City Council Meeting   11/6/2023

Are you ready to go?

All right, folks.

Let us call a meeting, the November 6, 2023, City Council meeting to order.

Ms.

Councillor Perrier?

Here.

Here.

All here and present and counted for.

Good to have you back, Mr. Pinkston.

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

Move for approval.

Is there a second?

Second.

Okay.

Cast your vote, please.

Motion passes.

We have an agenda approved.

So the meeting will be divided into three main sections.

There will first be a work session to hear and discuss presentations that do not require a council vote.

Today that's going to be budget presentations on the operations section of city government.

There's no closed meeting.

Okay.

So we would normally expect to have a closed meeting around 530.

It looks like we will not be having a closed meeting around 530.

But we will come back to the regular business meeting at 630.

And that's where most of the

So four o'clock presentation, budget presentations.

Just to simply say that this is the operations section of the organization.

We have four presentations.

You originally had five.

Transit was going to be your fifth presentation, but we moved them a week to the next meeting, I should say.

So we have NDS, Parks and Rec, Public Works and Utilities this evening.

and David, I got a present.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Almost.

All right.

Good evening, Mayor Snook, members of council.

I'm presenting tonight on neighborhood development services.

My name is James Freese.

I'm the director of neighborhood development services.

So our shop does three things primarily.

One, planning.

That is working on plans, policies, regulations, and support of implementation of those.

So we're all familiar with the comprehensive plan and the zoning ordinance.

Two of our biggest projects right now.

Then under development review, we work in, we do building permits, we do site plan review, and I've included in here enforcement of zoning and our property maintenance codes.

And then finally, on the design side, we're involved in historic preservation.

That's both planning for historic preservation and enforcing and reviewing projects under our historic preservation ordinances, transportation design, and finally, placemaking.

We have a 28-member staff divided across seven sections.

Those seven sections basically are engaged in each of the different aspects of that work, including people who are engaged in inspections and enforcement all the way through to planners.

We have just shy of a $3 million budget in FY24, most of that

is going towards personnel costs.

You'll note between FY20 and FY21, there was a drop in that budget.

That's reflective of the time when engineering was pulled out of NDS and moved into DPW.

We have an ambitious planning program for the upcoming year or next couple years.

I think many of you are familiar with this program.

We're looking at a small area plan for 10th and Page.

We're looking at reviewing and updating our environmental regulations.

We're looking at new historic district guidelines and implementation projects related to our new development code including looking at our short-term rental regulations, parking management program, and this idea of pre-permitted building types.

All of these are projects that are related to implementing our comprehensive plan from November of 21.

On the development review side, we've got four big efforts that are all related to really adapting to change.

The first of these is looking at improving our development review process, particularly the time that it takes to engage in that process, the time to approval for projects, and adopting performance measures to get us there.

assess we have changes necessary for our new development code and basically how we do the work of enforcing and reviewing projects under the new zoning ordinance.

We have continued training and enhancements to our new permitting software which I'm going to touch on again in a moment and then looking at as we are anticipating an increase in the or a potential increase in the volume of applications

looking at utilizing on-call contracts in order to bridge the gap between current staffing levels and increased demand for permit review.

Absolutely.

Our building permits are now online.

Payments are now online.

All of this relating to our new permitting software.

Exciting for me, site plans and all of our other permits will go online as of November 13th.

So that's next Monday.

So as of next Monday, people will be able to submit their site plan applications and the payments associated with those fully online, completely digitally.

And then

City Manager's Downtown Mall Committee, an effort we started back in January.

We're aiming to have that work completed by early next year.

Over the last year, we've moved to get our residential permit applications down to an average of two weeks from submission to permit.

We're working on getting commercial permits down to one month.

We're not quite there yet, but we're getting there.

Under our transportation program,

rides on the scooter service has now exceeded a quarter million rides just this year alone since being in January to now quarter million rides.

The new permit with our scooter company steps up parking enforcement and rolls out a low cost program for qualifying low income riders.

And then we saw a great deal of success at last fall with the implementation of improvements related to safe routes to school that continues into this fall with improvements coming to neighborhoods throughout the city.

And then, over the last 12 months, we have issued 1,744 building permits, 25 site plans, 9 special use permits, 39 BAR applications, and 28 zoning notice of violations.

On the last one, I want to note that we strive to resolve issues without having to get to a notice of violation, but some of them still go to that point, and about half of those are related to homestays.

challenges, implementing the new ordinance.

There's a lot for us to do, to learn and adapt, and we're also considering and looking at the idea of a potential increase in application volume.

I think maintaining the schedule of anticipated planning and policy work is, we have to acknowledge a challenge, but one we're eager to work on.

And then as I noted, we're looking at our development review process and performance measures associated with that.

So the transportation projects, sort of the management of those falls under you as well?

Then Chambers is in Neighborhood Development Services, yeah.

So we consider ourselves to be on the planning side.

So policies and

kind of the beginning stage of kind of answering the question, what projects do we want to do?

What are we doing?

Okay.

Excellent.

So you had mentioned the permitting

was down to two weeks, and I think for residential and commercial was a month, and what were the highs of that?

So at our lowest point, we were building permits were around three months.

and inspections, we were looking out at least two weeks to schedule inspections.

Thank you.

And that was, it's gotten a lot of compliments on the improved process.

And building permits are already online.

They've been online since, I'm not going to get this right now, April.

More than six months, so half the time.

The idea is they have to live there for half the year in order to qualify for a homestay.

That's the biggest issue.

We get reports from, yes, usually from neighbors suggesting that their neighbor does not live there.

six months out of the year, and then we have to investigate that.

Thank you.

Appreciate all the work that you've done in your department.

So I wanted to ask about the scooter thing.

So we get probably more complaints about scooters and sidewalks than just about anything else.

and the question comes back to who's in charge of enforcing that?

What should somebody do if they've got a complaint about somebody's left a scooter in the sidewalk?

I can tell you right now that emailing the mayor doesn't help.

Not that I wouldn't love to be able to help, but that's not in my lane.

The 311 system, there is a category, Ben, I'm going to look over here.

So through MySevo app, you can report a misplaced scooter via that.

There's also a reporting mechanism printed right there on the scooter as well.

The scooter company is responsible for moving that scooter.

And in fact, the new aspect of the permit is they've actually instituted a fining system.

Someone finishes their ride, one of the things they're required to do is actually snap a photo of that scooter in its location where it is.

Before the ride actually officially ends, before their billing, if you will, ends, they have to snap a photo and send that in.

And that's kind of the first step the scooter company has to check that, to make sure it's actually been parked correctly.

The next thing that happens is if we get a complaint through MySeaVille or through the number that's on there, the scooter company is responsible for then moving that scooter for rectifying the situation, but they also then put a fine on that rider.

And I believe after how many?

So what is, what somebody, let's say somebody rides a scooter home and they're living in a residential neighborhood, what are they supposed to do with the scooter?

Not park it in the sidewalk.

Right.

So when you first sign up with the company to do your first ride,

One of the things they've also instituted is an instructional video specifically on how to park the scooter.

So your first ride, you actually get a video that tells you how you're supposed to do it, and it warns you that you're going to be fined if you don't do it correctly.

The basic premise is don't block the sidewalk.

So leave it standing upright.

If there's space between the edge of the road and the curb, that's probably the best place to put it, if there's sufficient space there.

Okay.

Yeah.

The people that go walk with me,

They know every time I see one, I stop and, you know, sometimes it's, you know, half a dozen times, you know, putting the scooter either up or out of the sidewalk.

So I'm glad that this is being implemented.

Okay.

Related to the small area plans as well as the possible increase in the number of permits coming through, are you anticipating that any additional

So let me start with the small area plans.

One, the CIP includes a, has a item for small area plans and I don't anticipate a request to add to that.

Okay, thank you.

Ms.

I did have one other question.

Appreciate it.

So the end result is an action plan that's looking ahead at what are the different

What are the different projects that we need to engage in towards moving the downtown mall?

What would you do to prepare the downtown mall for the next 50 years?

That was the kind of setup of the effort.

It's kind of a plan for plans.

So it'll identify and then try to prioritize things like safety lighting, new benches on the mall.

One of the big things in there is looking at a new maintenance plan.

We're aiming for January.

So coming up very soon.

James, if you had one or two things that keep you up at night beyond finishing the draft zoning ordinance and thinking about all of that, for the next year, what

Would you be willing to share those with us?

It's not from me.

I mean, you took away the big one right at the top, right?

It's looking at, I think we have, I said, an ambitious agenda for planning projects that we want to engage in, in order to advance the objectives of the comprehensive plan, right, and the affordable housing plan.

I think they're doable.

But that's probably what's keeping me up at night.

Thank you.

And I appreciate all the work that you and your staff have done with the zoning ordinance.

It's really been a huge lift, especially you and Missy, your whole game, so thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Freeze.

All right.

Thank you.

Parks and Rec.

Okay.

I believe I have a presentation.

Yes, I do.

There you go.

There you go.

Thank you, Mayor Snook, Vice Mayor, Council.

Thank you for the opportunity.

for presenting in front of you the Parks and Rec budget.

First and foremost, last year I came to you and I had, I believe that Parks and Rec is a essential services.

It's very important to the city, just like water, sewer, public safety.

We're in the same line.

It is vitally important to establish and maintain the quality of life.

And then also, we also contribute to economic and environmental well-being.

within the community.

So I like to always start off with that.

and again Parks and Rec, it's a big portfolio.

One of the departments that touches a lot of other departments, public works department, economic department, finance department.

So we do a lot of things and as you can see that's why we have a budget of close to $13 million.

And again just to give you a snapshot of Parks and Rec, our mission statement is to ensure the quality of life for all, stewardship,

of public land and parks and also provide quality recreation experiences.

We have roughly around about 27 parks including Sugar Hollow, Raggett, and Hayworth.

We maintain 45 playgrounds.

That includes school properties as well.

And can you believe it, we only have one full-time employee that takes care of 45 playgrounds within Parks and Rec.

We oversee close to 4,000 acres.

Mowable acres is roughly about just under 2,000 acres that we mow, that including street mowing, also 250 bypass.

So we do a lot.

We have over 6 miles of paved trails, over 30 miles of natural trails.

And again, we only have one employee, and that is Chris Genzik.

We oversee four pools, two indoor to outdoor, plus four splash pads, a regional skate park and a regional golf course, regional city market, that's every Saturday, and then also, we also share maintenance with the county.

And this is our organizational chart.

We have four divisions.

We have the golf division.

We have two big divisions, and that is our recreation services.

This individual oversees athletics, aquatics, adaptive recreation centers and programs.

The other one is park operations.

Park admin, landscaping, custodial, and construction and planning, too.

and then we have our administration services which oversees performance market, business and marketing and also administration duties and then we have our business operation manager that oversees also our special events, not just parks and rec special events.

Why does it not work?

There we go.

So I'll go into our

Departmental Budget.

This is just a snapshot of FY23 budget, our expenses, as you can see, as I mentioned earlier, it's roughly about just under $13 million.

And as you all know, all budgets, we are heavy on personnel, roughly about close to $8 million on salaries, and we're going to have roughly about $4 million to maintain parks, provide recreation activities, special events.

Oops, I think there's something wrong with this.

Click it.

There we go.

On our revenue side, we bring in roughly about $1.5 million in revenue.

And as you can see, most of our revenue comes from charges.

That is when you sign up for a recreational program.

That's a charge.

A rental fee when you want to enter the pool.

When you want to lease property, if we lease property, that's where we get our majority of our funding, our revenue source.

and that is through our services.

Again, 1.5 million.

So that's a good snapshot of Parks and Rec as a whole.

My fun part, what's new?

I always like to look at the bright side.

Glass is always half full in our department.

One that I really invested in is the first one, the master plan, which I'm so excited.

You will get a presentation from a consultant tonight in the 6.30 hour.

So that is going to set the table for council of how we are going to move through our master plan.

and hopefully in 2025 in January we'll present the master plan to council so that council can adopt our new way looking forward.

Again our master plan is just a roadmap of what the community truly wants within the city of Charlottesville.

The other big thing is to look at the department of reorganizing

our organizational chart.

Our chart has been stagnant for a long time, but in order to be more efficient, more innovative, we have to look at our org chart to see what makes sense of what we do and how we do things.

Again, we went through a slump again through COVID, and we're out of COVID.

Parks and Rec has only been operating, as I like to say, roughly about two and a half years now since we closed our doors, and we're roughly about two and a half years.

And now we're looking at, seriously, how do we re-brand our department?

Where does Charlottesville Parks and Rec fit into the city of Charlottesville and the surrounding?

What activities should we offer?

What does the community truly want?

And again, it's coming at a perfect time and that's linked up with the master plan.

Other exciting news is we're in the process of looking at golf course, trying to outsource golf course.

Again, it's a great opportunity, again, efficiencies.

Our golf course, our maintenance was always outsourced, and our golf course conditions improved.

But at the end of the day, with our expertise, we can only take it to a certain level.

Now we're going out to the professionals that does this.

Again, Parks and Rec, we do a lot of things.

A lot of things, but now we want to take it to the next level whereby where we let the professionals take over the golf course and take it to the next level.

And again, thanks so much for the invasive species CIP project.

As you can see, a lot of work has been done.

We went from goats at Washington and Frye Springs, bless you.

Frye Springs, we went to Azalea Park, we went to Jordan, we went to Forest Hills.

And again, this is a very important program.

It links up with our tree canopy.

So we have to look at how do we increase our tree canopy.

We want to increase our tree canopy, but we don't take our invasives.

It's counterproductive, so we have to look at

First taking care of invasives, at the same time also replanting and increasing our tree canopy.

Exciting news, we also added four new positions to our portfolio.

Challenges, challenges, challenges.

Every department has challenges.

One of our challenges is service levels.

Community offering.

Again, as I mentioned, that's one of our biggest struggles.

In the next slide, you'll see there's a kind of increase in our services, but not where I'd like to see it, but we are moving in the right direction.

The standard of care, we want to try, that's our biggest trouble.

From COVID, everybody used our parks.

Still today, just had a meeting with the custodian manager.

It is November.

How's the parks doing?

It hasn't changed.

Been packed ever since.

ever since we can only afford to take care of trash once a day.

We'd like to get our center of care up to twice a day.

We only have three full-time employees that take care of all our parks, only three.

So again, we have high standards, but in order for us to get there, we need additional staff.

and as I mentioned earlier, it's a new thing and it's a challenge realigning the department, looking at our goals and objectives and driving ourselves to focus on goals and objectives.

Staff shortage.

Hiring rates, working with human resources to see how we can increase our hiring rates so we can actually get temporary staff on board and also our full-time staff.

We're also looking at flexibility, asking staff, what's your availability?

When can you work?

And we'll try to figure out how we can assist them, especially in our aquatic division, aquatic division with lifeguards.

We are looking at all different angles in order to

to solve the puzzle, but it's still challenging.

The last bullet point is retention.

Morale is down.

We also found out we need to work on our retention program because we hired four or five individuals and we're only keeping them for a year, year and a half.

And the question is why?

So we're trying to really look into that

we can support staff and how do we retain them?

And that's one of our challenges.

Sorry.

There we go.

So I'm going to focus just, as I mentioned, with our program offerings.

So this is all the programs within Parks and Rec, so program levels.

So if you look at FY22 to FY23, there's been a roughly about $200,000 increase, which is a positive thing, meaning we are offering more programs, we are being innovative with staff and trying to accomplish different programming so that our community can actually

sign up and have programs, so that's a good thing.

But I want to move our focus to our scholarship program.

So Parks and Rec, we call it a scholarship program, but it's actually a subsidy program because we do not have a line item within our budget that has X amount of dollars.

So when you see those numbers of 39 to 40,000, that is just when an individual comes for a lot of scholarships.

We are just subsidizing the price, i.e., if a program is $10 and someone qualifies for 90%, we are minusing $9 out of parks and rec budget and just subsidizing the program for $10.

It would be nice to have a true line item for a true scholarship program so we know exactly how much money we have in.

And then on the right-hand side, if you look at what's very interesting, in 2022,

Only 2,000 unique individuals used the program, but FY23, it reduced, and the question was why?

We, as Park and Rec, we need to do a better job of advertising our scholarship rate, and that is one of the things we're working on,

We need to inform the community that we have this program and please use the program because it's there.

So that was a unique thing that I've noticed.

There we go.

Again, these are all enrollments.

If you look at 19, 19, we were at 10,000 before pandemic.

Last FY, we were around about 7,000 enrollees.

But as you can see, there's an upward trend in FY23.

We're at 9,000.

So we are moving in the right direction.

And we're hoping to continue on that.

trajectory is moving up and to get more programs and more offerings to the community.

Last slide is staff levels.

As you can see at the moment, we have 16 vacancies in our department.

That is a big gap within our department and we are looking at different ways, as I mentioned, with the challenges in terms of retention.

in terms of flexibility, how can we attract employees to work with the city of Charlottesville?

And that's my presentation.

Should we turn short?

Thank you.

I don't think so.

Thank you.

Yeah, I have a couple of comments about the scholarships.

I think that, you know, for your budget, it's the middle of this year, I think I would like to see just what the numbers would be for that and see if we can consider it.

You know, Lisa would like to know what it is.

And also about the promotion, I would love to, you know, when the dust settles with the zoning ordinance, you know, before next summer, things really heat up, to sit down with you and your staff about ways to connect with

the wider community to get the word out because it's because people ask me about it all the time and I'm happy to share my network with you about that and also you said that you like more staff but you got 16 short and the morale is not the best and I don't think that the master plan that you mentioned

Delving to that aspect or is it just the park, you know, the actual physical park?

So anyway, I think that, you know, we probably want to look at what's going on before we go out because you don't want to bring them in and things are not where you want it and they leave, you know, so I think you can work with it.

H.R.

or whatever you need to get that straight.

I have a couple of questions.

One of them Mr. Wade already asked but as it relates to scholarships when you are talking about developing that line item I think you should also include the impact

that it currently has.

So if I'm a 90% person and I'm only paying a dollar and your department is paying nine, I think we need to look at what impact that is currently having on your budget because you're doing something to help the citizens here.

And

I would presume, I can't say that you have done this, but you've spoken about morale several times.

And are you doing anything internally, like an internal survey to look at some of the big things?

And I know there are a lot of employers in the area that are having problems in hiring people.

So that's nothing new, but looking at

your morale issue and what we can do to encourage people to apply and to stay because as you said you don't want to have a revolving door and somehow things are getting done but they're getting done at a cost.

our schools are well maintained on the outside the facilities are being maintained but those things are happening at a cost to those employees that are there and I'm sure that that impacts on the morale as well so I think we need to do something internally to look at that because I don't see the issues that you have discussed

being addressed through your realignment unless you perceive that I've got X amount of people over here and I might be able to move them somewhere else so that the impact would be different.

I can't say because I don't know what you and your team are looking at as it relates to realignment.

Yes, you have a consultant coming in

but just because the consultant makes a recommendation doesn't mean that that recommendation is going to work within your particular department and it is just a recommendation.

Absolutely.

We are working internally of providing surveys.

We did a survey and we're just looking at different methods of how we can increase morale and also working with human resources of how to attract and retain.

And who is responsible for doing your exit interviews when employees leave?

Okay.

A few questions.

The first, you made reference to outsourcing the golf course staff.

Yeah, good question.

Rational two-folds.

Number one, we had a retiree of the manager, PGA manager, and then a year later the golf operations specialist also retired.

And we were at the crossroads of saying, okay, do we actually

provide employees or do we have to look at outsourcing?

So that was one option of outsourcing.

The other option, as I mentioned earlier, was the golf courses.

We brought it up to standard.

And then, so is it outsourcing that operations as well as the maintenance staff for the golf course?

So in the RFP, it was labeled that first rate of refusal for every staff that works out at the golf course.

Okay.

Another question

You mentioned the services provided.

One of the things I've heard particularly from Midway Manor but also other communities is that Parks and Rec used to offer very regular social activities on a regular program schedule on a weekly basis and once the pandemic began that completely went away and has not returned.

Is that a factor of staffing shortages or vacancies?

Definitely staff shortages.

That's what's driving the factor right now.

We have to look at what staff can do and we also looked at other opportunities of outsourcing as well.

So in our recreational services we have a few

Recreational activities that are outsourced because we just could not meet the demand.

And then finally in the presentation you had mentioned in addition to vacancies and staffing being one of the challenges and need for reorganization.

I know across Virginia and the country the pandemic really walloped parks and recs departments and there's a lot of recovery needed from that.

So, when I talk about reorganization, I'm looking through the lens of being more efficient.

Right now, as you can see, we have, for example, in the parks unit, when it comes to our capital improvement projects, we have roughly about three people taking care of the capital projects within parks, but we're not being efficient.

So we're trying to figure out how can we get a capital improvement manager that is that individual's job so that

We can be more efficient, especially when we work with VDOT CIP projects, when we work with grants, so that there is someone actually the lead, and that's the individual's job.

So that's one line.

The other line is looking at our org chart as it is.

Does it still make sense in terms of where we have operations mixed in with programming, or do we split it out where we have

Programming line whereby all programmers report to one individual so that our programming can be consistent across the board so we can have a quality of services to the community and also when it comes to moving the department forward of expanding programs we are

Much more efficient and effective.

Same side on operations.

Okay.

Well, yeah, thank you.

I appreciate the acknowledgement of that there's a lot of difficult work to do in terms of getting the department where we all want it to be.

I think Parks and Rec is quietly, you know, a very critical part of the social fabric of Charlottesville in terms of providing

Relative to a lot of other jobs, living wage jobs for a number of years.

I hope that efficiencies and outsourcing don't really impact that in a dramatic way, which is, I know you already know, it could also have morale and retention impacts.

But yeah, I'm definitely supportive of us trying to really dig in with you to figure out how can we invest in the department to get it where we want to be because it's really one of the few things where you don't have to be affluent to take advantage of the services.

I have one last question.

In doing your outsourcing, particularly when it comes to the golf course, because a lot of people use our golf course.

It's a very nice golf course.

So the golf division is an enterprise fund.

So the savings that the golf course is reinvested within the golf course, infrastructure and assets.

And that's where we use the funds.

Okay.

Yes, and I believe we have, we still owe the city, I believe, $75,000 to pay off that debt.

I remember during COVID, of course, you had basically no business, but you still had expenses.

A couple of months ago,

I'm thinking it was roughly around June or July, but I don't remember specifically.

We had, I got a whole bunch of emails from people who were using Parks and Rec programs who were saying that people who were on half-time, part-time contracts had hit the limit, had to stop doing what they were doing.

It was one of the, and they wanted me as mayor to figure out how to figure this, how to fix this.

and my solution was to send an email to you and Sam Sanders and say, you all fixed this.

Sure.

We looked within our temporary budget.

is to figure out what can we do to solve the problem.

We created four new positions with our temporary dollars in order to meet those needs because, again, the policy is set but also we have services to render and if there are certain times and operational times we have to look within,

So what we did was we used our temporary dollars.

We added two full-time lifeguards.

I remember a couple of years ago, one of the issues that we kept talking about, but because of COVID, we weren't really in a position to do anything about.

was this problem of having a lot of people, particularly in Parks and Rec who were not full-time employees and who in some cases had put together two or three or four part-time Parks and Rec jobs getting more than 40 hours a week but never in one program to get benefits and all the rest of that stuff.

And we had talked a couple of years ago about fixing that.

I don't think so.

That's the work that we're still planning to do.

If I could, I'll step in a little bit and just say that there is some structural work that needs to be done.

So as Mr. Anthony has referenced, reorganization, this is something that's been talked about for quite a while.

And I can say for the time that I've been here, we've been talking about it.

there's some extra steps that need to be taken but ultimately what was done that he described was taking temporary dollars and moving that moving people over to a permanent status so that they could work more hours we were able to work that out with some people I don't know that we dealt with every single person that was in that category but there's still some ongoing work that needs to be done and I'll also point out that

Rihanna is our deputy director who has been serving as our director for an extended period of time.

So I take this moment to thank him for stepping up as our director has been out on extended leave and that is part of why some things haven't been resolved at this moment because he's trying to keep his side of the shop running while also keeping the entire department running.

There is some serious work in the culture space that needs to be worked out in that department and he hasn't been a part of it because everybody's a subject of it but we do have a consultant that is engaged in conducting a cultural assessment on the department and we'll be getting that report out very soon and looking to implement whatever recommendations come from it as well.

Okay.

Good evening, Mayor and Council.

I've been in the acting role for Public Works and the interim role for the city manager, interim deputy city manager for operations.

And as a result, the Public Works Group, they've been putting this presentation together.

And so while I would have a desire to do it, I'm going to turn it over to Avery.

But we're going to be here, Avery Thompson, and we're going to be here to answer any questions or anything we need to do.

All right.

Thank you, Steven.

Hello, everyone.

We appreciate you taking the time to host us this evening so we may brief you on the state of public work for the city.

My name is Avery Thompson.

I'm a management analyst in the Public Works Administration Division, and I will be presenting to you on behalf of Public Works.

Since we're in the current process of hiring a director, a few of my colleagues on the department leadership team

as well as Sam and Steven are here to provide further context and answer some questions as needed.

From our administration, Aaron, Ron, and Sarah, they make up the administration team.

Crystal runs our environmental division and Jack, engineering.

So we'll take some questions at the end.

There we go.

Oh, too far.

Too far.

All right, so here you'll see some of the topics we'll discuss tonight.

First, we'll cover a little bit about who we are, what we do, and why we do it.

Then we'll go into some of the budget aspects.

Next, we'll mention some of the common challenges that our department faces as we conduct our business.

Then we'll move to factors we believe that will drive our future success.

And to end, we'll share some of our wins and successes we've had over the past year or so that we're excited about.

and then answer your questions to finish up.

Like I said, additionally, if we don't happen to have any answer for you here tonight, we will make a note of it and be sure to follow up with you after tonight to get the answers that you need.

So with that said, let's get started.

Depending on the clicker, I guess.

There we go.

So this is how Public Works is organized.

We have one director that oversees the department.

It didn't go.

Nice.

Okay.

It slipped back again.

It's perfectly okay.

It's technology.

Okay.

Okay.

We're going to stay.

Okay.

Here we go.

This is how Public Works is organized.

We have one director that oversees the department, the admin office that supports the director as well as the entire department, and then we have six different divisions.

The numbers you see here for each division includes everyone from front lines all the way up to division managers.

Due to the nature of the projects that we do, there's a lot of collaboration amongst the divisions.

For example, Facilities Maintenance and Facilities Development work closely and coordinate on many repair and replacement projects throughout the city.

As you can see, a majority of our employees reside in Public Service and the Facilities Maintenance Division.

And for each division, typically, like for example, FM is responsible for the maintenance and repair of 58 city and school buildings.

Engineering oversees about 100 plus million dollars in projects, roughly 30 ongoing projects.

Facilities Development is responsible for the design and construction of projects related to those 58 city and school buildings, including the $72 million Buford Reconfiguration Project.

Public Service is responsible for maintaining street and sidewalk and stormwater infrastructure.

That's a good question.

I am not entirely positive.

This way?

Okay.

So that was a little bit about who we are and what we do.

Here's our why we do it.

Public Works has been currently working with city management to align our vision, missions, and goals with the city's overall strategic plan.

Here you'll see our current established mission statement and goals.

We believe these are core foundations of the identity of Public Works Department.

This drives our decision making at the organizational level

and stands as a reference for each division within the department to utilize as they are translating city level goals down to the divisional level.

Next week we are conducting focus groups within our department to gather feedback from all levels of employees on what we can do within the department to improve efficiencies and make adjustments to foster a more productive environment for our employees to provide the best quality service to the Charlottesville community.

We expect to have that feedback ready to present to the city manager's office by the 22nd of December and this will enable our department to hit the ground running in the new calendar year with a renewed sense of purpose as well as set a set of tangible goals that we can track our progress with.

So we're really excited about that opportunity.

So here we'll see a look at the current FY24 operating budget for our department, our total expenditures

were up about 9% from FY23 and our total revenue was up about $200,000.

Inflation was a notable effect for us last year and we foresee that to continue.

About 70% of our revenue comes from refuse collection services.

and at the top you'll notice that our CIP budget is roughly 153 million so that affects our operating budget a lot to maintain that between the VDOT projects, schools and other facilities related projects that's where the majority of our time and money is spent.

One of the initiatives I was tasked with since I was hired back in February is working with VDOT and our budget office

back one.

So many of the challenges public works faces are issues that won't ever go away, but we hope that we can improve our response and flexibility in finding solutions for these.

Here are a couple examples for the categories you see up above.

The Market Street parking garage has a chiller.

Recently that needed to be replaced.

The project came in at more than two times the expected budget.

Material costs in previous fiscal years, asphalt has increased 27%, traffic marking has increased 20%, and stone backfill material has increased 15 to 20%.

We also expect these cities' solid waste contract to increase significantly for both curbside collection as well as waste disposal based on market rates, and lead time on vehicles for fleet are roughly about 8 to 12 months.

For technology, we are researching solutions on that front that we can use department wide to better improve efficiency and uniformity amongst the divisions, which can most importantly save the department time and man hours that we can use on completing projects.

For example, tools that we can utilize would be for such things as data analysis and work order management.

As it stands now, we currently take a more reactive approach on the maintenance issues that arise in the city.

Ideally, we would like to eventually get to a point where we can increase the percentage of projects or tasks to be more proactive.

We are currently evaluating options and changes we can make to improve this on the operational level.

We do foresee this to continue to be an issue.

I've touched a little bit on the interdepartmental coordination some already, but the main takeaway here

for us is to ensure our entire department is on the same page when working with other city departments.

For example, if facilities development is going to be needed on step three of a process, making sure they're aware that it's in the pipeline as the project is just getting started.

This can prevent future obstacles that could arise and they can give their expertise early on and that can be incorporated from the plans from the very beginning.

Finally, community expectations is another issue that will be ongoing.

Public Works always strives to be as clear and communicative as possible when we do a project, especially when it comes to the pace and scale.

Citizens rely on accurate timelines and costs from city officials, so the more detailed information and justifications we can provide hopefully will reduce the intense or time consuming questions and inquiries city staff receives.

Staffing shortages are not unique to our department nor any place of employment these days.

Currently, we are about 80 percent employment rate.

Sarah has been working with HR to update and post our openings for the department.

Some of our vacancies have been open for hundreds of days.

We are kind of at the mercy of the number of people that apply.

However, we are working on getting job description updated to better reflect the responsibilities that they would entail in those roles.

And we're doing everything we can within our control to fill our open positions.

With that said, one serious concern is shortages of emergency personnel in the event of a snowstorm.

We are currently working on implementing a potential creative solution, but the contributing factors for that include CDL license requirements, temporary staffers not to be able to be retained, competition on both the private and public sector and wages.

While those are many difficult challenges, we are optimistic in our ability to combat those obstacles and find success.

There are several key factors we believe will drive our success for our department.

Focusing on delivering projects on time and on budget will be vital in our progression.

We need to be able to provide accurate timelines and costs within the best of our forecasting abilities so that leadership as well as the public has the best information possible.

If we can deliver projects on time and on budget, that typically indicates all the moving pieces are working together effectively.

We are in the transition of moving towards a unified technology system for our department as a whole, which will also provide decision makers with more recent and accurate information for them to utilize.

Also, we are encouraging our staff to seek out training and professional development opportunities to increase their skill set.

We are also in the early stages of researching internal staff development and training programs to better prepare them for their current roles.

Widespread action in accordance with the city's climate action plan and initiatives will also be vital in our success to adapt going forward.

So some of the highlights and the successes and the good news from Public Works over the last year, some of the recent positions that we have filled, Climate Program Specialist, Parts Manager for Fleet, Project Manager for Engineering, and Project Manager for Facilities Development.

We have a number of honors and awards for the hard work our Public Works folks have done.

Facilities Maintenance received an award from the APWA for Best Project under $5 million for their handling of the Smith Recreational Air and Quality Project.

Environmental Sustainability has a number of awards and initiatives.

including community engagement projects for the Climate Action Plan, the EPA WaterSense Award, the DEQ VEEP Sustainability Partner, the Resilient Together initiative of Albemarle County and UVA, and the Shanks Branch tributary stream restoration.

Some of the technological improvements we've had, Ron's been working and been instrumental on this, as well as Jonathan, converted traffic signs to the GIS inventory, implemented Geotab for leaf and snow removal,

which also helps with our winter operations crew for their response time shift change issues and the reducing citizen callbacks for those and we've also automated the traffic sign fabrication that used to be done manually so that signs can be generated at night or while crews are in the field so that the time reduction there is very beneficial.

some of the construction and improvements that we that we've been that are wins about 570 or so sidewalk hazard repairs in the past year about 250 asphalt patchings potholes or new installations and the climate action plan Charlottesville's first community plan adopted as a part of the comprehensive plan the plan this plan provides a framework for the Charlottesville community how they can work together to achieve our emissions goals

and capital funding awarded for projects and initiatives such as the LED streetlight conversion, solar deployment, grant match for urban forest management plan and community EV infrastructure planning and more.

So that is the biggest rundown.

Excuse me.

Thank you for that presentation.

It was very helpful.

So the engineering department, I guess we do some in-house engineering ourselves and we also do engineering review for outside consultants that submit to us for site plans.

The inside engineering we do, actually, the design work would be very minimal.

It would be for a small project.

And Jack Dawson oversees it.

Mainly the work that we do for site plan review we do in-house.

This is our team.

It's in the engineering.

The engineering work when it comes to some of our capital improvement program projects, we also use outside consultants.

We have project managers who manage those projects, both for facilities and also for some of the VDOT projects that we manage, as well as our ADA projects.

and also some of our sidewalk projects and also parks and rec.

Yeah.

this would be part of the sidewalks group and also depending on how it's funded we'll also determine which group I know Ben's group takes on a lot of the planning phase of it and then Brandon our traffic engineering group they will focus on some of the more the traffic signals some of the ADA incurred cuts and so it really depends on the the bucket of how funds are being but the the ADA

transition plan that we're looking at the initiative.

Got it.

Can you tell us briefly, if it's not too complicated, the software that you're planning to use to streamline and integrate what the name of the software is, if you all know it off the top of your head?

We don't use any software, per se, because we rely on the consultants to do it, although we do have a- That's a little more like the project management piece, not the design piece.

Yes, and we're working on a

Kind of a software system, but it's more of an in-house database system that allows us to track projects and stuff.

Okay.

Got it.

Okay.

You had a couple of them.

Sorry.

It's good to see that the leaf collection is going on.

People are really happy about that.

So it's a great service that you provide.

You mentioned that, and I may have missed the details, you said 70% of the profit or something comes from bulk, assuming it's bulk pickup?

I believe it came from Refuse Collection.

I'm not exactly sure of the breakdown.

I assume that's the amount that we pay for the sticker or whatever.

That's well organized, by the way.

We've had to use it before.

And I don't know if it's Parks and Rec or your department that handles the street, the trash cans in the street that need to be emptied.

Yeah, that's basically a contract and service.

Okay.

I think that, you know, you just might want to get them to, sometimes some of them are high traffic areas, which is a good thing, it's full.

In the Belmont Bridge, I see that it's

Yeah, it's almost done.

I can see that now they're kind of doing the final work on it.

That's all I have.

Thank you all so much.

You do a lot.

One of those things that if you weren't there,

I'm hoping that we have one or two snow, good snowfalls.

Juan, quit while you're ahead, okay?

I live on a corner lot, okay?

I live on a corner lot, so I know what a snowfall means for the sidewalks on my corner lot.

Mayor, if you don't mind, I would like to touch base.

I mean, we will be doing a dry run, but I understand the community members, they have high expectations, and there's some things we just can't control right now.

One, obviously the weather.

But outside of that, we are limited on our resources to address the

an aggressive snow removal plan.

Now, we have a plan.

It may not be at the level that we've seen in the past, but we realize that everything's on the table when a snow event does happen, but we're struggling to get CDL drivers, as Avery shared.

We're competing with VDOT, who's willing to pay a tremendous amount, the hourly rate.

and also they already compete with all the contracts.

Even if we were trying to put out a contractor to get a crew to push snow, they wouldn't even probably entertain just because they're already absorbed by VEDA.

So I share that.

I know everyone would like to see snow, but not here.

We'll just have a dusting, we won't have a major storm, is that okay?

So I would like to say thank you to your department for being so responsive.

We have varying age groups in our neighborhood and one of our neighbors was able to share with me when the leaf collection was going to take place.

So we've all in our neighborhood been feverishly working this weekend because it's happening this week.

so I went online and did the things to text and within two minutes I got a text back and all the dates when the leaf collection was going to take place so whoever is responsible for doing that they did a really good job and I'd also like to say thank you to the people that do the leaves because it's a lot of work and I know it's hard work but whenever you see them you know they'll nod or they'll wave or whatever you know and I know they've got other things to do but

Maybe they just say, you know what?

And so I appreciate the work that they do and just that they acknowledge the people that live here, you know?

Yes, ma'am.

Question for the climate team, obviously under public works, our climate action plan calls for that to kind of diffuse through every department and everything we do.

Thank you for the question.

So one of the things we did to start with was to publish a work plan that reflected the work that's being done by other departments.

And as we hit the end of the year and there's an expectation for a report out that will include coordination with those departments that are leads.

I think that there are many ways that we can integrate it.

And I think this is part of the hard work ahead of us, whether that's creating an internal climate team that has representation from all the departments.

Certainly,

It includes working with the community partners as well because a lot of the work is being done and can be leveraged.

I think that we've had conversations about looking at capital investments through a climate lens, looking at other decisions through a climate lens.

So this is really year one of trying to implement that plan.

I don't.

And just one other question, obviously there's

a backlog of projects as well as maybe some challenges in terms of relationship with VDOT.

So first thing is we meet on a regular basis at least once a month with VDOT to go over projects.

The second thing is that

We worked with VDOT to come up with more like an action plan to identify what the city's going to do and what VDOT's going to do to be successful and to deliver projects on time and on budget.

And so our relationships are strong.

I mean, I would have to say it's one of the

the better relationships in a while and they recognize the struggle we're having and it's just not us it's other localities just because of the hiring market it's hard to get project managers but we do have a lot of projects in front of us and and so we are assigning projects we're hiring project managers I think

So anyone who's listening if you if you're a project manager all means apply the city of Charlottesville so We do have deliverable dates on projects now and we are tasked to to deliver projects on time and on budgets whatever it means our relationship is

The big role plays also in the city manager's office.

It's been very clear on both sides if we have any obstacles in front of us where the projects are slowing down for whatever reason, internal or external, that those issues would be bubbled up to the deputy city manager and to the city manager's office to try to

navigate the process because there's sheer responsibility in delivering projects.

So I think our relationships have changed.

We still have a long road to go as in delivering projects just because of the schedules, but we will see a turnaround on that.

And we've been working with VDOT on a regular basis.

Okay.

Yeah, I don't really know all the details, but the Planning District Commission, I guess, have been talking about VDOT, smart scale, some pretty dramatic changes going on.

Does the department feel comfortable in terms of being able to adjust to whatever those significant changes may be?

We met with VDOT about three weeks ago to discuss SmartScale and we are looking at pursuing some application process for it and what our capacity can do to manage those projects.

So VDOT's on board

Thank you.

I had one

So I guess there could be.

It seemed very organized.

And they all got operated on at about the same time.

Was there trucks associated with the work?

So it was probably inspection of our sewer lines.

Or it could be inspection of our storm lines.

They dug up around the... Oh, I know what this is.

Yeah, yeah.

So we're replacing frame and covers associated with storm lines.

And I assume that's what it is.

We have a long backlog of that.

Okay.

And...

Actually, I need to check, though, because it may be associated with sewer.

So I'll get back with you, but that's okay.

I know we have talked from time to time about a number of different utility systems that have ongoing schedules for replacement and maintenance and trying to finish, you know.

That's right.

Tell them to get back out through the asphalt.

Yeah.

Before we move on to the next, I'd like to just speak to the VDOT issue because the public is watching and it is important for us to make sure that we continue to help manage expectations.

This VDOT exercise has been quite a task, I will say.

It's occupied a lot of my time and I prioritized it a long time ago.

because the leadership change that occurred within our district office was right around the same time that I came and in hearing the various concerns it was really assessment that was what was most important for me in that it was identifying what our team needed what issues were they facing there were a number of issues that they were facing including

past decisions not being made to their benefit so that they could move forward and get work done, as well as not having all the hands that they needed to get the work done.

But bigger part of the issue is that we have a huge portfolio.

Our portfolio is probably too big, to be perfectly honest.

And we have edited that portfolio.

and probably still potentially need to do that, but I'm not going to say that.

We probably still need to do that a little bit just to be able to get it within our grips so that we can handle getting it done.

But as we've been doing that at the motivation that we've been given by VDOT to get better so that we don't appear on a bad list, which has been the threat that we've been facing for quite some time, is that a list could be produced and Charlottesville could rank high on that list, and we don't want to be on that.

but at the same time VDOT has been trying to fix some things internally and in doing so they've been making adjustments to their performance measures and maintenance and it feels heavy-handed at times because they're trying to fix their own issues while also trying to

Crack the whip a little bit on the rest of the programs across the state.

So it's really about alignment.

It's about balancing the priorities.

So some of that will mean that we will be telling our residents that we can't take on that project right now.

That is meant not to be we're not interested.

We're unwilling.

But at this time, it is just not the right thing for us to do with managing the workload that we have.

We can get through some of those things and we'll have room to go back and add more projects.

But VDOT has warned us in their scoring model that if we don't have what we currently have as a portfolio working well, they're going to be reluctant to continue to approve projects coming into that portfolio.

So how do you make that adjustment?

Because you said that you felt the portfolio was a little large and that it probably needs to be streamlined some more.

So do you have an internal matrix that

helps you say, okay, we've got 100 things in the portfolio, but we really should only have 50.

How you scale it back to the 50?

Sure.

Well, we have a very nice Excel workbook that will blow your mind.

Okay.

And it follows the traffic management system of red, yellow, green.

Okay.

And when I first looked at it, I saw way too much red, but thankfully I can report I see green.

Okay.

So that's a good thing.

But I think that's what we've been continuing to work on, and we're trying to figure out what the right steps are, including shifting staff around and putting priorities in different places so that we can get some extra attention paid to things.

So it's a work in progress, and I feel good about where we are.

So I'm saying that to the team as well as to the public that we can do this.

We'll get there.

Get her done.

Thank you.

So, ready for the last presentation.

Ms.

Hildebrand, bring you back up again.

So, Mayor, Vice-Mayor and Councilors, I'm happy to talk about the Department of Utilities.

I'm Lauren Hildebrand, the Director of Utilities.

Let me see if I can get this thing to work.

Okay.

Our vision for the Department of Utilities is to provide outstanding utility services in the Charlottesville community.

Our mission is the Department of Utilities is committed to providing the Charlottesville community with safe, reliable, and sustainable utility services

by dedicated and knowledgeable staff.

Currently, we have, across the four utilities, 14,800 customers are served with water, 14,700 customers are served with wastewater, 21,300 customers are served with natural gas.

As most of you know, not only do we serve customers in the city, but in Albemarle County.

And we bill 15,000 customers for stormwater fees.

Little overview with the org chart, we have 99 full-time employees, of which a little over 75% are associated with operations or field crews.

And so the bulk of our utility is to support operations.

And so you know with the office staff, the remaining FTEs,

They're engineers, they're regulatory compliance folks, GIS technicians.

They're also administrative people that handle our procurement contracts.

We have outreach people as well as people that just support the operations staff because that's our key role in utilities.

I want to go over some of our core programs and services.

We obviously maintain and repair all the infrastructure, all the underground infrastructure associated with the four utilities.

We provide emergency operations 24-7.

If someone calls in and they see a water leak, natural gas leak, sanitary sewer overflow, or a backup, or

something associated with a drainage issue, they can get a response.

We have on-call people 24-7 to respond.

We provide safety training.

We are required by OSHA as well as state and federal regulations to provide safety training associated to our crews.

We provide a 24-7 utility call center.

Anyone can call 434-970-3800 and get our live person.

We have five dispatchers that

work a rotating shift and they can answer any questions or if you have an emergency we will make sure that you get a response.

We provide GIS asset management.

This is a something I'll go into detail on a later slide but I just want to mention it's one of our core services.

We also provide meter reading and maintenance.

We read our meters monthly and it's an AMR system so it was a

System that was put in about 20 years ago and it's a drive-by system and it works pretty well.

We are evaluating an AMR system which is kind of an automatic system but we haven't made that transition yet because it's still kind of on the leading edge of technology.

Almar County Service Authority out in the county is implementing that.

They've been implementing it for the last few years, and we're going to see how it works for them in this topography.

But I will say, along with metering, we provide maintenance because as meters age, they slow down, so you can decrease your revenues.

So we try to look at the sweet spot where we have to change out a meter, natural gas meter maybe 20 years, water meter's about

10 to 15 years, but we have a regular maintenance program associated with our meters.

Capital improvement to infrastructure, about 15 years ago we spent very little money when it came to water, wastewater, or stormwater infrastructure, and now we have a pretty aggressive program associated with those three utilities.

I might add too that 20 years ago we replaced our entire

Natural Gas System, except for the, as some of you know, the last mile, approximately a mile that's located in West Main, which we were fortunate to recently get a PHMSA grant, so we'll be replacing it in the next few years.

but I'll go over a little bit more on a later slide about more about the capital improvement program.

We also coordinate with Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority and Almar County Service Authority.

We also do development site plan review and inspection.

We also provide annual budget planning and we prepare an annual rate report that you folks see every June when we set the rates for the next year.

Regulatory compliance is key across the four utilities and I'll go over a little bit on that on a later slide and Utilities outreach and customer engagement is also key and we have in-house staff that are very talented that provide our outreach Each utility is funded by rates or fees They're what's considered enterprise funds.

So we get no funding from the general fund and

For example, if somebody pays a water rate, it goes strictly to funding the water operations, Rivanna costs, debt service associated with maintaining the water infrastructure.

We have shared resources among the four utilities during very critical emergencies.

We're customer service driven where we provide a high level of satisfaction that's measured by our annual customer satisfaction survey.

We do this every year in February, done it for the last five or six years, and it provides valuable information to us.

For example, several years ago we realized a lot of the comments were associated with we want a better online billing portal.

We want to be able to pay our bills online.

We want to be able to go paperless.

So in 2021 we rolled out a new system and people, as you can see, 98% in the last survey are very satisfied with our new system, which we're pleased about.

In other

Another example where we've used the customer satisfaction survey several years ago, we couldn't figure out why were people rating the value of our sewer service at like in the 80s?

couldn't figure it out.

So where all the other utilities are in the 90s.

So we thought, you know, we're just going to start letting people know what we do from a wastewater standpoint, you know, the fats, oils and grease program, you know, this cleaning TV of the sewers, you know, and so we started doing that.

Now the numbers are in the 90s.

So we do use the survey to

Feed what we might want to make improvements on.

I might also mention that in the last survey, politeness and courteousness of staff is 98%.

Overall responsiveness to any questions is 98%.

The ease of contacting department staff is 100%.

And staff's knowledge and technical competence in the last survey was 100%.

and I often look at these things and I think every year from one year to the other they're always really high and then the next year they're higher and I think well we're obviously doing the right thing.

So anyway.

Over the four utilities we manage a budget that's 65.6 million dollars and you got a lot of detail of this during the rate setting this last year.

I want to go over some of our accomplishments and I also call this kind of the ongoing initiatives because these are also still in the works but I mentioned about our investment infrastructure and it's really to minimize long-term operational cost and emergency expenditures and over time we've seen that our expenditure that the money we spend

to support our capital improvement program over the last 15 years has really paid off.

Our water leaks have decreased, our sanitary sewer overflows have

All but, you know, gone away.

You know, we used to have hundreds, hundreds of sanitary sewer overflows when I started here 16 years ago.

And we're down to very minimal ones every year.

And then we've also spent a lot of money on our stormwater infrastructure to handle drainage issues.

And you could tell based on our customer satisfaction survey that people find our systems reliable.

It's 99% in the last survey related to water and sanitary sewer and natural gas was 100%.

But we also want to balance this major expenditure and make sure that our rates are considered fair and a good value.

And you can see based on the last survey, water was 97%, sewer was 94%, and natural gas was 96% as far as a value that people thought.

A little bit about our

engagement or outreach that we do initiatives.

I think this is an accomplishment.

When the online billing system was rolled out, we rolled out a monthly e-newsletter.

We've got 9,200 subscribed customers that receive our pertinent information.

We try to time the information.

Like right now, we're developing something for, you know, the November, and it's always about fat, soils, and greases because people are cooking around the holidays.

We want to make sure they don't dump that, that grease is down the drain.

So, they'll get an e-newsletter on that around the 10th of the month.

Our average open rate, if you look at, if you know what these terms are, people open them up, is 62% industry standards in the 30s.

So, people are reading what we send them in an e-newsletter.

I want to mention also in the 2022 Gas Safety Public Awareness Survey,

95% of the surveyed residents were able to identify correctly the smell of natural gas.

And we're required to do this survey by the federal government.

In 2006, it was 39%.

Of course, I always say this was because Flickr was developed and born in 2007.

and became the face of our public awareness program for natural gas.

In the last two years, we also developed an energy saving tree program.

This is where we give 200 to 250 trees away.

And this is the program where people are so happy to get these trees.

They come in on a Friday or Saturday and you've never seen so many happy people.

And our staff really like to work this program.

You know, we have volunteers from our

Staff because people are just so happy to get these trees and take them home and plant them.

And this is where, you know, where they have this, they can decide where they want to plant them on their property to maximize the shade or the wind protection from their house and get the most bang for the buck from an energy efficiency standpoint.

This past year, we were the winner of the 2023 CMA Award of Excellence for this program.

We coordinate this program with the Department of Parks.

They help us decide what trees to

get that will be great for this program.

And then if people don't come and get the trees in a timely manner, they find a home for our tree.

They actually go out and plant it.

So we're thankful that Department of Parks helps us with this program.

We also target park postcards to 3,300 households to promote energy efficiency programs as well.

And we find that we found with our trending, you know, just looking at

What people really look at, postcards are the best way to go if you're trying to target a special program.

And we have the ability to develop those postcards and get them out when we're trying to promote something special.

Another accomplishment or ongoing initiative is meeting and exceeding all regulatory compliance.

We want to ensure our water quality exceeds the standards through maintenance of the distribution system and I think a lot of this is kind of out of sight is that you know our water wastewater people because they both they can work on both and stormwater folks they work on the three they have to have that capability because just for backup purposes even during the flushing exercise or repair of a line there can be a misstep by a maintenance worker that can impact your water quality

So these people have to be specially trained that there's not an impact to the water quality.

And we've been really good about training these people, and they've been receptive to that training.

In the last year, we've had some detailed frequent state corporation commission inspection.

This is on the natural gas utility.

We've actually had three major inspections that have happened over the last year.

One was for operator qualification, which is our training program for natural gas.

workers that demonstrate they are qualified to work on the infrastructure.

Another one was our public awareness program.

This is where you can smell the natural gas.

That's all public.

It's all very involved.

And those are week-long audits we go through.

and then we had in the last year a two week long audit by SEC personnel that looks at our field operations.

We had no findings or recommendations from any of those inspections and I can say that no other natural gas utility in this state had those kind of comments where there were no findings.

We work real hard to make sure we don't have any findings.

And then there's the EPA led service line inventory.

This is, you may have read a lot about this in the news where

EPA has brought down regulations to make sure that everybody knows if they have any lead within their system.

And I am very pleased to say, based on great records prior to me, we have no lead service lines in the city's system.

They did an inventory back in the day by a professional, and there's documented records that have no lead services.

Now, but with that said, we're also required to look at the private system.

This is from the meter to the household.

Things we don't own.

And we can say that 35% of those private owned lines have been verified with no lead.

But anything built prior to 1988 is going to require some investigation.

We have to make sure that lines are investigated and have all that data into

The state office, which then reports to EPA, it's Virginia Department of Health, and all of that has to be completed by October 2024.

Yes, yes.

But there are means to do that.

But yeah, we're in the midst of doing that right now.

We also have innovative applications of technology and asset management GIS team works on this is where we utilize cutting-edge technology to enhance the data collection between the field crews and the office crews so all of that can be downloaded and we have developed 22 applications by our GIS team and this was done in-house so that so we can increase efficiencies for example

If we are installing any infrastructure, they could take a picture of it.

That's automatically uploaded into our system.

There's applications that have drop downs that we could check off what they may have found.

We also have applications associated with our clean and TVing for sewer lines to make sure that they know where they need to go next.

said that we're not redoing a system that we did three years ago, because we try to get through the system every ten years.

And we have the same type of application when it comes to leak detection of our natural gas lines, so they know what's coming up, because we have to get around all the residentials every three years, and they use applications to track that.

And so it really increases the efficiency that the fuel grows.

But we're not without our challenges.

So in the field worker area, we have 24, when I put this together, we had 24 open positions.

We have recently had four maintenance worker hires that are pending right now.

So that may decrease to 20.

But the

Composition of that is where majority of those are maintenance workers so they're really entry level positions and we've tried to work with HR to get into the schools to try to promote come and work for us.

You know it's people that may not want to go to college and they may want a career

Utilities is a good place to start and we have had some very young staff people come to work for us and they seem to enjoy it but we still got a lot of work to do and then there are about 11 or 12 of these positions that are more highly skilled their natural gas service technicians go into homes to light gas about three or four of those

There's motor equipment operators, you have to be skilled to drive a backhoe and run other kinds of equipment, and they take a little more skill set.

Of course, we're competing with the private industry for these positions, and it's gotten tough in recent years, but we're trying to do everything we can to recruit people.

And then I mentioned, you know, more stringent regulatory compliance.

I talked a little bit about the leak copper survey that we're in the midst of doing.

and additional SCC oversight.

It's indicated that the federal government, which is the acronym is PHMSA, is coming down with more regulations next year associated with the natural gas utility and we'll have to be on top of that.

And then the stormwater program is about ready, it has or is about ready to

have its 10th anniversary.

And so we're going to look at evaluating any enhancements or fee adjustments that need to be made or phased in on the next rate setting.

So stay tuned to hear more about that.

Yeah, I thank you.

I've enjoyed working with you on the Rivanna board, and you all do a really good job of keeping our utilities in excellent condition and very professional.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And I appreciate your presentation.

I just had one piece here.

It's something I don't really understand that well, but a friend of mine who knows a good bit about the stormwater utility fee, I guess it started 10 years ago.

Is that right?

Essentially their question is what is that money being used for?

Is it just for utility projects or is it being invested in the Water Resources Protection Program as well?

Yeah, so it's twofold.

It's investment in the Water Resources Protection.

So we do have projects like the stream restoration projects that are associated with the Water Resources Protection that we invest in.

as well as making sure our infrastructure is maintained.

A vast portion of that, the fee is, you know, I don't know the numbers right now off the top of my head,

It's about 80 to 85% is associated with capital improvement program.

And minimal is, you know, we don't have a lot of staff in the stormwater.

There's only administrator, GIS technician, VSMP person that works in engineering, as well as the water resources specialist.

The WRPP, Water Resources Protection Program?

It's still active, yeah.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you.

No questions?

I've got nothing other than what I already asked you.

Okay.

I'll get back with you on that.

You have satisfied customers on the dais.

That's good.

I know.

Thank you.

All right.

Is there a motion to go?

We don't need to go into a closed meeting, so we just need to recess until 6.30.

And if you're coming by Zoom, it's a different Zoom link then.

Okay, folks, it is 630.

And let us come back to order, please.

We did not have a closed session, so we don't have anything to come out of.

Okay, we have a couple of proclamations.

Just stand here for a second.

I'm going to read the proclamation, then I'll come down and give it to you.

Recognizing Cindy Richardson as the 2023 Virginia State CIT Coalition Peer of the Year, whereas the

Last year I just sent you a letter.

This time I give you official proclamation.

So whereas the Crisis Intervention Team or CIT program is a community partnership of law enforcement, mental health and addiction professionals, individuals who live with mental illness and or addiction disorders, their families and other partners to improve community responses to mental health crises.

and whereas the CIT model known as the Memphis model was first developed in 1988 and since has spread throughout the United States and several nations worldwide and whereas the Virginia Crisis Intervention Team Coalition, VACIT, is an incorporated nonprofit organization

that supports crisis intervention teams to improve behavioral health crisis response through community collaboration, training, and advocacy.

And whereas VACIT values safety, partnership, dignity, and respect, and innovation, and aspires to promote safe and appropriate responses in Virginia to those affected by behavioral health crises.

And whereas VACIT's purpose is to promote and support

Collaborative efforts to create and sustain more effective interactions among law enforcement, behavioral health care providers, individuals with mental illness, their families and communities, and to reduce stigma related to mental illness.

And whereas on October 17, 2023, Ms.

Cindy Richardson of On Our Own Peer Support was presented the 2023 Virginia State CIT Coalition Peer of the Year Award at a Virginia CIT conference ceremony,

Now, therefore, the Charlottesville City Council congratulates Ms.

Cindy Richardson for receiving this prestigious award in recognition, and we express appreciation for her dedicated service to the community and to the work of crisis intervention.

Signed and sealed this 6th day of November, 2023, Jay Lloyd Snook, the third mayor.

Do you want to say anything to anybody?

You've got an opportunity.

Okay, well first, this is what this is about.

So I'm going to hand this to my granddaughter, Casey.

I grabbed Tom's hand because I was just expressing to my daughter that none of this happened.

Tom,

believes in me, and he's always putting my name in something.

And I follow, and I follow.

But it's a labor of love, and this is what happens.

And we have a second proclamation recognizing the 160th anniversary of the First Baptist Church on West Main Street.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

First Baptist Church, West Main Street, 160th anniversary recognition.

Whereas the story of First Baptist Church

West Main Street of Charlottesville began before the Civil War when congregants worshipped together under segregated conditions and whereas in March

1863 shortly after signing the proclamation the Emancipation Proclamation approximately 800 black members presented an application to form their own congregation and that their request was granted several months later and whereas in 1868 the congregation purchased the mud wall building officially

the Delavan Hotel becoming known as Delavan Baptist Church and whereas the Delavan Baptist Church building was raised in 1867 and the new building completed in 1883 with the congregation becoming known as First Baptist Church.

and whereas after the Civil War the First Baptist Church was instrumental in holding instructions within its walls hereby whereby hundreds of formerly enslaved people were educated and members have been the forefront of race relations for nearly a century instrumental in establishing the local NAACP chapter integrating patients of the University of Virginia

serving on local boards and commission and remaining active actively involved in the community.

Now therefore be resolved the Charlottesville City Council takes great pleasure in recognizing the 106th anniversary

of First Baptist Church, West Main Street, and the contributions its members throughout the years in service to Charlottesville and the surrounding community.

We've got to give this to somebody.

I'm truly thankful and honored by God to be able to be here.

Thanks to the city council.

We have several members here this evening from First Baptist including our interim pastor, Pastor Jerome Lee, Dr. Jerome Lee, excuse me.

If you can, if you would please stand.

We've only been there, the church has only been there for 160 years through God's grace and His presence.

So we are truly thankful.

We would like to actually officially invite each and every one of you all to come out and join in our 160th anniversary next week, Sunday the 12th, and each one of you all as well.

Service is at 1045 in the morning.

You're certainly more than welcome to be there with us.

And for those of you who are truly interested, we will feed you afterwards.

Those of you who can, those who will, please come out and join us.

It will be a truly wonderful celebration.

And thank you all.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So next item up is our consent agenda.

Ms.

Consent Agenda Number Two, Minutes, August 21st, Regular Meeting, October 3rd, Work Session, October 11th, Work Session.

Three, Ordinance, Amendment of the Charlottesville City Code, Section 15-75, to comply with recent amendments to the Virginia Code, Section 46.2-924A, requiring drivers to stop for pedestrians in crosswalks.

Second reading.

Four, ordinance, amendment of Charlottesville City Code Section 15-435 to permit a towing operation or towing operator fuel surcharge fee to conform to changes in state law, second reading.

Five, resolution to appropriate funds from the Charlottesville Albemarle Adult Drug Treatment Court Grant Award, $240,000, second reading.

Six, Resolution to Appropriate Funding from the FY22 State Criminal Alien Assistance Program Grant for Albemarle, Charlottesville Regional Jail, $19,050.

Second reading.

Seven, Resolution to Appropriate Funding from the FY23 Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS, HIV Grant

$382,352, second reading.

Eight, resolution to appropriate victim witness assistance program grant $258,342, one of two readings.

Nine, resolution to appropriate funding from the Supreme Court of Virginia Behavioral Health

Docket Grant, $67,792, one of two readings, 10, Resolution to Appropriate Virginia Department of Education Special Nutrition Program Child and Adult Care Food Program funding, $30,000, one of two readings,

Each speaker will have up to three minutes.

Is there anybody in council chambers who would like to speak on a consent agenda item?

If you have preregistered and you want to talk about something else, that moment will come in just a few minutes.

But if you have something on those 11 items, this is the time to talk.

Anybody?

Okay, seeing nobody, we will move on then.

Okay, please vote.

Yes, sir, Mr. Mayor.

Just a few things.

First, I wanted to brief counsel as well as bring the public up to date as to where we stand on the alternative fuel study.

We have a lot of interest, of course, in CAT finishing up their work to bring that particular study result back to counsel with their recommendations for you all to make some determinations as to what next steps we will follow.

We have worked with the team to decide to push that back to January.

The actual presentation of the

recommendations will come at a January work session and council meeting on the 16th.

So the goal would be for there to be sufficient time for that information to be made public so that others can take a look at it and of course for council to have some time with it.

because it will lead to some big decisions as we've been discussing any transformation of a fleet of the size that we have is going to be very expensive and we need to make sure that we take the appropriate steps and we think through that in the best way that we can.

What we're also doing and this is also information for the public as well is that we have been working to try to see if we can't schedule a site visit.

The goal would be to go to Montgomery County, Maryland at some point in December.

We're working on trying to figure out exact dates as to when we might be able to have

a brief visit for council members the public as well as media and advocates if they would like to join us to give council the opportunity to see what does a transformation like this really entail to give you a chance to see some of the infrastructure improvements that will be required and then a chance to actually talk to individuals who've done this so we'll be able to hear from them some of their various issues some of their lessons learned

and hopefully see some of their celebratory moments that have occurred as well and being able to make the changes that we've been discussing here in our community.

So we'll be working on that.

There'll be more details to come.

I've enlisted the assistance of our communications director who's going to help coordinate since we're going to be inviting external parties to the government to participate on this particular event.

And as soon as we get those details, we'll be making them public and look to invite others to join us for that particular trip.

Next item is a continued update on homelessness intervention.

As I've expressed over the past few months, that is a top priority for me.

And we continue to work on making sure that we are paying attention to the needs of our unhoused population.

In the short-term area, we are continuing to look at overnight shelter capacity, especially as our winter has arrived a little bit earlier.

Y'all don't know me as well.

I hate cold weather.

I don't like snow.

So I'm already stressing out about the fact that I need a coat someday.

So the fact that that is the case, then I'm looking to make sure that our unhoused population have options to not be outside.

and exposed to the temperature as well.

So we'll continue to work on that.

Right now, our capacity has been sufficient, so we're going to continue to work on looking for additional beds and making sure those beds come available as needed and that we can respond if that other stuff, that white stuff, starts to fall and then makes me a little sad.

That's all right.

But more importantly, I think this is also an update for the public on one of the key priorities.

It falls into the longer-term category for me that I want to express some continued support on.

And I'll be bringing an item back to Council very soon in support of you spending funds to help make some of these things happen.

The permanent supportive housing development at the former hotel site on 29, we refer to it as Premier Circle.

It's 80 units of permanent supportive housing.

That project has a budget gap, and that budget gap right now is $1.4 million, and they are short 40 vouchers to be able to move forward on the project as planned.

and I think it's important for us as a region to come together and figure out how to close that gap and get that project back on track.

The city has not put a lot of money into the project previously and I hope to fix that so that's why I've been working on it.

We have had some conversations with the county and additional other partners and the goal would be that we can close that gap and ensure that that project can start in May as scheduled.

80 units of permanent supportive housing is a big deal.

It is an important piece to our puzzle as to how we continue to support what is happening in our community as it relates to those individuals who are struggling to maintain a household of their own.

And the goal would be to get that done as I also will continue to work in that space that I've already expressed the desire to have a full service shelter available in this community 24 7 365 so that we can make sure that no one has to live outside if they are looking to move inside.

So with that, I'll end and turn it over to Will Bassett from Parks and Rec.

I have our consultant for the Parks and Rec Master Plan.

They're going to actually introduce you to the process that we are about to kick off.

This is a very important task for me.

I'm excited.

I'll tell you that because I've been asking for a Parks Master Plan for I don't know how many months now.

We're going to start that process.

The goal is to engage the community and we will be able to look at what are some improvements that we can make overall as it relates to parks and recreation in our community.

Thank you.

Good evening, Council.

My name is Will Bassett with Department of Parks and Recreation and I'm here tonight to introduce Mike Spetz with PROS Consulting who will be conducting a virtual presentation regarding the Parks and Recreation comprehensive master plan.

The department is in the beginning stage of this plan and we've hired PROS Consulting and they'll be guiding and assisting us with the development of the plan.

Tonight PROS will give you an overview of the project process and the outcomes of the master plan process and the final draft in the final plan.

Now you can hear me.

There we go.

Thank you, Will.

Thank you, Mr. Sanders.

Thank you, Mayor, Council.

Very nice to make this presentation to you.

It's been quite a while since I've had the opportunity to present to Charlottesville City Council.

My name is Mike Svets, Principal with Pros Consulting.

Recovering Parks and Recreation Director and did spend about five years with the City of Charlottesville so as mentioned tonight is not meant to be an end-all be-all it is just to provide you an overview of the process and some of the key touch points and or deliverable so I'm gonna kill my video share my screen and run through this with you hopefully here

are in short order as soon as the screen loads.

Mike, this is David Dolehunt with the city.

I'm able to share just in case.

Yeah, you know what?

Let's do that if you want to stop my share.

If you can do that, I seem to be frozen on my end.

Your presentation is now displaying on Zoom.

I cannot, but I can work through it very quickly.

So just very quickly, the team, so the second slide, if we want to go to that, the team is

pretty tight team.

Pros Consulting is the prime or the lead on the project.

LPDA, landscape architect firm located in Charlottesville is a part of our team.

ETC Institute will be conducting a statistically valid survey.

for us as part of this process and we also are bringing ZEC 8 insights into the project to help with evaluation of the programs and services associated with the current department offerings.

PROSE has been around for about 27, 28 years now.

PROSE also was the firm that

in next slide the pros was the firm that did the the last Parks and Recreation master plan in 2005 for the city of Charlottesville next slide in terms of implementation or the overall process one thing we want to focus on is recognizing that implementation isn't something that we talk about at the end of the project it's something that is front and center throughout the entire process

and we're really focused on understanding and creating an implementable and realistic master plan for the entire process.

The next slide really kind of if we want to skip to the community engagement well one the next slide is really focused on the

facility assessments, park and facility assessments.

This is something that is currently being undertaken by LPDA.

They have been out assessing and inventorying the entire system.

This creates a good foundation to give us an understanding of the current system as it exists today and will be a jumping off point for us as we start to talk about improvements for the overall system going forward.

In terms of community engagement, we want to ensure that we take a very holistic and never-ending approach to community engagement.

It is important to recognize we are going to use a lot of different tools in the toolkit.

These are just some examples, but we will certainly bring as many of these to the table as possible.

Next slide.

In terms of a project website, we do have a social pinpoint website.

It is a very interactive website.

It is currently live.

That is the web link there at the bottom.

We will shorten that as we start to push this out as part of the project.

But it's an opportunity not only as a repository for information associated with the master plan, but it gives the public an opportunity to engage along the way.

Tell us your likes, your dislikes, your opportunities for improvement, what you like most about the system or a specific park.

This is just something that will live throughout the entire project.

It is again, not going to be the end all be all in terms of engagement with the community, but it is a great way for folks to continually be updated with regards to where we're at with the plan.

Next slide.

So one thing that you're going to start to realize as we go through this, and you all know this, but a master plan project is very comprehensive.

In fact, the department labeled it as a comprehensive park and recreation master plan.

We want to bring this back to you and the public and the advisory boards and the project steering committee in what we call digestible junks.

We're going to do a series of meetings with regards to just the overview of the process.

We want to bring back to you another set of meetings

Brown community needs the technical key findings recommendations and then final master plan what this will ensure is that we're getting it right along the way that we have the opportunity to elicit feedback and incorporate that feedback into any step of the process so that when we get

to the end we will have more or less covered every stone so that we're talking about final plan adoption we will have had the opportunity to really talk about every issue and recommendation along the way.

Next slide.

So one big component for us

is to ensure that diversity is heard throughout this entire process.

Next slide.

One thing that I think, you know, when we talk about a statistically valid survey, we talk about underrepresented or we talk about websites, that's not going to reach everybody.

So what we really have to understand is how best

has to reach underrepresented populations.

The Social Vulnerability Index, you know, and some of the key factors, race, ethnicity, poverty, language barriers, health, disability, educational attainment, other that we need to be aware of are all variables that we need to take into consideration when we start to talk about making

making sure that we have a holistic community engagement process.

Next slide.

So this is a really quick map of the level of vulnerability based on the CDC Social Vulnerability Index.

You can see that the lighter shades or the green shades is where you have low to medium.

The bluer shades

The data is medium to high, the purple is high.

These represent challenges for us and also opportunities to make sure that we're tailoring a community engagement process in such a way that we reach everybody in all neighborhoods in Charlottesville.

So though we will certainly apply many overarching community engagement processes, as we refine our community engagement process,

through the end of the year and the beginning of next year.

We will certainly tailor it to ensure that we're getting people's voices heard and represented in the plan.

Next slide.

The statistically valid survey is going to be key.

We can produce this in multiple languages and this is going to be a very data-driven, result-driven process.

We will be able to divide this up based on household type in terms of priorities.

We will also be

to divide this up geographically so that we're not just creating a system-wide plan but we're also able to hone in and focus on the recreational values, the park and recreational values as they differ and what those needs are as they differ from household type to household type as well as geography.

Next slide.

Another, so all of this will result in what we call community needs.

Programs is one thing.

Services is another thing.

Park and rec facilities and amenities is another component.

And we will certainly use a very data driven process to ensure that we are understanding not only the prioritized needs of the community as a whole, as I said, but also understanding them by geography as well as household type.

Next slide.

Level of service is also critically important and we want to ensure that we are creating equitable levels of service provisions whether it be for programs, whether it be for services, whether it be for parks and amenities.

Next slide.

One thing that we are going to do is map that CDC vulnerability index and dive into it a little bit further.

We're going to use other factors such as how well have you invested in parks and services

in certain areas of your community over the course of the last 10 years.

What's the plan going forward?

And have we been applying equitable resources to the community to start to understand that are we trying to create as much equity and accessibility to high quality park and recreation parks, facilities, amenities, as well as programs and services?

Next slide.

We'll end up with a composite map, and I'm just using an example of this from Virginia Beach.

But basically you can see on this map that all of the hot areas, the heat index, the reds, are where the most amount of investment needs to be made in Virginia Beach.

and the green is where the lighter areas need to be made.

So what this does is it takes the narrative around understanding what needs to be done and really has the ability to focus in using this kind of visual tool.

Next slide.

Programming and Service Equity Assessment is a component.

This is something that will be led by ZEC 8 Insights.

Pros will certainly have a say in this, but one of the key outcomes, next slide, of this is to really create a mill and matrix and a prioritization lens, understand what the department should

I'm going to talk about what the department should be doing and understand what the department should not be doing.

This is really important because every department in the city has limited resources and we need to use those resources in a way that's going to reach the most amount of the community and meet the most amount of needs.

So this is just a way from a program perspective.

to be able to help us understand what businesses or lines of service as it relates to programs that the city should be in and the ones that maybe we just need to stop doing.

Next slide.

We are also going to create concept plans for this master plan.

with a focus on four specific areas.

Next slide.

We are going to do concept plans for Tonsler Park, Booker T. Washington Park, Market Street Park, and Court Square Park.

These will have their own separate community engagement processes that will take place next summer and fall.

The concept

plan and next slide but I want to make sure that everybody understands that coming out of this a deliverable for a concept plan is going to be a high level idea test fit it's flexible it's going to be an example of what could happen and not necessarily what will happen but I think it's important to recognize that we need

some four very distinct park improvement plans for those specific parks going forward in very different parts of the community.

Next slide.

The capital improvement recommendations and costs refer to this more about cost estimating and you will not necessarily

We're going to break this up into what we call three buckets.

We recognize the city has criteria around which you determine whether or not capital projects go forward, but we're going to break capital projects up into three buckets.

Things that are just life cycle replacement.

No park amenity, no facility that ever gets built is going to last forever and everything at some point needs to be replaced.

Were there opportunities for renovations and enhancements to existing parks and are there any visionary projects, new acquisition such as the

the acquisition you're considering as it relates to along the Rivanna.

Is there an opportunity to completely renovate an entire park?

For example, if that were to happen for say Washington Park or Tonsler, that would be something that would fall into this visionary bucket.

The reason that we like to do this in these three buckets though is also there are different funding strategies.

Not to say that there are unique funding strategies for each bucket, but there are absolutely funding strategies that will be applicable to only bucket one or bucket two or bucket three.

Next slide.

And again, the final plan is really going to be grounded in realistic implementation strategies.

We want to ensure, just like the plan was back in 2005, that it can be implemented, that it is realistic.

It is within the funding resources that the city is projecting to have over the next five to ten years.

and we'll also challenge with regards to what are additional funding strategies that we can bring to the table.

Next slide.

So last thing I want to mention is that we are going to route this all within the total cost of ownership.

There are obviously funding sources for capital investment, but anything you build

you're charged with operating and maintaining that and we need to ensure that you have the appropriate resources on the operations and maintenance side to support that capital investment and then as mentioned in the CIP discussion we will also give you an understanding of how long anything should last and what that potential life cycle replacement cost would be.

Next slide.

So our most immediate next steps is really going to be that we already did this for the Parks and Rec Advisory Board in October.

The park assessment site visits are occurring now.

The kickoff meetings will be there next week in Charlottesville.

The weather will, as Mr. Sanders mentioned, start to get a little chilly.

But we'll be there next week.

Again, we are going to be doing some stakeholder and focus group meetings next week.

We are going to do a kickoff meeting with the community as a whole at the Carver Recreation Center at 6 o'clock.

on Tuesday, the 14th.

We're also going to do the program and service assessment kickoff in December.

And on December 1st, we will be conducting intercept surveys at the grand illumination event.

So this is just, again, a quick overview of the process.

It is not intended to be completely comprehensive of everything that we're going to do, but just some of the highlights.

Yeah, I have someone.

Thank you so much for this.

You know, I had heard of the social, the CDC's Social Vulnerability Index, and I went to a CDC site, and they talk about that, you know, it's good for when you're looking at stresses such as natural or human-caused disasters, and I was just wondering how

Are you going to measure that?

I mean, I know the importance of it, but I think the importance of us understanding at a very first step is to understand where your community's vulnerability is most is currently.

And what we're trying to do with that is number one,

recognize that those basic needs as it relates to parks and recreation are likely going to be very different in parts of those community in that part of the community but it's also going to allow us an opportunity to start to frame the community engagement plan in such a way that we're going to tailor the processes to ensure that that we get into those communities more so than just ensuring that say we're asking folks to come to us at the Carver Recreation Center

on Tuesday, the November 14th at six o'clock.

So we're using that as kind of a jumping off point.

It is certainly not meant to be an end all be all.

But again, it's just a data point that will help to inform some of our decisions as we

Go through the actual implementation of the master plan process, but also use the information that comes out of that in such a way to start to identify the difference in the demographics, the tapestry segments, income levels, race, ethnicity, and the basic needs that come out of it.

I would say one of the best ways to look at this is to say, yes, we're going to do an overall system plan, but we are going to have very key recommendations to

for very different parts of your community.

Thank you.

introduced this to us several months ago.

I told him that the input process was going to be real important, that you really have a good engagement process to get input.

And it sounds like you do.

You just really have to go out so that

Correct.

Yeah, it's really just a matter of taking the show on the road, right?

I think you're absolutely spot on.

It's a matter of us getting out into the community as much as we possibly can.

As I recently told the department, you know, the first blush at this is in a week.

But that is not the end-all be-all when it comes to community engagement.

We're not going to say we're going to do some stakeholder and focus group meetings.

We're going to do a community meeting.

We're going to do a survey and be done.

We fully expect the key finding components of the community engagement process to last through the spring of next year.

And I just have one more question or comment that I would like, you know, not detailed information, but, you know, just in large numbers or the, you know, a breakdown of the input to ensure that we got a wide range of input.

doesn't have to be a survey of people come in, but it could be, you know, a guess, something so, you know, so that I can have some assurances that this study represents the community.

So thank you.

Yes, it is a city county park and so that will certainly be a part of something that we tap into as we go forward.

Great, thank you.

I was looking at your presentation and you had your toolkit and a large percentage of individuals that utilize parks and recs are younger people and you indicated that there would be some engagement with students which I think is critical because I think that

You need a buy-in from all of your citizens, but when you're looking at some of the facilities, you need to consider the individuals that use it, just like the skate park.

A lot of the children that use the skate park are within a certain age group, which is also a demographic.

One of the things that we discussed earlier were services for

persons living in particular communities and courses or classes that they may want.

So I appreciate you saying that this is not a one and done, but if you have something that is scheduled,

and you don't get the return or the attendance.

I hope that you will go back and look at it and be very pointed, particularly when you're meeting with students, what their schedules are.

You're saying that you're going to start now through the spring of the year and we have various athletic programs and competitions going on

that may impact those students from coming, but also making sure that the parents of the younger children who participate in our little dance classes and ballet classes at the Carver Recreation Center

are able to attend as well because there are particular things that they may be interested in.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Well, we look forward to engaging with you over the next year on this and look forward to the reports.

You're very welcome.

Thank you, Mayor.

Council have a good rest of your meeting.

Thank you.

Okay.

It is now time for our community matters section.

We have eight pre-registered speakers leaving eight slots for additional speakers on community matters.

If one of the first eight speakers is unavailable, we'll take the next person on the wait list to move into that slot.

Each person will have up to three minutes to speak.

We'll now open the floor to preregistered speakers.

Kathy Rupnick Okay, lovely.

So first off, thank you all for your time tonight and for allowing me to speak about a speeding issue that's occurring in our neighborhood.

Thank you for the work that you do to contribute to the well-being of our community.

My name is Ketty Rupnick and I live at 219 Langford Avenue with my partner and my young two-year-old son.

We've lived on Langford Avenue since 2019 and it's a wonderful place to be.

I love it.

I have amazing neighbors, many of them who are here tonight, to also voice their concerns about speeding that's occurring within our neighborhood.

So if you don't know about Langford Avenue,

It's a connecting street between Ridge Street, which is off of Fifth Street, and also South First Street.

Of the 35 homes that are on our street, more than half of them have children that live there.

You know, these are really important members of our community and our neighborhood.

We obviously care a lot about their well-being.

They live and play in this neighborhood and also commute to and from the bus.

And I believe that there are several factors regarding the design of the street that contribute to and exacerbate some of the speeding issues.

So there's two hills within our street.

So as you go down the street, a lot of the vehicles are picking up speed.

Also, there's sidewalk discontinuity.

So if someone's walking down one side of the sidewalk, it ends and they're crossing the street to get to the other side to use the sidewalk.

That increases the risk with those people being in the street and increases their vulnerability to traffic and safety issues.

So we've witnessed intense and dangerous speeding at all hours of the night and some near misses that have really made me hold my breath.

Tonight, I stand here with my neighbors and with my community members asking how we can work together with the city to evaluate and implement some traffic calming issues and measures on Langford Avenue to ensure the safety and well-being of all of those who live on our street, including our children.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

Ruptek.

and I note that there are a number of other folks who had asked to speak on the same topic who are on the wait list and maybe you'll get there or not but at least I gather there are other people here who support what she just said.

Just give me a show of hands so you get a sense of how many of y'all there are.

Okay.

So if we don't get to you we've at least got that expression.

Good evening, counselors.

Thank you for your time.

My name is Maria Deuster and I am a climate justice policy manager at the Community Climate Collaborative here in Charlottesville.

And I'm here to speak today on the city's alternative fuel study and in favor of zero emission buses.

When we think about issues such as energy and transportation, I think we should always consider the ways in which they intersect with

and reproduce different social, environmental, and economic inequalities.

C3's transit equity report highlighted that low-income households can spend over 30% of their income on transport costs.

Transport equity is inextricably intertwined with housing affordability and cost of living, issues that cities such as Charlottesville have and continue to struggle with.

Right now, the city of Charlottesville is confronting the fact that many folks in our community do not have adequate access to care and housing.

This is symptomatic of decades-long policies that have pushed black and brown folks out, prioritized redevelopment over community preservation, and depleted an already low affordable housing stock.

Many people cannot afford to own a car or pay for gas, car insurance, or other related costs.

By investing in transit, we can make cars less of a necessity, increase mobility, and lower a person's monthly bills in the process.

These costs include medical care as well.

The pollution that diesel buses emit has been linked to heart and lung problems as well as premature death.

Vulnerable populations, especially black, brown, and low income folks are disproportionately affected by these pollutants.

Put simply, no one should have to put their health at risk in order to use public transit.

I'd also like to emphasize that this is a direct local action that the council can take.

Right now, for example, the city of Charlottesville purchases carbon offsets from BP as a core way to reduce its carbon footprint.

In fact, carbon offsets make up nearly 25% of the city's emissions reductions.

While purchasing carbon offsets can sometimes reduce GHG emissions on a global scale, they do not address emissions within the city itself.

25% holds a lot of potential.

While the city does not necessarily need to stop purchasing carbon offsets completely, where we spend our money matters, as does who it most benefits.

Investing in technologies such as zero emission buses, like BEBs,

can positively impact our community.

Zero-emission buses are not a fix-all to the various issues facing Charlottesville, but they do represent an actionable step that the city can take towards reducing emissions locally and improving the livelihoods of our residents.

Thank you, Ms.

Ooster.

Good evening, Charlottesville City Council.

My name is Lucas Schatz and I'm currently a first year engineering student at the University of Virginia.

I'm here to talk about the upcoming CAT decision for the buses.

The City of Charlottesville has the potential to act as a statewide leader as it determines what type of bus will constitute its CAT fleet in the coming years.

I propose that the City of Charlottesville maintain 36 diesel buses while simultaneously revamping its fleet with 22 new battery electric expansion buses complete with fast and or en route charging over the next five years.

Katz's biggest weapon to combat Charlottesville GHG emissions and meet the city's climate goals is the restoration of public faith.

In 2021, ridership numbers were 75% lower than in 2015.

Any improvement upon these numbers will aid in city emissions, regardless of the bus variety and use.

Thus, as diesel buses remain the most consistently reliable bus option, the city ought to retain 36 diesel buses both to provide a backbone of reliability for the new fleet and allow CAT to phase in new battery electric buses over the coming five years.

Additionally, diesel buses are the cheapest option of the available bus types, require no excess infrastructure or facility costs, and are already familiar to CAT personnel.

Nonetheless, price at face value does not illustrate the full picture.

The city of Charlottesville has pledged carbon neutrality by 2050, but the city's transportation sector accounts for 29 percent of Charlottesville's GHD emissions.

I urge this council to consider the fact that our current emissions progress is coming off the back of Dominion Energy's changing energy mix, not an effort on the part of this community.

The city has pledged a 45 percent emission reduction by 2030.

Twenty-two new BEBs would make CAT's fleet roughly 40 percent electric by 2028.

We're not asking you to do something radical.

It's simply time for Charlottesville to adhere to its own climate directive and CAT must play its part.

BEBs remain the best alternative fuel option available to cut down on CAT emissions with lower operating costs than low carbon alternatives and a booming industry behind them.

Purchasing 20 new battery electric buses by 2028 along with the two BEBs already approved allows CAT to adapt in real time and scale up the infrastructure for the new BEBs as they arrive.

As CAT builds out and expands its EV infrastructure, the ease of adding additional BEVs will compound.

However, we must begin purchasing BEVs now while the $1.7 billion of federal grants for low emissions buses remains a potential to offset costs.

A sustainable CAT and a reliable CAT are not in any way mutually exclusive.

Thank you, Mr. Schatz.

Next up, we have Violet Wiley.

Good evening.

I'm here today to speak on the zero emission buses.

My name is Violet Wiley and I'm a junior at Western Albemarle High School.

I'm one of the leaders of the Green New Deals for Schools Club at Western and I'm also part of the Environmental Studies Academy there.

This summer I had the opportunity to participate in the James River Leadership Academy, which is a program designed to enable teens to become active members in the fight to better the environment around us.

I learned firsthand while paddling the James River with experts the harmful impacts that come from industrial and agricultural runoff and individuals and communities not being good stewards of the river.

As a part of this academy, I will complete a project which will make a positive impact on our community as well as helping the river.

As I have been thinking and deciding on what specific issue I would like my project to address and have been looking at issues such as pollution in the James and the actions of the community in addressing them, it has become very clear that there is an interconnectedness between the issues present in my community and issues plaguing the river.

When I became more aware of the side effects of careless human actions on the river, I started to see that issues in the James were also present in my community.

Its pattern of negative human impacts is present in every community, including mine and yours.

But you are capable of having a positive impact.

If you all vote in favor of battery electric buses, the positive impact this decision would have on our environment are clear.

Battery electric buses emit 1.29 pounds of greenhouse gases per mile, while compressed natural gas buses emit 5.77 pounds.

This is almost 4.5 times more per bus.

When it comes to the fight against climate change, every action matters.

What we do in our community individually affects all the other communities around us.

This vote will move Charlottesville towards being a role model for other communities to follow and look up to in the fight against climate change.

For example, even though I do not live in the city of Charlottesville,

But rather in Albemarle County, this issue is incredibly important to me as it one day may lead Albemarle to follow in your footsteps.

I'm part of the growing generation who loves the outdoors and recognizes the value and importance that it holds for everyone.

Because of this, I urge you to think about how your actions here today will pave the way to create a world where my children and even grandchildren can experience nature and the world around them in the same way both you and I have.

This will only be possible if we start taking action today.

Thank you, Ms.

Wiley.

I'm grateful for the opportunity to speak tonight.

My name is Sarah Stevens and I'm a resident of 226 Lankford Avenue and the Ridge Street neighborhood.

I'm here tonight with many of my neighbors both in person and virtually to ask the council to install traffic calming measures on our street.

As our first speaker, Ketty Rupnick, detailed, Langford Avenue is a two-block-long residential street that runs parallel to Elliott Avenue.

This is a street full of young families.

My wife and I have three children under the age of four, three-year-old twins and a one-year-old.

One of our twins has mild cerebral palsy, which means that she has motor differences that make her slower at times.

And part of her disability is that she can be quite impulsive, and we worry about her eloping outside the fence now that she's at an age to open the gate herself.

In addition to our family there are at least 12 other children on the street that are under the age of 10 years old and there are more on the way.

These numbers do not include any homes in the adjoining Burnett neighborhood which also houses many young children.

I want to impress that Linkford Avenue is truly a delightful street filled with caring neighbors and we've been residents of the street since 2018.

The problem is that our little street gets a lot of traffic and the cars go way too fast.

The street has two hills

and at the bottom of Langford are the housing complexes on First Street.

At the top of Langford is a connection to Rich Street.

Many cars use it as a quick cut through to bypass traffic on Elliott Avenue and our narrow street was not built for that kind of volume.

Other cars use it as what seems like a drag racing strip and I wish I was just being funny.

We regularly have people drive their motorcycles and cars to the top of the street just to turn around and race down and they do this repeatedly throughout the day.

With so many young children at play and pedestrians who are walking to the top of the street to catch the city bus, we absolutely need a way to slow the traffic down.

Many of us have already installed fences and other barriers to keep children away from the road

but these measures are insufficient for safety given the amount of reckless driving that happens on our residential street.

A recent example is Halloween.

We and another family on the street went trick or treating on Lankford.

We had five kids under the age of four dressed up in costumes.

We had our slow kids at play sign out and I was so alarmed by the number of cars that exceeded the speed limit on our street despite seeing children out.

I joined my neighbors tonight in requesting that the city install three speed humps on our street, one at the top, one in the middle, and one at the end on Lakeford Avenue to slow down the cars.

Thank you, Ms.

Evans.

Good evening, Council.

Good evening.

Thank you for having me.

My name is Ryan McCall.

I have been a Charlottesville resident for the majority of my adult life.

I'm a husband, a father of two boys, ages 15 and 12, and my family is my life.

I'm also a board member of the Community Climate Collaborative, and I consider them my extended family.

I'm here today to talk about the zero emission bus campaign and I'm hoping you all will take what I have to say in making your decision.

Nine and a half years ago I lost my mom to lung cancer and it was one of the hardest things that I've ever been through.

My mom was a wonderful human being.

She always put her family and her community first.

She was a public school teacher for over 30 years teaching third through fifth grade.

She lived in the city most of her life.

She took public transit most of her life.

and I am convinced that this contributed to her developing lung cancer and dying at the age of 64.

She spent most of her life outside teaching, breathing in toxic fumes from emissions through vehicles in the city that she called home.

There's not a day that goes by that I don't miss my mom and the hardest part is that my kids have grown up without a grandmother.

I know the decision to convert over to zero emission battery electric buses is not an easy one.

It comes with the decision about money and it also comes with the decision of equity.

But I believe that it is our right and it is our goal to protect our citizens and that health should be the priority over everything else.

Maybe we can do something that makes the air cleaner and maybe that means that fewer people will develop lung diseases such as cancer.

and maybe there'll be a lot more children on our streets that can grow up with their grandmothers as my children have not grown up with theirs.

And that's why I'm here and I'm asking you all to consider my statement and we have the opportunity to do the right thing and I'm asking you guys to consider that as a strong possibility.

Thank you, Mr. McCall.

Next is Asa Eslocker, if I've got that correct.

and I see you have an assistant.

Ryan, I'm sorry for your loss.

Thank you for your statement.

Hello, my name is Asa Eslocker and thank you for this opportunity to speak today.

I'm also here with my daughter, nine-year-old Violet Eslocker.

Thank you.

My family and I, we live on Lankford Avenue in Charlottesville and we're also here with many of our neighbors

to request traffic calming measures on Langford Avenue, like speed bumps or speed humps or what you think are appropriate.

My wife and I have three children, ages six, seven, and nine, and we've lived on Langford Avenue for the last nine years.

And like all parents, we remember many adorable sayings from their toddler years.

And one of their most memorable childlike sayings evolved from their own righteous indignation at many speeding cars and loud vehicles racing down our street.

On many family walks and strollers or trikes or while playing outside, our kids would often point their little fingers and yell at speeding cars, slow down sir, many, many times, right?

It happened so often that this shout became almost like a family meme.

It happened so often that we, wrongly, kind of found complacency and acceptance to the danger only feet from our house and from our children.

While living on Langford Avenue, we've also enjoyed seeing the number of families and number of young children increase on our street.

I think 12 or more recently, just within the last, you know, eight or nine or ten years.

We've also seen safety concerns increase due to the frequency of fast cars and speeding motorcycles up and down the street.

It simply has become unsafe for everyone.

Recently one of the most alarming incidents happened this year when getting our children off the bus at the top of Ridge Street and Lankford.

When the bus stopped a motorcyclist swerved recklessly and defiantly in front of the bus passing the children and the bus so it could illegally speed down Lankford.

We felt helpless and worried about safety.

Scared and nervous for the record.

But fortunately, our neighbors and this Lankford community is also stepping up and requesting support for better speed management on our street.

And finally, the noise pollution for motorists driving too fast is also a concern.

In a recent first grade riding assignment, and this is true, our seven-year-old son described how he dislikes the motorcycles and cars that drive too fast on our street, and how the noise often wakes him up at night.

So finally, along with nearly all of our Lankford neighbors, we'd like to respectfully request that City Council approve and provide traffic calming measures on Lankford Avenue as soon as possible because, you know, we'd like everyone driving on our streets to slow down, sir.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for your time.

My name is Maria Kinnon and I'm a junior at Western Albemarle High School.

I'm a co-founder of the Green New Deal for Schools Club at my school and I'm also enrolled in the Environmental Studies Academy there.

I love being outdoors and around nature as much as possible every day in any way that I can.

In the summer of 2022, I was given the chance to be part of the James River Association's James River Leadership Academy.

Just like Violet.

And as part of the program, I got to do a five-day long paddle down the lower part of the James River, kind of near the Chesapeake Bay.

I also then got the opportunity to create a capstone project on how local communities impact the James and how the James River in turn affects them.

As part of the program, I learned how pollution and waste from human activities affect the river and the ecosystems both in and around it.

So for my project, I went to my local middle school that I used to attend and I talked to the sixth graders there about a creek behind their school that is a tributary into the Janes and about what goes into that creek.

and how it also goes into the James.

I also took them down to the creek where we did an activity on sediment runoff and pollution and I taught them about the adverse effects of it and how it can decline the health of the river and the organisms that inhabit it.

And just like how human activity impacts the James, it also impacts the land and cities around it.

Greenhouse gas and tailpipe emissions from public transportation use like buses can lead to poor air quality and

and especially in places like cities where the area of travel is very condensed.

Poor air quality can have negative effects on people who are frequently exposed to it like lung and heart problems and by switching to zero emission battery buses for the community of Charlottesville the air quality would be much better giving people better quality of life while still being able to offer an affordable way to travel around the city.

Growing up in Charlottesville, I know the city, and I love everything that it has to offer.

From great restaurants to fun stores and festivals, I want future generations to be able to have those experiences too.

With these zero emission buses, future generations will be able to share the same experiences and enjoy the city that we all know so dearly.

Thank you, Maria.

Okay, so that gets us through the eight who are definitely pre-registered, and the next eight we're just going to take from

from the group here.

I'll go sort of roughly group by group.

Is somebody over here would like to?

Hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone.

My name is Brian Ng.

I'm a first-year at UVA, and I'm speaking on the alternative fuels plan.

So for Charlottesville to reach net zero emissions by 2050, it must immediately invest in infrastructure that provides for net zero transport as transportation actually comprises 30% of energy demand in the U.S.

This transit plan will chart the course for the next 12 years

and 2050 is closer than we think.

So the city must make sizable progress now and almost completely transition in its additional bus fleet to battery electric buses.

So in terms of zero emissions buses, battery electric buses in comparison to the other things that have been considered like hydrogen fuel cell buses are more abundant and cheaper.

And a major concern with battery electric buses is reliability.

And so I'd like to take a quick moment to address that as their range is not as high as the current diesel fleet.

Thus, they should concurrently be implemented with on route charging.

So a few good examples I could think of for this is like near the downtown transit area as well as near the UVA chapel.

The infrastructure will only cost 100,000 more and will lead to a 1.1 to 1 replacement rate, which means that there wouldn't have to be a mass expansion of the bus fleet like some people have said.

This will increase the mileage of each bus, allowing exhaustion of the fleet soon enough to receive federal grants for the most up-to-date technology, addressing the key concern that the Charlottesville Transit Director had.

The transit director had actually suggested a few years ago having a part of the fleet that was diesel or natural gas based.

But the fact is that diesel and natural gas emit a significant amount of greenhouse gases.

and not to mention that natural gas itself will require additional infrastructure.

So to truly eliminate greenhouse gases and the social cost of carbon, not just the actual cost associated with other transportation systems, we must transition to battery electric buses.

So I'm glad that the city has chosen to expand its bus fleet nevertheless.

As a first year student at UVA, I feel that getting from

UVA to the city of Charlottesville is almost, it's a huge hassle, and it's like going on a half day trip.

It shouldn't be like this.

So we need fleet expansion, but we need to do this in a way that future UVA students, citizens of Charlottesville, and Virginians will thank us for.

Coming over here?

Ms.

Cantini-Murrava, how about you?

I'm sorry.

I'll get you next.

First of all, yes to speed bumps and yes to electric buses, but that's not what I'm going to talk about.

I'm Ellen Contini-Morava from 225 Montebello Circle, and I'm going to talk about the JPA neighborhood and zoning.

Since early in the zoning process, residents of the JPA neighborhood have raised a number of concerns about the proposed rezoning of our neighborhood.

We brought them up at a meeting with Mayor Snook and counselor per year in August, and we emailed them to the whole council the next day, but none of them have been addressed at any of your meetings.

We ask that you do consider them before you vote on the new zoning code.

First, please maintain residential zoning for the streets between Stadium Road and Jefferson Park Avenue.

The draft code proposes RX3 zoning for them.

that would allow buildings up to 175 feet wide which would dwarf the existing one and three story houses in this area.

It would also allow only 10% tree cover after 10 years of planting whereas residential zoning would require at least 20% tree cover.

The JPA neighborhood is already below the tree canopy standard for a healthy neighborhood.

Also commercial development is not suitable for these streets.

Every resident lives within one block of JPA

which is proposed to be zoned CX5.

So there's no need to add commercial uses to the narrow strip of streets.

Second, please do not make the intersection of Shamrock Road and JPA CX8.

Even though this was described as a key intersection in the Streets That Work report, it's hard to believe that the writers of that report actually looked at it.

Shamrock is too narrow and winding to support eight-story buildings on each corner.

We also asked to protect the historic Frye Springs Station on the corner of Maury Avenue and JPA, another so-called key intersection, also proposed to be CX-8.

At your November 1st work session, the topic of transitions between zoning categories came up, but not with respect to our neighborhood.

The draft zoning map allows CX-8 zoning across the street from RX-3 at Montebello Circle and CX-5

adjacent to single family homes on streets between Stadium Road and JPA.

Please reconsider these transitions.

But before any rezoning of our neighborhoods, some urgent studies are needed.

An infrastructure study, which was done for the RB and RC areas, but not for ours.

A review of green infrastructure, which is already inadequate.

And a traffic study for a neighborhood that already suffers from extreme traffic congestion.

The study should include the extra traffic from the already approved student high rises at 2005 and 1709, JPA, plus the future developments on Stribling and the UVA Piedmont housing complex.

Please help preserve the residential character of our neighborhood.

Thank you.

Thank you.

My name is Jamal Bowie.

I also live on Langford Avenue with my wonderful neighbors.

I want to echo everything my neighbors have said about traffic calming on the street.

It is hard to

overstate how bad the traffic is and how bad the speeding is.

We're not talking about five miles over or ten miles over.