City Council Meeting   10/2/2023

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

Move for approval.

Second.

There we go.

The meeting is going to be divided as always into three main sessions.

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

Second, we will have a closed meeting around 5.30 or so.

and then a city council business meeting which will begin around 630.

First item up is a budget kickoff.

Ms.

I am.

If you can believe it, I'm back.

Exactly, exactly.

David, can you pull up my presentation please?

So today we're going to kick off the budget for the 25 budget.

We're going to go through today.

Next slide please.

Today we're going to talk about the dates in terms of the budget and the budget process both from a staff perspective, a council perspective for the public

I'm going to talk a little bit about some budget drivers that we're anticipating for this year's budget and then we'll close it out with any questions or comments or concerns that you all have as we're getting started so with that next slide please

So staff has already been working on the 25 budget for about two months now.

We spent August going through and presenting new requests both for the CIP and operating.

That was the month of August.

In the month of September, staff has been working to update CIP proposals.

Those were for projects that were already in the five-year plan.

updating those and they are actually due tomorrow as well as going back and providing us information with projects that were approved prior to FY24.

So any ongoing project we're getting updates on those.

for the month of October staff will be working on their operating budgets and then in November and December they will be meeting with the city manager and the budget team to go over those proposals and then finally the city manager will be presenting his proposed budget to you all in March so that's sort of the staff timeline next slide please

So some key dates for council to keep in mind.

February 15th, this is the glorious day that we all talk about.

We used to say that the budget is balanced by then.

I'm going to change that a little bit to say that the total budget amount is set by then.

and that is because that is the date that we will be advertising the real estate tax rate and also the required rollback calculations in the daily progress.

It's important to note that as of July 1 there was a state law change.

Previously we had to advertise this 30 days in advance and the state law changed that to make it more consistent with other tax rates.

So we only technically have to advertise seven days

So, quickly, Chrissy,

Is the Daily Progress new distribution process, you know, I guess it's always been, will be online, but they mail the paper out.

It will, because we're only required seven days notice, we're going to shoot for 30, so we'll have plenty of extra time.

You know, should something happen in a very short window that we needed to re-advertise, it just gives us more flexibility.

So we can advertise longer, but we have to do it at least seven days before the public hearing.

March 5th is the day the city manager will be presenting the actual proposed budget to you formally.

That's also the day that the school board will be coming to present their budget to council.

March 18th will be the first budget and tax rate public hearing.

April 1st will be the second public hearing.

And then April 9th will be the date that we officially adopt the budget.

Next slide, please.

So we do have our normal work session scheduled.

That is March 7th, March 14th, March 28th, and April 4th.

We'll be spending, I think they're all Thursday, so we'll be spending every Thursday evening together for the month of March.

Next slide, please.

There is also this year a community budget forum that is scheduled on March 21st.

This is an opportunity for the community to come and share their ideas about the budget with council.

We will also use that date as our public hearing for the budget as well.

Next slide please.

So just sort of a graphical presentation here for you to see the things that council is involved in.

We will have four work sessions, two public hearings, community budget forum, and then formally you will adopt the budget on April 9th.

Next slide.

Our city manager will also be having a community budget forum as well.

And this is an opportunity for the public to come on January 11th.

It'll be held at the Carver Recreation Center.

The public is invited to come and share their ideas with the city manager.

This will be just about a month or not quite a month before the city manager will be presenting his budget to council.

So this is the last opportunity.

for the public to weigh in before we actually start putting things into print.

Next slide please.

A new thing that we're doing this year, we did one meeting with this with you all last year where we had a couple of the larger departments come and brief counsel on their departments, their operations to give you just kind of an overview of what they do and some of their challenges.

Mr. Sanders has mapped out a schedule where for all of the four o'clock meetings starting tonight and moving on to the last one is in January 2nd,

there will be departments coming to present and there are schedules up front there's also schedules on the budget web page so tonight in true fashion to be the first guinea pig the city manager will talk about his office as well as Ms.

Thomas for the clerk of council the city attorney Mr. Stroman and Mr. Engel with economic development will be presenting tonight as well next slide please

There's also for the capital budget process we have two opportunities in which we will meet with the planning commission to talk about the draft of the CIP.

The first one is what we call a work session that's on November 28th and then the public hearing which is with council and the public will have an opportunity to speak on the draft is December 12th.

Next slide please.

So where can you get information?

Please check out our budget website.

We're at www.charlottesville.gov slash budget.

We try to put all the information out there for you that's available for both the work sessions.

Next slide, please.

If you go out, we have a wonderful online budget book, but council will also be getting your printed proposed budget book this year when we produce the proposed budget.

But if you go to the budget website, you can view the city's online budget book as well as print an entire copy in a PDF if you choose.

Additionally, next slide please.

Want to remind you we have some other information.

We do have a work sessions web page and so as materials become available for the work sessions we'll be posting those out here and the public and anyone can go and view those and download those if they wish.

Next slide please.

We also have the budget explorer tool which as we've talked about before this is updated quarterly.

This provides you with both a quarterly report as well as an opportunity to choose any department and to drill down into their line item budgets.

There is also a CIP summary which for every active CIP project you can take a look at the budget

and what's been expended and the available budget balance of that budget for those projects as well.

And again that is updated quarterly and it's usually if the quarter ends on the 30th of the month it's usually updated by about the 15th or the 20th.

It relates to when finance actually closes that quarter on in the financial system.

Next slide please.

So what are we anticipating for this budget?

As with every budget, there's always more needs than resources.

We do know that some of the largest drivers that we'll be considering for this budget cycle are collective bargaining, class and comp, homeless intervention, affordable housing, city schools both from an operating standpoint both for operations and collective bargaining as well as their capital needs.

A few honorable mentions with this year's budget.

Our biggest revenue source are the real estate assessments.

That data is not really available in total until January, so we go through a lot of this process, which is kind of what this picture is meant to depict.

is that we go through a lot of this process kind of shooting darts everywhere until we can sort of nail down what our numbers are.

Additionally, federal funding.

The last two years we've gotten large influx of cash from the federal government both with CARES and ARP.

We do not anticipate we get any more kinds of money like that.

and those are one-time funds that we have used throughout the budget and some of those programs we have incorporated in the budget some are still to do that as well and then the year-end surpluses they are one-time funds as well so as the finance director will be coming to you in November or December just keep in mind we've talked about that that's going to be a big number but those are for one-time uses and next slide please

You know my crystal ball always has concerns.

No.

I mean, I think this is no different than any other budget cycle.

I think we have to work through the information and we'll take it one step at a time and we'll keep you all informed as we go.

I would ask the same of you as I think the city manager would.

If there are things that you want to see or things that are important to you, let us know as early as possible so that we can make sure we're

Thank you, Chrissy.

It's always good to see you.

So the surplus that we're projecting for last fiscal year, which we'll talk about in, I guess, a couple of months.

You said November?

November, December.

Got it.

And I don't even remember now all of the sort of things we were hoping to pay for with the surplus when we finished our budget deliberations in the spring.

We will.

And just keep in mind with that our policy is that any surplus by policy reverts to the CIP.

for one-time uses.

And so that's a real important thing from the rating agency standpoint as well as that we comply with our policy.

Once that goes to the CIP it still sits there until council has an opportunity to

allocate that so it's not like once that comes to you that you have to assign it and spend it at that moment.

It goes and waits.

Because I know we had some budget issues with the Buford School.

Yeah, and that will probably likely be coming back to you as a separate item prior to the year in surplus.

Because we did put the full amount in the CIP last year, so it is fully funded.

The grant that they received, council actually has to appropriate that, as does the school board, and that's in process right now.

First, just a comment for the public.

I'd really encourage anyone to use that tool on the website of each department.

I know we get a lot of feedback.

Some people say they don't feel like they have enough information about each department, but that really breaks it down line item.

And if there's anyone who thinks there's not enough information for a department, check out that tool and tell us what you want to see there, because there really is a wealth of information there.

The only question I have

I think the accurate answer is we're still wading through that, so we do not have numbers.

I think some proposals are floating around, but in terms of evaluating those to know the cost yet, we do not know.

That's fair.

That's the technical word.

I didn't even say that.

No, we'll need triple the surplus, which is a lot.

Chrissy, thank you and to your department for all the hard work that you've done.

It's interesting for me to be on this side.

of the table as to where I was before but you and your team have always been very efficient always there to help and I would like to encourage people to come to the work sessions but also to come to the session that our newly selected city manager is hosting because we need to hear from the community

before.

It's very easy for people to sit back and be complacent and then when things happen everyone wants to complain.

So if you have something you need to say and you want to get it off of your chest in looking at your proposed dates there is ample opportunity for people to do that.

and we know that our community does not mince words.

The emails fly on a regular basis.

But for those of you that really would like to be heard in another manner, please utilize these opportunities.

And again, thank you to your staff.

Sure, I'd be happy to.

Emma?

Emma McMahon is our newest budget analyst and I'll also give a shout out to my other colleague Brian Ray who is I call the man behind the curtain.

So I have

Only one request, and that is that I hope someone will send a list of all of the dates to me, because I don't actually use the city's calendar.

I use my own calendar.

I need to transfer things.

I'll be happy to.

Because you've given us a lot of dates there.

So there is this, and this is on the city webpage, there's also some copies down there.

And I'll just echo everybody else.

I know how hard you end up working and how many different times we throw you curveballs in March and April.

Sounds good.

Thank you.

Good evening, councilors and the public.

like to display what I ask of others.

I do it myself.

So I'm coming before you this way to present just so that we can kick this thing off.

I do want to roll back a little bit to some of the things that Chrissy discussed and really to get at what Councilor Payne said.

You'll see in the slides that David is pulling up for me right now that

We have big things.

And while Chrissy just said that this is just like any other budget, I can't believe she said that.

This is not just like any other budget.

We have a lot going on that we're attempting to do from a financial perspective.

I think what she's speaking to is she's going to figure it out because that's what I tell her all the time.

I know you'll figure it out.

But the reality is that collective bargaining, comp and class is a big deal.

That's a lot of cash injections that will be required.

Thank you.

I was looking forward to it.

That's going to be a lot at one time.

We're trying to figure out exactly how to do that.

That's part of what the conversation with the staff has been on how do we implement this.

Collective bargaining has a prescribed process.

We have contracts that we have to sign.

That's going to actually unveil what the true costs are going to be as we get close to that.

and we'll be able to price it.

But when we get to COP and CLAS itself, that's going to be a multi-year process.

We're going to have to figure out what our top priorities are, what's the best way to really to mitigate some of the impacts of modernizing our pay system.

So with those things, I think that's what Christy is speaking to.

It's no different than any other year because she fights through the process.

in her way.

But we'll get through it.

But our goal is to let you know a lot more as early as possible because I'm trying to make sure that I keep the staff up to date as well.

So I'm going to go over the city manager's office budget, which is a really small piece of the pie.

But what I did in this briefing is I'm going to more or less cover what are things about that particular office budget, which is small, but then kind of highlight some of the big things that I've even started talking about already.

So this year's city manager's budget is $1.4 million and most of that is just staff.

And the issue with that at the moment is it also has the budget team in there.

We've been making some transitions to identify all of the offices individually.

So we've moved some things around and we'll probably finish that up this year with pulling them out into their own budget line because Chrissy does have a budget for her office.

And then that way the city manager's budget, when you see it in the book and online, it'll be an accurate number.

I don't have to say next slide I'm supposed to advance it There we go

We always take a moment just to help the public understand because I always remind you what the role of the city manager is.

You set the strategy and the vision.

I do everything else.

So ultimately what the administration aspect of it is is that I am here to implement council's vision and I do that with the support of staff.

All of the team members are part of this process.

We implement policies and we take directors from council.

You all are the ones who carry the burden of figuring out what those things are.

and then we are the professional staff that gets it done.

This is the city manager's office today.

Myself, Terry Bentley and Theresa Pollock, the two individuals who keep the office going, they really are the bosses, I will say that.

They're the ones that keep it all going.

I do have three deputy city manager positions.

Steven Hicks has joined as an interim at this moment, but he's working his way to dropping the interim.

He wants me to do it sooner.

and we're going to make sure we get it done.

And Ashley Reynolds Marshall is deputy city manager for racial equity, diversity and inclusion.

And then there is a third position, DCM of administration.

That position has not been filled since I've been here, but I am dropping for that this month.

I'll be advertising to fill that spot.

It hasn't taken very long for me to realize how many more hands I need

to do this work.

Okay.

Well, he's in the role in an interim capacity.

We'll decide if we have to advertise that or not.

That's what he's trying to get me to figure out.

Yes.

Okay, Steve, you're on the clock.

He's got a punch list.

Fourteen.

All right, where do I point this?

It's not moving?

Oh, there it is.

Okay.

Let's see where I'm not supposed to be in the budget.

Alright, so this is just a quick look.

Again, so FY24 adopted budget, total budget is $1.4 million, as I said.

Most of that you see is in the personnel category.

Very small items that have been used by the office itself.

Most of the resources that are spent are just in all the various department budgets across the entire organization.

For FY24 we know that there was a decrease as we started to move some things around and as I said in FY25 we'll finish that process.

But just to highlight some things just so that the public is aware of what those line items mean in the contractual area and

and other expenses area.

That is where we paid Polyhire to do the city manager search that was conducted late spring into the summer.

Zen City is a communications tool.

The prior city manager wanted to test this.

It was a tool that is a communications tool that we learned about at an ICMA conference, and he was intrigued by it and wanted to see how we could deploy it.

We've actually had it active for a little bit, and when our new director comes before you, she'll tell you where we stand.

I think we're probably going to pass on it.

but she still probably has some ability to use it.

It was just an opportunity for us to just figure out additional ways for public engagement.

That's one of the priorities that we've added to that particular office.

So that was one of the reasons for testing that out.

And then the Robert Bob group was of course the big ticket item that you all have been paying for the time that Mr. Rogers was here.

We were paying that firm directly so that appeared in the budget.

And then Acela is one of our contracted vendors that is the backbone for MySeaVille.

So we pay an annual contract for keeping that alive.

But we'll be able to move some things around.

And then from there, I think we'll have a much cleaner vision for when you go and look at the city manager's budget.

If someone wants to complain to me about how much I'm spending, it'll be probably small.

Yeah.

You said the communication software that Mr. Rogers had, you know, intrigued him.

So we could plan out a campaign that we wanted to run and the public could go to this site and engage with that site versus calling and doing all the various things.

It was one place to go.

We tried it.

I don't know that everybody liked it.

We didn't necessarily get too far with it.

And ultimately, my thought was to leave it until Afton got here and let her play around with it and see if she had a vision for it.

So I guess we'll find that out soon.

Okay.

Thank you.

That's all.

Okay.

Next.

Next.

Just objectives for the year, my work plan, which I'll be presenting to you all later this evening, strategic plan implementation, of course, that is your big ticket item that you just successfully adopted, and now it is my responsibility with the team's help to implement that.

And then naturally, organizational excellence is always something that I would strive to highlight, and you put it in the strategic plan to give it a centerpiece effect, but it is really a part of management, and that's one of the things that I'll always remember.

So with strategic plan implementation, that is a five year plan that you all adopted.

Ultimately, the goal is to make sure that we can get some work going on all those things.

And I'll present that this evening so that everyone will see how I am attacking all nine plus the JEDI commitment.

So I consider it 10 strategic outcomes that we're trying to prioritize.

I'll lay that out for you all to see that and we will continue to engage Raftelis.

I think it's important for us to have enough of a resource available to support staff and it's producing basically the goals and the actions that need to be taken on to be able to fulfill this over the next five years.

With organizational excellence, the key things for me, filling the key positions, improving morale, and retaining the team.

As it relates to filling the key positions, I mean, I think we're doing a really good job at that.

We're attacking as many positions as we possibly can at the same time.

We've been fortunate that in recent postings, we're getting back to the normal where we get multiple responses, multiple quality responses, I should say.

And that's making it a little bit easier for us to find who we're looking for that can come and join this team and take us where we're trying to go.

With improving morale, you know, it's always going to be complicated.

There's a lot to that.

This workforce, I think the number one mission for me is to fix compensation.

I think that's what I've heard consistently.

We know that that is an important matter for anyone, but because we have fallen so far behind, it's important for us to get this right.

That's the reason why collective bargaining has its place, comp and class has a priority, and we'll have to figure out how to balance the cost of those two things, and then we'll get them integrated into our process for going forward.

As it relates to comp and class, we did engage the department heads, so this is an update for you as to where we are.

We're doing step placements right now, so that's when the individual employee will be placed on their step based on the various factors that go into considering that.

Everyone is kind of becoming an HR guru.

They've been trained by HR on how to evaluate.

It's not because you like them.

It's not because they're doing great work.

It's because of these key things that are consistently applied.

So that will conclude in the next couple weeks and then the HR team will take some time with that and then they will go and they'll more or less approve, adjust, and then finally bring to the final version of what that is.

We'll take a look at it, confirm that we're satisfied that everyone has been fairly evaluated and placed and then Chrissy gets the hard work of pricing all of that and making sure that we can then determine how to afford that.

and that's where it may turn into we have to make certain decisions to do things in an incremental period versus all at once or at least I'll provide the information to you and then you can choose to do other things if that is your choice but ideally the goal again is driving employee morale the first part of that for me is to make sure that we are demonstrating to the team that we're getting compensation right

and then we'll do a number of internal things of engaging the employees and talking more about things and letting them participate in things so that they feel a part of it because I think that is of value as well and that's how we retain them so challenges challenges challenges challenges we have many of them but everybody does so there's nothing different about the fact that we have challenges our things are big ticket things that's really the biggest challenge so from an overall budget perspective and

My money bags is what I call Chrissy is always going to struggle with trying to make it all fit through and get it done at the same time.

So the multiple priorities make it a challenge.

And that's the reason why we have to strategize and figure out what's best for now.

And at times we have to say no.

And I've said that over and over.

No can be an answer.

But sometimes it's no, not right now.

and then we'll get back to it.

And if we can figure out when we can get back to it, I think people will better accept similar things that we may have to do as making a tough decision.

But with that, change is hard and we have to manage expectations.

So that's one of the hardest parts of doing the job and I think we know that.

So, Mr. Sanders, we've talked a lot about class and comp and what that's going to mean, and it's going to be a financial heavy lift.

And if we ultimately go to a phase in, your team, i.e.

Yes.

She will make those recommendations to me because she doesn't want to make that decision.

Okay.

And then I will be the one who has to ultimately make that ultimate decision.

That means as long as it takes.

I think ideally, we're probably talking three years.

We're talking three good years just as a fair place to start, but I may have to come back and adjust that, so I reserve that right.

It's not until we get through the bargaining process and truly figure out what those three units desire and then what that costs, because we have to have a contract, so we're going to have to

Find out what that's going to be and then price that all alone.

But in doing that, it's going to also drive what the priority would be on the comp and class side.

Because one thing that I'm most concerned about with this workforce is because three units were able to form and to negotiate for what they want, everybody else is waiting saying, what about me?

And part of the balancing act that I feel that I'm obligated to figure out is how best do I respond to that question?

by at least ensuring that I did something.

So in doing something, it may be a small step for some, a nice side step for some others, and a big step for a few others.

And then over the next few years, then we might reverse who that is so that everybody gets a feel for what those three different steps may feel like.

Right.

And I think that's my responsibility with Afton's help as well as the budget team and HR.

We have to figure all this stuff out.

And that's really what the work is right now is we're figuring it all out.

And then as we figure it out, we will communicate, communicate, communicate.

Because I think that's what people really want to understand.

I've had people who have come back to me already and said, I understand.

If I hadn't told them that, they would have been mad at me.

But I told them something and they said, thank you for at least telling me that because now I'm not sitting here wondering and believing the worst.

You just told me that I need to wait until January and that's when I'll find something out about this.

So I'm trying my best to figure out milestone moments.

I talk to the team about when can we tell people this.

Absolutely.

That's right.

And again, dealing with the hard facts that if I can't do it, I'm going to say it.

And I think that's what I need to be able to tell them.

And I think at least they'll appreciate knowing.

But it'll be you can't do it because it just won't be a flat out no.

Okay.

That's right.

Unless there's something that comes from you or it just comes up in the process that that is the truth.

That is a no.

Okay.

One question.

I know I think last budget cycle, I think there was ultimately like $500,000 allocated to the city manager's office, like a strategic use for the city manager.

Thankfully, it hasn't been touched because it's what I'm looking at for homeless intervention right now as we speak.

so I think that was a good move and you'll see in the budget proposal that I'm probably going to ask for something like that again for this moment just because there's a flexibility that is needed and I think you trust me to run the entire budget so giving me a piece to actually be in charge of with my own pen would also be helpful.

One quick question, and I thought it was going to be coming out your budget, and that is the renovation of this space here.

Yeah, the only thing that this room is slated to get is new carpet.

And that is from the flood that occurred in August.

That has already been identified, and that is only because insurance is covering that.

So that is going to happen probably later this month.

We may end up, our goal is that after the second meeting, they're going to come in, take all the chairs out, rip up the carpet, put new carpet, put the chairs back.

So you have new carpet, but you won't have

The yellow chairs will go away.

But the room itself is not slated for renovation.

That has not been on the list.

I think that's something that if you want it on the list, we would need to talk about it.

But the reality is that it wouldn't come up very soon with the backlog that we currently have.

So it could be on the list, but it'll be a couple years at least.

I think it's fair to say that doing something about

the unhoused population is going to take a higher priority than this.

Other questions?

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We'll come to this side so we don't have to switch the controller.

So I think David has the presentation.

I'm hoping I can see from here.

I'm so used to looking at my computer.

So I'm presenting to you the report for our office, which is the council and clerk of council or chief of staff clerk of council office.

And I tried to pack what we do into a nice little paragraph package.

A lot of what we do doesn't fit neatly into a package, into one little

Paragraph description, so I will just read to you what we have.

The Clerk of Council Office performs work related to the operation of the city and provides administrative direction and support for the legislative body.

Many duties are prescribed by state and local law.

Duties include record recording and certifying official council actions and records, notifying the public of council meetings, administering the agenda preparation and publishing process.

managing the Boards and Commission's appointment process, serving on the Sister Cities Commission, notarizing various city documents, and the Clerk of Council is the official keeper of the city seal.

In the middle.

Okay, so the current staffing that we have is an office of three, and that includes myself as Chief of Staff, Clerk of Council,

We have a Deputy Clerk of Council, Max Celia Robinson, and Administrative Assistant, Monica Mallory.

That is the three positions that were allocated in the FY24 budget.

And we provide support to five council members, to the public, to all city departments, and nearly 40 boards and commissions and their liaisons.

So here's a snapshot of our department budget and this includes three cost centers which are the Clerk of Council, Sister City and the right now it's listed as Mayor and City Council.

For future budgets we will have that listed as City Council budget since we are a council manager form of government and not a strong Mayor.

So you will notice that in the upcoming budget.

One thing that I would like to note as far as sister cities the allocation that they usually get each year is allocated in a lump sum but when they do incur expenses we record those two separate line item budget line items so that they are accurately recorded.

So when you go out onto the budget online you might see a number for the actuals that looks different from what was

what was adopted because their items were listed only in a lump sum.

So what is new?

And I'll start with sister cities.

Sister Cities Commission is currently in pursuit of a Sister City relationship with a Spanish speaking Sister City and Huehuetenango, Guatemala was selected as that city.

So we're currently in friendship status, which will go through late 2024.

And an invitation was extended to a delegation to visit us from Huehuetenango.

Sister Cities is still currently in the feasibility

phase of whether that visit will actually work out.

Yes.

Yes.

And they did tell us beforehand that they would cover their own expenses, so I think that's the part that we're trying to confirm.

Sister Cities has implemented a travel scholarship program, and that is related to delegation trips.

as well as any student groups that might travel to our sister cities, which right now we have Besson, France, Poggio Acaiano, Italy, and Winnebogana.

So we have supported several trips to those countries.

The application process, I think it starts in March.

I want to say it's just one time of a year that people can apply and they can get up to $1,000 just depending on the need.

they would be responsible for covering their other costs but the commission wanted to at least be able to help with a little bit.

And a post trip report is required for those who are granted those the scholarship.

So what is new with the council and clerk office?

So council did adopt the strategic plan framework on September 5th, 2023 so we

Look forward to all the work that's going to be involved in getting that underway.

We've developed boards and commissions recruitment cards so that council can, as they're out and about, hand these cards out and it'll link people directly to our vacancy page on our city website, as well as the application.

So you can go directly there and see where you want to serve.

And the latest is the addition of a new position.

and this is the Freedom of Information and Public Records Officer position.

It was previously housed in another department.

The Freedom of Information Officer was advertised at one point but not filled and just through time it has developed into something more than just Freedom of Information.

We've added the Public Records Officer component to it so it's a very robust position and this person will be very much needed

Who does that roll now?

The duties have been delegated to Theresa Pollock for now.

The demand on this position is a very high demand, so this would be a set alone,

Standalone position to handle those duties.

And we are one of few organizations that would have a standalone position for

And if I could, just to add for the public's benefit as well as council, this is a part of organizational excellence.

Public records is critical.

We are required to maintain.

We probably have not necessarily maintained the way that we need to.

We have disparate ways of doing things.

This is really to centralize an opportunity under our clerk who has experience in this space.

That's also the reason for choosing to have her oversee it.

It wasn't too much arm twisting.

That's right.

So would the public records officer, one of my

sort of wish list items has been that we had the ability to have some sort of a database of city documents, public records, if you will, that would enable somebody to say, you know, I want to see the documents that when the Belmont Bridge was first approved, what did people say about that?

and to be able to have some indexing process to say, okay, that would have been the meeting in 2011 and here are the minutes from that.

And basically to allow a Google searchability kind of a thing for city records.

Now some of the city records I gather are not OCR'd so that would be very difficult to do without an additional step but if we had that ability I would think that not only would it be easier for people like me who like to go googling around at three o'clock in the morning and don't really want to call up the clerk of council at three o'clock in the morning to say help me out with this but also people and we know we have a very curious

citizenry, and they're going to want to find everything like that too, and I would think it would be a really great public service.

That's kind of something that's also on my wish list.

There are records retention rules that tell us when we need to destroy items and how long we need to keep items, so if it falls in that Library of Virginia retention schedule, then those are things we can keep.

And I would just echo that.

I think our old website certainly wasn't perfect, but I think it was better than our current system for being able to do that in some ways.

And I would just very much echo that.

I imagine it's something we may need, if we go that direction, we may need to outsource or something like that.

It may be that at least part of the answer is hire a student or two for the summer to just sit there and prepare digests of things so you can find the most AR.

Yeah.

Okay, so our future ORC chart would look like this.

Just adding that one position.

The battery might be dead.

Okay, so what does success look like for our office?

I would say providing council members with timely and accurate support, compliant public meeting notices, timely agenda publishing, responsiveness to incoming calls, emails, and requests for information, conflict of interest, form filing period, compliance, and we've done rather well within the last few years, so we'll keep that up.

Accuracy in Record Keeping and Certification of Council Actions, Department Objectives Completed Within Budget, and since I've been here at least, we've been able to do that, streamlined processes, which we work on consistently, and continuous learning and development for our staff.

Some challenges that we face, and this looks like a lot, and I think I just want to be transparent.

I'll just start with staff capacity.

This is a high demand office for information, for documentation, just for informal stop-bys, you know, just pop-ins.

So we are stretched pretty thin with the staff that we do have.

Also with the increased number of public meetings,

Joint meetings, FOIA requests, and requests for council's attendance and support for various things.

That requires staff support most of the time.

And stability in the office.

When there's turnover in other departments, it's amazing what demand that can create on our small office.

Agenda management.

Our timeliness depends on the timeliness of departments and whatever items are coming before us.

Usually we do get it out on time, but if we're at the last minute, usually it's we're trying to pull it together from somewhere else.

Boards and commissions, we've, and you all know this, we've had issues with recruitment and people volunteering to serve on our boards and commissions, so that's why the cards were created with the QR codes.

Aligning boards and commissions with our strategic plan going forward I think is going to be a challenge in making sure we have

the right boards and that the boards that we already have are still what we need or whether we need to evaluate those.

Follow up on findings from the spring 2023 study which also was about boards and commissions and just making sure we're moving in the right direction.

Sister City's funding and direction.

Historically,

Sister Cities has been given an allotment of $15,000 annually.

There was a year that it was skipped, so they got double in the following year.

We have not been able to find the documentation for that funding going forward.

We found where they were supposed to be fundraising, but we

So, just do you think, I'm just not necessarily asking you, but just generally, Sam, is that something we should act on during our budget time this year just to, because I think we should continue to do, but I just want to make sure the $15,000, because what I'm understanding is that you,

No, but I think we kind of just informally made a decision that it was the right thing to do to keep the funding annually, and they do have a program where they

They issue those funds annually based on projects that link the sister cities.

Yeah, and I would say that.

I mean, that's the kind of thing that Ms.

Thomas will be able to bring into her budget team meeting with us.

So as she's preparing her budget for the year, those are the things that she can consider.

And also if council has any direction that you would want to provide for sister cities, they do welcome that.

Right now they are operating under guidelines that have been approved, there are bylaws that have been approved, and they are open to your suggestions if you have any.

Another challenge for us is professional development and training for our staff.

With just the three of us usually our training is at a conference or something related to our membership organizations which we all can't be gone at the same time really so we usually switch out who can go to which training but we will continue to work it out as a team for certification.

Our certification processes can take at least three years for the first level certification so I have achieved certification but I've

Right now we do have some funds budgeted but there's been more interest in actually attaining those certifications.

And my last challenge that I listed is just data analysis systems.

Right now we don't have much that we can

lean on as far as quickly being able to gather data.

And opportunities.

Sister Cities annual grant opportunities for cultural projects with Sister Cities.

They do

open up the process during the beginning of the year, usually January, February, increase local visibility and education about sister cities is one of their goals.

They want to bring more programs locally rather than most of the projects being sent abroad and still determining the feasibility of that sister city relationship with Weiwei Tenango.

For our clerk office, our opportunities that we listed is building capacity

and a team that meets or exceeds the demands of compliance and support.

And that's for council and for the public.

Continuing to streamline procedures to optimize timeliness and accuracy.

Seeking tools and opportunities to implement data analytics and continuous learning for clerk and staff.

For council, you have your upcoming legislative agenda, your January organizational meeting and retreat training through your member organizations such as VML and NLC.

and future budget meetings where you'll get to have all the discussion you need.

No.

Does anybody care that there's a sign on the door that says you cannot come in, see someone at the kiosk, there's no one there?

We'll figure this out.

Obviously, we don't know when we're sitting up here.

Well, there's never more than that at 4 o'clock, but anyway.

Okay, next.

All right.

Mr. Delhunt, if you'll...

Bring the PowerPoint on, please.

There we go.

Okay.

Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, Mr. Vice Mayor, Councilors.

It's my pleasure to give you a very brief overview of the City Attorney's Office and some of the budget considerations that are relevant to the operation of our office.

I will tell you that today I celebrate my three-month, two-day anniversary, and so far it's been a wonderful ride, and I've

I'm very much looking forward to the good things that I think lie ahead both for this city and both for the role of our office in bringing those good things to pass.

City Attorney Administration, this is a dense slide and so I'm going to summarize it for you.

A municipal law office like ours has an extraordinarily broad practice area.

When I have given similar talks in other contexts, I've said about the only thing that we don't do

is get people divorces and prosecute felonies.

Now that's a tiny exaggeration, but not much.

Think about the vast array of litigation that we manage for this city, the vast array of transactions, both real estate, transactional, public finance, taxation, FOIA, the Freedom of Information Act, COIA,

the Conflicts of Interest Act, just risk management issues, personnel issues, which are huge issues for us.

I just leave you with a thought that if there's a legal issue out there on the civil side of our profession, our office tends to touch it.

Now that's exhilarating in the sense that you get to pick up something new every day, but it's also very challenging because of the range of things that we need to handle.

I wanted to do this slide just to give you a short sort of snapshot, literally, of our office.

You can see this is one of our office lunches that we periodically have on the downtown mall.

They wanted this to be a nice picture, so I was directed to go to the very rear of the table for that photograph.

I noticed that the glare has got you kind of obscured.

But the attorney that follows direction.

There you go.

I want to take a moment and talk about our philosophy because I think that's important.

We believe that public service is the highest calling to which lawyers and legal professionals can aspire.

And that's important.

because the challenges that I think we face as local government attorneys are more than made up for the zeal that I think we bring to public service.

Being able to do the work that we do to help the process along both the legislative process that council and policy setting process that council brings

to the implementation of that process through the city manager's office and through all of the departments and boards and commissions that we represent.

I hesitate as a lawyer with a keen interest in the First Amendment to use this term, but public service in our profession really is a vocation.

And for those who have it, nothing else is as satisfying.

And I will tell you that from personal experience, I left public service for a while, well into my career, and I couldn't wait to get back.

And I think I speak for every lawyer and administrative professional on our staff that we all feel that way.

Now, it's appropriate, I think, at this juncture to talk about what our goal is.

as an office and it's a very straightforward one to be the best local government law office in this Commonwealth.

Now that's, I don't think, a far-fetched aspiration for this reason.

Charlottesville is a city that very much punches above its weight in many, many areas and that is reflected in the work that our office does because we are called upon

to punch above our weight in many ways on issues like farm-based zoning, collective bargaining, the transactions that we do, both real estate and contractual, that are really very similar to the same kinds of things

that I did in my prior job in a city that was about five times the size of Charlottesville.

And some of those issues, including collective bargaining and form-based zoning, were not even being seized upon by

by some of the largest localities in the Commonwealth.

It's really a very small group in central Virginia and some in northern Virginia.

So when you start with that base of touching those kinds of areas, I think that the aspiration to be the very best law firm that we can be both for the council, for the administration, and for the residents of this city is a realistic one and one that we take very seriously.

This is our staffing and as you can see we are a very flat organization.

You will hear me talk about the fact that we're a law firm and everybody's a partner and everybody has an important role to play.

The other thing I would point out is you see here a total of six lawyers and two

legal administrative professionals.

We are extraordinarily lean, I think, for the work that we do.

This is just a very simple slide about our budget, and I'm not going to spend a lot of time because there will be more to come here, except to say that one of the reductions

the city clerk alluded to earlier, which is a change in the location of the FOIA officer and records retention professional from our office to the city clerk's office.

We are absolutely fully in support of that, by the way.

because one of the interesting things is the FOIA officer is a very important client of ours and we give that person legal advice very regularly and so having that division we think makes sense.

I recall way back, I don't know if it was this year or last year, things kind of run together, but some notion of a ramped up version of whatever law

For the code?

Two issues going on.

First of all, as we have reviewed the code, we've noticed some little wrinkles that we'd like to get straightened out.

And I think as our office becomes, as we begin to catch up on some of the workload that perhaps built up in the approximately six months before I arrived,

We want to return to that.

But the other issue, I think, is to look seriously at a recodification of the city code, which addresses some of those issues that I think you're talking about.

Is the city code laid out in a way that makes sense, that is efficient?

Or is the placing of various

All that makes total sense.

I think what I will be referring to is some sort of new IT system that helps.

So I think one of the things that I take away, Councilor Pinkston, is we need to pull that contract and see what features there are to make that more

more user friendly.

There's a statement here about objectives and I'm just going to mention two that I think are overriding for this office.

The first is the strategic plan which the city manager alluded to earlier.

Our role is to provide the legal counsel which advances the council's strategic plan and we're intimately familiar with all ten of those goals and there are a number of legal issues embedded in those that we aspire to

to ensure that we're doing everything possible, that council's will is reflected in the strategic plan is being carried out.

The second item is perhaps obvious, but it's important to measure, and that is

On every legal matter that we touch, it is our duty to provide the very best legal outcome that we can.

That legal outcome can take many forms and can be very nuanced depending on the type of legal issue.

When it's litigation, winning, or resolving a case on terms that are favorable to the city.

On a transaction, ensuring that the deal goes through.

when that's in the best interest of the city and ensuring that those terms are fair to the city and protect the city from liability.

And I have some others here that in the interest of time I'll just mention

things that we're looking at.

One of the things that the city manager discusses on a regular basis with staff, including me, is the emphasis on processes.

And I think that that's something that we embrace enthusiastically because we think that can help us

deliver our services better.

We are going to ask of this council and of the city manager significant investment in professional training because that is so incredibly important in making us more effective at what we do.

We want to cross-train our legal professionals.

That work is underway now because we must be nimble as a law firm in order to do the best job that we can.

and the last one is to provide training to city staff and that's something that's already going on now both at the lead team level and at the departmental level that we think is helpful and I'll speak a little bit more about that perhaps when I give a report at the next meeting but we're excited about all of those things.

Success factors.

So we want to win.

We want things to go smoothly from a legal standpoint.

And you can see some of the measures that we're looking at here.

One of the issues that we grapple with is workload.

There's a tremendous amount of legal work for a city of our size.

And so marshaling legal resources we think are important.

And then obviously the other two bullets I think are

are straightforward and things I've alluded to earlier, so I won't spend any more time on those.

So challenges.

One of the challenges that we have, I'm still new to the job.

I would say workload is a significant challenge, but one that we are, I think, successfully addressing.

Procedures, tools and technology, and staffing.

And you'll be hearing a bit more from us

on some of those issues as we progress.

But along with challenges, there are opportunities.

I'd like to talk about those.

And some of the things that we're trying to concentrate on is building the city government's law firm, building our identity as the city government's law firm.

From this council, of course, the deputy city managers, but down to

to ordinary employees who may have an issue that we can help to address.

And when I was at a briefing that we recently did on some training, one of the first things that I said was, it's so great to see so many of our clients here today.

And I think I want them to understand that we're here for them, zealously represent them, protect them, and I think that that's very important.

We want to refine processes.

I've spoken to that and develop new ones.

I won't spend any more time on that.

And this last bullet, developing technology, Councillor Pinkston, you've already alluded to one issue that we may have there.

I will say that that does not necessarily mean buying new stuff.

I'm incredibly impressed with the information technology resources that the city has, and we're working on a process improvement that actually involves the development of a software app, I suppose you'd call it, that's going to allow us to be more effective in delivering our legal services, so we're grateful for that.

Then, before I take questions, I do want to take a moment to say how much I appreciate this council's confidence in consenting to my appointment as city attorney.

I want to tell you how much I appreciate the opportunity to be here and how exciting it is to be in a city like Charlottesville.

I have just one quick question.

You said that the staff is extremely lean for the amount of workload that there is.

So, since we've been talking about budget, there will likely be a request for some additional resources.

I'll give you a quick example.

The brave new world of collective bargaining is going to generate a significant amount.

It is, but will in the future, once those contracts are in place, generate additional legal work.

by virtue of those labor contracts.

Okay.

So Jay, you talked about the volume of work that is currently here, even before we get to collective bargaining.

Is that volume

unusual because of COVID and we got backed up.

Is that volume the nature of the beast for legal issues of cities?

Because you alluded to the fact as it relates to Charlottesville, a city of our size has a very heavy legal volume.

The fact that this council is embarking on initiatives that are

important and valuable, but they generate legal work.

Form-based zoning, your contemplation of your new zoning ordinance.

And we've gotten support and help on that, which has been very important.

Collective bargaining, which I've already alluded to,

some of the programs that the city engages in, the loan programs associated with some of our residents that go to the issue of affordability.

And then just a period during which you had a

support that was remote and some which was very effective and very helpful, but certainly a buildup in that period that we are now working through and doing so successfully, I think.

It certainly has kept us busy.

Okay.

So you're going to keep us off the front page?

I'm going to keep you off the front page, and I only want you appearing in an appeals court as the appellate, not as the appellee.

Okay.

And to your point,

Much of the work that we do is done quietly.

We want to preserve the attorney-client privilege.

We want to preserve the attorney-work product doctrine.

You're aware of that.

We like that.

Sometimes lawyers are best seen and heard quietly.

And so I've said this to the city manager on a number of occasions.

I'll say it to counsel too.

Questions?

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Good evening, Council.

I think I'm batting cleanup for you today for your first part of your meeting.

So Chris Engel, Director of Economic Development, pleased to be with you to share a little bit about our office and our FY25 outlook as we're embarking upon a new fiscal year cycle.

So thank you, David.

So, Office of Economic Development, we like to consider ourselves small but mighty in many ways.

And I'll get you to an org chart here in a minute that shows our staffing.

But we constitute another very small piece of the overall city pie, about $600,000 to operate our office in FY24.

which is to give context less than one-tenth of one percent of the entire entire budget I like to tell folks but we're involved in a variety of things and describe us as a Swiss Army knife sometimes a multi-tool if you will we get involved in

a little bit of a lot of things.

We're a mile wide and an inch deep in a lot of ways trying to help the business community do better and that's everything from startups to existing businesses to companies that might move here to connecting residents to opportunities to be employed at a city business and so our mission hasn't changed over the years.

We're a catalyst for private and public initiatives that create employment opportunities and a sustainable economy.

the strategic plan that you all just adopted very recently.

We fold up under economic prosperity most directly, but some of our work would touch on a few other elements of the nine key areas that you have adopted.

so some recent highlights just share with you most of you probably receive our bi-monthly newsletter if you don't we should certainly get you on that list we do an annual report that's a little more comprehensive in terms of identifying things throughout a course of a 12-month period that you certainly receive hard copy and digital version but just some recent highlights that are a little more

a little more relevant in the last few months just to kind of orient you to what what we're doing the ready to work program is a new program that we've launched it's in the workforce space led by Jenny Bechet one of our newer employees and that's a program that connects folks with some pretty rapid training in the soft skills primarily as we continue to hear that soft skills are a challenge

for employment across a variety of spectrums here in the city.

So some very quick 20 hours worth of soft skill training and then some coaching work

preparing resumes, doing some mock interviewing, and then connecting them with a guaranteed interview.

That's really what we were bringing to the table, and that's an interview with a city employer that has a need.

And so it's in its pilot phase.

We had our first graduate of the soft skills training just about a couple of weeks ago.

and then we have about 25 folks that are in the pipeline now at one phase or another of getting that training and then we're connecting them with guaranteed interviews with the hopes that they get employed.

So that's an example of a program there.

We facilitated a number of announcements in partnership with the Virginia Economic Development Partnership and the governor's office.

Two local companies were beneficiaries of the Virginia jobs employment program.

And we were very instrumental in our business visitation program, which visits businesses on a regular basis.

making them aware that they were qualifying for that and helping them through that process and facilitating those announcements.

53 new jobs and about 5 million in investment were categorized just in those two announcements which happened over the summer.

You all are familiar with the city's support for the Beacon Project being run by New Hill

Development Corporation and we were instrumental in a number of facets there including two state grants that are in process and then the city contribution as well and we're about to finalize that that

Grant agreement with them as their project is rapidly picking up steam.

They currently took over a space on Market Street that was previously occupied by another nonprofit, the PB&J Fund, you might recognize the name, which had a small kitchen in it as part of their mission.

That's a temporary space.

They took over an existing lease.

I was surprised because I knew they were talking about Carleton.

I was thinking.

Yes, it's temporary.

You all are certainly aware of our economic development strategic plan which was done this year with the help of a consultant and presented to council and multiple engagements.

That's now completed and we're ramping up to start actually working towards that tackling that plan.

It's fairly significant.

It's our first comprehensive plan in

at least 10 years.

So we are ramping up to start digging in on that.

And then another element that many don't realize, but the parking off street parking for the city, which constitutes about 1700 parking spaces through two garages and four lots rolls up under the Office of Economic Development.

and this past year significant renovations were done at both Market Street and Water Street to preserve that asset for the future and as you see here in our org chart you'll see

or staff member that's affiliated with that work.

Let me see here.

Here we go.

So the strategic plan that I mentioned, just a refresher on the five key goals that we have coming out of that.

equitable entrepreneurship, innovation and growth, intentional growth with with companies that are here predominantly not doing so much attraction, but helping our existing companies with their growth pathways for opportunity.

And that's really that connecting residents to opportunities for work and employment, gainful employment.

The ready to work program speaks to that.

Creative placemaking is speaking to the fact that we have a treasurer here in the downtown mall and other places within the city that need to be recognized and maintained and have investment in them so that they continue to be a long-term asset and then storytelling is

Another way of talking about communications and messaging and our consultant recognized the fact that we don't spend a lot of time and energy on that and we need to do better telling our own story.

So we made that an actual element of the plan to make sure we focus on it.

Some key metrics that are affiliated with that plan.

You've seen this at least one other time, but I just wanted to share with you some of the metrics that we would look at.

Many of these are not driven

100% by the work of our office but are really more citywide kind of metrics just to say what direction are the trends going and so we'll be tracking those to attach them to some of our work but also so the city has a sense of are these things going up or down median household income employment numbers business numbers and then we have a whole set of these that we've identified for measuring communities of color in terms of

household income, education, home ownership rates, and things of that nature.

And we specifically developed these in a way that these are derived using a methodology that uses census data as its background source so that we're not having to hire a consultant to create these on an annual basis.

So we have a baseline and we'll be annually updating these and having these available as part of our work with the strategic plan.

Here's our org chart.

We are a total of six full-time equivalents at the moment and we have one vacancy and one well two vacancies one that's about to be filled we have a new hire starting this month in the role of the assistant director and then we have one other position that we're working with HR on to reclassify and get that

put out so that we can hopefully by the end of the year be fully staffed at the six FTEs that we have an allotment for.

Has that been open for a while?

It's not a new position.

It's going to be a reworked position.

It has been open for about three months.

We had a departure earlier this year that made that an opening.

But we're trying to beef it up a little bit so that we can attract hopefully better candidates.

to that position.

So of the six, five of the FTEs breakdown on the economic development side.

The one other breaks is focused on parking, but just to

As we look forward we haven't fully put together our budget request yet it's early it's only October and we're early to go in this process but we don't anticipate any major increases or decreases other than cost of living most of our budget is comprised of staff staff support the one position that I mentioned we're hoping to fill that by the end of the year and our strategic plan is now complete and implementation is we are embarking on that

as we speak.

The Parking Enterprise Fund

No major changes there in terms of staffing.

We'll expect to stay at one person, the parking manager, to handle that work.

We are anticipating a rate increase to keep up with a monthly parking rate increase to keep up with our traditional every couple of years increase to help defray enhanced costs related to maintaining the parking.

Transient rates we anticipate remaining unchanged.

Structural Repairs I referenced earlier.

Fairly significant work that has happened just recently.

and we've been working with our new parking manager to really enhance the event related service that folks receive when they come for a special event.

As you can imagine, when lots of vehicles come at one time and leave at one time, it becomes challenging to get out.

And we've had some complaints in that area and we're working to alleviate those likely to include future new equipment that will help us with that significantly.

So more to come on that, but just to

Quick overview of that.

And that concludes the slideshow for today.

One question about the event parking.

Yes.

Considerable thought's been given to that.

Our equipment doesn't really accommodate it in its current form, which

We can do a workaround and we've considered that, but we haven't taken that step.

But that is an option that does happen in many places.

That generally could include receiving cash, which is something we would prefer to stay away from.

So we have to have the type of equipment that can handle that on entry.

There's a couple options, but yes, we are exploring it.

The new technology for parking actually moves away from gates and moves towards, you know, different mechanisms for capturing payment, using apps and different things.

So, Chris, your budget is, I think, $600,000.

So if there was a, you know, proposal, you know,

A business wanted to come in and needed some help, you know, you wanted to attract them, you would then turn to the CEDA, the Economic Development Authority.

Yes.

So if an incentive that

were to be offered by the city.

That would generally happen through the Economic Development Authority.

We have a couple of performance agreements in place and actually you all will be receiving a request for Friendship Court phase two, which has a performance agreement for phase one.

Those roll through the EDA and those

those allocate city dollars, city future tax dollars for the typically for that support.

So that would happen through the EDA, but it's essentially a pass through from the city in terms of tax dollars.

I know that many years, not many years, I don't know, seven, eight years ago, that Charlottesville, and I don't know if it was Charlottesville, Albemarle, this community, was one of the top places to go for small businesses to start, you know, to get going a lot of, you know, probably spinoff from UVA.

Is that still the case?

I know we don't have the capacity to attract, you know, a big company.

We just don't.

Yeah, so we don't do a great deal of, we don't do any outward business attraction.

Many other economic development organizations would typically go on marketing trips and talk to folks and things like that.

We've never done that.

We've not had the need for that as a 10 square mile city with most of us, most of our real estate spoken for in residential.

You know, we don't have business parks or industrial parks that the city manages or maintains.

and we don't have a lot of private sector vacancy.

So we don't engage in much of that.

So our focus is typically on entrepreneurship and helping small fledgling ideas grow, but also more

more specifically that kind of second stage business that starts to grow rapidly and needs some assistance.

The two that I referenced that received the state BJP dollars were in that boat where they evolved out of the university and over time got to a place where they were growing rapidly and thus qualifying.

So we spend a lot of time trying to help an existing business that's here that wants to grow, grow from five people to 10 people to 20 people as opposed to that

So what are you doing?

One of the things you mentioned, Chris, was we don't tell our story.

The city of Charlottesville does a lot and all you hear are the negatives.

We don't do a good job of talking about the positive things that we do.

What are you doing to

encourage that, but more importantly, what supports are you doing for minority businesses, particularly those of African Americans, indigenous people, other race individuals, because some of them have small businesses, some of them are trying to start up.

Sure.

So it's a two-part question.

I'll answer the last part first.

We have the Business Equity Fund, which was created by Council about five years ago, and it has been, it is held at CIC.

So that's a revolving loan fund for communities of color, BIPOC, if you will, small businesses that can qualify for low to no interest.

So it's zero to two percent, essentially, based upon their

and other factors.

So that's been in place.

Our Go Startup program is intended to also pair with that as a very entry level program for folks that have an idea and want to kind of get some business basics before they take the full CIC course or Piedmont course or something else.

at least those two components.

We also made a contribution this year to the Envision grant, which is housed at the United Way, also in conjunction with the county and the United Way fundraising, which is grants specific to minority businesses that are growing and that have been around for at least two years and are growing.

And seven folks just received those awards last month.

So the first round of that happened.

With respect to telling our story, both as a city and as the Economic Development Office, it's two pieces, but they do go together.

We need to do better at both.

The city doesn't have a real strong brand at the moment.

I think with the addition of a Director of Communication, that's probably one of the elements that will be worked on.

Internally, we need to tell

Okay, so the information about the biopic organizations is going to be in the next newsletter.

Which one?

The ones that just received your Envision grants, that'll be in the next newsletter.

Yeah, and I think that Friendship Corps performance agreement is a perfect example of how the EDA can be used creatively in a really positive way.

Same question I had for the city manager's office.

I know council had allocated some one-time funds to your department.

Yeah, a part of those got used for the contribution to Beacon.

I have to check the remaining balance.

I should know that.

But I think we do have some left and a little bit of runway on that.

There are some other elements that the city manager and I have been talking about recently with regard to homeless intervention and the downtown mall and surrounding areas that may speak for some of that.

And the other question, obviously the city recently acquired KTEC.

We haven't formally had those conversations.

I think we are interested and willing.

and kind of waiting for the dust to settle on the direction of what is KTEC and how that plays out.

Thank you.

Yeah, I had a really great conversation with Kim Powell from the schools a couple weeks ago, and it seems like they're really getting aligned on how they're going to make that work.

I can't remember the name of the person from the- Sarah Morton.

Yeah, Sarah Morton.

Okay.

Thank you.

We're ready.

Okay.

We're done.

Okay.

I was just wondering.

It was me.

I saw an interloper in the back.

You speak next time.

Okay.

So here we go.

I move that City Council close this open meeting and convene a closed meeting for the following purposes.

One, as authorized by the Code of Virginia Section 2.2-3711A8 for consultation with the City Attorney regarding legal matters requiring the provision of legal advice, specifically legal matters regarding the proposed Zero East High Street development.

Okay.

Let's see.

Casting our votes.

Yes.

Okay, that motion passes.

Council is now going to go into a closed meeting.

We will return at 630.

For those joining by Zoom, there's a different link for the 630 meeting, so sign on there.

See you in about 52 minutes.

My clock still says 629, but let's go ahead and get started.

We'll begin the 630 business meeting with a moment of silence, please.

Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, let's vote please.

Now we can begin the business meeting and we'll have a moment of silence please, thank you.

Thank you.

Vice Mayor Wade Yes, I have a proclamation for Digital Inclusion Week, whereas broadband service plays an important role in civic and cultural participation, lifelong learning and access to essential services for communities in the city of Charlottesville and nationally, nearly half of all people who are digital

disconnected are people of color and are less likely to have a broadband internet connection or a desktop or laptop at home.

And whereas the city of Charlottesville remains committed to closing the digital divide for its residents, including collaboration with the regional digital equity coalition partners, including Albemarle County Broadband

Accessibility and Affordability Office, the University of Virginia, Charlottesville City Schools, Java, Jefferson Madison Regional Library, the Blue Ridge Health District, the Piedmont Housing Alliance, all of whom are working to launch programs that address barriers to digital equity, including distributing Wi-Fi hotspots, providing digital skills training, distributing laptops,

and tablets and coordinated the development of a digital equity plan.

And now therefore be it proclaimed that the city of Charlottesville declares that the week of October the 6th, I'm sorry, the 2nd through the 6th, 2023 as digital inclusion week in Charlottesville.

Thank you.

And we're presenting this to Sue Moffat and Jason Ian Fuentes.

All right.

On behalf of this coalition, thank you for this recognition.

I'd like to take a moment to thank the rest of our coalition, including Sue Moffitt with City DSS, Jen Fleischer from the Blue Ridge Health District,

Ginger Dillard from the Jefferson Area Board for Aging, Kathryn Fay from the Jefferson Madison Regional Library, our partners with Almarle County and Charlottesville Public Schools, the Equity Center at the University of Virginia, Network to Work and TJ Ace at Piedmont Virginia Community College, the Broadband Office at the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development, and the National Digital Inclusion Alliance for organizing this week to celebrate digital inclusion efforts.

Digital inclusion happens when everyone in a community has access to the digital resources they need to participate in our modern world.

And the result is a more connected community that is able to take part in online learning, enroll in needed services, participate in e-commerce, receive telehealth services, and possibly most of all, connect with their community, whatever shape it might take.

This coalition formed to develop sustainable partnerships and programs to address barriers to digital access throughout our community.

Sure.

Proclamation.

Fire Prevention Week, October 8th through 14th, 2023, cooking safety starts with you.

Whereas the city of Charlottesville is committed to ensuring the safety and security of all who live and visit our city, and whereas fire is a serious public safety concern and homes are the locations where people are at greatest risk from fire, home fires killed more than 2,800 people in the United States in 2021 according to the National Fire Protection Association.

and whereas the fire departments in the United States responded to 338,000 home fires in 2021 and since January 1st, 2023 the Charlottesville Fire Department has extinguished over 60 building fires and more than 70 kitchen fires contained to the stove or container and whereas cooking is the leading cause of home fires in the United States two of every five home fires start in the kitchen with 31% of these fires resulting from unattended cooking

and more than half of reported non-fatal home cooking fire injuries occurred when the victims tried to fight the fire themselves.

And whereas children under five face a higher risk of non-fire burns associated with cooking than being burned in a cooking fire, Charlottesville residents should turn pot handles toward the back of the stove

Always keep a lid nearby when cooking.

Keep a three-foot kid-free zone around the stove, oven, and other things that could get hot.

Watch what they heat and set a timer to remind them that they are cooking.

And whereas residents who have planned and practiced a home fire escape plan are more prepared and will therefore be more likely to survive a fire and whereas

Working smoke alarms cut the risk of dying and reported home fires by almost half through a recent community development grant.

CF Charlottesville Fire Department installed 408 smoke alarms, 807 stove top fire stops, and 469 carbon monoxide detectors and continues to offer installations for city residents.

and whereas the 2023 Fire Prevention Week theme, cooking safety starts with you, pay attention to fire prevention reminds us to stay alert and use caution when cooking to reduce the risk of kitchen fires.

Just quickly, I want to thank you all very much, Mayor and Councilors, for this.

And we'll be out in the public all week next week doing pop-up events in neighborhoods to look for our press release this week.

And then our stations will be open Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, 4.30 to 6.30 for anyone to stop by Ridge Street or Fontaine and visit the fire station.

We'll have public safety material for them and stuff.

Great.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Yes.

I would move that, I move that we appoint Lindsey Ideson to the retirement plan commission.

Okay, any discussion?

Cast your vote, please.

5-0.

Motion passes.

Ms.

Thomas, would you please read the consent agenda?

Consent agenda number three minutes July 17th regular meeting.

There was a correction to page two of the minutes under item number two.

So a scrivener's error has been corrected and posted September 12th joint city council planning commission public hearing number four resolution to appropriate funds from the Bureau of Justice Assistance FY 2022 Patrick Leahy bulletproof vest partnership

$16,942, one of two readings.

Five, resolution to appropriate Virginia Department of Emergency Management Emergency Management Performance Grant $7,500, one of two readings.

Six, resolution to appropriate VDOT TAP funding for Meadow Creek Trail and Bridges $800,000, one of two readings.

Seven, Resolution to Appropriate Virginia Juvenile Community Crime Control Act Grant, $452,704.

Thank you.

So we'll now take public comment regarding items on the consent agenda just read by the Deputy Clerk.

Each speaker will have up to three minutes.

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

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

We will alternate in person and virtual speakers.

This is only to talk about those five items.

The things that I suspect most of you are here to talk about are not for right now, but will be in a couple of minutes.

Is there anybody in council chambers who would like to speak on one of the consent agenda items?

Yes, Mayor Snook, I see what appears to be six individuals on here with raised hands that all have the same name, so I can certainly call on one of them.

All right.

And we'll see what happens.

You guys hear me?

Alright, how about now?

There we go.

So I believe we need to buy more bulletproof vests.

These are for the police, right?

Right.

Yeah, definitely get more bulletproof vests for the police because all these crazy niggers that are just running around shooting people, you can't be too safe.

You can't cut me off.

It's called the First Amendment.

You have three minutes, sir.

Well, it's not about being persuasive.

I'm just telling the truth.

I mean, look at the crime rates.

I mean, across the United States.

Excuse me, I'm speaking.

So 60% of all violent crime is done by... Actually, it is protected by the First Amendment, unfortunately.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

60% of all violent crime is done by those niggers.

So, you know, it's about time that white people like me stood up for ourselves and called this out.

Because we didn't even bring the niggers here.

Cut it off.

Okay.

Okay.

Nope.

Is the speaker, okay, it's not still with us.

All right, is there anybody else who would like to speak on the topic of one of these consent agenda items?

Yeah, I'd be interested a little more about the $800,000 from VDOT to the Meadow Creek Trail.

Do we?

Chris.

Certainly we have been working on constructing a trail from Greenbrier Park over to Mickey Drive.

This is a large chunk of that trail system's been funded through Department of Transportation, Department of Conservation, Recreation, local money, some of our tarp money, some of our surplus.

So it's a conglomeration of state, federal, multi-state and

multi-local funds.

VDOT authorized an additional $800,000 to make sure we get this project across the finish line.

Thank you.

Definitely.

Thank you.

It'll add to the overall pot we have for the project, which is just about to get through all of its engineering and design hurdles and go to construction bids soon.

All right.

Thank you.

Okay, any further questions or comments?

Do we have a second?

Second.

Okay, please cast your vote.

Yes, sir, there is.

Good evening, counselors and members of the public.

I just have a couple of remarks in advance of me actually moving through the presentation of my work plan as well as responding to our priority with the homeless intervention strategy.

I just want to start with saying that today is my 61st day as your city manager.

As planned, tonight I present to you the work plan that will guide what I will be doing for the next year or the rest of this fiscal year.

But before I review that document with you, I felt that it was important for me to make a few remarks in regards to what has actually been happening in our community for the past couple of weeks.

In July, when council identified me as the choice to serve as the next city manager, I made a few observations about Charlottesville that I think are important for me to restate tonight.

Charlottesville is consistently punching above its weight class.

That makes us exceptional when comparing efforts to cities three and ten times our size.

I noted that we are striving to make a difference in the lives of all of our residents and I'm emphasizing all.

I acknowledge that we absolutely do have two life experiences in our city and we must continue to bridge that divide.

I also said that we must intervene with long enduring and appropriate efforts to reduce gun violence.

We have to produce and preserve affordable housing.

We have to work to effectively address the many challenges facing our unhoused population.

and we have to ensure that this government remains strong, functional, financially sound and disciplined.

And finally, I said, I accept this assignment to lead the charge and I look forward to talking with anyone who is willing to not only engage in problem identification, but also solution consideration.

I do not make decisions from the dais.

I do not do knee jerk reactions.

I strive to solve problems, not just identify them and talk about them at the surface.

I did not decide to lift the closing hours of Market Street Park under duress or without regard for police department.

I actually made the decision to protect our officers and the unhoused.

I did not want to subject any of them to any additional interaction that could go terribly wrong.

And I wanted to give our chief the opportunity to fully assess the situation which has now been done.

I recognize the situation is uncomfortable, untenable, and unsustaining, but for ten days now I have been buried in obvious statements

impossible demands untrue assertions and most definitely a series of angry messages expressing disappointment disregard disrespect and dismay I've been told to tell people to get out of the park give us our park bag I don't care where they go you are focused on the wrong thing I'll admit that has been hard to hear not because I can't take the criticism but because I accept that I can't accept that the desire to transfer a problem is the right way to go we need to solve the problem

I don't apologize for caring about people.

I won't apologize.

It is people in process that I have repeatedly referenced as what matters to me the most.

The challenges facing the unhoused population is a total community issue.

I understand that we have never had a comprehensive plan for addressing homelessness.

I now commit to seeing that one gets built.

I have a caring staff who have been working well beyond their scope to fill gaps as they recommend a host of actions only to see them never move forward.

I have assured them we will move.

I myself have heard criticism of service providers directly from members of the unhoused community.

And while I don't believe everything that I hear,

I want to take those concerns to those individuals and I want to talk to them about them and let's figure out how to fix that and that's how to focus on continuing to help the people who need them.

Council recently adopted a vision that states Charlottesville will be a place where everyone thrives.

I submit that the reference to everyone in this vision should include even those who don't have an address.

So now I'm going to move on with the action plan and this is just the moment I felt it was necessary to let everybody know who I am.

and I can't get this to work.

I could just state very briefly, we've gotten some emails from folks expecting us to, this is some of the direct words, discipline our city manager, criticize him for this action.

And I want to say affirmatively, we are not going to do that.

This is why we hired him as our city manager.

So enough of that.

So let's move on.

Let's get to work.

This is what this is all about.

This is about work.

This action plan covers the period of August 1st, 2023 to June 30th, 2024.

It is based on my start date, which is in this current fiscal year going through June 30th of next year.

I'm going to present a new fiscal year work plan to Council in July.

At the start of each fiscal year is the intention.

The work plan will be directly tied to Council's strategic plan.

I will provide quarterly progress reports by updating the document, reviewing during my report, and replacing an online version so that the public can actually see that as well.

This document will be emailed to Council and posted on the City Manager's page tomorrow, and that is what I wanted to make sure everyone understood.

The format of this work plan is based on smart goal setting models.

Specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and time bound.

That's why it's laid out the way that you see it there.

Excuse me, I can't hardly read that.

I can't read that.

All right, thank you.

David, can you make it a little bit bigger just because it is

I don't know if you can.

But there with nine strategic outcome areas and a commitment makes it ten.

That's a lot.

And I've shared that with council that that is a lot.

What I'm going to do tonight is just highlight four of them and just show you how the document works.

This is me teaching you how to use the document as the public.

When you look at it, you'll know how to look at it and what it will do and what it will tell you.

So the first column are action items.

Those are the things that we are committing to do under each of the bolded items at the top which are the strategic outcome areas for council.

All nine of them plus the commitment appear in this document.

It's a multi-page, eight-page document.

Those action items are the things that we're going to work on specifically.

The target measure is how we're going to measure success.

What is it that we're going to do that is then going to be looked at at the end of this fiscal year and these five will tell me if I've done a good job or not.

The completion date is the time bound.

That is when we're going to have it done.

You see some things don't have dates because we're still trying to figure those out.

And as I give you updates, we will put those dates in there so that everyone will see that as well.

Ideally, the plan is to take the references to quarter, like it says third quarter under operationalized JEDI under completion date, third quarter, second quarter, second quarter.

At some point, I will change that to a specific date so that we'll be able to tell you exactly when it will be ready, when it will be presented, and when people can actually react to what it is.

So in looking at the commitment to justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion, I put that first because it was council's commitment that they decided they wanted to make sure it was prominent across their strategic plan.

The commitment is that this is going to be an effort that we undertake across the entire organization.

Our Deputy City Manager for Racial Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, Ashley Marshall, is responsible for leading this charge.

So she's going to be putting together a performance framework that will be laying out exactly what's going to get done.

We identified that we wanted to have an Office of Equity and Inclusion.

We'll be renaming that, of course, now that we're saying JEDI and not just Equity and Inclusion.

But that will be a commitment to develop a work plan

specifically to that area where all departments will engage in identifying what are they doing in the equity space.

The goal is to make sure that it is not just happening at the top, it is happening everywhere.

That is how we can make the difference and make the changes that we're saying that we want to make.

I like that voice.

So we're going to pursue the implementation of critical response programming.

So if you see that as the fourth item under the commitment to justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion, that's Marcus Alert, alternative response team, opioid abatement.

These are big things.

We got information from the state that doesn't tell us exactly how to do those things.

We have to figure those things out.

There's work that needs to be done.

what I'm showing you in the resource allocation column is who's going to be doing that work so each of these columns each of these boxes is going to have maybe one person if it's only one person doing the work or if it's 10 people doing the work I've identified those 10 so you see in that particular box there are seven people that are identified and they're not the only ones doing the work but they're the seven leaders of that work they'll be working together

And then the notes section will tell you things that I'll be notating along the way.

Maybe that we had a hiccup, we've been set back, we're not going to necessarily get this done at this point, or surprise, we found out about this, or we landed money to do this.

I'll be able to report on that as well.

So it's meant to be an interactive document, but it actually is a road map.

This is to tell you where I'm going based on what they have told me they wanted to get done.

When you, the community, take a look at it, then ultimately I hope

that you will find that everything that we've been talking about is there in some form or fashion.

So I'm going to move on to the next topic is affordable housing.

That's there in the middle.

It's not a whole lot there because we've got to figure out a whole lot of things that we can do, but we are implementing an affordable housing plan, which is a very good document.

It's very detailed, very complex in what it says that we need to do.

There are specific target measures that I'm identifying that we should be able to make significant progress on, get some serious traction on, and then we may add additional items to that depending on what develops over the course of the rest of the next few months.

and again in resource allocation you see that's what five people there, seven people there that are doing that work.

I have developing a homeless intervention strategy.

We're going to go there in just a second and go a little bit deeper into that.

I've identified an internal work group and I've asked Ashley Marshall to lead that effort because I think it's important for us to make sure that we can go where we need to go on that issue and that means we have to go deep.

There's a lot to be done.

The last thing that I'm going to focus on just for this document is about organizational excellence.

This is important for us as a government.

In order for the government to be responsive, we have to be strong.

We have to be sustained.

We have to be available, and we have to be responsive.

So I'm recognizing that and identifying that this is an important priority for us.

Council made it an important priority, and then I'm laying out in this document what are some of the things that we're doing.

First there that you see rebuild staff capacity, and that's simply hiring a bunch of people for a

or a bunch of vacancies that we have, but there's more.

Improving our staff morale.

If our staff are happy at doing their job, they serve our public better.

I believe that to my core.

I have said that since I've been here to every employee that works here.

They have heard two words from me.

Service and Impact.

We have to give good service and we impact lives all day, every day.

It is important for us to lead that way and live that way.

And I'm doing everything that I can to support them and making them understand that that is not a choice.

That is actually just a way that we should be.

We're completing a compensation and class modernization effort.

That box has a lot of things in there.

That's a lot of work.

Ultimately, that is the best way for me to improve staff morale, to be perfectly honest, because if people are coming to work and they feel like they're undervalued, they are not paid what they believe they are due, they won't necessarily be able to give me their best.

If I can fix that, I can get their best, and I can at least ask for it.

And if they don't give it to me, I can ask them to move along.

So I think what we're trying to do here is just help everybody understand that we're working together.

We're also integrating collective bargaining.

That's a big, big project for us.

It is going to be a very costly project for us.

We're going with three units, police, fire, and transit.

Others can join later, but there's a lot of work and it is a process.

It is something that we don't have control over how it goes until the very end when a contract is presented to me and I have to sign it.

or not, and then we do something else about it.

The goal for me is to ensure that through our process, it won't be a question of whether or not I'll sign it.

The goal will be that it makes sense and we will get that done and bring it to council.

Producing a comprehensive communications plan.

We need to do better at our engagement activities so that the public better understands what we're doing.

How are we doing it?

What can you do to help us?

What do you want to do with us?

I think there are ways that we can fix that and we'll continue to work on that.

And naturally, a balanced budget.

We've got to be able to stay within our means in order to do the things that we want to do.

So you saw organizational excellence took up a whole page because it's important for us to remember if we're strong, we can be strong.

All right, David, I think you'll go ahead and switch to the next sheet.

I wanted to go deeper into homeless intervention because I know there's a lot of people who want to hear what I have to say in that regard.

And I just want to be able to express to you that homeless intervention across this country is probably the number one issue facing governments.

I just got back today from being in Austin for a couple of days.

Cut that trip short because I thought it was important for me to be back here.

But every government leader that was there was talking about homelessness.

They talked about it as a top priority.

And we were in Austin, Texas, where they've done some amazing things, but yet I saw homeless individuals on the streets.

So my point to everyone is that we will do our best to do the best that we can in this space.

I think it's important that you see something like this this soon in my tenure is to demonstrate that I'm committed to wanting to do something to make a difference about how we go about doing this work.

Because this is not something that I understand that has ever been produced and put in front of anyone to say, here's the short term, here's the midterm, and here's some long term.

Others may have it in regards to their organizations, but collectively it is not my understanding that that is the case.

So in the short term category, we're going to do some things and we're working on some things and Market Street Park has consumed the conversation, but it's not really the short term.

It really isn't.

There's some real serious short term things that need to be done.

We need to identify who can actually operate a shelter.

That's number one.

We need to know how many of them might actually be able to do overnight shelter, which is very different than just a day shelter, right?

I mean, a day shelter is a good thing, but an overnight shelter is something altogether different because they're going to be there and somebody's going to stay awake and be involved and be involved in what's going on.

It requires another skill set.

It requires some additional things, some additional matters that have to be taken into consideration.

It's a costly operation.

It is not for the faint of heart.

We recognize that.

So we want to make sure that we understand how to support that.

We need plans.

We need to make sure that we understand how many beds can we support.

How many beds do we need?

Do we need less in the winter?

Do we need more in the winter?

I don't know.

Those are the things that I have as questions that we've got to figure out.

There's some midterm actions.

We need to acquire a space so that we can make sure that there is a building of some size.

But I'm not running to do that at this moment because I don't know how big that facility needs to be and I don't know if it's one, two, or three facilities.

Because in the population there are differences amongst what the issues are and we need to address them where they are.

And that might mean that we have this facility does this one, this facility does this, and another facility does this.

And they can be all different sizes.

I think that's part of the question.

We need to do this from a regional perspective.

Our regional partners are simply, is simply the county.

That's who's going to be our partner.

We're not going to get the support from the other counties around us where people are coming to get services here, but the county sees it and they've already identified that they're interested, they're willing to support, and they want to be a part of the solution.

I have a meeting this week.

I had a conversation on Friday and I have a meeting this week to continue that because I do believe that they're serious about joining us in that effort.

I also want to point out that this is complex.

There is no quick fix.

There's no simple answer.

There's no easy solution.

It is going to be painful.

The community has to appreciate that.

It is going to hurt to be able to deal with this in more ways than one.

One of the big ways is if you want me to really, really solve the problem in the best way that I know how, I would just say everybody who is willing to go to a local bank, open a change fund, and put as much money in it as you possibly can.

It is a very, very expensive operation to do that.

So that in itself says that this is not an easy thing for us to just wipe away as a problem.

It doesn't happen that way.

It is very, very complex.

It's very complicated and costly.

We need some midterm and long-term actions, and that's what I want to focus on and make sure that we are going somewhere

We're getting somewhere and I'll come back and report to you how we're doing.

This task force is made up of very qualified staff members of our team who've been working in this space for years and they know some things that we need to do and they have questions.

We also need to go and sit down with more of our providers and find out what else and get their list.

What is it that you want to do?

What else can you do?

How can you do that?

Is it going to check as many of these boxes as possible?

And then I'm just going to simply go back to say to you about Market Street Park.

I never said it was permanent

The intention was to ensure that I could make sure that our police department and the unhoused population did not have any further negative interactions because I thought that was important.

I wanted to give the chief the space that he needed to do the investigation that he did.

And now that that is done, it is time for us to figure some things out.

That is what we're working on.

We are in conversation with Pacham to see if it's possible to open the shelter early.

We are looking at additional locations that possibly could be made available to them.

I think what I want everyone to understand and appreciate at this moment is we're trying.

I'm not sitting here not doing anything.

We are trying.

We are having conversations.

We're having conversations in different ways than we ever have had.

And we're trying to figure out what is the best way to do it with dignity and to make sure that the individuals land in a better place.

That's the point of any effort that we should undertake.

Yeah, I really, really appreciate all of that and the passion that your intensity that you're bringing to this issue that is very visible and important, I guess urgent, but also all the other things that are important in their own ways.

And I really agree with your point about organizational excellence.

I think that that is

A failure to really tend to that over the last couple of decades, frankly, is one reason why we're struggling in so many ways.

So I really applaud that.

And I know, as you said, when it comes around to funding things, that's when the proof will be in the pudding.

Yeah, I concur your comments about the morale of the staff is the utmost important.

I think that that will be critical as we move forward because that was something that, you know, we heard a lot when we were campaigning about the morale of the staff and it has an impact on how the city can carry out its services.

And earlier we got an update on the budget.

and I know that you've been working hard to address the Market Street issue over the weekend.

We probably received several hundred emails on it and I certainly didn't read every word of every last one but I got the sense of them all and it is a difficult issue to address and I know that I'm glad you let the public know that this is something that we are working on.

We're trying to find a solution and it's just

It's difficult.

Thank you for your attention to detail.

What happened at our last meeting was unfortunate.

I think it brought certain things to light but it also in my mind let us know the following day that there was someone that has been selected to lead our city that cares about everyone that is sitting in this room.

There is no difference because he sees all of us

in this room and in this community as human beings that need to be treated with respect.

None of us have chosen our circumstances and now Mr. Sanders is faced with addressing circumstances that are not palatable for anyone

No one wants to live outside.

No one wants to sleep on a sidewalk.

No one wants to be cold.

And Mr. Sanders does not want that for anyone, whether you're on the property of Market Street or anywhere else.

And he's committed

to working with all of the people within the organization.

He is committed to working with council.

He is committed probably to opening that little account at an unnamed bank at this point that people will go and put their pennies, their nickels, their dimes, their dollars.

But he's willing to find the money to help.

We can give lip service from now until the day the cows come home, as my grandma used to say, but at some point we have to take action.

But the thing that I hope all of us recognize is that it is a process and it's going to take time, which you have before you on my screen, on that screen, on this screen, and on that screen in the back for the gentleman that couldn't see initially.

short-term, mid-term, and long-term solutions.

So we have to follow the process because if we have a building tomorrow and that building isn't what it should be, we're right back where we started.

We are right back where we started.

And he's committed to not having anyone

be treated inhumanely.

So yes, a lot of people felt that on Tuesday, two weeks ago, Mr. Sanders made a knee jerk reaction, but he did not.

He took into consideration people.

He took into consideration the people that lived in the Market Street Park.

He took into consideration the employees of the CPD and he allowed

the CPD to do what it needed to do because if action needed to be taken, our Chief of Police should be the person to do that.

What you're seeing tonight is Mr. Sanders' actions for those persons that are currently in Market Street Park.

and beyond because everybody's not in Market Street Park.

There are people that are homeless or unhoused.

I hear those words used interchangeably.

I do not want to be disrespectful to anyone.

So whichever one of those terms you feel that you're comfortable with, that is fine.

But everyone is not in Market Street Park.

But he is dealing with the collective of the homeless slash unhoused.

And we must give him and his team an opportunity to do their due diligence.

Well, there's not too much to add on top of that.

I will say eagerly await some of the budget requests.

I know for myself I'm absolutely ready and open this upcoming budget cycle for it to be one of our top priorities in terms of figuring out where we're going to invest that money as well as some of the unspent accounts we have of one-time money from ARPA and other sources looking at those as potential areas to make investments in the short term.

And I will say again if

It wasn't clear.

I think both the city manager and the council are legitimately open from individual members of the public, nonprofits, private sectors to come to the table with us with any ideas or solutions you have.

because as you made clear, there are not any easy overnight or inexpensive solutions.

And we are very open to any suggestions.

And I know not everybody wants to work from the inside.

That's not everybody's role.

But whether we love it or hate it, the city and our zoning, our budget is going to have to play a role.

There are three open seats on our Housing Advisory Committee that anyone can apply for and be part of that organization to try to inform our policy.

And there are many other avenues that we're willing and waiting for people to come to us with what is a solution, what's a budget allocation, what's a potential property for acquisition, anything.

So thank you.

And let me just add, I've spent

Oh, boy.

How many hours over the last week responding to the emails that we've gotten?

And I'll tell you, the emails that I have personally received, about 100 on this topic, most of them are opposed to they want us to kick people out of Market Street Park.

some cases they said we should do something about our city manager and so on and I responded to all of them and basically to explain why we were doing what we were doing and what the

even if we didn't have the details of a plan yet that we're working on a plan.

We're working the problem as they would say in NASA.

But I also wanted to add one other thought.

About half of the emails that we received were from people outside of Charlottesville.

they were from Fluvanna County interestingly there's a large contingent of people in Fluvanna who are very concerned about this issue lots of people from Albemarle and I say this not because I want to make fun of their opinions or because I want to deride them but to emphasize a very important point Charlottesville being the center of this region we have

We are the leaders in many ways.

We are also the magnet for a lot of people, particularly when outlying counties specifically and intentionally try to be inhospitable to their own homeless people so that they will come to Charlottesville.

I talked to one official from an outlying county who told me that's what they were trying to do.

So this is not just me being conspiratorial.

This is what they're telling me.

The consequence, I think, is that we have to recognize that it is a regional problem.

It will have a regional solution.

And when I've written back to the people who live in Albemarle County, I have written back to say, please

Talk to your Board of Supervisors, folks.

I appreciate the fact that you're writing to city councilors, but talk to your leaders, your elected leaders, and let's get this thing figured out together.

And I will say that I've talked to a number of the members of the Board of Supervisors recently

and they are interested in working together.

This is not going to be a situation where we're fighting against them.

We, I hope, will be working with them in a way that will help solve these problems.

And Mr. Sanders, I really appreciate all of the time that you have spent.

I have told people and somebody was complaining that, well, he hasn't written me back.

I said, well, he's been busy.

So we'll work on that.

I wrote back on your behalf.

We'll work on that and we'll get a solution.

And I'm very impressed with what you've given to us.

I do want to add one other thing.

When I was fussing about city management issues over the last couple of years, I was noting that in 2019, our then city manager, Dr. Richardson,

was given a laundry list from city council of like 74 things they wanted the city manager to be working on.

And I said, my reaction was, that's not a work plan.

That's a laundry list.

It's not a work plan.

and so I was fussing at him about it.

And so when I drafted a sort of initial effort to communicate with Mr. Sanders about what I thought a work plan ought to look like, I put about eight or ten items on there.

And he comes back with his own, you know, however, six pages or whatever.

So if any of you sit there and say, wait a minute, wasn't Mr. Snook saying something about not having a laundry list for the city manager?

Be aware, it's his list.

Okay?

We appreciate the fact that you understand how many things there are that have got to be worked on and we will certainly all be helping in every way we can.

I think we can consider his city manager's report as his reply to all of the plethora of emails that people said and he hasn't responded yet.

Community Matters.

We have eight pre-registered speakers.

There were other folks who are listed on the wait list.

Be aware that being on the wait list doesn't mean you necessarily become the 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, and so on.

But we will take the first eight off the list and then

We will open it up to one from here, one from online, one from here, one from online until we get through 16.

The way we do it is we get 16 up front at the beginning part of the meeting.

There will be another opportunity for additional comment at the end of things, but only 16 right now so that we can get on to the

to the other items that are on the agenda.

So with that in mind, we've got eight speakers.

If one of them is unavailable, we'll move somebody up on the wait list.

Is the first speaker available?

I've got Matthew Hall as being the first speaker.

I may as note, counselors, thank you.

Good evening.

My name is Matthew Hall.

I'm a lifelong resident of Charlottesville and I have lived in an apartment on the downtown mall for the last eight years.

I'm here to talk about deteriorating conditions in our city's public spaces, especially the mall.

Our city is attracting an increasing number of homeless individuals from jurisdictions across the state and even outside of Virginia.

At the same time as this population is growing, the city has largely eliminated the tools of law enforcement designed to maintain order and civility in our city's public spaces.

Joe Platania's office generally declines to prosecute disorderly conduct and similar offenses and our understaffed police force is not going to make arrests that they know will not lead to charges.

This means that when an individual is on the mall screaming obscenities, throwing trash, and generally making the area a terrible place for anyone else to be, there is no response from our government and they are free to continue doing so for as long as he likes.

Open air hard drug use, which unfortunately I witness on the mall on a regular basis, gets much the same response, which is to say, none.

Antisocial behaviors that degrade public spaces for everyone, like public urination, blasting amplified music and littering are being allowed to run unchecked.

The cumulative effect of the mix of policies from Mr. Platania's office, the police department, and this council is that what should be shared public spaces that are safe and hospitable for all of Charlottesville to use are being taken over by those who are most abusive of our city's permissive policies.

The city's current approach of simultaneously providing relatively generous services and declining to police or prosecute these kinds of aggressive behaviors means that in practice Charlottesville's residents are not being asked to share parks and public spaces.

We are being asked to seed them.

I expect many of the commenters here tonight are here specifically to discuss the encampment in Market Street Park and to encourage the city to make further accommodations for our growing homeless population.

But the larger issue of increasingly inhospitable and unsafe public spaces is going to remain whether or not the city decides to re-implement the park curfew and whether or not the city decides to build a shelter.

The problem is not just where people are going to sleep, it's how they are going to be permitted to behave in shared public areas.

I hope the city sees this and will take action to rebalance law enforcement policies to include the rights of all of the city's residents to safe welcoming public spaces.

Thank you, Mr. Holm.

Thank you.

The second person is Katie Dela Cruz.

Ms.

Good evening, Council.

My name is Kati.

I'm a student at UVA here in solidarity with the unhouse community.

I want to thank the city manager as well for taking this issue seriously.

But I also want to remind the rest of the community of some things and some larger issues.

So seeing our community members with no other choice to live on the street should make us uncomfortable.

not because our unhoused neighbors are dangerous or because they pose us a threat.

The violence we see in our community is because of the conditions that those in power have created.

Unlike the white supremacist logic we just heard in the speakers of this room,

Instead of making an enemy out of somebody who is suffering, we need to make an enemy of the conditions that cause people to suffer in Charlottesville.

There are larger issues that we must interrogate.

It should make us uncomfortable that the city creates criminals when they write unhelpful policy, like outlawing panhandling on the downtown mall in 2011, which was ruled unconstitutional, or removing all the benches on the downtown mall so no one can rest there.

It's not a coincidence that the

The downtown mall is a disappointment to tourists and locals who have nowhere to sit and that our community members in crisis are now finding respite in parks.

As a UVA student, it makes me uncomfortable the way my university has worked with Charlottesville's local government to harass unhoused people who find themselves near grounds, and how UVA has increased displacements of people and gentrification of communities not associated with the university by not providing more student housing, especially when many of the people that I stand here today to be in solidarity with come from communities that had their ancestors' labor stolen to build UVA and the rest of the city.

It makes me uncomfortable that the Charlottesville police can spin the story to shame us out of speaking up about what we know is true.

Charlottesville police demonstrated at its recent press conference that it is more interested in its reputation than keeping our community safe.

I urge you all to use your power to divest money from the jail and the police to reinvest your resources in things that can truly keep our community safe like more affordable housing units.

Additionally, you must permanently lift the curfew in the park so that more harm is not caused.

Thank you.

Good evening.

I'm here to speak about the site plan proposal for Zero East High Street to request that City Council, oh, sorry, I'm Rebecca Riley and I live on Caroline Avenue.

I'm requesting that City Council uphold the decision made by the Planning Commission in August and to review the remaining public facilities, the widening of Caroline and Fairway Avenues and the water and sewer lines proposed in the preliminary site plan.

Caroline and Fairway are both in the floodplain and the specific area in question has multiple road made flood signs posted.

Additional impervious surface and increased traffic will go against the city's comprehensive plan objectives of protecting the river corridor and creating roadways that are safe for pedestrians and cyclists.

I'd also like to remind council members of the large community concern that's been raised with regard to this proposal.

I have no idea how many calls and emails you've received, but I did see the hundreds of people that came out to the August 8th Planning Commission meeting.

The river is very important to our entire city, not just the people who live immediately adjacent to it, and I request that you vote to protect it from irresponsible development.

Thank you, Ms.

Riley.

Good evening.

I'm Anna Mendez.

I'm the Executive Director of The Haven.

I want to thank City Manager Sanders for ceasing enforcement of the constitutionally dubious curfew.

As I briefed the PCOB two months ago, the Ninth Circuit's opinion in Martin v. Boise found that prohibiting people who are experiencing homelessness for whom no shelter beds exist

from sleeping in public spaces violates the constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment.

I would like to remind our community that depending on this season, our Charlottesville community is short between 35 and 70 shelter beds.

I would also like to reiterate the Haven's request for a city resolution indicating a willingness to proceed with exemption from local property tax.

This is the next step in our ability to take legal ownership of 112 West Market Street and to proceed with desperately needed capital campaign and exploration of year-round overnight shelter at our location.

Mr. Sanders commented during his very important remarks that he has received criticism from people experiencing homelessness directed at service providers.

We have experienced that as well and at The Haven we very firmly know that meaningful feedback is a gift.

I want to repeat that.

Meaningful feedback is always a gift.

We also know that despite making great strides over the last year since I was given the opportunity to be of service to our community in this role, that we still and always will have room for improvement.

I look forward to hearing from Mr. Sanders regarding any feedback he has received about Haven Services.

I also request that the city expect this level of appreciation of feedback from any service provider you decide to fund.

Thank you.

Next is John Beadle.

Hello, counsel.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

My name is Roscoe Boxley.

The first thing I noticed when I came to Charlottesville is that where there are a lot of white people, the property value is high.

Appreciate it.

When there's not,

the property value is depreciated.

And by that tone, I judge every decision that I make.

And I literally see that tone in everything that the city does.

So I have my own nonprofit organization.

I have my own ideas.

I have my own understanding.

And I have my own person to speak for myself

and my own identity without nobody else's identity or persuasion with it.

It's a shame that every time I'm released from some kind of facility, they let me know that repeating the same mistakes over and over again is insanity.

But here we go again, right here.

repeating the same mistakes over and over.

So my attempt is to build a nonprofit organization called Pan Akibalon because it is easy.

It's not hard.

All it takes is for us to work together.

We have the resources.

We have properties and inventories.

We have banks.

We have all of these things with all of these different inventories and properties that we could utilize.

If we average the amount of homes that suffer foreclosure, it'll come to about $250,000 a home.

As a business, probably pay about $500 to $600 a month

and you guys have these Section 8 programs that are paid a little bit more for these people who need housing and then we can still make some money on the back end to put back into the economy.

Those areas on the outside, the Fluvannas and the greens and oranges who send their people down here, we can invest in their economy.

Provide jobs for them as well as providing jobs here.

If anybody want to talk to me after this, community, government, haters, we can all come up with an idea together because that's what it takes.

Black, white, brown, red and yellow all working together to pick up these things like business opportunities.

job opportunities, programs that actually help people with their psychological illnesses.

And I know my time's up, but I got to say this.

Homelessness and gun violence is not our problem.

That is not our problem.

Mental health

is our problem.

High cost of living is our problem.

We have more problems than just homelessness.

And I'm definitely not going to allow nobody to shove me away in a room somewhere in a building.

I'm too intelligent to be locked in a box.

Hey, good evening.

Mayor Snook, Councilors, my name is Sam Galand.

I live at 123 Goodman Street.

I'm going to speak tonight on the Zero East High Street appeal of the comp plan determination.

Back in August, the Planning Commission reviewed public facilities that were requested by Seven Development and found that the two dead end public roads in the parking lot in the Rivanna floodplain were not substantially in accord with the comprehensive plan.

The PC's review was thorough and reasonable.

It considered dozens of comments from the public, which you all also saw, and it quoted specific sections of the comprehensive plan

I encourage you to uphold the Planning Commission's decision tonight.

I also realize that the applicant or the landowner will probably get the last word tonight, and I wanted to share some important background on the project.

First of all, it was never a buy-write project.

As originally proposed, it required a rezoning of the R1S land and the mixed-use corridor land over which the driveways needed to be built.

So the whole purpose of the public roads was actually to circumvent the zoning ordinance.

They actually had to add a traffic circle and a parking lot to kind of justify public roads when driveways would have made more sense.

It's kind of like a weird land use subsidy.

But without the city approving the roads, the site plan cannot be approved.

This is kind of a shortcut.

I believe the Planning Commission did a good job.

And again, I encourage you to uphold that finding.

Thank you, Mr. Gulland.

Good evening.

I'm Jennifer King and I'm a resident at 221 Montebello Circle.

With respect to the special use permit request for 1709 JPA, I'm requesting consideration from council to reduce the impact of high intensity density on the single family homeowners on the residential side of Montebello Circle.

Specifically, I'm asking Council to increase the setback on Montebello Circle from the 25 feet in the Planning Commission proposal to at least 50 feet, remove the delivery access and scooter parking on Montebello Circle side of the project, and increase the level of screening from S1 to S2 for 90% of the frontage on Montebello Circle.

These requests were noted by City staff in their report to the Planning Commission

to provide a better transition from the high intensity density to the residential homeowners.

As this project has dual frontage on both JPA and Montebello Circle,

It's not unreasonable to consider creative solutions to driving the vehicular traffic to JPA rather than the narrow one-way street which is Montebello Circle.

At only 23 feet wide at the point of this project, the circle offers an opportunity for pedestrian and bike traffic, but additional vehicular traffic would seem unnecessary given the access to the property on JPA.

I appreciate the Planning Commission's recommendation to remove the proposed parking spaces from Montebello Circle, but I'm wary of the delivery area as past experience dictates that what is designed as a loading zone or delivery area is often used for parking or eventually turned into parking by the developer shortly after the project is complete.

Enforcement is challenging given the city's current resources and delivery vehicles would have substantially better access to the property on the wider JPA.

I'm frustrated by the rush to approve special use permits in the JPA neighborhood for high intensity density projects which continue to be improved with no included affordable housing and with affordable housing fund payments which are consistently described by the Planning Commission and the City Council as disappointing.

I ask only that you take a moment to consider changes to the request which would reflect a modest level of concern for the existing homeowners who are being asked to absorb changes to their quality of life

on behalf of the rest of the city.

Thank you, Ms.

King.

Thank you.

Good evening.

My name is Shannon.

You heard from my husband earlier in public comment, and I wanted to add to his comments about conditions on the downtown mall, specifically from the perspective of a woman who has no choice given where we live and work but to walk through that area every day.

Living in a densely populated area requires the people there to be respectful of each other and the shared resource of public space.

Cities have laws governing behavior in these spaces like disorderly conduct, noise ordinances, public intoxication, et cetera, so that these areas can remain accessible, usable, and welcoming to everyone.

Our city is currently deep in an experiment in abandoning enforcement of these so-called quality of life laws, and I want to share with you from my own experience what the results of the experiment are on the downtown mall.

For months, in order to leave my apartment to go anywhere, I've had to walk past an unhoused man who regularly shouts sexual comments and obscene words at me, and the other women who pass him as well.

several evenings a week.

There are profanity-laden, full-volume screaming fights outside our apartment windows that often include exchanged threats of violence.

Individuals urinate against my building in full daylight.

This is despite the opening of the bathroom at York Place that was supposed to solve that problem.

I'm increasingly witnessing open-air drug use and seeing clearly high individuals acting wildly, and I step over discarded needles when I walk to the gym.

All of these behaviors are legal and could be addressed by law enforcement, but policies from the Commonwealth's attorney, the police department and council mean that they go on unchecked right now.

And this has turned what was once a friendly and welcoming environment where I felt safe walking even after dark, alone, into one that is hostile and threatening.

Last Saturday, two, three nights ago, that man who often shouts at me was arrested after he violently assaulted a woman.

I saw the attack.

He threw her to the ground.

He punched her head into the bricks until he was hauled off of her by a bystander.

The police did arrest him at that point, but how is a woman to feel safe walking around downtown when the police only seem to be able to respond after you are attacked?

I recognize that many of the people here tonight are advocating on behalf of the unhoused population, and that is commendable.

I hope that in your efforts to help that specific population though, you will not disregard the rights of the rest of Charlottesville citizens to access safely and enjoy our public spaces.

Basic public order laws that ensure a safe and respectful environment for everyone should be enforced.

Thank you, Ms.

Ellis.

So that is the eight pre-registered speakers.

We will now, let's try one person who's online.

Do we have somebody online who would like to speak to us?

We have Elizabeth Stark.

Okay, Ms.

Hi, counselors.

My name is Elizabeth.

I live in the Woollen Mills neighborhood in the city of Charlottesville.

I want to say that I appreciate Sam Sanders sharing his work plan for the city earlier.

Some of you may know I'm a regular volunteer as an eviction prevention advocate.

I speak to people who are on the eviction docket and I inform them of their rights as they face the eviction process.

and I can tell you firsthand that Charlottesville area residents and people living in the city are really struggling to make ends meet.

We know real estate prices are rapidly increasing.

Rents are increasing.

and we really need solutions for deeply affordable housing and services.

We also need to increase the number of low barrier shelters that are available to the unhoused community.

I see that the work plan includes asking Pacham to accelerate the timeline for overnight shelters and also to conduct a feasibility study for additional overnight shelter services.

I'd just like to echo the request of the Haven Executive Director and saying that you know if the Haven seems like they very much would like to move forward with this and so I ask the city do everything they can to facilitate

this trusted community partner who works with unhoused folks in trying to get this done there's obviously a great need in our community and I just hope that you you know City Manager Sanders said that he didn't want to act too quickly but I do think that this is really it's clear that we need rapid action I also want to say that

We need supportive housing.

It's a real loss to this community that the crossings to never happened, but this kind of supportive housing is essential to help unhoused folks become housed.

That's the ultimate goal and we can do that for our neighbors and friends.

I also want to say that the city needs to implement a Marcus Alert program.