

You have to compare apples to apples and not apples to oranges in these situations.

We keep getting our assessment pushed up even though we live in this old leaky squeaky house and so it's a problem when we live next to a house that has been renovated but yours is not.

It's a problem also to talk about the market rate of a house.

You don't really know what the market rate is until that house has been sold.

Otherwise, the city is just engaging in real estate speculation.

And there just seems to be a systemic and institutionalized gentrification of the entire city with its ever increasing assessments.

We need more equity and transparency as far as how these assessments are done.

rather than just saying, oh, it's the Dillon rule or, you know, it's the market.

So I would ask, as Martha did, for something's got to change.

It's not clear.

It's not equitable.

It's not fair.

The math is off is what it comes to for me.

In the time I have left, I'd just like to also talk about the fact that if somebody comes to the city council meeting and wants to sit there, and there's a room, and I see there are rooms to sit there, even though they have not supposedly not signed up, they should be let in.

I'm not sure if it's even legal to tell someone that they can't come into a public meeting like that, especially when they're open seats.

And if someone doesn't have internet access, for example, it's not very fair.

and I've been told by a few people that this has happened to them so I would ask that if there are open seats that people be let in.

Thank you very much.

I'll talk later about the tax rate.

Thank you Ms.

Hawkey.

I wasn't going to talk tonight, but then I heard that there was a refusal by an architectural review for the church to have solar after all this planning.

I just received a grant from Dominion.

I don't know if it's...

I just signed a contract.

I'm going to get solar on my house.

And it took like two seconds.

They came over and they made me sign a contract.

And I'm not going to pay a dime, apparently.

I don't know if that's cool, but that's what I'm doing.

And I just want to say that Susan Cruz and all these people trying to

to get our climate and to make our city clean.

And trust me, if you get rid of all this methane, people will have less medical issues.

They'll be able to work harder and longer.

And all this effort, I can't understand for one second, especially after all the planning, that anybody would be refused solar.

And then also, I want to encourage people to join the chamber.

of Commerce here in Charlottesville is unbelievably active.

I just went to a lunch and met somebody from Foothills Child Advocacy Center and this company will go to our schools and spend time with our students that are having so many problems because of anti-socialization during the three years that we've been

Hold Up.

And so I just want to say that the chamber is really attracting a lot of marketing people and that sort of thing.

You don't have to actually, if you can't afford to belong, you can go to their meetings.

And I encourage that very much.

And lastly, I want to say I was petitioning for Michael Payne for a ballot and I heard so many heartfelt stories about how people don't live here because they can't afford to.

I wish I had a GoPro on my head.

so that you could hear the testimonials and the reasons why people are not living here.

And they have three jobs and they have no child care, et cetera, et cetera.

Those things that people are trying very deliberately to make quality of life, we have to tell the wealthy people of the city, they have to pitch in.

Pay for the parks, pay for gardens, pay for housing.

so that they can have quality of life and they can have service.

Who's going to clean their homes or whatever they need done, electric, this, that, teachers?

This all comes from something and we can't just keep taxing people who are working.

Thank you, Ms.

Hoffman.

Ms.

Good evening, council.

Thank you for the opportunity to chat tonight with you all.

I appreciate it.

And as you know, I am a city resident and often we interact when I'm wearing my hat for the school board, but I am here tonight as a community member.

And I come to you with a lot of concerns.

I come to you with with

I guess just an urgency and an ask of you all you know and the fact that those of us who do have the ability to advocate for others and like I said for myself I often am advocating for the schools and those students but we look to you as counsel

to manage budget and we're right in the midst and the meat of you all making some tough decisions on what to fund and how the money gets allocated.

In 2017, as we all know,

in August, you know, that really kicked open the door and allowed for the mobilization of a lot of groups with the goal of addressing and highlighting a lot of the disparities within our community.

There's been some excellent work and I know that that work continues and I think we are all aware now that there is a crisis occurring currently in our city.

You know, and how we define crisis can vary, you know, depending on, you know, it could be housing, you know, as was said in your earlier work session, you know, what is the definition of affordable housing?

What is the definition of deeply affordable housing?

The crisis could be climate.

The crisis could be tree canopy.

but really it's gun violence and making sure that we take care of our youth and and we as elected officials we as a community need to hold each other accountable to take care of our own we can't leave people behind and we have and we are and and I'm I have a lot of points and I'm not um

I'm going to fine tune these and refine them and I'm going to continue to show up as a community member and ask you all to really consider putting aside some funding to support our youth.

I mean, we have a lot of people who have a lot of great ideas.

We have space within our city to support our youth and to

be a place, but I think we need funding.

I know there's been discussion about strategic plans with Parks and Rec in 18 months from now, and there's a lot of talk.

We're really good at talking about and acknowledging what these problems are, but we need action now.

And so I, as a community member, I'm asking all of you to please really consider setting aside some money to support and to be available for funding if we find space for our youth

and for some of these other things.

So I'll be back.

Thank you, Ms.

Torres.

I'm sorry, Mr. We do have one more.

All right.

Ms.

Good evening, Ms.

Attorney Turner.

I just want to ask, when are you all going to open City Council up to where we don't have to register?

I mean, literally, everywhere in the city is open.

No mask policy anywhere that I know of.

What is the problem about allowing citizens to come into city council without having to register for seats?

Why is it that you all have to know who is coming to city council

every two weeks.

Why can we not walk into city council freely like we used to?

If I'm not mistaken, I believe our tax dollars are paying for this building.

So why can we not walk into city council and join a meeting

without having to register.

I just can't understand this.

I'm echoing the caller before me.

You know, there's people that don't have phones, that don't have computers, that might want to just walk off the street and speak to you all to let you all know what's going on in this community.

But for some reason, you all do not want to fake the citizens.

Why is it?

Do you have to know how many police there needs to be there for the people that's going to be there?

Because I haven't seen any police there since.

we've had to register for a seat.

So I'm just asking you like so many people in this community wanna know when are we gonna be able to just walk into city council like these children do at school?

If the children can go to school without math and get taught every Monday through Friday,

Why can you, City Council, not state your citizens every two weeks?

Thank you, Ms.

All right, Ms.

Good evening.

Behavior is a language of trauma children will show you before they tell you that they are in distress.

Children don't get traumatized because they are hurt.

They get traumatized because they are along with the hurt.

A child has experienced trauma will sometimes show they feel connected to an attachment figure by releasing all their big emotions in their presence.

What may appear as disconnections may actually be a sign of trust, if not being heard, no self-worth or hope or understanding.

Repeated childhood trauma causes a child to live in a constant state of hypervigilance, always alert to impeding perceived danger.

The disruptive voices that you hear are from voices of black and brown people's cries for help over decades.

To know it here, generations are damaged, hurt, traumatized, dehumanized, carrying tremendous weight on their shoulders.

Our children need our love, presence, parents, community, government, not jail cells.

Mental health endures a lot when our children have been abused over time.

All they know is hurt people hurt people even if it's their own race, which is disturbing due to slavery.

This is the result of the impact of violence of all kinds, but mostly guns.

These children are different.

They are misguided, miseducated, and misunderstood, fighting in survival mode for daily life.

Charlottesville is now an urban plantation.

There needs to be leadership, a choice, a chance.

Don't cry about what you don't have.

Use what you got.

Charlottesville has plenty of money and resources that aren't available to the black communities.

Better living, education, and better treatment is what we need in our community.

So please don't look down on nobody unless you are helping them up.

Leaders must be tough enough to fight, tender enough to cry, human enough to absorb the pain, and resilient enough to bounce back and keep moving.

So that's what I am.

I am a voice.

for these young children, which are my children, which I have put my life on the line to protect at any given moment of all hours of the day or whatever it does take.

I am a mother.

I am a grandmother.

I am a godmother.

I am a mother to a community that looks and trusts and respects me.

So I expect for the government of local Charlottesville to do something to be able to help our children to succeed.

Thank you, Ms.

Parker.

So next item on our agenda is the appeal of the BAR denial of the certificate of appropriateness for the First United Methodist Church.

Good evening.

Yeah, I'm Jeff Warner.

I'm the preservation and design planner, and in that capacity, I serve as staff for the Board of Architectural Review, or the BAR.

And just to some of the comments that were made, certainly we encourage people to install solar panels on their roofs.

I would just offer this recommendation.

Have your roof inspected before you cover it with panels.

Always make sure everything's taken care of before those things go up.

It's a...

Make sure you get that maintenance resolved.

So I'm here tonight regarding the appeal of the BAR's January 18, 2023 denial of the COA for the removal of portions of the existing slate roof and the installation of asphalt shingles and an array of photovoltaic panels at 101 East Jefferson.

Constructed in 1923, First United Methodist Church is a colonial revival brick church and has a three-story brick tower with a wood-framed steeple on the east elevation.

Properties with the North Downtown ADC District and the structures are designated as contributing which means that they contribute to the character of the ADC District and the ADC District being the local designation.

As allowed by City Code, the property owner has appealed the BAR's decision to you all and your role in this is to make a final decision on that COA.

That is to determine if the requested slate roof removal, subsequent installation of asphalt shingles and solar panels should be approved or denied.

and per city code for an appeal, council shall consult with the BAR and the BAR chair is here tonight and consider the appeal, the BAR's review criteria and any other information, factors or opinions it deems relevant to the application.

So our recommendation our staff's recommendation is for you all to make a final decision tonight and to not refer this back to the BAR and within your staff report are suggested motions one for approval of the request and one for a denial and finally if the owner of 101 East Jefferson Street is aggrieved by your decision this evening they do have the right to appeal that to the Charlottesville Circuit Court

So quickly regarding the BAR's discussion of this request.

Back in August last year, Mr. Owens, an architect working with the church, contacted me about the installation of solar panels.

And excuse me.

During the September BAR meeting I informally sought input from the BAR and communicated that back to Mr. Owens.

The BAR asked how will the panels be installed and mounted, where were the cables, conduits, equipment boxes be placed, etc.

How high will the panels be above the slate roof?

and importantly how will the slate roof be protected during installation and maintenance of the solar panels.

Generally the BAR was concerned about how activity on the roof would impact that slate.

The BAR also expressed a preference for the panels to be installed on the rear of the building or there's a rear building and to avoid panels on the sanctuary and they suggested evaluating construction of a frame for the installation of panels over the church's parking lot.

On October 18, 2022, BAR reviewed a formal request to install the panels onto portions of the slate roof.

A motion to approve that request failed by a vote two to four.

The applicant then requested a deferral.

On January 18th of this year, the BAR reviewed their revised request and that was to remove portions of the slate, install asphalt shingles and to install the solar panels.

And by a vote of 4-3, the BAR denied the COA and cited the following.

Removal of the slate and obscuring and damaging the slate conflicts with the BAR's guidelines.

and the proposed installation does not comply with the Secretary of the Interior's standards.

And I have some images.

I don't know, David, if you've got those queued up, but possibly.

But they do show and you will have it in your... There we go.

Okay.

So this first slide, there's two, this and the next one, David.

These are the two images provided by the applicant.

Next, David, this is the view from looking...

Northeast.

Next, David, is from looking from the park north.

And the last image here is looking west from the top of 2nd Street.

And I think there's one more in there.

and so I'll get to this in a second but during the BER's discussions three primary questions were weighed.

How much damage will be done to the slate during installation and subsequent maintenance of the solar panels and how will that be mitigated?

And per the prescribed standards for review is the installation of solar.

Are the installation of solar panels appropriate at the proposed location?

and then per the prescribed standards for review is removal of the slate entirely or partially and replacement with asphalt shingles appropriate.

And just to quickly get to where we are, the

The ADC guidelines, the ADC District Design Guidelines recommended solar collectors be installed on non-character defining roofs or roofs of non-historic adjacent buildings.

Additionally, the Secretary of the Interior Standards and this is the federal level recommendations for historic properties offer 10 criteria and they are in the staff report and when you apply those to this request the germane criteria just did not support its approval.

and one of the things that we have here is that slate is a very long-life durable product.

Properly maintained a Buckingham slate roof like this one can exceed 150 years.

This roof is believed to be original to the 1923 construction so it's got some life left in it.

Absent the installation of solar panels there is no demonstrated need to remove and replace the slate.

And regarding the apparent conflict of the BAR standards of review and the City's broader policies and goals, we acknowledge this and let's go to that slide, David, this is my recommendation to the BAR.

And I said that to be clear, the strict application of the guidelines and of the Secretary's standards would recommend denial.

These are what the BAR is instructed with using.

I said that the options available to the BAR were approve the request as instructed by the guidelines in a sense working to devise a creative solution that meets the applicant's goal for sustainability.

Part of that was considering installation in the parking lot.

Or B, deny the COA, acknowledging the matter can be appealed to city council.

and you all may consider additional information factors or opinions.

And so that's how we got here.

If you would, next one David and then I have images for discussion but I just want to leave with this one.

I've gotten a lot of emails about this.

I know you all have.

Since 19 or since 2010 the BAR's reviewed I think it's 15 requests to install solar panels.

All of them were approved, except for this one here, but all of them prior have been approved now.

None of them were incurred in installation on a slate roof.

And so I think that where, and I'll let Mr. Gastinger probably address it more eloquently than I can, but where the BAR was is that you have a sustainable material there, you have a historic material, and the

The historic guidelines and recommendations do talk about sustainability and they talk about the life cycle of materials and we have, like I said, a slate roof that was in place and weighing that against removing it, installing asphalt shingles, installing solar panels.

In the application of the guidelines there was a 4-3 vote to deny that request.

So I know

Here, and then, well, hold on, and then where's Bill?

The church.

Yeah, he's next.

I don't think so at this time.

Well, I'll definitely have some questions.

I'm not going anywhere.

All right, thanks.

The next up would be the appellants from the church.

Good evening.

I'm Bill Owens, the architect shepherding the solar panel project for the church.

I'm also a church trustee.

I'm here this evening with the Reverend Alex Joyner, fellow trustee Guy Moffitt, church member Fred Snyder, also a retired architect, correct, and church member Cindy Remington and hopefully numerous church members on Zoom.

Thank you for hearing our appeal this evening.

I've detailed most of my thoughts in the appeal letter so I won't take up a lot of valuable time covering those again since there's other folks here who want to speak this evening.

However, I would like to reiterate that we don't necessarily disagree with the BAR's decision so much as we think the decision was made based on out-of-date design guidelines that are now in conflict and incongruous with the current visions and goals of the City of Charlottesville towards the use and promotion of sustainable energy.

The ADC guidelines were last updated in 2012.

In fact, the Secretary of Interior's standards for rehabilitation that serve as the basis for much of the BAR guidelines have not been updated since 2011.

Even the BAR members admitted during the meeting that we had in January that the guidelines were indeed in need of updating, particularly in regard to renewable energy and particularly solar panels.

To that point, we were actually encouraged by several BAR members to appeal the outcome of their vote.

We've also received support from the city's climate program staff.

Since the guidelines were last updated, over the past 10 years or more, the city has approved numerous statements, standards, plans, amendments, and initiatives that not only support and encourage sustainable energy, but also make it a matter of governing policy.

Some of these documents include the City Council's Vision Statement 2025, the Solarize Charlottesville Campaign, the Charlottesville Standards and Design Manual,

the city's strategic plan, the city's comprehensive plan, and most importantly, the Charlottesville's climate action plan that was just adopted in January as an amendment to the comprehensive plan.

There are others, but all these documents support and encourage sustainable design, renewable energy, or solar panels by the city of Charlottesville.

The members of the United Methodist Church wish to demonstrate their commitment to stewardship of the environment and the city of Charlottesville community through their support of sustainable energy.

The solar panel project grew out of this commitment to stewardship.

To not allow the solar panels on the roof of the church would not only stand in stark contrast to the recent decade of progressive Charlottesville environmental and energy policy, but also deny an expression of faith by a longtime downtown church that wants to set an example of one congregation's response in acknowledging their obligations to address the climate crisis.

We hope you will let First United Methodist Church be an example for the downtown and the city.

Other members of the church?

Good evening.

Thanks for the opportunity to speak as well.

My name is Alex Joyner.

I'm pastor at First United Methodist Church, which has a long history, as Bill has just outlined, in the downtown Charlottesville community.

Our current building will soon be observing its centennial, but the congregation has been established here since 1834.

And like many downtown congregations, the people of our congregation have had to balance the challenges of maintaining and improving an historic building while maintaining a vital and responsiveness to the community around us.

And rather than move out of the city center to more modern facilities, the congregation at several points in its history has made the decision to remain.

That's not been easy.

We believe we've taken good care of the building that previous generations entrusted to us.

We believe we've been good neighbors working with the BAR on previous occasions when we've looked at improvements and alterations to make the building more useful and energy efficient.

Those encounters were sometimes challenging, but we recognize the community interest in historic districts.

The current project grows out of a faith commitment to care for the environment which is central to Christian witness.

Our newly formed creation justice team made up of church members has helped lead us to consider how we can be better caretakers of the world around us and it's also grown out of the vision of an individual to offer a significant donation towards solar panels and that's something that we celebrate in moving us in that direction.

Of course, we were disappointed in the decision of the BAR not to offer a certificate of appropriateness, but we do believe, like the three BAR members who voted in favor of the certificate, that there was room within the current guidelines to approve.

But having to face the additional hurdle of an appeal, I feel this can be a positive outcome for the Church and the City.

An affirmative vote by you tonight would begin to move projects like ours and there will be many more, I'm sure.

will move us towards a greater City vision for climate action in Charlottesville.

And I hope it will also prompt the City to take up an overdue revision of the BAR guidelines for sustainable energy projects in historic districts.

Planning Commissioner Carl Schwartz was quoted as saying, following the BAR action on our certificate, some guidance from Council would be very useful since our guidelines are very vague.

We've heard from a lot of community partners after the BAR denial.

At least 15 people have notified me that they were going to be on the Zoom tonight who are supporting this appeal.

There are a lot of folks who love this city and have voiced a support and the support that's been voiced for sustainability in climate initiatives.

They're waiting for the Council to take steps to make this a reality.

and we want to be part of making this community a better place for all people.

It's the essence of our vision statement which is to love the whole city and to love the city whole starting right here.

So I thank you for your consideration of this appeal and urge your positive action on it.

Good evening.

I'm Frederick Schneider.

I live at 506 Second Street Northeast, and I'm also a member of First United Methodist Church.

I'm also a retired preservation architect, and I have served as a past member of the Scottsville Architecture Review Board for 10 years, including some time on that board as vice chair.

I understand the perspective of the BAR concerning the historic first church building.

It's a dominant feature of the Market Street Park neighborhood and of our city.

I also understand the BAR's desire to preserve the character defining features of historic buildings, guided by the Secretary of the Interior Standards for Preservation.

However, I know from my experience in Scottsville that the work of architectural review often involves balancing the needs of preservation with those of building owners and users.

Frequently, these are economic concerns, but increasingly, they include efforts to keep older buildings viable for contemporary uses and for making these uses sustainable, including environmental sustainability.

In situations like these, preservation goals can't exist in a vacuum.

If building owners cannot respond to changing needs by making responsible adjustments to their buildings, then they are hampered in their ability to be good stewards of those buildings, our collective architectural heritage for future generations to use and enjoy.

I also understand that some BAR members may feel constrained in their authority to allow changes to buildings by the provisions of the ordinances empowering the BAR to protect historic resources.

However, City Council's authority is based on a wider mandate to be not only stewards of our city's buildings and infrastructure, but to use resources wisely to benefit the citizens of our community.

First United Methodist Church's proposal to install solar panels provides Council with an opportunity to reflect this wider body of responsibility.

It demonstrates that the City is supportive of efforts, both public and private, to use energy conservatively and innovatively to respond to changing needs and global concerns right here in our own community.

It encourages others to take similar initiatives and shows that we can all be part of solutions to be more environmentally responsible.

These values are embodied in the city's comprehensive plan and here we have an example of putting them into action.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Schneider.

So, anyone else from the church?

No?

Thank you, Mayor Snook and councilors.

And my name is Brett Gastinger and I serve as chair of the Charlottesville Board of Architectural Review.

And I'll first say that I voted in favor of this proposal, but I respect the work that we did and the conversations that we had and how we'll be here to represent the decision of the majority.

Before I speak about this project specifically, I just want to take a second to step back and put some attention more generally about our charge at the BAR and how it relates to the future of our community.

There are many reasons that this community sees that it's important to preserve our historic buildings, neighborhoods, and landscapes.

But many people don't think or appreciate that historic preservation is inherently a sustainable practice.

Again, historic preservation is inherently a sustainable practice.

It's often said that the greenest building is the one that's already built.

Demolishing buildings and constructing new ones requires tremendous amount of material, energy,

Chemicals, raw transport, associated pollution, and the amount of landfill waste can be staggering.

To live sustainably as a community, it is imperative to take care of the working historic structures that we have.

And I think that everyone here in this room wants to do that.

But I just want to take that moment to highlight how important historic preservation can be to our sustainable goals.

This project is a pretty interesting one because on the one hand it envisions generating solar electricity downtown, but on the other hand at the cost of removing and potentially damaging a significant feature, its slate roof.

and I'm really grateful actually for the First United Methodist bringing this project to us.

I think I found the conversation not only genial and detailed but also an important one as we tease apart a tricky conversation.

It was a tough call and it was a close vote as I already mentioned.

Project was denied 4-3.

There are a few other things that I want to clarify about the BAR and our deliberations and I think there have been some misleading assertions in the media and in response to this project.

For the record, the BAR is supportive of solar panels.

As Mr. Werner mentioned, we've approved 15 projects and this is the first time that one was denied.

And it was also the first one that was proposed on a slate roof and it has some tricky circumstances.

Out of all the sky available in Charlottesville, this is one of the trickiest spots to install solar panels.

Additionally, I want to say that our guidelines are not incompatible with solar.

I don't agree with that assertion.

The Secretary of Interior Standards, to which our guidelines refer, and actually they were updated in 2017, offers a range of specific guidance on how solar panels might be successfully and unsuccessfully incorporated into renovations and rehabilitations.

Furthermore, for this request, the BAR majority was not concerned about the visual impact of panels on the roof as designed or their presence within the historic district.

So I don't know if that was clear in our decision, but the concern was not about the solar panels.

Lastly, our own guidelines in addition to the Secretary of Interior standards, they do implore us to think creatively and proactively to favor sustainable technology.

Sustainability is literally the first topic in our design guidelines after the introduction and it implores flexibility.

and I'll just quote one of the sections here.

Sustainability and preservation are complementary concepts and both goals should be pursued.

Nothing in these guidelines should be construed to discourage green building or sustainable design.

If such a design is found to conflict with a specific guideline, the BAR work shall work with the applicant to devise a creative solution that meets the applicant's goal for sustainability and that is also compatible with the character of the district and the property.

So why was the project denied?

It was about the slate roof.

The primary concern was this character defining feature of this historic structure and doing so in a way that could jeopardize the building into the future.

This is a character defining feature and it is one that could remain in place for 50 years or more.

It is in good condition and it is visible from public rights of way.

Our guidelines discourage altering character-defining features on historic buildings, especially roofs.

In our guidelines under the section on roofs, section G, number 7 says when replacing a roof, match original materials as closely as possible.

Number 8 says place solar collectors and antenna on non-character-defining roofs or roofs of non-historic adjacent buildings.

And I will note here that for the solar array that was proposed, only a small portion of those solar panels are facing south.

Slate is a remarkable local material that lasts for 100 to 150 years.

Buckingham slate is just quarried not that far away, and it's said to be some of the highest quality in the world.

It's been quarried since the 1700s.

It is a sustainable inert material, and as such, especially installed, has a much less carbon footprint than replacing it with asphalt shingles, solar panels, which would likely be made overseas.

And this roof that will replace the shingles would have a life cycle of around 20 years.

Now these considerations about sustainability are not expressly considerations in our guidelines, but I think it's important to think a little bit more deeply about the sustainability related to replacing intact, inert, and functional roofs.

It is not sustainable to remove a slate roof which is in good shape in favor of technology which the applicant admitted will be obsolete in 20 years and will require replacement.

Additionally, some members of the BAR were concerned about the integrity of the roof and how it will age with a novel combination of slate and asphalt shingles, intermittent braces for solar panels.

Such a mixture introduces a lot of opportunity for water penetration, roof failure.

And our goal here is long-term preservation and viability of the structure.

And it all starts with the roof.

Clearly, this project is unique.

It brought up a number of potential conflicts within our guidelines.

But the board had deep conversations with the applicant, city staff, and thoroughly discussed many sides of the issue while working within the guidelines.

In the end, it was close vote, vote being four to three against.

Thank you for your time tonight.

Thank you, Mr. Gastinger.

Well, maybe it's – Or should we go to the public comment?

Let's go to the public comment.

Okay.

We don't have public comment on this one, I'm sorry.

It's the next one.

Getting confused.

Well, yeah, I'm sorry.

So, I'm not sure who I should direct my question to besides the collective group.

Mr. Warner, since you're staff, would you come up and take it for the rest of them?

Sorry.

Thank you.

Yeah, so I guess from my perspective, if it sounds like the BAR was okay with the way it looked, the sort of aesthetic perspective, there was another thing Mr. Gastinger said that they, I can't recall, the other thing that the BAR didn't have an issue with that came down to simply the fact that we were going to be disturbing

existing Buckingham slate and putting in asphalt shingles so that the assembly, we're replacing one assembly that's working perfectly well that could continue to work perfectly well for another 50 years with an assembly that might work for 20 years and could have leaks in the meantime.

Okay, so that's sort of the pith, I think, of what's really at issue as I sort of sifted through things.

I guess from my perspective, I mean, if the Reverend and his church are willing to take on that

risk liability of having a leaky roof that they have to repair in ten years time.

I'm asking others, why is it that we as city council would

would care about their private building if we're confident that they're going to take care of it.

It's not going to get run down or whatever.

We are confident that they'll take care of it.

I mean, that's a valid question.

A number of ways to respond.

One would be

That makes perfect sense.

Yeah, and I think, and I guess I could answer from

I get this question a lot.

I live in a historic house.

I have to go to the BAR, I've told you.

I've had to go to the BAR.

I have the windows that were installed in my house in the 1880s.

I could go spend a lot of money to put all new windows in and take all my windows out and

but there's a calibration of what is involved, what are the costs and benefits of that.

So not trying to question their decision.

Heck, my church put solar panels on the roof.

One of the things to evaluate is, all right, and I don't know if the BARs

has the ability to do this.

But in terms of environmental stewardship, what are the costs and benefits?

Is this carbon footprint of the new offsetting what's being removed?

And I don't know how to answer that.

That's a perspective that we're weighing.

Whether the roof leaks or not later, I would hope it wouldn't, and knowing Bill, I'm sure it won't.

And I think the other part of the answer would be we have a lot of slate buildings downtown, slate roof buildings, and, you know, it would sort of, I guess, to make a decision

that's not just a, hey, if it's slate roof, take it off and put on solar panels.

I mean, if there's, because that really kicks the leg out from one, you know, positions that BAR has.

Now, to answer the question about the BAR's guidelines, we were in the process of reviewing them and then COVID hit.

And then we are hoping to, when the zoning rewrite is done and kind of know where things settle, would be the appropriate time to

Well, I think as Mr. Gastinger said a minute ago, it's pretty clear that there was a robust discussion among the professionals and others that make up that committee.

It sounds like it really came down to a close decision in terms of what was most appropriate.

I don't know, we could have someone from the environmental team maybe assess how much carbon we're getting rid of by taking up slate and putting down asphalt versus what we offset with.

My guess is that the solar panels would win in terms of

carbon mitigation.

Yeah, if I can give some history just real quick that might address some of your questions.

So when we first went to the BAR, that was in October, that was our first time, we were going to them more interested in not how we would do it but can we do it because we didn't want to waste the time

and Tiger Solars and everyone's efforts applying for grants and also if the BAR which we knew would be a process here to take the time to do that.

And so we went to them in October and the conversation quickly went not from the solar panels themselves but how are they installed?

Will they damage the slate?

A lot of time on whether the roof would leak or not which our point was that's our problem not yours.

And it quickly became apparent that that was how the panels were actually mounted on the slate roof became a stumbling block.

And we could see the vote was going south, so we deferred.

And based on that, we actually met with our roofer and came back.

And the system we're proposing now is in response to the BAR, removing the slate, putting down an asphalt shingle, which is a more traditional installation of solar panels since it's done mostly on residential.

The panels sit only six inches off the roof.

They overhang their mounts, so it's going to appear to be slate everywhere except under the panels.

Right.

And that is to provide a better weather tight, it'll actually be tooth roofing.

We'll put on a rubber membrane and then an asphalt shingle.

That will be actually better than the entire slate roof is now because it's just a stone roof with nothing underneath it 100 years ago.

Sure.

So actually the system that we're proposing now understandably removes the slate which we've promised to keep and we found a replacement source for anything that's damaged is far superior to what is anywhere on the roof right now.

And that was in response to what the BER said.

I've got technical information here if you'd like to see it.

We originally proposed to mount them on this.

None of the shingles would have been removed but involved obviously you've got to mount

the panels to something.