City Council Meeting   7/17/2023

First of all, I call the meeting to order, and Ms.

Councillor Pinkston?

Here.

Mayor Snook?

Here.

Let's see, is there a motion to approve or amend the agenda?

Is there a second?

Second.

All in favor, please raise your hand.

Any opposed?

The motion passes 5-0.

This meeting will be divided, as always, into three main sections.

First is a work session to hear and discuss presentations that do not require a council vote, and I should add, and will not have a council vote.

followed by a closed meeting to discuss and interview candidates for a few specific boards and commissions then the city council business meeting which will begin around 6 30 p.m.

and I should start off by saying for those who either are here and wondering why we're here or who are watching online and wondering why we're not in city council chambers

Good afternoon, Mayor Snook.

Good afternoon, counselors.

Mr. Rogers.

Good afternoon.

My name is Edward Herring, and I will be presenting the update for the Charlottesville Sisters Citizens Commission.

Our annual report is normally due in June, but we did change our previous chairman.

That was his last month of service, and therefore we were able to get a little bit of a delay.

And now we go to the technical part here.

Okay, there we are.

So with Assistant City, we're all familiar with the work we've been doing, but what I'd like to do is briefly, very, very briefly go back and review just a little bit of this report today, the activities we have had in fiscal year 2023.

Now, once again, our sister cities, just as a reminder of , please note that I misspelled , it has an A-N-O there, and I think it's almost always the case that when you do something and you hit send on the computer, about five seconds later, you find your error, which was our first sister city in 1976.

Plevin in Bulgaria, which was a sister city since 2004, is in non-active status.

In Bulgaria, the cities have been rearranged to some extent, so Plevin doesn't really exist in the way it did before.

Besosona, of course, in France, our sister city since 2006, Guineba in Ghana, which we've been quite active with as a sister city since 2010, and lastly, Huehuetenang in Guatemala, which became a friendship city in July 1st, 2021, and is still in the exploratory phase.

The commission members that have been working for the past year, several of them left in June at the end of their terms.

We don't have any new ones coming to commission yet.

We hope to in September.

But the list here, Alison Brown is our representative from the Charlottesville school system.

Claire Denton-Spalding is a commissioner at large.

Nana Gottlie, who has been on the commission several times.

has been working with Winnebaugh.

Michael Grinnell is a treasurer.

Kimberly Hayes is fairly new.

She's been a half a year and she's the business representative.

Myself, Edward Herring as the chairman as well as the representative for the new city which means Wayward-Tenango.

Stella Matteoli, who is at this moment still in Italy working with Poggio.

Celia Nustron has been with the commission about a year.

Elizabeth Smiley has been with the commission two years.

Elizabeth is the secretary as well as the representative of Bessenzong.

Our youth representative is Vivian Wong who will be leaving us soon as she has graduated from high school.

Higher education is open and I'm speaking with Ambassador Moll in this moment as to have a replacement.

And of course we have Max Helia Robinson as our staff liaison.

Now the best is on we'll start there.

Finally, after the pandemic, we were able to resume in-person exchanges with Bessesson.

First week in April, Elizabeth Smiley traveled to Bessesson to renew links with the city.

Now, this happened with several cities that between our last visit before the pandemic and now, the government changed.

Friendly changed the government.

So a new government was elected and so we started all new because as with all the European cities all the different high offices are held by their particular mayor's appointed officials.

So our contacts and people we've been working with for quite a few years because the previous mayor was there for 17 years.

so we were pretty well entrenched into the government.

Now we're starting all over again.

At the same time, Kimberly Hayes accompanied her at her own expense.

She wanted to be there and help form an informal delegation.

That coincided with a delegation from Charlottesville High School, which I was the chaperone for, and therefore we had a mini-delegation of three sister city commissioners in Bessizong, and we were able to work with them very, very closely.

Two highlights from that particular visit.

One was the fact that because we had brand new contacts with a lot of new people, we as a commission hosted a dinner for 18 of the key people in Bessizong, both from the school system as well as from the city.

and able to be able to re-forge those ties in addition to present Elizabeth as the contact person.

Also, at the beginning of the visit, we were treated to a reception by the deputy mayor in the birthplace of Victor Hugo and there was a presentation where we were able to present a nice letter from Mayor Snook along with a gift, several gifts that

we had found and we were going to present those gifts to the vice mayor on the right you will see a photo of Elizabeth and that is the vice mayor and then on the left you will see our 23 American students Charlottesville high school students along with about 20 students from their host students from Best in Song

and it was wonderful.

I was caught off surprise and wanted to translate in both the French versions and English versions in all the speeches, you know, and so I was like, okay, you could have warned me, but we got through it some sort of way without fracturing too many verbs.

The next thing is Pojo Alcano and it's spelled correctly here.

Stella Mattioli has been there for a few months and she's worked to develop new relationships.

With Pojo, the same thing with Besosom, the entire city government changed.

So there we are starting from scratch, building new relationships and also coming up with new ways of doing things because any time it does change it gives us an opportunity to find new avenues to work together.

One of the things that was very interesting is the fact that in Pozio Charlottesville High School choir led by Will Cook was there on June 15th with a group to sing all over Italy but especially in Pozio and that funding the travel was partially funded by the commission on the left is Will Cook with the mayor of Pozio and on the right

is our group of students singing.

I hope that you were able to see, I had sent out several weeks ago, a YouTube of the students performing in Bozio, and I hope that you were able to see it.

If not, I'll make sure you get to it.

They did very, very well.

We are very, very proud of them.

We are very pleased with what they were able to do.

Then we come to Winnibar and Ghana.

Now we have a lot of activities because we are fortunate to have the Charlottesville-Winnibar Foundation in the city also.

And this foundation has been very, very active as sort of a go-between between the governments of Winnibar as well as working with the commission here.

And Nana Gottlie, who is our representative to Winnibar, works closely with them as well as former mayor and former commissioner Dave Norris.

We have had quite a few delegations.

This year there was a 10th and 11th city delegation from Charlottesville to Winnemar that we've had since 2010.

We did provide some travel scholarship assistance for people to go there.

And there are some other collaborations going on with Winnemar, University of Virginia School of Architecture, the Helen Project, some initiatives supported by some of the grants from the Charlottesville Sisters City Commission.

All right, we also joined in the funding of shipment of medical supplies and toys that were donated by Charlottesville residents facilitated by the Charlottesville-Whatever Foundation and we maintain very close relationships due to the efforts of the commission members and close relationships with the Charlottesville-Whatever Foundation

and there's a photo on the left you may recognize on the left photo the gentleman to the right is Santa Gottlieb and he's working with members of the city commission there and on the right are some of the packages that received there was quite a few more but you know it was quite a load I'm glad I did not have to carry it

Now, then we come to Huehuetenango, Guatemala, which is in our friendship city and exploratory stage, and it's an interesting city, it's different than any of the other ones we may have a relationship with, and we're still exploring the nature of our relationship, what are the things we can do with them, what are the things we cannot do with them.

It has, and we'll be talking next month.

I'm coming back to do a presentation on Weiwei specifically with the recommendations as to what we do.

So I won't touch too much on Weiwei, except to say that we're working closely with a foundation called the Ixtantan Foundation.

here who were the ones who initially suggested Weiwei as a future sister city and they helped facilitate a lot of activity.

The second thing is also I went to Weiwei in Guatemala back in February to meet on a trip organized by the mayor of Weiwei.

Now I didn't expect it but there was this to get from the capital city to Weiwei

There are two ways to get there 200 miles.

You can get into a bus and go around cliffs for six hours or you can get into an eight passenger puddle jumper.

I chose the puddle jumper route.

So I got there quickly and so they didn't tell me that in Guatemala they charge a ticket not just by the baggage weight but by you and the bags.

So with me I had 200 extra pounds.

All that were in the bag.

Plus what was in the bag.

But nonetheless, it was a fun trip.

They presented me with all of the different attractions in Weiwei.

I learned a lot about the life.

I learned a lot about the city.

I learned a lot about what might be possible to do with them and what we should probably not do with them.

We will be working with the commission at our first meeting in August to discuss these so we can come up with a good recommendation.

as to how we should work with Weibo Tenango, and I'm looking forward to that next month.

Oh, on the left, little old me and the mayor of Weibo, Mayor Cano, who just won on the 25th of June re-election.

and then on the right at the open of the library which had been closed for two years due to the pandemic as well as a shortage of funds and so we sat there I thought that we had long ceremonies here in America believe me our ceremonies here are short compared to everyone at the table had their talk and then they gave me the microphone so I said well if they can talk for 20 minutes why can't I and well we had a wonderful day

and that was there I am at the end of the table.

And of course, my new friends I met up in the mountains from Wehwe to Naima.

Yes.

Yes.

Which are not native, obviously, to Guatemala, but they are a good tourist attraction.

So the results of the visit are what we're doing, we're reviewing, discussing.

Because remember that when the decision was made to go with Wehwe as a friendship city, there was two whole sets of commissioned people to go.

the present set of commissioners have very little knowledge or have very little knowledge about what we're into this process so we have courtesy of going to discuss that the first meeting in August to bring them up the speed so that when I come back to council to show you the recommendation that the commissioners will totally be up to date as to what we're going to talk about what we're going to recommend

Travel Scholarships, we've been talking about them.

We gave Travel Scholarships to individuals that go to Willeba, to go to Poggio, also to go to Bessenson.

The second one, the CERN program is a program that coincided with our trip to Beseson CERN obviously is the center in Switzerland so we went both to Beseson as well as to CERN with 23 young people from Charlottesville and we did get some support to help make the trip from the Sister Cities Association and we continue with our grant programs

We were able to have significant grants with people going to sister cities.

However, we are taking a look at now because of some grants focused on bringing people here so that the citizens of Charlottesville can enjoy more of the results.

We realize that our citizens in Charlottesville do not have an awareness, as much of an awareness of the sister city commission as they need to have.

They need to share in the benefits of the commission and the benefits of what we do.

And so that's a new focus we want to make sure that we take on.

So, in conclusion, with international travel, we'll continue our vital role in connecting the citizens of Charlottesville with those of the world, particularly Bessizam, Wade Whitting Angle, Pojo, and Winniver.

And to move on to quickly possible next steps, I do wish to return in August to give you an update on Wade Whitting Angle and what we think is the next step in our relationship.

Also,

Oh, I'm hoping that we, and we do have, pardon me, coming up in about two weeks, the visit of a delegation from Winnibur.

There's about eight people coming, the mayor of Winnibur, and I think all of you, some of you have responded, you will be at the reception, and so I'll be also there, and we will be working with Dave Norris to make that painless, happy, fruitful week.

All right.

We would like to look at creating an annual Sister City Week that's plans in the future within the next couple of years, some way where we can involve the citizens of Charlottesville, but at the same time highlight our relationships, both food and music and other activities to bring the Sister City organization, the results of the Sister City organization to our people in Charlottesville.

And we'll start to work on that and we'll be in our retreat in September.

We will have an informal delegation, hopefully, from Weaver Tenango, and that's part of the discussion of the next month, so I won't talk too much about that, but they are chomping to come.

I get phone calls about every week saying, when can we come, when can we come?

But once again, there's preparation, that's all I had to go into place, so they can't simply just come without us discussing that, and we will talk more about that next month.

We will have an informal delegation from Besançon in 2024.

2024 represents the 20th anniversary of us becoming friends.

Also, we would like to have a delegation at some point in time to Weiwei Tenango in 2024, assuming that we move further in the relationship.

I would like to mention that the delegation away with Sena Magill would be different than perhaps going to Best and so on.

It would be more of an organized travel group, moving as a group because of safety issues.

It's a wonderful country, but once again, how we approach traveling in Guatemala is different than how we would approach traveling in France or in Spain.

The last thing that I'd like to refer out is

possibly doing a major delegation from here to Besançon in 2026 to mark the 20th anniversary of our partnership with them.

And that's far enough out that we can figure out how we want to do it, if we want to do it, and who might like to participate.

So it's not on immediate.

With that being said, thank you so very much for that time.

Do we have any questions?

I appreciate it.

Thank you, Mr. Herring.

Yeah, I'm just curious about the process of the, you know, I think the term was your friendly sister, so to determine if that partnership will work, what is that like?

You're just like, cordon each other?

But what were the original assumptions of the things that we could do?

Now, the Spanish language is a big piece of that.

The second one is the fact that Huey Wittenango is the center of the migrant civilization, which has impressive ruins.

Unfortunately, Huey Wittenango is also in the center of the path of migrants going from Central America to Mexico.

So we have to look at both sides of that.

We're trying to determine what

How would visit to Weywood-Tenangal, how would travel look?

Under what forms would it take?

And I think we have some options.

We're looking at things like the school interchange.

It is unlikely that for the foreseeable future that we would send our students to exchanges in Weywood-Tenangal.

It would be a safety issue.

But there are possibilities for teacher exchanges.

There are possibilities for pen pal relationships, for zone relationships.

So what we're trying to do is define what those possibilities are so that we are clear from the beginning that if we move forward in a relationship, what will be the foundation of the relationship.

and that everyone's on board with it.

So that's what we're hoping to be able to come clarify.

And once again, as you well know, working in a committee is not the easiest thing in the world, but it's fun.

And we want to come back and present an approach that everyone buys into that defines for the council and for the city of Charlottesville, this is our relationship.

This is the relationship we're trying to build with a way of which an angle to make sure we all have the right expectations.

and that's what I'm hoping to present next month after our deliberation and I'm looking forward to it.

But I must admit it was impressive to go.

Yes.

So one quick follow-up.

I forgot the country that our relationship is now dormant with.

That's right.

Is there...

a capacity like we can, you know, for a city this size that we, you know, I don't know what that number is, but that number is too much.

It totally depends.

I have worked with cities that are outside.

I have nine cities.

I think it depends upon what our desires are.

We have an ability to do more with a smaller number of cities in terms of budget and traveling and to be more selective with a smaller number of cities.

And so I think we have about the right size right now.

If we do not consider Bulgaria, I think we have the possibility for one more city.

But once again I think it's a city that should fit the needs of Charlottesville people as well as Charlottesville education.

Now I taught school in Charlottesville High School this past year and I taught French and German and so I have a meaning to watch German series because I teach German.

But at the same time, and I do know that those are the three languages we teach in the school, German, Spanish and French.

So I'm always pushing for, hey, let's balance that out.

We have Rome in the city for five.

I wouldn't suggest more than five.

But five, I think, would be very, very good.

No other questions?

Just thank you for the presentation.

It was very interesting.

It was very interesting and important.

Thank you for letting me come today.

Mr. Herring, I do have one other question.

It won't be long.

Sir,

All those variations are possible, and I agree with you, we will be talking about that during our retreat in September, how do we approach it, and instead of, and I like the idea of having it spread out through a month, let's say for instance October, just take it out of the end, or it will be Sister City Month, and we're going to have visitors from Pozio coming, and events, and music events, and food events during that week, and then another city we could invite the next week,

It would allow us to spread it out a little bit instead of having one big week that's over and gone.

No, that's an excellent idea, and I want to make sure that's on the table as we discuss it, because I was just, but we do need to have something, we need to have something where we can bring the citizens of Charlottesville closer to the results of the Sister City Association.

I speak some French.

I speak no Spanish.

Thank you so very much, but once again, just to add, it's all about the youth.

Everything we do for this city, everything we do for this city, it's about the young people and the next generation and preparing them and educating them and opening their eyes.

And it's something I enjoy doing very, very much.

Have a good rest of the day.

Okay, so second presentation of the Economic Development Strategic Plan.

All right.

Good afternoon, everybody.

Thank you for being here, and we're here to present the Economic Development Strategic Plan.

This is – you had an update about a month ago from Stephen, who's with us today again from Resonance Consultancy, and I'm going to let David pull up the presentation there.

And in the meantime, I want to say thank you to

The members of the steering committee, this project was guided by 16 member steering committee made up of community, nonprofit, small business, larger business, education, representatives.

We also had significant stakeholder engagement through a three-day kind of charrette process in this room that totaled about just upwards of 80.

Many of you were part of those three days as well.

and then we had a significant survey component that had business as well as community respondents totaling about 300 responses there.

So we did have some engagement.

So I wanted to mention that and thank the steering committee in particular who met multiple times on that.

Also thanks to Mr. Rogers for initiating this work when he came a little over a year ago and realizing that this might actually be his last council engagement and meeting with you all.

It's appropriate that we end with the

the plan.

So with that, I'd like to introduce Steven Pedego.

Good afternoon, everybody.

It's good to be back with you.

Good to be back in Charlottesville.

No pressure, since this is Mr. Rogers' last meeting, I'll try to do my best to live up to expectations.

So what I thought we would do today is I think Chris said I have about 20 minutes with you all.

and then I'll open some time up for questions as well.

So what we'll do is talk a little bit about the project, hit on some of the key phases and the things that we did, and then quickly just go back and refresh ourselves on the research that we had did for the project and remind ourselves about some of the key learnings.

But then spend most of our time in the strategy piece of this, kind of outlining some of the strategy.

You'll have an opportunity to see, talk goals and action steps and metrics and things to that affair.

So that's the plan for today.

So just as a reminder, we spent a, as Chris alluded in his comments, we spent a fairly significant amount of time getting to this final document.

Really sort of set over four phases.

Sort of phase one was really where we outlined out the project with our steering committee.

Phase two and three were our discovery sections, particularly one,

Phase 2 where we're doing much of the analytic work and the research work around that in Phase 3 supported by much of the public engagement that we did actually in this room with the community along with some community stakeholder engagement.

And then finally have spent a good amount of time actually developing the strategy but working back and forth with Chris and team and the steering committee to think about an action and implementation plan and how we want to measure impact.

So, as a sort of overview of the discovery, so one, I think you all have had this in your packet, but one of the things we've also made available as part of this report is a fairly detailed appendix, research appendix report, so if you're wanting to know more about the demographics or economic assets or challenges that we sort of learned throughout our

work with you all.

That's all available.

It's about 100 and some odd pages.

It's great bedtime, nighttime reading to work yourself through, but I'll try to summarize some of that key work as we go through this.

As part of our analytics, we did kind of add three pieces.

Again, benchmarking, looking at how we looked and compared Charlottesville to our peer cities and our peer communities, obviously in its context to the Commonwealth as well.

We did some industry cluster work trying to really have a clear sense of what were some of the target sectors as it related to investment in Charlottesville and this I think was really helpful work to really clarify what were some of the key opportunities and strengths

And then a piece of that which I think is somewhat interesting and new to the analysis of what we've done for brought to Charlottesville is we did some career pathway analysis.

So you'll notice in the plan we're not just talking about an economic development strategy that's just built upon company attraction and traditional what I call economic development kind of 101, kind of an old school fundamental pieces of economic development.

We did in the strategy, there's a good emphasis I think on community entrepreneurship, wealth creation, but also skill development for residents as well.

So as part of that work was fundamentally supported by doing some career pathway analysis for some of our sectors.

So for instance, we looked at healthcare to really have a clear understanding that if someone's starting in a healthcare entry wage,

opportunity.

How do they kind of work themselves up the food chain, so to speak, and what opportunities does that create in terms of our industry sector work?

In addition to that, you all are already doing a comprehensive planning process, but we did some look at

some of the challenges and some of the opportunities that we face in sort of the commercial landscape space here in Charlottesville.

You don't want to make industry recommendations if you can't support them in the commercial space around them.

For instance, you want to make sure that your economic development strategy and your land use strategy are somewhat married, so we did some analytics behind that to support that work.

And then as Chris mentioned there was a fair amount of engagement and I think for a community of your size quite robust.

Sixteen member steering committee, we had over I think about 85 participants in round table discussions over two days and then had nearly 300 people participate.

and our community survey.

So lots of engagement as it related to kind of providing insights to that report.

And in fact, one of the things I would say is that as you look at the strategy and look at the particularly around the strategies but also the priorities and implementation, a lot of that work gets very much informed by those discussions that you have because that's how you understand who your community partners are and how you match up

the things that the city wants to accomplish with what your partners are already doing or wanting to advance in the field.

So with that, I'll give a really quick overview of the research.

I won't hit on this much in detail because we've walked this path before together, but I'll hit over sort of 10 of the key highlights really quickly.

First and foremost, I think you all will know, Charlottesville is a very diverse town.

It's a young town.

It's got a great community charm.

about a third of the residents in Charlottesville are BIPOC residents and in fact you'll see that in the plan we've put an emphasis on the BIPOC community particularly around entrepreneurship as it relates to skill acquisition and thinking about how we tracked it over time and much of the metrics that we're putting forth in this plan so very much a foundation for that so we're a very young town and a diverse town as well.

is an extremely educated community.

Charlottesville, like its peers, like its other college town peers, extremely educated.

In fact, when you look at the number of residents that have a bachelor's degree or higher or tied to the knowledge base occupations, Charlottesville is about 72% higher than the US average.

Again, a lot of folks that are highly educated participating in a knowledge-based economy.

And then when you look at the basic metrics of the community, particularly as it relates to labor participation rates, how productive the workforce is, unemployment, all of those things are very much trending in the right direction, particularly as we come out of the past few years of the pandemic.

Thirdly, competitive export sectors, a strong foundation base, you'll see that these sectors, real strengths in defense, life sciences is a real opportunity here, tourism as well, but also even the clean technology sector and what I think is

What we learned, and in fact, we're working with a couple of other communities and have pointed to y'all as an expert, as kind of a mid-sized city that have done a really nice job around life sciences and actually your clean technology with some of your consortiums here and Chris being able to create those opportunities and working with them.

Fourthly, we think that life sciences is an opportunity as is clean technology.

Partly if you just look at the landscape of first and foremost what's happening with the investment that UVA is making in this space as well as your CIVO Biohub group.

But if we look at even thinking about the opportunity around clean technology, the fact that there is billions of dollars being invested by the Biden administration, particularly with the IRA, Inflation Reduction Act, that creates a lot of opportunity for communities that are thinking about clean technology.

There's an opportunity to connect both those federal dollars as it relates to some of our export sectors as well.

Great asset in the University of Virginia.

We want to think about how that partnership is strengthened even more.

I think what we appreciated about that work was that UVA was represented on our steering committee and present at many of our engagements and very much centered as an anchor institution in wanting to think about the economic development strategy.

I think one of the things that you'll see as it relates to the plan is that we have put an emphasis on this idea of inclusive Charlottesville as it ties to innovation.

A lot of communities sort of divorce the two.

We have actually put a

an emphasis on really marrying the two, thinking about how we continue to address some of the inclusivity challenges that we face as it relates to building a more inclusive Charlottesville.

In fact, this is becoming a more and more important element of the work that we as economic developers do in our space and how we connect the two.

I think there's some great opportunity here over the next course of four or five years as we implement this plan to have impact in that space.

A very growing diverse entrepreneurial community.

I think when you look at the folks that participated in our roundtable discussions, as we look at the data as well, there is a large number of folks that are engaged in entrepreneurship,

is a very diverse entrepreneurship community from not only just our demographics, but from industry, both from what we suggest as being sort of export-based driven, which is kind of your sort of regional industry sectors, but also your traditional small business base here, fairly robust and fairly strong as well.

We think that there's an opportunity to really bridge equity divides with some workforce development practices.

You'll see that's front and center in one of our goals and our strategy and really used a lot of the work that we did in the pathway analysis to think about how we connect the two.

It's not just enough to have an innovative-based sort of industry sector, but how do you create pathways and opportunity for residents to fully participate in that.

through new training programs, through new career pathways as well, and we've included that as a part of our plan.

That said, you know, there's a lot of great things happening in Charlottesville, but, you know, generally speaking, the economic development story is fairly somewhat untold here.

You know, there's a lot of best practices here.

There's a lot of opportunity.

and we do a great job on the DMO or the destination management or visitor side but wanting to do that same work around economic development.

I know Chris is making one of his newer hires, his updated hires having a piece of this in terms of being able to complete that storytelling piece and you'll see that's part of our plan as well.

And then finally, there's a lot of great quality of place assets here.

You've got the downtown mall, you've got the assets that a college town brings.

The continued thinking about how we can marry that and thinking about sort of the 2.0 versions of that around place making strategies is something that is important to that.

So with that, I won't hit on this very quickly, but these are the kind of the target sectors.

This is in the report as well as in your deck.

But one of the things I think you can see, and if you follow through the report, we've outlined strengths and assets and opportunities, both specializations and challenges, and within that report have highlighted particular sectors within those industry clusters that really set us up for opportunity.

But again, thinking about life sciences, IT technology, financial services, defense, tourism, and clean tech, kind of that core group of industries.

That's super important for when someone says, what drives the Charlottesville economy?

You can start, now you have the elevator pitch to say, well, we're a place of life sciences, we're a place of clean technology, we've got a robust tourism sector as well.

You now have that elevator pitch that allows us to really have clear,

sort of messaging around that, but also as a way to really track business investment over time.

We now can start to figure out which of these sectors are emerging, how do we bring these folks together, and you can create some real synergies through the business recruitment and expansion efforts that Chris and team will do as well.

So that brings us to the strategy.

and so we've devised this strategy based off of four areas.

There's obviously a vision statement, what's going to be our ultimate guide, how do we think about what are our big overarching goals to the economic development strategy, what are our desired outcomes.

How do we activate on them in terms of our strategies?

And then our action steps.

And I'll hit on one, two, three with each of these and just we'll kind of move through the action steps pretty quickly.

But we wanted to include them where you can see what we think is a fairly robust plan.

So, a vision statement, culture and creative capital of Virginia, Charlottesville treasures its people and diversity, a leader in innovation and sustainability, again, thinking about people first and really putting in the storefront windows, so to speak, this commitment to diversity, commitment to innovation and a commitment to this idea of sustainability and resiliency and you'll see that as it works through the strategy.

To support that, we've built, I think, a really economic development strategy that really in a sense represents where I believe economic development is today.

And Chris and I were talking about this this afternoon because we're geeks.

over where kind of development has come today.

And if you think about economic development, it's really kind of went through kind of three phases of work, right?

Phase sort of economic development 101 was really centered around sort of company attraction and retention in traditional business development.

and sort of phase two of economic development being really centered around a lot around people attraction, quality of place development, many of the things that you all have done here.

But then sort of that third phase of economic development is how do you marry business attraction, talent attraction with this idea of complete community building, right?

Thinking about creating opportunities for all of your residents and businesses.

And I seem to believe that this strategy really does that.

Goal one is really around equitable entrepreneurship, investing in entrepreneurship to grow a more diverse, equitable, and vibrant Charlottesville.

I know that when we had our session, we were challenged to think about community wealth building and an opportunity for wealth creation.

We think we're going to accomplish much of that through our support around equitable entrepreneurship.

I'll talk more about that as we go through the plan.

Our second goal is really thinking about how we support intentional growth, so building out an innovative economy, one that really thinks about growth but is intentional about the types of partnerships and opportunities that we're creating and really remembering that if we're wanting to build a real more inclusive

community that not all job creation is equal, right?

That focus job creation on the jobs that are creating family supporting or family supporting or household supporting or sustainable, however you want to define that in that space is super important.

So having intentionality around that.

Goal three is really, really focusing a lot around focusing on the individual pathways for opportunity, creating skill development, so creating pathways of opportunity for all Charlottesville residents.

You'll see that there's much discussion about expanding some of the current programming you're doing, but also some new innovative work with other partners throughout the city as well.

Fourth is considering doing what Charlottesville has had a real storied history on, and that's thinking about placemaking,

investing in placemaking to continue to celebrate who we are as a community.

And then five is somewhat, I think, new for Charlottesville in a bit, and that is just being very clear about positioning and telling our story and how we want to be in a community that's open for investment.

So those are kind of the five goals.

And if you can imagine, as I said before, kind of the evolution of where development is, we're kind of hitting on all three of those phases.

So why equitable entrepreneurship?

So we're going to invest in equitable entrepreneurship to develop a more diverse, vibrant Charlottesville.

Much of the literature has suggested in the space that this is an opportunity where, if done right, I'm doing very targeting.

you can create community wealth in your community particularly for underserved businesses as well as thinking about how you can tie your entrepreneurship development to your quote unquote traded sector work as well.

So it's a real opportunity to grow a community from the ground up or from the bottom up so to speak.

How do we envision doing that?

So we've outlined in the plan seven strategies to do that.

And by the way, in the plan and in the implementation plan, you'll notice that we've outlined what's the responsibility of the city, how the city's working with partners, as well, and being very clear about who's on deck to do what, as well as phasing this over time so it's not happening all in year one, so to speak.

Crystal's got a small team.

He's not going to implement this entire economic development strategy on.

It's going to require partnerships and other organizations, connections with, you know, the county and others to do some of this as well.

So, strategy 1.1, growing Charlottesville's BIPOC and diverse businesses through technical training and capital access.

1.2 is about thinking about how we ensure that we're creating a one-stop resource.

1.3 is really around thinking about support for home-based businesses and the support for that for remote work.

1.4 is continuing to do your business equity loan fund that's been quite successful.

1.5 is thinking about subsidized commercial space in the downtown.

1.6 is continuing to partner with community support organizations and program funding to accomplish a lot of the things that are already happening in the entrepreneurial space.

So as you move on, just a note, maybe something for Jay and us as counselors that the 1.3 where they talked about the home box,

Yeah, so to that end, one of the things you'll see, and I won't go through all of these because it's quite detailed, but you'll see we've outlined action steps of how this happens over time and what we should be doing, as well as the partners and things.

So it's an implementation plan that's available through this as well as it relates to each of these areas.

So questions around metrics are important and one of the things that we've done in the plan is outline both a series of what we're gonna call sort of in process metrics, metrics to understand how we're implementing the plan and then I'll share with you at the end

What's that success story about how do we know that we've deemed some success and what are those metrics that we want to follow and track throughout the time?

But things that we should be, that we'll be tracking and that we're interested in, and our team has kind of set Chris and team up with a fairly good KPI metrics, ability to kind of track these metrics, but looking at business formation, the number of businesses are participating in our programs, how we're spending our capital dollars, and the types of entrepreneurs that we're promoting.

and how we're promoting them as some of the recommended metrics as we sort of process through this strategy over time.

So goal two is about supporting our sort of innovation-based economy.

I'd say this is somewhat of a traditional economic development goal.

It's what you would want to find in any city's economic development strategy.

You're kind of thinking about how you attract investment and what's the plan for that investment, as well as how do you really leverage

relationships that you currently have.

So you don't wanna build in a business attraction plan that always just looks outside of the city.

You want a business attraction plan that looks inside the city as well, right?

That builds those relationships through business recruitment and expansion.

So to that end,

You'll see that we've outlined there's seven sort of strategies behind this goal as well.

So executing on a business retention program, how do you, you know, that's that visitation that you do all the time with your businesses.

But being a bit more systematic in the way that we do that, using that as an opportunity to understand opportunities and challenges, what opportunities are they seeing in the marketplace as it relates to Charlottesville becomes a very important sort of business intelligence collection opportunity for us as well.

2.2 is continuing to leverage all of the relationships in the Commonwealth as well as our regional partners and our partnership with the county as well to think about how we're attracting that investment strategy as it relates to decision makers.

2.3 is around continuing to build out

the connection to all those, to the industry associations that we have here, particularly focused around the two that we know are quite successful, which is the life sciences and the clean technology sector.

2.4 is aligning our redevelopment and our planning policies, so that's where, you know, city staff and Chris and your planning team making sure that we're aligned in our economic development, our planning interests.

2.5 is continuing our Seville Match Program.

2.6 is considering continuing to think about how do we continue to strengthen those relationships with our anchors and our county partners.

And then 2.7 is that if there is publicly available land or opportunities to build public-private partnerships or community land banking and those types of things, how do we can use that to continue to support

diverse jobs, investment, and housing options as we want to address investment in the community.

So you see some of the actions.

I'll skip through these pretty quickly.

So that gets us to the metrics.

My apologies.

I am not driving this thing very good.

There we go.

Metrics to look at are around, you know, business invested, the types of businesses, jobs created, how we're supporting that Seville Mass program and then the types of site selectors that we're engaged with.

Now, goal three is really another opportunity for closing our equity gap.

And I think this is going to be not completely new work for the city, but an expanded array of portfolio of work with partners to really create those pathway opportunities.

Again, thinking about how we create opportunity in what we know are those innovative sectors, as well as thinking about how we can think about career pathways.

for residents in Charlottesville.

And so in this strategy, there's sort of eight pieces that are attached to this, all supported.

There's some of that work that we did around career pipeline sector analysis.

3.1 is about the development of our getting private sector companies really engaged in our workforce development, continuing to do that.

That's again why that business visitation piece becomes super important.

You can connect the dots.

3.2 is putting a real focus on learn and earn.

You would typically maybe have traditional old school language would be apprenticeship, but earn and learn being a new way of thinking about workforce development and potentially connecting that with our tech-based sectors of tech and IT sec and life sciences and thinking about through what that looks like.

3.3 is in collaboration is expanding and thinking about a new go healthcare program.

Again, we've done all the analytics that have looked at how you can create pipelines from beginning in healthcare all the way up to

more and more credentialed healthcare opportunities, so an opportunity with Chris and team and partners to think about that.

The Go Cook program, expanding that to have a bit more of an entrepreneurial piece to that, not just about training people in the food and restaurant space, but thinking about the wealth creation opportunities there.

partnering with Charlottesville school districts to think about K through 14 programming, expanding the programs around our go hiring programs, so encouraging our companies and our businesses to really support the development of underserved residents and entrepreneurs.

Thinking about leadership opportunities as it relates to BIPOC residents and up and coming leaders.

And then obviously 3.8 is that you already have a housing plan and a comprehensive plan that are outlined in priorities.

We want to make sure that those are indicated in our economic development strategy as well as it's about creating the necessary wraparound services for residents to be successful.

So that's what goal three is centered around.

To do that, in terms of measuring impact for that or measuring progress, we're gonna be looking at a lot of different metrics here, participants in programs, looking at how our population of share of residents, our income of residents look like, educational rates, poverty rates, median area rates, homeowner's rates for all different residents throughout the city as well.

So it gets us to goal four, which is around placemaking and building out on our destination assets.

Obviously, we all want to live in a great place that attracts and retains talent.

Through that, we want to continue to support a lot of the great efforts that are already in way, particularly the reimagining of downtown, the historic downtown mall.

Thinking about community welcoming initiative.

How do we really promote and how do we engage our business community around supporting Charlottesville as a great place to live and work and thrive?

One of the best practices that we outlined in the report is really looking at some of the things like a place like Greenville, South Carolina has done around making that as a real key element of its economic development plan.

Supporting the Young Professional Program in Charlottesville.

We talked about this with folks, young professionals that were in town.

It was represented in our discovery work, but also with the chamber, and that is how do we continue to ensure that there's opportunities for people that want to stick around after they finish up at UVA and really make a commitment and connection to the community.

and a lot of that could be through volunteerism, through just being able to create that social cohesion, that sort of social connection that's capitalism that's important as well.

4.4 is supporting the efforts to visit Charlottesville, already a robust partner.

Chris is obviously a key element in that work.

And then 4.5, we included parking because it's part of Chris's portfolio and it's a key piece of placemaking as well.

So then that gets us finally how do we think about metrics around this, visitation, placemaker events, how we're thinking about investments that we see.

And then that gets us to our final goal which is really around storytelling and really positioning the place for investment.

And, you know, economic development 101 is that marketing communications and telling your story is a fundamentally

is an important piece of that work.

To do that, we've gotta make some investments there.

We gotta build out the identity for that, which is what strategy 5.1 says.

We gotta create the promotional materials to do that.

We've got to have the technology base to continue to support our infrastructure.

So a lot of the things that you may see that we've talked about, for instance, in goal one to goal two to goal three is about tracking of data and tracking of investment and opportunity.

And so you've got to have the infrastructure to do that.

So there's investment that needs to be made for there.

And then finally, 5.4 is once you're doing all the work,

It's got to be an ongoing communication of a drumbeat that you're doing this work, not only with y'all as policymakers, but also with residents and businesses that are living and working in Charlottesville as well.

Again, metrics, thinking about traditional comms metrics, as well as how we're engaging with that.

So over five years, ideally, one of the things that we want to be able to do is track some metrics to tell us a little bit about the vibrancy of our community.

And obviously, if we think about our goals,

We want to ensure that we are a vibrant community that's continuing to have an attractiveness to it in terms of residents and talent.

We want to make sure that we're a place that's seeing investment coming in.

You don't want to be some communities that are bleeding employment, that are losing employment, that are losing firm formation.

You want to be able to track that over time.

We want to think about how we're also kind of in a sense representing opportunities for all of our residents, right?

And so thinking about educational skill opportunities as well as measuring through income as well as some traditional metrics of wealth

generation.

And so as you can see, these are metrics that we're suggesting over time to follow throughout.

And we've offered Chris a baseline of these metrics, but we'll track these over the course of five years as we're implementing the plan.

So everything from our population development to how we're thinking about business formation

the employment that's engaged with that by sector and by cluster.

How does that relate to our median household income?

And how does that cut across residents of different ages, different income levels, but also different ethnic and racial backgrounds?

And then overall, some general sort of wealth creation, generational community wealth creation opportunities looking at household ownership, median earnings, poverty rates, and those types of things.

And these are metrics that we would hope

that as you're implementing this plan over time, along with the process metrics that we outlined in the plan, you start to see some success.

I want to caution us to say that one of the things that's the reason you capture these metrics over the course of the implementation of the plan, but will we see significant change in year one to year two?

Probably not.

It's going to take some time.

These are metrics that are long-lagging indicators.

They're not indicators that change over time, which is why we want to make sure that we're also measuring some of the process metrics that we've outlined in part of the plan as well.

So with that, I'll just leave that here on the back, at the end, just to give you a sense of, again, what we're doing, equitable entrepreneurship, really focusing on innovative growth, creating career pathways, placemaking and investment, and for a community of your size, and I would say,

this is a robust strategy that's gonna require Chris and team but also really strong partnerships throughout the region and throughout the community through your nonprofit partners your entrepreneurship partners to really create this plan I think one of the things that allude what's exciting about this plan is that the stakeholder group is represented by a diverse group and many of those partner organizations can see their work connecting back to the efforts that the city's doing and I think that's a win-win for the city

So with that, I'm happy to stop and take your questions, and hopefully I haven't been too long-winded.

I thank you for the presentation and for the report.

It looks very thorough and well laid out and a great plan.

I guess, Mr. Ingle, I'm wondering for you, what does...

Now that you have this great plan, what are your thoughts about, you know, how do you go get the work done?

I mean, is it the kind of thing where you come back to us every quarter or six months to sort of tell us how things are going?

Or is there a...

I think all of the above.

I think Stephen said robust.

I would say ambitious, so it's a little daunting.

We're a small office.

We have three folks working on economic development efforts at the moment.

We have two open positions, so we hope to

What's the usual sort of time frame in terms of how often these are updated?

Yeah, this is a five-year plan, so we would imagine within five years, towards the end of five years, we would start to revisit and update, and it's stated in the plan.

This is simply a plan.

It's a lot of words on paper.

It can change, and over the last few years, we can see reasons for why things might change, you know, pandemics and

Best practice for the EDA is every five years.

Some communities will do a three-year plan.

Like, I live in Austin, Texas, a community that's adding 50,000 people a year to our community.

It's changed.

They've updated their plan every 18 months, frankly, because it's changed dramatically different.

And I guess your colleagues at the university and the county and the region all get together on a semi-frequent basis to compare notes about

We do engage regularly, regionally, and in particular the county and city work pretty closely together along with the university.

We all share aspects of our plans and whenever somebody does a new one, people want to check it out to see what they might be missing or what they could potentially partner on.

So yes, many of our partners were engaged in the process and others will be further engaged now that it's done.

I'd also say there's really I think there's great alignment between what y'all are doing here and the county is doing as well.

I mean there's I think there's a lot of synergy between the two plans in terms of the county had previously updated their economic development strategy.

This plan I think is a great companion piece to that and doing things differently than what the county would do but also complementary to some of the things there as well.

So I had a couple of comments.

As far as community partners, ironically, I took a tour of the Housing Authority today.

Crescent Halls and they will certainly be open to being partners with that.

They will have some great kitchen space that they, you know, once the dust settles, that they'll be open for incubator businesses and things like that.

So we have a lot of community partners that we can work with.

And also as far as the businesses,

I mean, our community partners, the Chamber Policy Committee, which I sit on, they, you know, county rep and big businesses and small businesses where they talk about, you know, collaborative efforts.

I'm not sure if that was included in there, but that is another space, Chris, that I think a lot of these type of things are talked about.

There's two things you mentioned during your presentation that I just wanted to delve into a little bit deeper.

One is that the untold stories, and I think that that goes to when you say that we have some untold stories, and I think that we understand that and we're trying to get that PR person for the city because we are doing some incredible things, but

Yeah, I think what I want to do is, you know, I think a lot of times, so communities will think about inclusivity work and economic development work and think about them separately.

And one of the things that I think about in this space is trying to think about how we reimagine them together, right?

So rather, if Chris is doing small business work or doing talent attraction skill-based work, it should have a lens towards inclusion.

We shouldn't be thinking about it in terms of church and state, so to speak.

A lot of communities have approached this, particularly a lot of the efforts around DEI with sort of two separate departments, for instance.

But a lot of the things that Chris is doing already in this space, particularly around his small business work, that's an opportunity to create greater emphasis on inclusion, right, if we're having a lens towards that.

Same thing with skill-based training programs, right?

For me, I guess, you know, when I think about how you tell an economic development story today and you kind of position a plan forward, it's not just about investment in, investment in, investment in, just to create all, you know, this idea of just all jobs create opportunity for everyone, but it's being very intentional about how

You measure those two together.

So that's my mind.

Yeah, it's communicating.

It's getting a word out of its rule.

Sure, a few questions.

You can go first.

Well, I think a couple things.

One is I think that, I'm not sure that it's a new, I don't think it's, first and foremost, I don't know that there's new resources that are being advocated.

I don't think Chris is asking for any new resources with this plan.

But I do think that there is some orientation work that maybe has changed here.

One, I think greater emphasis already on sort of the opportunity around entrepreneurship and using that as a lens for wealth creation.

I think two, you would see in this plan, if you looked back at previous work, a greater emphasis around skill development and partnerships around skill development.

So those to me are probably the two policy changes.

I think the sharpness

about now being able to say we have a clear understanding of who we are as an economic development portfolio in the city I think is something that we have really brought to this plan you know when we first started the work with Chris and team there was not a lot of analytics around how you measure your business portfolio or how do you think about

you know what are those skill pathways and how we want to get there to them I think now what we've brought to that is some analytics to really support that work so I don't know that

there's a ton of quote unquote policy change as it is from you all as a policy making body but there is I think changes in terms of the team and its partners right because again you're a very small economic development team right for the size of your city you have five people doing economic development that's super size small right

so Chris relies on his partners to do that and so I think what this the biggest change for this is what we've said is broadly speaking we're creating a bigger tent for economic development in this plan and because we've created a bigger tent you can see more of your community partners tying to that work in a way that hasn't been able to decide so I think that's probably what I would say is the biggest change is that we've pitched a bigger tent for economic development than we have in the past and we're asking a lot of our a lot of our partners

I think what I would add is internally we are as one of the goals talks about storytelling internally we are seeking to strengthen our ability to do that we have an open position right now that we incorporated some of these elements for marketing communications we've not been strong in that we haven't had a focus on that so we're looking for a skill set in somebody to to bring that to the table so we can do better at it in conjunction with the city's communication efforts which

are also being hired for as well.

So I think that's another, a different perspective that we have in terms of how we're looking at how we're filling at least one position so that we can do better in terms of how we tell that story.

We've never, honestly, we've just never been good at that and we haven't spent a lot of time and put a lot of resources towards telling the story.

It's more towards, all right, let's do a program or let's help a business, but we've not,

really leveraged that ongoing.

One of the elements that was up there was trying to identify kind of our brand, and we're going to have a decision to make internally if we undertake that solo as a city economic development effort, which is an option, probably the easier option, or whether we do a partnership to try and get comfortable with the county,

and create a joint message or the visitors bureau or something like that.

There may be more points to leverage if we go with a partner but it may be harder to kind of get there.

So that's something we've never really done.

We created a logo for economic development several years ago.

We haven't really done much with it then and we certainly don't do any advertising.

We don't do any real marketing.

I don't think we're going to jump into that in a huge way, but I think kind of creating a way to tell our story locally and regionally, we need to fine tune that a little bit and get better at that and having somebody with a little bit of a skill set in that area is going to help.

Probably because your peer communities across the Commonwealth are doing that, right?

And so, not to say that you're a peer community, but with Lynchburg, Virginia, it's a client of ours, they have really invested in this space of being able to tell their story in terms of marketing and comms in a different way, particularly because they're wanting to try to hold on to all the talent that they have around their universities.

they are a brain drain community unlike you.

So they are facing the opportunities of doing some of that investment and sort of telling that story.

Richmond is another example of that where there's been real, if you look at the communication and comms efforts around economic development comparatively to that versus Northern Virginia.

Arlington is another good example of that where places have invested that space.

I think you all are doing all that work.

It's time to kind of tell that story as well.

And you mentioned partnerships many times.

Did you identify any key top partnerships that don't already exist that you would be looking to prioritize building over the next five years, whether that be with the Housing Authority, Community Development Corporations, Land Trust, et cetera?

Do you want to speak up?

Yeah.

I mean, we have a number of key existing partnerships.

I think there are additional ones that we would lean in on, like the Community Investment Collaborative.

We've done a fair amount of work with them.

The Business Equity Fund was mentioned.

They hold that fund on our behalf.

They are continuing to grow their skill set.

and get more into the economic development space based on small business growth.

So that's an area where I think we would see a little bit more activity.

There are others.

The City, County, University, the regional group, the state group are certainly key, but there are other local ones like CIC comes to mind.

The Housing Authority comes to mind.

Piedmont Housing Alliance, we're doing some work with them.

They're doing some.

kind of financial self-sufficiency training and home ownership things that kind of nudge up to what we're doing.

So I see, you know, PHA and CIC certainly as key partners.

KTEC is an opportunity.

You know, there's transition there, but obviously they and Piedmont, they were on our

on our steering committee represented.

So both of those are certainly key partners.

I should also mention the United Way.

They've done new and different work in the last few years, and we have partnered with them on the Envision grant along with the county.

Not specifically.

The authority is aware of the plan.

They're getting a briefing on it.

We'll have a discussion about their potential roles actually later this week.

But the bonding piece, not so much, not yet.

That is an option that authorities have.

We typically use that in terms of industrial revenue bonds, which are essentially conduits for tax-exempt status on business or nonprofit.

Bank loans.

That's the traditional method that we use there.

We have not done our own bonds like the city does.

Of course, we don't have taxing authority, so that's part of the reason for that.

And the final question, you made reference to community wealth building and you felt that the entrepreneurial piece was sufficient to cover that.

Well, I think, I mean, so I think that there's a lot of things, so there's a lot of pieces that are happening in the community.

So to just say that it's all about entrepreneurship and community wealth creation, I think, I mean, I think that's one piece element of this.

I think the other element to the work that's in this is around skill development as well.

And when you look at traditional community wealth building pieces, there are kind of three pieces of that that typically happen, right?

Typically is one, around entrepreneurship, two, around the idea of skill development, and three, around sort of the home ownership piece, right?

The idea of home ownership.

you know it feels it's I think from Chris and you know connection with the steering community and others there is and there's organizations around town that are doing a lot of work around the idea of home ownership and the development of home ownership it felt to us I think when you look at the plan that there was enough community partners in that space doing that work on behalf of the city

and frankly I think that it's just a resource standpoint as well right you're a team you're a community that has by folks doing economic development and so you have to be strategic about how you spend your time and where you think you can move the needle we know that we've got strong partners in you know goals one and three and from an economic development team and the expertise around that that's what we think we can move the needle on I think around the housing piece particularly

There's a lot of community partners.

You've outlined some of them today.

Yeah, and just final thoughts.

I think there's a lot of good things in this plan.

This is not a new concern I've raised, but I'll raise it again.

My concern is still I think we need to still be more explicit about how the very real positive things, university being here, being a knowledge economy, are creating the externalities of having a poverty rate double the state national average, one of the lowest levels of economic mobility,

and that if we're really going to confront that economic development has to break out of a silo engage with other departments and really have a community wealth building strategy like other localities are taking on that is looking at not anything that you mentioned is bad just building on it additionally in terms of how does it connect with land trust co-ops community development corporations

You and I, we can disagree on that a bit, maybe.

I think that you have a housing plan that is, again, that takes some of that consideration into that, and I think that some of your nonprofit partners are doing that.

I think a lot of it depends on how you view the vehicle for achieving that success.

So there are some communities that have brought that in-house completely and sort of run that from a city-operated space.

Last time we had a conversation, you mentioned Burlington as an example or Richmond that have taken that on.

We can look at both of those communities and see that perhaps they actually haven't moved the needle as much as they thought they would by taking that into consideration.

There are other places across the country that have done this in a partnership manner, right, in terms of thinking about wealth creation in a partnership working with its nonprofit organizations and others to do that.

You know, I think of places, recent example of that that's done really good work in that space is Boston, for instance, particularly under the United Way and the Boston Foundation.

They've done that in a completely divorced role than the city leading those efforts.

I think they've been pretty successful in that.

So I think it all depends on how you view who's on bat to do that.

Is it a consortium of organizations or should it and does it have to be city-based led?

Now some of the policy work I think can be city-based led.

You've got a housing rewrite that's going, you've got a housing plan, you have a rewrite of your land use code.

I think those are documents which can

as policymakers can lean into to create that environment.

But I think it depends on, there's many, many approaches to doing that.

The question I had was alluded to earlier, with the zoning rewrite that we're doing right now, is there any sense that you have that there is something in particular that we ought to be doing with the zoning rewrite that we're

Yeah, I mean, I think the continued commitment to I think that you are placing an emphasis on this idea of mixed use.

I think you want to continue to have that presence there.

You know, I think in terms of

When you look at the industries that are Charlottesville, for instance, you're not taking big pieces of it.

You don't have a lot of land availability, first and foremost.

Secondly, you are not a community that's doing a lot of what I would traditionally call industrial-based development.

You're not a Lynchburg, Virginia, for instance, where you've got pieces of land and you're trying to marry up that work.

So I would say that continuing I think to think about some of the density things, the work that you're doing, the question of mixed use, those all are important principles and we outlined that in our real estate analysis as well.

I think the thing that is about economic development in Charlottesville, which will continue to be I think who you are as a community,

is really about the growth and expansion of businesses that you have in your space and in your community.

It's not about attracting the big whale or the big fish outside of Charlottesville.

And so as much as you can do to support the needs of those businesses is important.

I think the thing that came up over and over and over as it relates to land use, and particularly zoning,

as it related to the engagement work that we did, it was about the need to continue to make the process more clear and easier to follow and to follow in the permitting process, et cetera.

It's about reducing the barriers to entry, so to speak.

Anything else to add?

Yeah, I would add that I think we need to continue to be strategic about where we do investments, and I'll use the Beacon Project, which you all are familiar with, as an example in terms of that's going to be sticky.

It's not going to go anywhere once it gets built, if it gets built in the city, and then it will have an ongoing impact in generating opportunity for new businesses in the food space, as well as entrepreneurship in the food space.

So we need to continue to do things like that with the realization that the market is pushing kind of some of the industrial land.

It's bound to go away.

And we've seen that.

It's going to continue to happen.

The market's driving higher

More intense uses, largely residential, not always.

We've seen some office space for sure.

But some areas we're going to continue to lose what has traditionally been commercial or business use to another use.

And we can fight against that or we can realize that that's going to happen to some extent and then be

strategic about investing in things that aren't going to move as easily.

We hope that Beacon is a long-term project that will stick around, but we need others like that that will be here.

And I think secondarily, we need to be open to partnerships, realizing that we're 10 square miles in our

neighboring county is 720 you know so we we partner with them we talk with them we share ideas and we do things but you know we

We don't have a joint industrial park or business park, for example.

Not that we're ready for that or that they are, but that's an idea that's been out there, and some communities do that.

That's fair.

I would hope that

Clearly over the last year, two years, three years, we've been emphasizing housing above most other forms of land use.

One of my concerns, which I've articulated a couple different times, is that I think that if we convert all of our land to housing and have no primary economic activity,

We lose, relatively speaking, sales taxes.

We lose meals taxes.

We lose lodging taxes.

We lose BPOL receipts.

Charlottesville is fortunate in that right now only about 44% of our budget comes from real estate property taxes.

Only about half of that probably is from residential real estate taxes.

So as opposed to some counties immediately surrounding us where that number is not 44% but it's 70 or 80%, when there is an economic downturn and when people have to start scrounging around for money, in those places the only place they have to look at is real estate property taxes, whereas here we're not as adversely affected in that respect.

I would agree, and I would suggest that if you are thinking about, so for instance, if there is large-scale conversion in any industrial commercial space to residential, I mean, I would put forth that would encourage you as a policymaking body is just task yourself to go out and do an employment lands look at that, right?

What is it going to look like?

What's going to be the impact of that?

on everything that you've just described.

We're working in Gilbert, Arizona right now doing the same similar strategic planning process now and this is a front and center issue that their council is very much debating back and forth is the pressure of residential development but also the need to protect commercial space and so one of the things that we've been doing with them in addition to the strategic planning work is an employment lands look, asking ourselves

and the sort of question is what's the employment opportunity, you know, won or lost and what's the tax implications of this or the revenue implications for this as we make those policy decisions.

The only other thing I would add is Mr. Sanders, his inaugural speech to the group here spoke about Charlottesville's story and wanting to do a better job telling that story and reclaiming that narrative.

It sounds like you're wanting to do something similar and specifically having to do around economic development.

I'm just hoping those can all be married up.

I see the piece that you're trying to do is really the global more overarching and what you're doing is supporting but they're both important and I absolutely agree we need to be able to tell our story in a more proactive way where we own it and we own the bad parts and the good parts

And going forward, we have an agency in how that's communicated to the world.

And so it sounds like there's some staff that you might need with part of that.

And this is the kind of thing that for me as an engineer, I'm like, I have no idea how you would pull that off.

But it is important.

I would agree, and I would say that the city hasn't spent any time or energy on its story, its brand, its narrative.

Some cities spend a lot of time and energy on that.

We've had other things that have intervened and not allowed us to do that.

And, you know, we are the business card.

logo is the city seal, which I don't know how many years old that is, but it's been around a long time.

And it doesn't really tell the story as an example of, I think, what we want to say in terms of our city as a place to live and work.

And so that whole effort can dovetail nicely with the business piece and the business identity and economic development story if done collectively.

So there is opportunity there, and maybe we'll

And I'd say the cities that do it really effectively are the ones that do it together, right?

Sure.

Where you don't create these two brands and two identities, you want to create a unified identity, and there's a lot of best practices to do with that.

Even thinking about the extension of that, even into how you position yourself as a place to live, a place to visit.

This is up our 4 o'clock agenda.

Next item for us is to go into closed session so that we can discuss and interview some candidates for some boards and commissions.

I have that here.

Okay.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

All right, motion passes.

Council is now in closed session.

We will return at 6.30.

For those that are joining by Zoom, there will be a separate and different link for the 6.30 meeting.

See you all in an hour.

Yes, sir.

Is there a second?

Second.

All in favor, please raise your hand.

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Okay, motion passes.

We have appointments to make.

Yes.

I would like to move that we appoint to the CRHA Board, Charlottesville Redevelopment Housing Authority, the following two people.

Is there a second to the nominations?

Second.

Any discussion?

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

We will begin the 6.30 p.m.

Thank you.

I have one for Mr. Alexan, his 15th Annual Summer Think Shop.

So I'll read this briefly.

Teen Creator TVO highlights 15th Annual Summer Think Shop.

Charlottesville, Virginia Award winner, author, trailer blazer, Mr. Alexan presents the 15th Annual Summer Think Shop with this year's theme, Take in a Moment.

The purpose of this event is to provide a fun, educational, and positive experience

for area children most of ages 6 through 12 summer campers the event will be at the Burnley Moran Elementary School Charlottesville Thursday July 20th at 11 30 a.m.

to noon sorry 10 30 a.m.

All right.

Thank you.

Is that it?

That's it.

One other.

Got turned off there.

Just one other announcement I wanted to mention that on Saturday, July 8th, which obviously is a couple weeks ago, 10 days ago, the Healthy Streets, Healthy People event was held at Washington Park.

Counselors will recall that this was the item that we discussed where

We wound up saying to the Parks and Rec staff, can you fix the sidewalks before that starts?

And I'm pleased to report that the event started at 10 a.m.

on July 8th and at 6.30 p.m.

on July 7th.

I got the email message saying, yes, the sidewalks were fixed.

was fully handicapped accessible and I just wanted to say thank you so much to the Parks and Rec staff let them be publicly acknowledged because they really did work very fast and very well so thank you all Parks and Rec so it's one other quick announcement that on August 5th it's West Haven days and I have it on a good authority that the mayor and vice mayor would be in the dunking booth so you want to please to come out Chief Kochis do I have you as well

So anyway, it's a great event.

Please come out to support them.

We won't be upset if you don't take a ball and throw it at the dunking booth, but it's a great event to see different community vendors and community supporters.

So that's August 5th and start at 10 to like 6.

They go all day.

One of the things I discovered in the dunk tank four years ago is that if the kids don't throw it hard enough, they get to come up and punch.

Yes, yes, I have one.

July is Park and Recreation Month, and so I have a proclamation.

There's a lot of whereas's on this.

I'm only going to read a few of them.

This is a great asset to the community, so whereas parks and recreation programs are an integral part of the communities throughout.

the country including the city of Charlottesville where parks and recreation experiences are vitally important to establishing and maintaining the quality of life in our communities ensuring the healthy lifestyle for all citizens and contributing to the economic and environmental well-being of the community whereas the U.S.

House of Representatives has designated July as Park and Recreation Month

Now, therefore, be it resolved by the Council of the City of Charlottesville that July

and residents and visitors are encouraged to participate in the range of activities that help to make Charlottesville a vibrant community.

Signed and sealed the 17th day of July, 2023.

J. Lloyd Snook, the third mayor.

Also, since we last gathered, I had occasion to execute another proposal.

this was a proclamation honoring Tito Durrett who retired from the city of Charlottesville on effective June 30th and June 29th there was an event that I guess he probably wondered why his wife was taking him to the bowling alley at 11 30 in the morning but it was for this occasion and we thanked him for his

for his 30-plus years of service and wished him well in future endeavors.

So that gets us through to the consent agenda.

Ms.

Consent agenda, number three, minutes, May 1st, council meeting, May 15th, council meeting, June 5th, council meeting, June 16th, special meeting, June 23rd, special meeting.

Four, resolution, Fontaine Avenue fire station alerting system update, second reading.

Five, ordinance, Charlottesville Police Department firearms buyback program and destruction of surrendered firearms ordinance, second reading.

six resolution appropriating city traffic assets insurance reimbursement fifty six thousand three hundred sixteen dollars and fifty three cents one of two readings seven resolution appropriating funds for the Virginia Department of Education special nutrition program summer food service program one hundred thousand dollars one of two readings

Eight, resolution, reallocating $33,827.85 of American Rescue Plan funds to the Department of Human Services from funds previously appropriated to City of Promise.

One of two readings.

Nine, ordinance, approving a right-of-way encroachment agreement for 1117 Preston Avenue.

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

Each speaker will have up to three minutes.

If you're on the Zoom webinar, you may select the raise hand option to be placed in the speaker queue.

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

We will alternate in-person and virtual speakers.

And this is literally just to talk about the things that are read on the consent agenda.

So if you want to talk about anything coming up later on at the meeting,

My name is Khalil Reed from 208 Fairway Avenue.

I was wondering if we do the gun buyback programs.

I was wondering how we make sure it's safe and how the destruction happens.

Okay.

Tell you what, let's take any other comments and then we may be able to make answers to your question and other questions as well.

Thank you.

Good question.

Is there anybody else in person who would like to speak to a consent agenda item?

Okay, I see nothing, so we will close this part of the public comment.

Yes, Mayor.

So basically what will happen is whoever runs the program, like I said, we would be reaching out to nonprofit to actually facilitate the gun buyback where we would be involved in that process.

So if there's no other comments, I forgot, I read this wonderful proclamation, but we had our Director of Parks and Rec here today to receive it.

Is Mr. Anthony, are you still here?

Apologies.

Please, sir, come on up.

Deputy Director, did you want to say a few words?

First and foremost, thank you so much for making a proclamation to Parks and Recreation Month.

I would like to say thanks to the staff.

They have been working really, really hard, especially during the summertime, so kudos to all the staffs in Parks and Rec.

Thank you, Mr. Anthony.

Okay, so we have not voted on the consent agenda yet, so any further questions or comments from Council?

Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, any further questions or comments?

Okay, passes 5-0.

Yes, sir, good evening.

I have a couple of items this evening, since it's my last meeting.

The city continues to move briskly through its strategic planning process.

Recently, members of staff leadership participated in a session to review the city council's identified goals in order to brainstorm adding strategies and measures to those strategic outcome areas.

The city manager will review

that draft framework in the next few weeks with the goal of a completed framework that will be presented to City Council and the public.

The City of Charlottesville's Community Arts and Festival Grants Program is ready to launch.

The program was created to respond to the lingering negative impacts of the pandemic on community events.

The program is intended to promote citywide special events that will activate

public spaces, enrich the lives of residents, encourage partnerships between organizations, foster a vibrant and diverse community, and stimulate economic activity.

A total of $580,000 was reserved by the City Council on August 2022 for arts and festivals using American Rescue Plan Act funding.

$560,000 will be used for this competitive grant process

that will provide funding specifically for expenses associated with the cost of city services and events costs such as permits and protective barriers.

The application is open now for any event to be held between July 1-23 and December 31-23.

More information on the application can be found on our website.

The City of Charlottesville has been accepted to participate in the competitive National League of Cities Capstone Challenge Program through an application submitted by Deputy City Manager Ashley Marshall The Capstone Challenge Program matches cities with strategic partners

to work together on a project during an eight-month period.

At the end of the period, each working group will share the outcomes of their project and will also produce a reference document for any city that will be shared through the National League of Cities

In this cohort, there are seven projects that feature seven strategic partners.

Thirteen municipalities were selected from across the country.

Charlottesville is the only city selected from the Commonwealth of Virginia.

The city of Charlottesville... Lost my page.

The city of Charlottesville will partner with a number of cities in Houston and Rochester.

Next, the search for the fire chief is winding down.

We received 30 applications from across the country.

Very competitive process.

The review committee, the in-house review committee, which included representatives from the Firefighters Union, narrowed the field to eight who were invited for online interviews.

After that interview, four candidates are invited for in-person interviews.

The city manager is expected to appoint the fire chief in the next several weeks.

the city manager attended the fire academy graduation service where 12 academy graduates were pinned CFD has no vacancies with the 11 recruits that are now entering the academy it is an amazing accomplishment given the market that we've been facing over the last last year the city attorney

hiring has been completed with the hiring of the new city attorney Jacob Stroman and the hiring of April Wimperly and Ryan Franklin as assistant city attorneys.

The office of the city attorney is now fully staffed.

and we're glad of that.

We want to thank the work of Sands Anderson who served as our interim city attorney in the last several months and helped make sure we was covered during that period.

Chief Kochis, through his concentrated efforts, has hired 15 recruits in the police academy.

The success of CPD cuts the vacancies in the department from 30 to 50.

That's a big fate as well.

Charlottesville Police Department National Night Out.

It's going to be August 1st at Iggs Park.

And we have a video that we want to share that was produced inside that I think you'll find interesting that will give you all of the data you need on this event.

Hey Charlottesville, if you guys hear what's going to happen on August 1st from 530 to 8 o'clock here at the Iggs Park, we're going to have National Night Out.

That's right, National Night Out.

It's going to be bigger and better than we've ever had it before.

I know a lot of people like to make excuses for, you know, reasons they can't go to things, but we got everything covered.

You hungry?

We got you covered.

We're going to have plenty of food.

The big highlight of it is going to be Mission BBQ.

We're going to have all kinds of food for you.

You worried about the heat?

We got you covered.

Kona Ice will be here, baby.

You don't have a car?

Your vehicles broke down?

We got you covered.

Go to any cat bus station or bus stop.

Get on for free.

You need something for your kids to do?

We're going to have bounce houses, obstacle courses, dunk tanks, and a lot more.

If you're looking for a unique experience for your entire family, the Looking Glass will be open for free.

It includes interactive art from local artists.

So come out August 1st from 530 to 8 o'clock, Inks Park.

Yes, yes, yes.

Thank you, Chief Kochis and our staff.

Why don't you come in?

Officer Thomas, thank you very much.

Continuing with my report, the Human Resource Director, Mary Ann Hardy, has been meeting with department heads to identify where each employee fits on the proposed pay scale.

There will be a final meeting with department heads in a virtual public hearing for city employees next week.

The new pay plan is expected to be presented to council

on August 7th for the first reading or approval at the August 21st Council Meeting.

On July, well, let me say that the Charlottesville Airport is losing its leader.

Melinda Crawford, after 10 years, is retiring.

and she's done a tremendous job.

I attended the employee event in her honor and we bid her farewell.

We will miss her.

The board will start the interview process for a new leader at its upcoming meeting.

and also note that you know we have new new flights into show both Villa with flights to Orlando and we're getting Chicago and Philadelphia back so that's coming okay

On July 27th, the lead team will complete a 12-week course of study conducted by Piedmont Virginia Community College.

The program was designed to build a strong leadership team and enhance the skills of our team around issues that confront all of us and equip the team to better navigate challenges

At this point, before I make my last statement, I'd like to ask Chrissy Hamill to come and present the financial report of July.

I'll just steal a little bit of her thunder and say that for the second year in a row, we are ending with a big surplus,

and that surplus is driven by double digit increase in assessments and that's market activity and also savings from vacancies that we have that we're still having a challenge with but we did hire a recruitment staff person who's hootling the number down.

Yes, sir, so thank you.

As Mr. Rogers noted, and as we've been talking to you since about the second quarter, we are expecting a sizable surplus at the end of this year.

Again, as a budget person, we like to come and talk to you about surpluses as opposed to deficits.

However, we don't frequently like to talk about surpluses this big.

so largely what we have continued to see is that with the pandemic and the revenues this has been uncharted waters we have tried to budget conservatively to make sure we were making our marks we had no trends to follow during this time period and not unlike many other localities across the state

we have found that we have several of our largest revenues that are very economically sensitive and then as Mr. Rogers noted the double digit assessment increases that we've had for two years in a row are contributing to that.

So on the revenue side from a budget perspective you'll see here that we are expecting about 12.8 million dollars

We are very early in the year-end process.

Finance has a lot of work to do but I did go through last week and just as a snapshot our actuals are actually following very closely to these revised revenue figures that we have here so we do feel pretty good about them.

that said there are notes that are coming out of the state where they are starting to see some downturns especially with not downturns but slowdowns especially with sales tax which we typically have sort of lagged the state with our revenue trends so you know all this to say a

To lag a little bit amongst historically high revenue levels, does that mean we're gonna have a budget cut?

Probably not.

We're still doing very well, but not as well as we have been seeing over the last two years.

So with that, you'll see here that this is largely driven by real estate, personal property, which we talked about with the historically high assessment values.

sales tax, lodging tax, meals tax, and business and professional license.

So those are the things that are driving on the revenue side.

As Mr. Rogers said, we are expecting about $7 million in vacancy savings.

which is a large number.

We've made a lot of steps forward as we noted with the police department.

However, we take two steps forward and a half a step back.

So we are still working on that but we know between those two items, what you see here and the vacancy savings, that's about 19 million.

Per policy, all of that will go to the CIP contingency.

That is one-time money that will come before council to be assigned to, as you like, for projects and other uses.

Yes, sir.

Okay.

Thank you, Chrissy.

All right.

Any questions?

Okay.

Mayor Snook and councilors, this is my last meeting as your interim city manager.

For the last 18 months, it has been my pleasure, my professional pleasure, representing the Robert Bob group to serve the city of Charlottesville.

My assignment was to stabilize government operations, present the budget, fill a number of critical vacancies, and present to council programs and policies necessary for efficient working of government.

I stated at the Chamber of Commerce State of the City program three weeks after I was here that my goal was to make government boring.

Many wondered what I meant about that statement.

Very simply, my objective was to assure an administration that was responsive to council and the community and to make sure our employees had the tools they needed to perform as expected.

With the hard work of our staff, I am well satisfied that we did that.

I said to the lead team in our first meeting that my career objective always is to leave things better than I found them and I believe that was achieved.

I thank this council for demonstrating what good governance looks like.

You have worked well together to resolve issues for the benefit of the community as demonstrated by the fact that in 37 meetings

that have been held where you took 263 votes, 245 of them were unanimous.

That's 93.16%.

That certainly means that you talk to each other.

You work things out.

That doesn't mean that there was total agreement across the board.

but you did the work of governance and worked it out and came back with a unanimous vote most of the time.

That's a big difference and you really in my opinion

That should look like from the council level, and I thank you for that.

That has made this a pleasure.

To the city staff and leadership team, thank you for your extraordinary support.

To Sam and Ashley, you have been exemplary at the top of the list for the number of deputies that have worked for me over my career.

to Terry Bentley and Theresa Pollock, the anchors of the city manager's office, they held it down for us.

And to the citizens of Charlottesville, especially those who stopped me along my way to share kind words about our work, thank you for your kindness and thank you for making this point in my professional life outstanding and fabulous and personally fulfilling.

And Mr. Rogers, I have to say, as the writer of proclamations and so on, we have a proclamation here as a resolution of appreciation for Michael C. Rogers.

Whereas effective January 31, 2022, Michael C. Rogers began his service to the city of Charlottesville as interim city manager.

and whereas in the 18 months since Mr. Rogers has brought stability to the government of the city of Charlottesville leading us through a constantly changing fiscal landscape and the end of the COVID pandemic and whereas Mr. Rogers guided council through the preparation of two budgets in which Charlottesville developed a plan for funding the $90 million renovation of Buford Middle School while also continuing to allocate at least $10 million annually for affordable housing efforts

and whereas under Mr. Rogers leadership many long stalled initiatives have moved forward including passage of the climate action plan, the rewrite of the zoning code, the development of a collective bargaining ordinance and a revision of the police civilian oversight board ordinance and whereas under Mr. Rogers leadership the city has continued to rebuild its workforce after the many resignations over the last five years

Okay, so time for Community Matters.

We have one preregistered speaker leaving 15 slots for additional speakers on Community Matters.

Each speaker will have up to three minutes to speak.

Our one preregistered speaker is Marilyn Poling.

Okay.

My name is Marilyn Poling.

I live at 123 Observatory Avenue.

I'm speaking about the ERB review of 2005 JPA.

I think that the porches along Observatory Avenue should be removed from the design.

Porches will encourage illegal parking by delivery vehicles and by guests visiting the tenants with porches.

This would block two-way traffic and get in the way of emergency vehicles.

Removing porches from the design is changing the design.

It is not managing traffic or managing parking violations or managing vehicle accessibility or restricting parking on city streets

Any more than making sure that 2005 JPA's external lighting doesn't shine directly into neighbors' houses is managing the city street lights on Observatory or Washington Avenue.

Porches were added to the design during design review.

They are a design feature with dangerous consequences.

Thank you, Ms.

Poling.

You're welcome.

Is there anyone here who would like to speak?

Yes, sir.

Go to the podium, please.

Hello, hi members of City Council and members of the City Manager Office.

My name is Caetano De Campos-Lopez and today I'm here with the Community Climate Collaborative as their Director of Climate Policy, but also why not as a faculty lecturer at the UVA teaching sustainable transportation.

And I would like to share a few thoughts about the alternative field study being conducted by CAAT and the Transportation Department of the City.

I already sent an email this afternoon with some remarks so today right now just make it more conversational for those that know me and most of you do know me you know that I try to be unbiased most of the time I try to give credit where it's due so I will start with a positive note the title of the study is really good alternative field study

Okay, let's move to the rest of my comments.

So the study started about two years ago.

It started in a situation where it was not informed to the community, it was being, the RFP was being released without much conversation in community events like this one or even announced at all.

and I think that that's a great part of the issue that we have seen with this study because as an economist there is no right answer for public policy in general public policy the right way of doing it in a way that meets the community needs and desires so therefore by not engaging with the community you are just doing whatever you think is best that's not the right way of doing it in my opinion and that's not how this community would like to see

I would like to also share that this study is as good as the foundations of this study, the assumptions of this study, as any other study.

This study relies on some information, for example, from a transportation route optimization study conducted about three years ago.

when the city of Charlottesville had not good information about ridership usage because of lack of adequate device to estimate ridership.

Guess what?

Pandemic started, and the study was scheduled for that moment, 2020, fiscal year 2021.

It started in July 2020, right in the middle of the pandemic.

Instead of stopping the study, the study was conducted with only six devices during this pandemic

of the second half of 2020 and yielded the results that not surprisingly didn't change much at all.

The routes remain mostly the same and the conclusion is that the system was more or less operating as well as it was about 30 years ago.

So the results of these studies we're going to be seeing today afterwards are based on conclusions like this one.

Lastly, there is the

so-called renewable natural gas technology being considered for this study, which, in my opinion, is just there to make natural gas looks better.

So I ask why this study is not considering, for example, solid state batteries that makes electric vehicles look much better, as they are twice as capable of the current batteries and their life cycle is about three times to five times longer.

So I'll keep in touch.

Thanks so much.

Did you say solid state there?

All right.

Yes, Mayor Snook.

Ms.

Hoffman, you're on.

Hello.

Okay, I want to thank everybody, Mr. Rogers and everybody who's been there at council and really stepped up to a lot of the needs of the city and during the pandemic and up until now, I really do appreciate it.

But I know a lot of you know that I started an art park for the farmers, the local farmers right now during the

A climate crisis, we need to step up and adapt and provide shelters for the farmers and the farmer's market and the art park.

And also because of the possible grant, somebody could actually direct an art park, have music there, et cetera, at me park.

It's been really successful.

I've done caricatures and the kids

have been doing commission signage for the vendors and things like that.

And people have been visiting musicians and different artists.

But the one thing I do know is that living in Willamills and near Meade Park and all that, the ridership and the buses, well,

We I mean, my heart was broken.

I'm seeing people sitting without a canopy.

So I looked up canopies, bus canopies and how much they cost.

And apparently Amazon sells bus canopies and they sell them for like two thousand dollars as opposed to like some other companies were selling them for like six thousand dollars.

So I'm imploring you to, first of all, please make the Mead Park, Water Park user-friendly.

The grounds are not kept up well.

I've written letters or emails to Parks and Rec.

And secondly, please, Mayor Snook, a year ago you said you were going to put canopies for the buses and the kids are coming.

They need better walkable sidewalks there and that sort of thing.

If the Parks and Rec could do for Washington Park, can they do it for East High?

Thank you, Ms.

Hoffman.

Next, anybody here in person?

So I hand it in the back.

Hi.

Good evening, City Council and City Manager.

Congrats.

Director of the Community Climate Collaborative, and today we are experiencing yet another day of poor air quality, in large part due to climate change.

So as Council begins to consider alternative fuels, this is something to keep in mind as we're listening to information here tonight.

We have a climate commitment we need to meet.

We need to reach net zero by the year 2050.

and Council needs to just really dig in and try to solve this problem with the community.

And I wanted to point out that I was listening to the Office of Economics Development strategic plan presentation earlier tonight and it was noted that one of the pieces of our economic viability is really the clean energy sector that we have in this community.

We have some of the businesses at the forefront of solutions for climate change right here in this community.

And we have businesses that are doing vehicle to grid energy transformation.

We have clean energy companies.

We have some really strategic thinkers right here in this community.

So I encourage council, let's align

our city and our infrastructure with our economic priorities for who we want to attract and the sectors we want to grow in this community and really think about bringing these strategic minds to help solve our challenges whether it's transit or city buildings or energy efficiency or more resilient schools we have a lot of the tools right here in this community and a lot of great minds

that we can bring together and really allow some of these companies that are here to work with us as the city and pilot some of their technologies right here.

So I just wanted to put those thoughts in your mind as we consider this information tonight.

Thank you, Susan.

Yes, Mayor Snook.

Mr. Glasgow, you're on.

You've got three minutes.

Yes, we can now.

Thank you.

My name is Bruce Glasgow.

I'm a PVCC professor.

I live off Rio Road, and I'd also like to talk about electric buses.

When it comes to climate change, there are really three groups of people.

There's the group that believes in the scientific consensus that it's a threat to our planet which will hurt our descendants for generations if we don't do something to stop it now.

The second group doesn't believe it's real or doesn't believe there's anything we can do to stop it.

If you're in that group, you're willing to ignore the vast majority of climate scientists, glaciers melting that have stood for thousands of years, and the extreme weather of the last decade, and the undeniable fact that this year has seen the highest temperatures ever recorded, not to mention the smoke from Canada.

If you're capable of that level of denial, I won't be able to say anything in three minutes that will change your mind.

Then there's a third group that probably is the majority.

We know it's a problem, but it doesn't affect us right here, right now, so we put it on the back burner, literally.

We announced publicly that we plan to do something farther down the line, the way this council did when it voted for a climate action plan to reduce emissions by 50% before 2030 and down to zero by 2050.

That was great, but when it's time to make the tough calls, there are always other concerns that come to the forefront.

We just don't want to leave our comfort zone.

Talk is cheap and so are promises, but actions are what counts.

And when it comes to those, there isn't much difference between the second group of climate change deniers and the third group that just makes excuses.

Since transportation is the largest contributor to global warming, you'll be hearing from many climate change advocates over the next weeks and months asking this council to adopt electric buses instead of continuing to depend on fossil fuels.

But if you want to take the easy path, you will also hear plenty of recommendations

from folks with invested interest that will give you excuses to do just that.

Fossil fuel advocates will tell you about upfront costs and charging times and all kinds of other easy reasons why fossil fuels are the way to go.

It'll be simple for you to avoid asking tough questions about who stands to gain if you take that advice or whether electric alternatives have truly been given a fair shake.

Members of Charlottesville environmental groups have looked at the numbers ourselves and we are convinced that federal grants can make electric buses comparable and maybe even superior in cost to alternatives.

Estimates that we would need to replace diesel with electric buses at more than a one to one ratio are based on incorrect data.

And the savings that come from the fact that electricity is cheaper than gas, both diesel and LNG, mean that they may end up being less expensive than fossil fuel powered buses in the long run.

Dallas, if you take our advice tonight, you'll want to conduct your own studies to find out if that research is correct.

Still, voting for gas powered buses will almost certainly be the easier choice.

And that's how our planet has gotten into the mess we're in right now.

So we the citizens of Charlottesville and Albemarle will be waiting to find out are our electric officials part of the group that make the easy choice or the group that gives a damn about the future of this planet.

Thank you, Mr. Glasgow.

Next in person.

Okay, so, and that's in a couple of hours or something?

It's not going to be that long.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

Anybody else here in person?

Okay.

Those folks are just leaving.

Okay, so we will close then the community matters portion.

The first action item on our agenda is the approval of the city manager employment agreement.

one reading and it's very simple.

We have extended a contract to Sam Sanders to be our next city manager and I think folks will likely have seen his information.

He has been with us for about two years as deputy city manager.

Before that, he was the executive director of the Mid-City Redevelopment Alliance in Baton Rouge.

He has a bachelor's degree from Christopher Newport University proving he was originally a Virginia person His travels took him elsewhere and he wound up getting a master's in public administration from Troy State He has been just a wonderful addition to our team for the last couple of years

and the City Council was delighted to be able to offer him the job and he even said yes.

And so we're asking now for approval of the City Manager Employment Agreement which was provided in the materials.

Is there a second?

Second.

We all had some discussion on the matter last Wednesday.

That's right.

All right, so all in favor, please raise your hand and say aye.

Aye.

None are opposed.

Motion passes five, nothing.

Congratulations, Sam.

and I want to point out that there will be an opportunity on Thursday the 20th to both to thank Mr. Rogers for his service here and to welcome Sam in his new role.

It'll be at Carver from 5 to 8.

Five to seven?

Five to seven.

And there'll be a little bit of speechifying at the beginning, but not very much.

And after that, it's mainly a social opportunity.

So if you don't know Sam, come by and meet him.

If you would like to say something to Mr. Rogers, thanking him for his service here, that would also be appropriate.

Five to seven Thursday night at Carver.

Did you have any words?

Yeah, I would like to say something.

I'm sorry.

I have to practice, got to get it done, right?

So I just want to basically start by saying thank you to the members of council for your support.

I'm definitely looking forward to the ability to bring forward your vision for this city.

I want to thank the staff and many of our residents.

This community has been very supportive.

over the past few days as my email box, phone calls, messages, and all have just been a little overwhelming.

And I do appreciate the various kind words and well wishes.

That confidence from all of you makes it easier for me to step forward and slide into this seat.

I just want to just make a couple comments in regards to the way I look at this opportunity.

Our role as public servants comes with an awesome responsibility.

We should take that work seriously and set our expectations high.

As I move into this new seat, I aspire to be clear, consistent, decisive, and inclusive.

And while not every decision can be made by committee, I will strive to seek and embrace all facets of an issue and make sure that I consider them collectively.

We have a lot on our plate.

We've always talked about that.

but I probably want to say make that a platter because it's really not a plate, it really isn't.

There's still so much more being discussed and considered so we know that expansion is a part of that ongoing conversation and we as a team must work collegially, collaboratively, and cooperatively to achieve the many goals that have been set.

I may be one who struggles to achieve work-life balance, people are reminding me of that, and I will always encourage others to seek and find theirs so as I do that with them I hope to bring that to myself.

I will support this team in every way that I can.

They are a very capable and experienced group of professionals.

I expect so much from each of you, and our community needs you.

Every person within the city organization, regardless of position, is contributing to the work of impacting people's lives.

Let's keep that work in the forefront of our actions each day, and we will be better for it.

Thank you, Mr. Rogers, for your demonstration of city management where boring government gets things done.

One, it really does mean a lot that you were willing to step into this role and it really just has been a joy being able to work with you and the team over the past several years and your integrity and commitment to service leaves no doubt in my mind that we have a very bright future ahead of us and that we're all ready to stand behind you 110%

and I will also say because we didn't get a chance with the resolution to thank you Mr. Rogers as well for your services interim I don't like to often think back to where we were a few years ago when we all started but our local government was in a very rough space space and tonight in your employee newsletter you said your biggest goal is to always leave a place better off after you've left than when you came and there is zero question that that was accomplished here and

Everyone likes to say low government was boring, and in a way it has been, but if you care about policy, it has not been boring at all.

Other comments?

As the newest member of the team, I guess I make the fifth person so I'm on the basketball team now.

All of the things that Mr. Rogers and Mr. Sanders have stated are true.

The team and all of the people that work for the city of Charlottesville love their jobs they work hard and some of them probably are not paid what they're worth but for someone who came in new

someone who had questions and I'm a visual person whenever I emailed or picked up the phone everyone greeted me and treated me with respect and never once said I don't have time or I can't help you and I know some of the questions that I ask

they answer every day more than once and it says a lot to be a resident of a community where people that do the hard work

are receptive to those of us that receive the services.

So to the entire team from Mr. Rogers down and back up to Sam and Ashley and all around to all of the people that you supervise and all of the people that I've met that say hi and genuinely mean it.

You've left the city better than you found it.

Thomas

Just logistics for Thursday's meet and greet.

You can send questions if you have questions for Mr. Sanders or City Council.

Send those to clerk at charlottesville.gov and we'll compile those and provide those before the meeting.

All right, so now we come to the appeal of the entrance card or review board.

See, I told you it wouldn't be that long, Ann.

A certificate of appropriateness for construction of an apartment building in 2005 Jefferson Park Avenue.

Jeff Werner will summarize the request.

Is Jeff with us, or is he online, or what?

Way in the back.

I just before I start I just I did want to say congrats to Sam and and Mike I really I cannot thank you enough for leveling the the ride for the last couple of years I speak as staff I I speak as a 25 year resident of the city and really grateful and I've been coaching high school lacrosse for 35 years so I've seen all kinds of teams I've seen all kinds of coaches and all types of leadership and I just really

The two of you, thank you.

I don't want to get emotional, but thank you.

We needed it.

Thank you very much.

Mike, good luck where you go next.

Thank you.

Again, good evening.

I'm Jeff Warner.

I'm the City's Preservation and Design Planner.

In that capacity, I serve as staff for the Entrance Corridor Review Board, the ERB.

which is in fact the city's planning commission and the body that conducts design review for new construction within the city's several entrance corridors and I'm here tonight regarding the appeal of the ERB's July 13, 2023 approval of the design review of the certificate of appropriateness for the proposed development of three parcels on JPA collectively referred to as 2005 JPA

and this was a request to construct a multi-story brick and stucco apartment building.

So briefly, in December 2022, we received an application for the ERB design review.

on February 14, 2023, and again on March 14, 2023, the ERB approved the COA with conditions.

The March meeting was necessary due to an error with the public notice for the February meeting.

Following the February and March meetings, the approved COA was appealed to City Council, and you all reviewed that on May 15, 2023.

Following your discussion, you did not make a decision on the appeal, however,

to eliminate concern regarding the ERB meeting notice letters.

You instructed staff to re-advertise the COA request for review by the ERB.

And again, forgive all the abbreviations here, but that's how planners speak.

On June 13, 2023, the ERB again reviewed the COA request for 2005 JPA and approved it with conditions.

Following the June ERB meeting, the approved COA was appealed to City Council.

There were five appeal letters and they are attached in attachment one of your staff memo.

As we did with the appeal in May, the staff prepared a collective response to those five letters.

Some background, the project at 2005 JPA is within the Fontaine Avenue, Jefferson Park Avenue entrance corridor, therefore subject to design review.

by requiring by city having requiring design review by an appointed board in this case the ERB state state code requires that agreed parties are permitted to appeal the actions of those boards to appeal to City Council the action of those boards

So tonight in reviewing this appeal, your role, council's role is to determine whether to approve or to deny that certificate of appropriateness.

and according to city code, when you review an appeal of an ERB decision, your task is to review the COA request as if it's the first time it had come forward.

You may consider any information or opinions relevant to the application and including information provided by the ERB.

This review process, this is the first time we've reviewed an ERB

Project as an appeal, but it's the same process that the city's used, at best I can determine, at least since 2008, for almost 20 appeals of actions by the Board of Architectural Reviews.

So this is a process we've used.

The order for the presentation of the appeal is as follows.

First, I allowed 10 minutes to present the matter.

Clock's not running, but I'll try to time it out.

followed by the appellant who's allowed 10 minutes to comment

followed by the ERB chair.

I think Lyle might be available online.

He has five minutes to comment.

And then it's all for you all to discuss the matter and make a decision.

And during that time, you can ask me questions, ask the appellant questions.

Also, the applicant, well, the design team for the project is here tonight, so if you have any questions about the design, they're available.

So, following that discussion, you all may approve the COA.

If so, staff recommends the council include the conditions that were approved by the ERB, and these are enumerated in the draft resolution number one, which is attachment eight in the staff memo.

You all may approve the COA, but amend or revise the conditions approved by the ERB, again, using Resolution 1 in Attachment 8 of the staff memo.

You all may deny the COA.

If so, however, you should state the reasons in the resolution, state the reasons for that denial.

Draft resolution number two, which is attachment number nine, and the staff memo covers that.

And finally, you all may defer action.

However, staff recommends that the matter be resolved by council and not refer back to the ERV.

They have reviewed it three times.

I think they have been rather conclusive on their view.

I don't mean that to be smart, just the fact.

In the staff memo that you have, I've summarized the ERB's actions in February, March, and June.

I've included links to the applicant submittal, to the ERB staff reports, to the videos of each of the three ERB meetings.

Also in attachment one are the five letters of appeal.

Appealing the ERB's June 13th action.

Attachment two is staff's response to the issues raised in the appeal letters, and additionally it has the two draft resolutions for you all to consider.

And I'll say I know resolutions are a little, we used to just simply do a motion, but the resolution I think is something that legal can explain, but they are a bit wordy.

In responding to the letters of appeal, I, as I did in May, tried to break them down into the categories of try to paraphrase what the appellants were offering, and I had to paraphrase for clarity and brevity, but their complete letters are in the staff memo, so if there's any question about what was said, we can refer to those.

I think, again, in the time allowed, and I'll wrap up here, not enough time to present a detailed review, but this is how we do things also with the BAR and the ERB, an introduction of the project, the applicant,

presents and describes their project and then the discussion between the applicant and either the BAR or the ERB.

Hopefully my comments in response to the appellant's claims are clear.

If you have any questions, we can certainly discuss them.

Again, as I said, if necessary, the design team for the applicant is here tonight.

If there are any questions specific,

to the design.

Just one question.

Obviously the one public comment we heard earlier was specifically about the porches.

What was it in the ERB's review and process that kind of led to that incorporation?

Was it anything specific or is it just a

You know, you apartment buildings, you can't necessarily tell someone where they're going to enter or exit.

I think they're a design rationale for that.

But you also try to break up the streetscape by having

Entrances not just a long blank wall and granted you know doors aren't necessarily the answer but it's it's to have that you know establish that streetscape where people go in and go out where a delivery person may park to deliver something

I think there was some criticism of the ERB and the comments earlier, but that's not within the ERB's purview.

And that's not to say it's not their fault or our fault.

That helps.

I know before this came in, the largest criticism was that the original design was a completely undifferentiated

Massive wall.

It was, I think, all the same material in color that was broken up with different materials, including that.

It's a – correct.

And it's – I mean, the design guidelines are not a yes, no.

It's not a dichotomous key that you can click down and reach the answer.

And so it's an evaluation.

using the different materials, using the sort of the wall is articulated, stepping in and out.

That is intended to mitigate that sense of design and scale.

But the height of the building has been the biggest problem.

But that was established by a special use permit.

So that was not the BAR, I'm sorry, I talked to the ERB, could not change that.

All right, so next would be an opportunity for the appellants to speak up to 10 minutes total.

You're the only one here?

My name is Ann Benham.

I live on Observatory Avenue right across the street from where the rear part of this project is supposed to go.

I have four comments to share, three directly relate to the ERB.

The first thing is the third item under the suggested motion staff recommendation begins all exterior lighting and interior lighting visible at the garage entrance will have lamping that is dimmable.

It goes on to say, the owner will address any reasonable public complaints about light glare, et cetera, et cetera.

And I'd like to request to be told what is considered reasonable

a reasonable public complaint and what recourse would be available in case a resident and the owner disagree about what a reasonable complaint is.

So that's the first thing.

Second, regarding the plants and the porches in the context of the following excerpt from the architect's December 2022 plan.

An array of plantings will liven the perimeter and improve the environment.

On Observatory Avenue, open space is punctuated by neighborhood scaled porches where tenants can see and be seen.

I request that the porches be eliminated even though it will contribute to a monolithic appearance.

But this is for safety reasons.

For one, the porches will invite parking by guests of the residents and more traffic from the guests as well as UPS and other service vehicles.

This poses potential safety issues on narrow dead end observatory where large emergency vehicles are already unable to drive down the street if there are cars parked on both sides.

Eliminate the porches entirely and use the space for more tree plantings.

For example, like the very fast growing honey locust which comes in a thornless version.

Better to focus on tree plantings rather than array of different sized plants because shrubs and flowers cannot provide the shade and cooling benefits that trees do or the CO2 take up or for at least 10 years while the replacement trees grow can the heat island effect be that will inevitably be increased

with the destruction of the existing trees and the huge increase in impervious surface, will that be mitigated for at least 10 years?

The third comment I have has to do with the rear multi-use pathway.

I think there's, I and some others would like that to be ADA compliant.

because it's a shortcut for observatory folks to take through to Washington and UVA on a more quiet route than having to go out to busy JPA.

So that's the third thing.

Lastly, fourthly, it would be very good if the city began to reward developers who build climate resilient projects with high albedo rated materials and who integrate mature trees that exist already on building sites.

as much as the city now rewards those who put a million dollars into an affordable housing fund.

Thank you, Ms.

Benham.

So next we have an opportunity for the ERB chairperson.

It'll be Lyle Soley-Yates.

Greetings.

Lyle Soliate, chair of the Infants Quarter Review Board for Charlottesville.

I'm a design cop.

Doesn't mean I'm always right, but I try to be.

And I try to prevent bad design.

I can't force good design, which is often frustrating.

I understand the frustration.

We had the good fortune to review this project at three points, as well as additional communication with nearby residents.

The designers had a work session with the team on this.

And we saw significant evolution.

And I believe

to make an improvement.

Like many designers, there was interest in emphasizing verticality, which I love verticality, too.

Everyone knows verticality, but it makes it look taller.

And we thought evolution is designed to be less vertical and more horizontal.

It is still the same height, but it feels more human scale, which I believe is a public benefit.

Yes, there are torches.

My understanding based on the design guidelines is that they are an important M&A, and I would be sorry to see them go, but counsel, this is your baby.

If you hit the forches, that is understandable.

The question, I guess, that I have, and I think we always have to distinguish between

what the Planning Commission does as a Planning Commission and what the Planning Commission does when you all are wearing your ERB hats, which technically are not the same hats.

And there are things that you can do as the Planning Commission that you cannot do as the Entrance Review Board.

and I'm wondering out of the various things that have been mentioned this evening and the other objections that have been made, it sort of feels to me like most of those are either site plan issues or they are,

I've looked at the statute, and it feels to me like most of the concerns that are being raised at this point are essentially site plan issues rather than ERB issues.

Do you agree with that?

As the ERB, our concerns are effect.

It can be a little bit challenging switching gears.

I believe the aesthetics here are pretty strong.

We've got some mature trees, we've got some color, we've got some material variation.

I believe aesthetically this is an improvement and is a benefit to the corridor.

The ADA issue, I believe we've discussed as a commission.

My understanding was that there was an engineering issue there.

That's my reflection on that issue.

That is not an aesthetic issue.

That is, I believe, a good concern about accessibility.

The transportation planning concerns, yes, that is certainly a planning commission issue and one we discussed at length.

And also you've got, again, special use permit conditions.

There's a provision in there about a parking plan.

So, you know, that was understood and anticipated when the SUP was reviewed.

So there are certain things that were established.

the RB had to work with.

They couldn't change unless the SUP was changed.

And yes, there's site plan review for the lighting, the trees, that path in the back will go through the ADA coordinator.

And I think I had commented that the ADA coordinator may determine that that is not the best accessible path.

They may determine that it's out on JPA.

No, and typically, yeah, I mean, there were things raised during the reviews that are incorporated into the recommended conditions, so we

did give consideration to screening of things, to the lighting and lamping of particularly LED lighting, which has been an issue.

So there were conditions put in there that the ERB felt addressed the concerns they had raised.

But I'll say again that the overarching concern, as we've heard, is the height of this project.

and they believe they did, so yeah.

In our packet, there is a suggested motion.

I think this is the suggested motion we're looking at.

Page three or four.

Attachment eight is the actual resolution draft.

But the motion suggested, I take it that these are the conditions that the ERB placed.

And the first, talking about glass should be clear, new railings will match the metal rail, exterior lighting and interior lighting visible from the garage should be dimmable, have a color temperature not exceeding 3000K.

I don't even know what a color rendering index is.

I know what the 3000K is.

The color rendering index is the color with which you perceive an object.

Natural sunlight has a color rendering index of 100.

So, you know, we're trying to get it 80 or higher, preferably 90.

So what you're seeing in a color in an illuminated space is very close to what it would be in natural sunlight.

and then the color temperatures is a function of glare and brightness.

And to touch a little bit on the color temperature issue

I know from research I was doing on something else that when you get a color temperature exceeds like 6000 K, 6000 Kelvin, that's very blue light and there have actually been studies that found neurological changes in people who are exposed in a long-term way to light at that level.

It's getting there.

This is a lengthy discussion the BAR had about lighting and a lot of input from Mark Schuyler in the community, a lighting expert or lamping expert.

if you sometimes when you're on the road and there's a car coming at you that's got that really just harsh blue headlight yeah that's that's that higher color temperature what we're hearing now is they're even suggesting we take it down lower but the 3000 K is sort of where the BAR got comfortable and then that dimmability you know and most of the lighting can be dimmed so those three things

We don't.

Not every site plan comes to me.

A lot of things that happen unless something's in a design review to the BAR or the ERB, I don't see it.

So the planners then look to the code.

conditions for Lamping take it a step further.

There are conditions that then I can look at in the site plan, but in a normal review of a site plan, it wouldn't come up.

So it just gives me an extra thing, an extra box to check when I review it, because what will happen is I look at the site plan.

I also look at the building permit drawings when they come in for a project.

So, and I'll go down through the light fixtures and say, you know, have they addressed what we, what were the conditions that we put on for the lamping or conditions we put on about the glass, you know, the clarity of glass has a surprising amount of

of range to it.

Yeah, I mean, the one note I would say at the bottom, the conditions of approval are those that were approved by the ERB on February 14th, March 14th, and June 13th.

So I was there at least two of those times, I think, and all of these conditions were put forward as a way to try to address concerns that were raised by the residents.

And so

My view is that we should go ahead and move this.

Okay.

Second.

Okay.

Is there any discussion on the motion?

I mean, basically repeating what's already been said, I would just say I think the fundamental issue that I think people are concerned about is the height.

And, you know, it's at a height where any design decision is going to be the height it is, and that's the height it is.

I think that the work that the ERB did actually made this

compared to the first design looks substantially better on a number of different levels and shows that there is some value to a process like that, particularly with larger buildings or at least having some kind of form-based code that's looking at these things in that level of detail.

The young lady discussed the ADA compliant pathway and removal of porches in lieu of trees.

What has been done about that?

Because if you are going to have a pathway and it's not ADA compliant, can you have a pathway that's not ADA compliant?

So the, and I'm not the ADA coordinator, but the site plan is reviewed, and there must be an ADA compliant path, as it was explained to me.

It may not be this one, it may be the sidewalk in front.

So that's a determination made by that staff person on all site plans.

The bike runnels were included as a recommendation of one of the planning commissioners, the ERB commissioners, and included in that.

We have a question on the floor.

So I say, if it is reviewed, that's not my call on the ADA compliance.

That's that staff individual who reviews that.

If you all feel strongly, the option is yours to incorporate a condition that addresses it.

But the point is that as this thing is designed, as part of the design process, there will be a path somewhere that is ADA accessible.

Correct.

That is going to happen.

The question about the porches is the first time I think I've heard about that.

But whatever the issue is with the porches,

I would have thought that would have been resolved before the ERB or the SUPE six months ago.

My frustration is this is the third time we're seeing this.

I'm not really sure anything is changing.

We've had a process.

Well, tonight I think is the first time I've heard anything about porches.

They're not noted here, and essentially this is a repeat of what we saw a month ago, which was only because of an advertising issue.

And so at some point it's not fair to the applicant to continue to have a discussion about these things.

I mean, we have a process.

I'll call the question in.

Any further discussion among counselors?

All right.

Motion to... What's the resolution?

To approve the... Attachment 8.

How about that?

304.

Okay.

All in favor, please raise your hand.

Aye.

Aye.

Okay, passes five, nothing.

Thank you all.

Thank you.

Next item, resolution approving a lease agreement with Blue Ridge Area Coalition for the Homeless, a portion of 105th Street Northeast City Space.

Good evening.

For the record, Brenda Kelly with the Office of Community Solutions.

This item in front of you, as you just mentioned, Mayor, is a request to approve a lease agreement with the Blue Ridge Area Coalition for the Homeless, otherwise known as BRAC, for the lease of a portion of city space where you're at right now.

The format you have in front of you is a format that was approved by a city council to be used for commercial spaces in the garage.

So that's a template basically that was put in place.

This is a lease for the use of approximately 366 square feet just to the right of the entrance up front.

It's basically a minimally secure

area which you're all familiar with.

The space will serve as office space for a maximum of three employees of Brock.

Some furniture will be provided by the city.

The lease is for two years with an option to renew for one time for one year.

The proposed lease rate is $1 per year with no annual increase Brock will have access to the use of the two conference room spaces through city staff reserving the space on their behalf and Brock will be responsible for janitorial services and all telecommunication services

Council, any questions?

Ms.

Kelly, it's good to see you as always.

I'm assuming this lease fits the Brenda Kelly program.

Yes.

Okay.

Yes.

Great.

It did go through the process we're trying to develop.

Yes.

But the end result is that they get to use the space for a dollar a year.

Correct.

Okay.

It's city staff right now so if you'll see in the lease document in front of you there's no start date to that because Office of Community Solutions has five spaces right now

I appreciate the city working with him to make this happen.

I would move.

Any discussion?

All in favor, please raise your hand.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Okay, next also Ms.

So two items before I get to the actual item in front of you.

This may be the last time you hear us referring this as Friendship Court.

I'm sure you're all aware it has been renamed to Kindlewood.

So hopefully we'll remember from now on to put items in front of you having to do with this as Kindlewood.

we are in the process of working on a funding type agreement for the phase two terms and conditions of allocating funding for this project that will be in front of you in the future and at that point Piedmont Housing Alliance will be in front of you with an update on phase two and the status of that piece of the project in much more detail

but the item in front of you tonight and I hope I don't make this more confusing than it is is typically on a consent agenda so we have come in front of you before for phase one basically just a resolution showing the city's financial support of the project and Piedmont Housing Alliance

uses that resolution to go with their funding applications for LITEX applications or whatever they need it for, for state or federal funding or other funding sources.

So in February 2021, we had a resolution from the city council for the phase two funding commitment support.

and through that resolution you all approved $3,250,000 and we word these resolutions as up to that amount because that's typically what's been approved in the CIP.

so when we did this in February of 2021 that was proposed in the CIP budget but ultimately the City Council approved a budget for $2,750,000.

So if any of you were doing the math in this with what we've since added with additional CIP approvals you would have seen those numbers off but with this resolution

were asking for your support for, I can't remember what that number was.

Yes, up to that amount, which is the amount that has been approved in total through CIP budgets for phase two of Friendship Corp.

This may also come in front of you in the future again because it's proposed for out years for additional funding.

for the phase two but at this point that's all the city can recommend that we provide this resolution for Piedmont Housing Alliance.

So we're asking for your approval of this resolution and hopefully I didn't make that too confusing.

Yeah.

You got it, you got it.

You got it.

I'm prepared to support, but I will say when they come back for phase two for something I will be looking for in an agreement.

There's some type of maturity that the new units will, that city residents get a preference in them because we're building a lot.

We have a big hand in building

affordable housing and we just want to make sure that our residents get first dipped at it.

Okay, thank you.

We just don't want the applicant saying no because it's not the same property.

So we can move the current resolution as it's ordered?

Yes, sir.

Okay.

I would move the resolution.

Any further discussion?

All in favor, please raise your hand.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Carries 5-0.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Council, staff.

He comes with a map.

I will in just one second.

I'm here before you.

I'm Chris Genzyk, City Parks and Trails Planner.

In that function, I get a lot of VDOT grants to implement some of these projects we do for trails and sidewalks and things.

This particular project is...

To construct a ADA and bike wheelchair stroller type ramp, this is Lower Washington Park, Preston Avenue, Madison going west towards Grady and Venable School, Madison going east towards Rose Hill Drive, Burley School and all that.

Currently there is a staircase leading down from the upper Madison into the park that's not accessible to everybody.

We got a grant from VDOT three years ago or so and designed the thing, put it to bid earlier this spring and the prices came back double what we had in the budget.

So coincidentally, Traffic Engineering and Neighborhood Development Services have another project

using this funding line that they're not able to go forward with at this time.

So they offered to transfer the money to this project so we can get this one done now.

VDOT agreed.

So this is a two reading appropriation to move the money from the canceled project or the project that's no longer in this grant line.

I think we're going to do it later with a different funding over to the Washington Ramp project so we can get this thing built hopefully by the end of the year.

And so when the kids start going to school and the park opens again in the spring, everybody will be able to get up and down that hill.

equally.

Any clarifying questions?

That's exciting.