City Council Meeting   11/20/2023

Okay, so we'll do the rest of roll call and take that vote.

Councilor Puryear?

Here.

Here.

Okay.

So you are not here.

So moved.

Okay.

I guess we're actually cast a vote.

Please cast your vote.

I move for approval of the agenda.

Okay, any discussion?

Let's vote on that.

Okay.

That passes 5-0.

Normally we would have a three section meeting here, but we're only going to have two sections tonight.

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

Normally we would then go into a closed meeting but we don't have a closed meeting this evening.

We'll probably end the work session around 5.30 as usual.

Then there will be a City Council business meeting which will begin around 6.30 and for those following along on Zoom there will be a different Zoom call at that point although we do not have to again ask the question of whether

I'll just simply say that this is an ongoing process that we rolled out this year is budget presentations being provided by the various departments and offices of the city organization.

Tonight's group is advocacy and transit, transit only because we shuffled things around a little bit because we were trying to put them in group categories so that the conversation would follow, but that's okay.

Great.

Mr. Williams.

Good afternoon.

Looking for the presentation to pop up.

While we're waiting on it, good afternoon, Mayor Snook, Vice Mayor Wade, members of council, once again, Garland Williams, Director of Charlottesville, Area Transit.

Are we able to find the presentation?

Perfect.

Thank you, sir.

There we go, advanced.

All right, Charlottesville Area Transit, the vision of safe, reliable, accessible public and pupil transportation that connects people to opportunities, empowers equity, and combats climate change by reducing individual automobile usage.

Our mission to enhance the quality of life

and Economic Health of the City of Charlottesville and the Urban Ring of Albemarle County by providing reliable, safe, and affordable public transportation options and dependable pupil transportation services to the Charlottesville City School System.

So my presentation tonight is divided into two sections.

First we'll go through transit and then we will touch on pupil.

So the first section, transit.

gives you our org chart.

The combined between transit and pupil is 134 total.

FTEs with transit is 94.

Of the 94, we have four key positions that we're recruiting for right now, an assistant director of operations.

That was vacancy there was a left rest by Juwan Lee.

The marketing coordinator position,

We have a senior project manager, we have a number of major construction projects that we're contemplating working through over the next two years, and an assistant director of maintenance and facility management.

There are also, as you see, of the 94 we have 59 approved operators and eight relief operators.

We're going to get a little more in detail about what our complement looks like on the next slide.

So our operating snapshot for CAD is basically 11.9 was our budget for FY24.

12.1 was our number.

We had a little bit more funding on the revenue side than we had operated, which is always a good thing.

There was $2.2 million of a pass through to Jaunt that came through our 5307 allocation.

which also included some money from ARP and CARES to them.

We have money that came through our budget this year of $1.9 million for a microtransit project that we're working with of Albemarle County.

Once again, 94 authorized positions.

As you can see, it's 59 full-time operators, eight relief operators, eight full-time transit technicians which are our mechanics.

That's of the operators that's

71% of our complement is on the operator side of the house.

40 buses, 13 routes, 1.1 million passenger trips.

That's very good for us.

The system of our side, we can be better.

What does that mean, unlinked?

So we don't track where you go once you get on the bus.

We don't track you getting off.

So those are basically individuals who got on the bus.

That's good.

Revenue expenditure numbers.

Because we have a high percentage of our revenue comes from the federal government and state.

Just to give you a snapshot of what that looks like, 38.8% of all of our money this fiscal year comes from the feds.

Whether our regular allocation of 5307 or ARPA CARES money, their state money of 25.9% or 26%.

Once the state and federal credits are applied to the city and the county, the city's portion is 23.6% and the county's portion is 10.8%.

Expenditure drivers for us, each jurisdiction basically we look at the total miles and operating hours and that's how we get their total costs.

That's correct.

OK.

So we have shared routes.

The majority of our routes are all shared between the city and the county.

By miles driven?

By miles driven and hours.

Well, we actually own them on hours, but we develop the cost model based on our miles.

Absolutely.

So is there a reason that you, the mayor asked you about miles but you said hours, are they,

That's a wonderful question.

Yes.

So we do two things.

We have a cost system agreement with the county that we will split the cost by hours.

We also are required by the state and feds to report our mileage.

So we record both.

So just giving you a little highlight of what revenue looks like.

So what that means is like $2.8 million of our operating assistance from our regular 5307 federal money came in.

ARP and CARES money, we used 1.7, almost 1.8 million.

State operating assistance, almost 2.8 million.

We have a TRIPS grant.

which allows us to go zero fare.

We won that two years ago.

It was a million dollar grant.

This year we were accredited with $376,000.

The local share that comes from the city is 2.8, 1.3 from the county.

and 85 basically $1,000 from UVA to enhanced service on the trolley.

An advertisement costs about $25,000 we get in in revenue.

Then there's a pass-through grant that we give to Jaunt to offset ADA costs of 2.2.

So our total budget was 14.2, but if you minus the allocation it's 11,995.

and this gives you a little idea of what it looks like on an operating administration, marketing, maintenance and safety and security.

Those are the five departments we have.

As you can see, the majority of our money is in the operation side of the house, $6.7 million.

Administration is almost $4 million, but that also includes the $2.2 million that we sent over to John.

And then there are the maintenance costs of $3 million, marking $200,000.

Yes, ma'am.

Oh, great.

Yes, could you go back one?

I'm trying.

There we go.

A little slow.

Yeah, right there.

So earlier you talked about the grant that you had gotten, well, not you, but we had received for the micro transit whatever whatever in the county.

How does that

impact your expenditures or does it not?

It's in a separate pile of money.

So that's a great question.

We are not in our agreement with the county.

We work through and have done this through a consultant or a third party group.

So we bought it.

We've hired VIA Transportation Group to do this.

It's a turnkey model.

Okay.

So, sorry, I could advance too quickly.

So these are the sheets that you've seen from every other department.

So total numbers, our personnel costs about 7.7 total.

Others, our operating costs, 3.6, I mean, 3.7.

Personnel other is our temporary line items, that's $400,000, our fixed costs, and then our contractual, we have, you know, grants and things that we have to get done as an organization.

Budget drivers for us, a thing called a transit strategic plan we're working on right now.

Thought it was pertinent to show you kind of what we have, there are things that we have to do, and this is one of them, a requirement from the state.

So we are working through that model right now.

you you probably have seen we've come back before and we've asked for you know participation from the city community that rides CAT or individuals who want to ride CAT and got some feedback from them so we're going to talk about that but this strategic plan basically sets how we're going to operate for the next eight to ten years so this is a requirement and we as we are working through this

One of the things that we did is kind of outreach and some work sessions with the community.

Things that they saw and the things that kept popping out in kind of the feedback from them is that we were unreliable.

infrequent some things were safe we were good things that they liked about us though they were our zero fare service transit services we provide to most key destinations and we have a strong connection to the pedestrian and bike network allowed to access our vehicles which is also a great thing and the zero fare model

just want to highlight we are going to continue to be zero fare through June 30th of 2026 based on the grant application.

So what was also done as a part of our ongoing efforts to complete our TSP is that we did a survey.

We had 523 survey recipients and there's some things that kept popping out.

More frequent service was one of the major things that popped out.

It was the number one.

Expanded coverage was number two, expanded weekend service, expanded weekday service, better bus stop, shelter, amenities, all things that we're already working on, and you will see that as part of our FY25 budget.

Reasons for riding the bus to save money, to save better utilization of time, safe travels, people who don't have a car, there are also things there, but why are people really using us?

They're going shopping, they're going to work, they're going home.

they're going to social recreational and they're going to medical so those are major key things that we're going to continue to try to make sure we continue to address why did people not use the service one of the major things about is it takes too long or infrequent so those are things that we want to work on

It doesn't go where I need so that's a coverage thing that we need to potentially address and we'll be working through that with our county partners.

Some people just live too far from a bus stop so that's also a coverage issue.

We'll work through that also.

So objectives for us.

There are a few things that are key themes, and you've heard me say these before.

Reliability is a major factor in transportation.

Transportation works well when it is frequent and reliable.

So does it meet the public demand, reliability factor?

Do our buses operate on a schedule that is predictable?

Are we on time?

Do we have the staff to meet the public's demand?

Do we have the right vehicles in place?

All things that are going to allow us to be reliable.

Frequency, how often do the buses come?

Do they arrive on time?

And how long does it take?

How long do we operate?

Those are all things that we want to continue to focus on.

And one of the major things as a driver for us is ridership.

means more money for us.

Is our system designed to increase ridership and should we expand our services on the weekends, which is an opportunity for us to capture more ridership.

Fleet transition is a key hot item for us.

We'll talk about that.

Completing our FTA required transition plan is a major step for us.

We'll have a recommendation and then actually getting to the transition plan.

That'll happen in the spring.

But there are things that we're going to have to go through.

And as we do that, are we planning for the growth of our system in this model?

Challenges on transit side there are five of them that I wanted to highlight service levels coming out of the pandemic we haven't been able to return to our pre-pandemic levels we also want to just not return there but we want to talk about service enhancements or phasing in those enhancements over time we want to increase our reliability and frequency

Per the survey, that's what people told us that they want.

We are increased access and the mobility of options for individuals in this region, which means we want to expand our coverage options.

We're going to transition to a union environment that is going to be a new world for a lot of folks.

New sets of rules, new policies and procedures, but I think it will be one that's really helpful.

And then the fleet transition, which is key on everybody's mind.

What is CAT going to look like over the next 10 to 15 years?

SuccessFactors, funding the BEB.

So we had an opportunity, even though we have not completed our study, we took an opportunity to put in a grant opportunity, and we won two battery electric buses.

which is outside of the norms because they normally don't do that until you complete your study but that's a good thing for us.

From whom is the money coming?

It's coming from the state and the feds.

They did not fund the capital side of the house so they gave us the buses but not the capital to do the infrastructure so we'll work through that also but remember when we buy buses it's a two-year it's usually about 18 to 24 months before we get the bus anyway so it gives us time.

We'll have the study complete in the spring, and then we'll be able to reapply for the infrastructure.

We have a demonstration grant that we won in partnership with the county.

That was the 1.9 million dollar for the micro transit project.

We called it microCAT.

It's running, it's operating well.

There's an opportunity, I think, in the future for us to partner with the county and look at expanding that microCAT

micro transit option.

Capital funding that we've also got to do some infrastructure improvements, knowing that we're going to have some alternative fuel vehicles that are coming.

We've got $1.66 million to complete NEPA, which is a National Environmental Policy Act process, and 30% design documents for maintenance,

So I have a question.

Yes ma'am.

So we got the grant to get the two buses.

Yes ma'am.

Now we have to come up with the money so that we'll have the

Docking stations?

Charging stations.

Oh, the charging stations.

Yes.

To charge the buses.

That's correct.

That's what we need to find out.

So that will be a part, that's a part of the study.

So the study will basically tell us once it's complete, how do we transition, what size of a charging stations we need to build.

We're going to also build in capacity for growth.

So we will work through that

As soon as this is complete, probably like I said in the spring we'll have a much better idea of what that number looks like.

So are these big buses or little buses?

These are big buses.

We are an urban style system.

Big buses make more sense.

The smaller vehicles at this model don't have the range that we need.

The larger buses don't have all of the range we need, but they're better than the smaller ones at this point in time.

So by having those buses, it will also help us gauge how to move forward.

Do you know what I'm saying?

Yes, it's a pilot.

One of the things that we've been concerned about is range and the different topographies that we have in this area.

Absolutely.

And so this is kind of like a pilot program.

Yes, ma'am.

Okay.

Next question.

The drivers, no.

The mechanics, yes.

So we will have more training for the mechanics.

There are some nuanced pieces with the drivers.

They have to be aware that there's no sound.

So they're quiet.

So as a driver, you have to be cognizant of that.

Oh, okay.

So one last question.

Okay.

And then the last one was we got $324,000 to upgrade bus stops in the city and the county.

There's 30 of them.

We were working through that model with our partner county right now and VDOT and the Department of World and Public Transportation.

It's everybody in the boat and see if we can make this thing work.

So hopefully I'll be having good news in the next couple months about, you know,

putting some shovels in the ground and getting some bus stop improvements done.

Great.

Pupil.

So pupil organization is 40 individuals.

We reorganized.

And I think one of the things I wanted to highlight is you see that blue box, it was in the transit side and also in pupil side.

HR has embedded an HR senior HR consultant into our organization to help us especially with the union coming we had some additional needs for having an HR position but one thing you will notice from the last year to now we don't have an assistant director position that was there before we

removed that position and reallocated though now we have three operations managers one for administration one for operations and one for scheduling and routing that has worked out really well it

and it provides us an opportunity to train the staff and also make sure that we're keeping on top of our administrative duties and then planning side of the house.

Renee Duval who come over from the county 30 plus years has been a wonderful addition to our organization and we've been able to really do some hard

fine-tuned planning which is going to be very fruitful to all of us in the near future.

As you can see there's 20 authorized FTEs for drivers and nine relief positions and 14 aides at this point.

Last year this time there were 30, now there's 20.

We're hoping to have conversations about restoring those 10 with schools in the future.

Snapshot, $3.9 million operating and revenue side of the house, $564,000 as a part of the operating budget goes to capital that buys buses, 40 authorized positions, 20 operators, three supervisors or lead operators,

39 vehicles to vans that we use to transport special needs or kids who have IEPs, individual educational plans that need to go somewhere different.

So pre-COVID levels, at one point in time, I think our highest number, I believe, was 21 or 22 operators.

So we're going to be close to that.

But I do believe

Conditions are different.

Our pay structure was different.

So our model really requires us to have 30 as a bare minimum drivers.

Optimal number is 40.

That allows us to do some additional planning and also cut down on our dependence on individual third party contractors to transport kids.

So if we got up to 40, then we'd basically almost be able to do everything in the house, which is a wonderful thing.

So operationally, this is what the snapshot looks like.

Administrative is $423,000.

Operating side of the house, where all our money and the operators are, $3.1 million.

And the maintenance side of the house, $366,000 for a total of $3.9 million.

As you can see, if you look at the total, the majority of it, almost $2 million, or 2.2.

If you add down the other operating side of the house,

Personnel Other.

Almost $2.3 million is for personnel.

The rest of it is contractual or our fixed costs, $3.9 million.

Right-sizing the organization.

Our service model is important.

Restoring some of the drivers that are from the past is one of our major objectives.

And looking at the transition on the battery electric side of the house,

for schools.

I think that's a model that has a lot of validity and also can really work well designed on the way the routes are.

You use the vehicles in the morning.

Some of the vehicles will be resting in the middle.

You'll be able to recharge and then use in the afternoon.

That model works really well if you're talking about a battery electric model.

So that's our goal of trying to work through that with schools over the next fiscal year.

Factors, right sizing and reorganization was a plus for us.

It allowed us to get our organization together, focus on hiring, focus on our administrative side of the house.

All those responsibilities and roles have been well defined now.

So I think we are hitting all cylinders, knock on wood.

Hopefully, we're going to continue that model into the future.

And with that, that's my last slide.

Any questions?

Thank you.

No, when you were discussing the partnership and the pay between the Sydney County for Transit Service, I kept countless meetings of that, you know, in my capacity and what I was doing planning for the county.

So it's a lot of, you know, digits that you have to consider for that.

Yeah, I appreciate the presentation.

Thank you, Mr. Williams.

I feel like I hear from you often in the MPO and the RTP standing meetings, and I've always just appreciated your candor in keeping us informed on where things stand.

in particular your sort of realistic view about you know how we get from where we are now to where we want to be I think it's always worth re-emphasizing the regional transit partnership that we want to go from that to regional transit authority model and there are conversations that are happening right now around that and I think that will be

I think it would just really enable our transit system to flourish and grow and be really solid.

And we need that to be able to get our climate goals around transit.

So anyway, just wanted to put a plug out there for that.

And thank you, as always, for your work.

Thank you Mr. Williams for your diligence and your willingness and ability to explain to the public what all of this means particularly when we are speaking on the pupil side and your

your concern about the safety of the children on the buses but safety for the people that are driving the buses as well and it's a hard job and the pandemic has affected you as it has affected other departments but somehow you and your team

have risen to the occasion, and I think that is commendable of you and all of the people that are in transit or transportation, whichever terminology you use.

So thank you so much.

Appreciate it.

Councilor Payne, questions?

Sure.

A couple questions.

One, I know in the survey that the increased route frequency as well as increased service and routes was the top priority of riders.

Are there particular high

Do you have priority opportunities to do that?

Wonderful question.

So, yes, we are, I tell everyone, we are a planning organization that happens to run transportation.

We have to plan out every single thing that we do and we have multiple plans.

We have an optimization plan that we took an opportunity when the pandemic was here to study all our routes.

that we are looking to phase that in before we go to the larger model which is the plan that was developed by the TJPDC in conjunction with the transit organizations about an unconstrained or constrained model which puts everybody in the boat and let's say let's try to do this and make the best system we possibly can.

Resources always help, but we need to make sure that we are doing what we're supposed to do so we're going to be good stewards of the public dollars.

We don't want to take the money and not be able to put the system in place.

Transit works well when it is fast, when it was frequent, and when it's dependable.

All those things play a factor, but resources

We have to have resources to do all of those.

So the more drivers we have, the more vehicles we can put out, the better vehicles we have that we don't have issues with reliability, then the more sustainable and reliable model we can put out.

I've said this in the past, you've heard me say, we have 40 vehicles, 10 of them are the hybrid models right now.

Nine of them are sitting on our lot right now, are not working.

So today we barely had 21 vehicles available for our system.

We need to correct that.

Connected to that a little, I guess, is I know you mentioned with any additional battery electric buses that for the drivers, that's not a significant change, but in terms of the maintenance, that's very significant.

Do you have a sense of the scale of kind of the investment that City Council may need to make in order to provide the

So part of our duty is to figure out what that looks like once we figure out the scale by which the infrastructure we need.

So there will be things as a part of the transition plan that we will identify with, you know,

tools or equipment that have to go and once that comes in place there will be training associated with those items.

So can't give you a ballpark now but we definitely will be able to give you a ballpark once we have a better idea of what the plan looks like.

And then final question is just obviously the community, probably the biggest conversation is around drivers, particularly at the pupil transportation level.

Obviously, this is part of a national driver shortage, nothing with a quick, you know, snap your fingers answer.

But how are you feeling about the progress that's been made in terms of drivers?

I like the way the direction that we're going.

I'm going to be very careful here on how I say this.

My boss is sitting right and looking at me.

Having additional resources for transit is a must if we're trying to expand service.

You need to have a person sitting behind the vehicle at all times.

Autonomous vehicles are not here.

It's not part of our model.

And the more buses we have, so if we have 30 buses, I'm just giving a quick example, in the morning, and that's our peak number, that's 30 buses in the afternoon.

Also, that's 60 people just for those 30 buses because somebody can't run our model 18 hours, 19 hours a day.

So that's only for the five days.

Now you also have to take into account the weekends, and you have to account for when people take off, when people get sick, and then when we have to pull people for random drug tests.

There are all sorts of things, or required trainings.

There are all sorts of things that we have to do.

So our concern is about having the right number of drivers so we can facilitate all of these needs.

I'll just leave it at that.

I have one question.

I appreciate that in the presentation.

That's it for me.

See, we are almost at pre-pandemic levels, but we still haven't been able to return our model to pre-pandemic levels.

What does that mean?

In terms of frequency?

We're doing just about what we were before with less.

So if we are able to return to our pre-pandemic level in service models, our ridership is going to skyrocket.

There is a direct correlation between ridership and frequency.

The more frequent bus service is, the more riders you have because they know it's frequent and dependable.

So as soon as we can get there our ridership numbers will go up which means that we are competing with every other transit agency in the state because if we're not doing that we are basically falling behind because everybody else trying to get their ridership numbers up and that means we are competing for more state dollars.

I just want to end with one observation that is that

You said that you are planning for your growth.

I hope you are also planning and that we are all planning for CAT's role in the city's growth because the way forward for a whole lot of reasons for Charlottesville is through transit.

I would love for the director of CAT to be seen as a climate action hero.

I'll leave it at that.

Thank you very much, Mr. Williams.

I appreciate you being here with us and learned a lot from your presentation.

Thank you.

Next up, Todd Niemeyer, Human Rights.

Thank you for this opportunity to present to you all about our work in the Office of Human Rights.

Really love the fact that these budget presentations are happening.

I know that may sound a little strange, but I always appreciate the interaction.

And thank you for this.

Make sure I understand how to use it.

I'm going to assume that pointing that way goes forward.

Let's have a look.

There he goes.

So briefly, the Office of Human Rights is a division of the City Manager's Office.

We address individual complaints of discrimination, conduct community outreach, and we support our Human Rights Commission, which you all appoint.

And this slide is exciting for me because it shows our organizational structure.

And for the first time, we are about to

enter into a period of time where we're fully staffed there's there was a time when I was the only staff person and I'm really glad not to be the only staff person anymore because we're doing so much better as a result of having a team so just a quick overview obviously showing the connection to the city manager's office and supervisory role there we now have our intake specialist Saad our community outreach specialist Lily who just came in we are

about this close to hiring an investigator.

I can't say any more than that because we're in the middle of the process but very excited about that.

I anticipate having a decision made in December and we still have one intern who works mostly remotely and that's Ginny and she's working from Williamsburg to get a lot of stuff done for us still.

So great to have this team, super excited about what it means for the future.

So this is a budget snapshot.

I tried to present some context for you so we could talk about where we're headed and why.

In particular, there were some appropriations previously.

In particular, the $176,000 was what got us to be able to hire an intake and investigation position.

And it's a little bit confusing for me.

The appropriations get factored into the total in kind of an interesting way.

And then they're also being expended in our

in our salary and benefits.

But if we look ahead to FY25, this is my best guess as to what it's going to cost to support our four full FTEs plus our intern position, so about $442,000 thereabouts.

There may be some taxes in there that I didn't calculate correctly, but in any case, this is my best guess.

typically do the personnel calculation that usually gets handled by the budget office.

But I wanted to have a snapshot in there as to what we anticipate.

Operating, I dropped it by a little bit.

Obviously, in the past years, we never expend all of our operating budget.

I keep it at a certain level because I anticipate as we

enter into more investigatory work and more mediation work with our entrants into federal work shares.

I believe mediation is going to be a substantial cost for us.

So that's our biggest chunk of operating budget.

I've shifted a lot of things around for FY25 just to anticipate the training that's going to take place with our new staff.

and just to better align with what we're actually spending because some of those some of our budget line items didn't make a lot of sense so there's not a lot of change overall in the budget just a more shifting around and a little bit of reduction in things that we weren't spending on so there's that and so this is this is sort of the the the equivalent of your objective slides and some of the other presentations I'm trying to try to

piggyback on what City Manager Sanders has presented in terms of a work plan to try to make sense of what we're going to do going forward.

This is for the next basically six months of this current fiscal year.

As you know, we've been working on revising our human rights ordinance, and that's particularly because we want to enter into a federal work share with HUD, the Fair Housing Assistance Program.

We passed some amendments to the human rights ordinance

was it in 22.

And the thing we learned about that is that we still have to make some additional changes to get it through for full certification.

So we're working on it again.

We've presented some amendments with the city attorney's office.

We'll be getting those all integrated and then presenting to you probably sometime early in next year.

So look forward to that.

The other thing we're going to try to do is to use the same work plan structure with our Human Rights Commission.

We found that when we do have a much more clear and focused strategy for them, they thrive a little bit more.

So I'm going to try to use the same strategy with them during their strategic planning process in March of 24.

Another thing that once we're now fully staffed, we're going to try to develop a set of standard operating procedures.

You might think that having been around for 10 years, we would have those all codified, but no.

We've been trying to put them together informally and in practice, but what we'd like to do is actually get them written down so that folks can use that in the future as a reference.

Also, as we become fully staffed, we can shift more of our energy toward community outreach because our community outreach specialist will no longer be helping us sort of fill in the blanks in terms of our intake and other work.

So excited to see what we're able to do in terms of broadening who we reach out to and what we're able to present in terms of public education and awareness with the aim of prevention, right, in the long term.

the more people know about the causes of discrimination we hope that that would actually reduce the problems that we see and in addition to that we want to build our capacity overall in the office to address individual complaints of unlawful discrimination so when we hire our

investigator and training will be taking them through a full complement of training in partnership not only what we do in house but also in partnership with the EEOC and other other agencies to get everybody up to speed but we want to take our whole team through the same with the idea of creating a continuity of government in our office because it's not good for any one person to hold sole knowledge about any one aspect of what we do given that we're a small team so we're looking forward to doing that

I won't spend a lot of time on this slide, but I tried to create a draft work plan for FY25 just so you could see how we build off of what we're going to do in the end of FY24.

Again, we don't have to go too much into all this, but obviously we want to get that ordinance revised, dig deeper into the Fair Housing Assistance Program, actually get that interim certification rolling because that unlocks some doors in terms of that training that we want to do.

We want to get that

work plan created with the commission and then execute it throughout the year.

Looking forward to working with you all on that part because obviously we just their primary role is to present recommendations to you.

The legislative agenda is a prime example of that and so we're looking forward to having a more focused work plan so we can present more things that you may find useful in your work.

Again, developing the standard operating procedures, we'll start that at the end of this fiscal year, but continue on and get that solidified, hopefully having a nice solid set of procedures through the next fiscal year.

And again, going

just continuing to expand that community outreach looking toward getting more specific about doing training classes and partnerships with other organizations so again to get that message out there and again continue to take advantage of the individual training opportunities that expand once we enter into the FAP work share so

Those are our main goals for that year.

Just wanted to give you a few measures.

You could look at this as also sort of factors of success, I suppose.

Just to let you know, we don't have a target.

We're never looking to receive a certain number of complaints.

Ideally, those numbers would be zero in a perfect world.

What we're trying to do is make sure we're addressing things as they come in.

This is just a comparison from our calendar year 2022.

As you might recall, we usually report on the calendar year rather than the fiscal year in terms of our numbers.

That's just how we collect data.

What we did add for calendar year 23 was an individual served.

I think it was a request from Mayor Snook.

Can we identify how many unique individuals we served?

And so far to date, that's 257 in 2023.

Generally speaking, you can see the numbers, how they compare over the two years.

We're probably down a little bit in terms of overall incoming contacts.

I think that's largely due to reducing the amount of extra navigation and advocacy work.

We've been really trying to focus in on handling complaints rather than some of the things.

We get a lot of requests for other services.

I can thank our intake worker, Saad Khalifa, for really intercepting a lot of those and getting those redirected to other agencies.

You said you've now started counting total individuals served.

Yep.

And that number did not exist in prior years.

But do you have a sense of whether it feels different?

It's a good question.

It may have been something similar.

I'm not interested in trying to make you do some more work.

Gut feeling, I would honestly say it feels a little bit less this year than it has in past years.

We did move locations.

What was it, December of 20?

I get my years all confused.

December of 22, we're in 23 now.

When I look at all these fiscal years, I get turned around.

Yeah, exactly.

I would say that our old location, we had a lot more individuals just stopping by simply because we were a storefront, basically, and people could make eye contact with us at the door and then, what's this, and come in.

And I also think that we were doing a lot of

I would say, I don't want to call it extracurricular, but it's sort of outside the scope of our work, navigation and advocacy, especially around housing issues.

And I think as we've learned to sort of back away from that and find more resources in the community to redirect people or sometimes actually say no

We don't do that because we have to focus on what's mandated in the human rights ordinance.

I think our numbers have gone down.

So that's an anecdotal guess, but I would say yes, our numbers are down.

Yep.

Again, just a few.

You saw this slide in the 2022 annual report.

You'll see something similar in our calendar year 23 annual report.

Housing continues to be the most often asked about and complained about.

issue in the office, followed by employment and public accommodation, those being the protected activities in our human rights ordinance.

And again, the other component of complaints of discrimination is protected class.

There's a lot of not specified.

You see 281 not specified.

And again, remember, this is also inquiries, which is not a complaint of discrimination, but just

some sort of ask or request of our office and complaints combined.

So there's a lot of things that don't fall into the protected classes protected by the human rights ordinance.

But that said, race and disability remain at the top.

And I would imagine that the same will be true for calendar year 23 when we put that report together.

And so this is just a quick summary of obviously one of the roles that we do is support the Human Rights Commission and the work that they do.

If you recall in the Human Rights Ordinance there's a Section 2-433 that identifies the roles of the Commission as it pertains to human rights.

These are very short summaries of what those roles are.

The actual sections in the ordinance are much longer.

But this is just a comparison of the actions that Council or excuse me Commission has taken

in the last two calendar years and obviously calendar year to date for 23, just to give you a sense of the things that they're trying to do.

I would say the zeros in individual assistance are worth pointing out in the sense that the role in individual

complaint assistance really is as an appellate body.

If we issue a finding of no reasonable cause, the complainant can appeal.

I think in the history of the Commission we've had one.

And their other role is a public hearing body.

If there's a finding of a reasonable cause and we can't resolve through mediation or some sort of other conciliatory means, the Commission can vote to hold a public hearing.

They've never done one.

Nothing's ever gotten to that level.

Most of our cases settle in mediation.

Just a good thing to keep in mind as you look at those numbers.

The other piece, the other zero and 23 is on the federal work shares.

Again, that relies on me getting the ordinance amended, presenting them something that they can vote on to adopt for recommendation to you all.

Anticipate seeing something like that happen early next year.

So just a little bit of summary of challenges and opportunities, some of which you can see addressed in our work plans for the coming years.

But again, we want to be better at processing complaints and investigating and issuing findings.

And I think what we're able to do with hiring a full team is going to be, I'm looking forward to it.

I'm really excited to see how our efficiency and our

sort of, for lack of a better word, our client service improves.

So access to in-depth fair housing investigation training.

We've been doing investigation into fair housing and mediation around that, but getting the actual formal training to do that has been difficult.

We actually use

Many of the similar techniques that we've learned through employment investigation to do that, but it's only accessible, this formal training, through that FAP work share with HUD.

So really looking forward to getting this pushed through so we can get that in-depth training.

Additionally, continuing that community outreach to expand to other populations that we haven't touched before.

and focusing a lot more on education and awareness.

If you recall, we divide our outreach into service provision outreach.

So that's talking about the services that the office provides through tabling events, things like that.

We also do collaboration and leadership where we sit on different committees to advise and provide some thought leadership.

But what we've not been able to do as much

and I hope we can do much more in the coming years is this education and awareness where we actually deliver comprehensive programs around either the protected activities or protected classes to different groups.

So I'm looking forward to doing that and partnering with other organizations to do that.

trying to get those SOPs done, so codifying our existing practices so that we have a manual basically going forward.

I think that we're going to get there.

We already have a lot of draft pages for that, but I'm really looking forward to getting that solidified for the coming year.

So that's all I have.

If you have any additional questions, happy to answer them.

Yeah, thank you very much.

It was very informative.

I'm glad we have this department.

This may be for you or maybe for Sam, but how do you anticipate your role, this department, interacting with the collective bargaining process?

I know we're still working through that, but I know there's probably going to be a grievance process, but

If they don't feel happy with it, workers, do they go through this department?

No.

There wouldn't be a role unless we were really in trouble, that they would have to go outside.

The way the grievance process would work is that would rest with me, the same as it does our internal grievance process.

I don't think there's anything that I could anticipate at this moment that would get us there.

Okay, thank you.

My other question is, Todd, like it sounds like, you know, this is one of those departments just kind of in its infancy and just like getting its

finding its culture, finding its way.

What do you think that you need now to be like to be running on all cylinders?

Well, thanks for asking that question.

I would say that we're well positioned to run on all cylinders for the first time.

I think that's the most exciting thing.

I think the fact that Deputy City Manager Marshall was able to get that ARPA dollars appropriated for the intake and investigation positions.

Those were things that my predecessor, Charlene Greene, was shooting for for a long, long time.

And to finally get to that point is really, really exciting.

So the fact that we have money budgeted to hire that staff, we have enough in our operating budget to train staff, and then once we get into that federal work share, that's going to really open some doors for us in terms of our potential.

Oh, look how everyone smiles up here.

All right, Todd gets five stars.

Ask me next year.

Well, you know, things change.

So right now you're moving forward.

Todd, just want to thank you for all the good work that you and your staff do.

Appreciate it.

No, thank you.

I don't have any additional questions right now.

I don't either.

I've been interested to see sort of conceptually how the Human Rights Commission and the PCOB and there are a number of other efforts that

at work here to try to address some of these issues and some of them are probably about to be further addressed by our deputy city manager.

Well, we appreciate the interest, too.

I think this is, it was mentioned, Kina, as we were walking in, the fact that the opportunity to engage with council is crucial, and I think that any time you want to engage with the commission is a welcome invitation because they're always looking for guidance.

They want to know what you would like from them, so feel free to reach out.

That's something we're always ready to talk about.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Yes, sir.

Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council, City Manager, and members of the public, thank you all so much for the opportunity to talk about the Office of Equity and Inclusion.

And thank you so much to our friends and office mates at the Office of Human Rights.

So first I want to make sure that we acknowledge that the Monacan people are the indigenous custodians of the land that we are currently standing on.

and that we pay our respect to their elders past, present and emerging.

This land acknowledgement is also located on our city website along with a link to the Monacan Indian Nations website so that individuals who visit our page can learn more about the indigenous persons whose land we get to right now work, live and play on.

So the Office of Equity and Inclusion is currently home to three distinct programs that foster equity, inclusion, and diversity within our community.

Accessible Charlottesville, which houses our ADA coordinator in Title II functions.

The Charlottesville Downtown Job Center, which provides workforce training, connections, and financial opportunities to those who want to work within the city limits.

and our Home to Hope program which is an ICMA award-winning program that provides individuals who are joining our community after incarceration to receive the support that they need not just to survive but to thrive.

Each of these programs provides action to equity by way of ensuring access to city facilities and programs, access to quality employment and financial opportunity in the city limits,

and access to support and new starts for those who have exited incarceration.

Here you'll see our organizational charts for our JEDI programs, our accessible Charlottesville program which is our ADA coordinator and a soon to be hired ADA specialist, our downtown job and financial success center that includes our employment and financial education manager as well as a soon to be hired

Job Center Engagement Representative and our Home to Hope team which currently houses two senior peer navigators and two peer navigators.

As far as budget

The Office of Equity and Inclusion, independent of the Downtown Job Center and Home to Hope Program, which you will see their budgets separately.

Because they were historically provided as separate budgets, we have chosen along with the guidance of our Director of Budget to leave them separate so people can continue to track the investment that you all are making in them.

but outside of that you'll see the budget above.

As you can see our budget did increase due the addition of two positions by the city manager and their approval in the FY24 budget.

Those two positions do currently remain funded but vacant as the city manager moves forward to consider council's strategic goals and plans along with his vision of how to move the city forward.

Now each program will provide counsel and the public with a quick overview of their area as well as some of the service data for them.

So just to give you your starting lineup for equity, first up is Mr. Paul Rudisil, your ADA coordinator.

Second will be Roy Fitch, Jr., our employment and financial opportunity manager who runs our downtown job center but also provides administrative leadership and support for our Home to Hope program.

And then third, last but absolutely not least,

You will hear from Mr. Whitmore Merrick and Ms.

Stacey Washington who are senior peer navigators that are two of the four founding navigators for the Home to Hope program.

Could I interrupt really quickly?

Absolutely.

We want to make sure that our nonprofit partners feel supported and they are doing absolutely amazing work supporting individuals who find themselves experiencing homelessness right now today.

So I think that and I appreciate this personally

The city manager is taking some time, is taking a pause with his call for an internal task force to see where that role that is funded but vacant could be of most use.

Good afternoon.

I'm Paul Rudisell as Deputy City Manager Marshall explained.

I'm the City's Title II ADA Coordinator.

It's my job and I play an intricate role in making sure the city is in compliance with Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

I act as a liaison of sorts so members of the community, they have a point of contact so they can contact me if they have a problem with a city program or service or project so they can be, so the city's programs and services can be fully accessible.

As of now, from November 22 to November 23, we've had over 200 inquiries for service, either a complaint or just general question about is this accessible or can you tell me what accessibility is.

We also receive complaints from other areas in the Commonwealth because they can't find who their ADA coordinator is.

So we've had people in Norfolk call Charlottesville saying, hey, we don't know our ADA coordinator.

We're having a complaint.

We're being refused, a sign language translator.

I see.

We're in our transition plan, and so the city's evaluating its programs and services.

We finished the public right-of-way.

The public right-of-way, right now, preliminary data shows over 100,000 city errors.

100,000 what? 100,000.

So, Paul, do you, I assume you get the complaints about the scooters and the sidewalk and things like that.

Yes.

Poor man.

Yeah.

Do you review development plans or is that in, James, planners do that, you know, to make sure that

Yes sorry just real quick um one I appreciate the the acknowledgement of right-of-wave issues and I'll just say I think myself ready to support anything that will help

accelerate solutions to that.

I'll leave it at that.

It will be spent and can be spent.

It's just over the years it accumulated and

I've only been with the city for two years.

I can't speak to why that money wasn't spent on prior plans.

We had a transition plan in 2013 and no one acted on it.

But what I can share for you, Councilmember Payne, is that when City Manager Sanders was still Deputy City Manager Sanders, he worked very hard to make sure that that particular fund in the capital improvement plan

became under the control of your ADA coordinator.

In the past it was not.

So if there needed perhaps to be some sort of an edit working alongside Public Works, maybe they needed to hire out a contractor, that's something where your ADA coordinator previously could not have done an RFP himself and process that.

At this particular point he can and at some point he will.

Part of the role that he will play once the self-assessment is completed and the transition plan is in its processes is that Paul will help to make sure that we have a plan of action.

And that includes working hand-in-hand with our friends and colleagues in Public Works and NDS

on deciding how to prioritize fixes and one of the things I do want to brag about him a little bit is that those fixes, it's very important to him and therefore also important to our consultant that we prioritize those fixes with an equity lens.

Right now we're looking at a similar process to what was used in Durham, North Carolina

Yeah, I got a chance to at least sort of scan through the digital survey and presentation.

Yeah, yeah, it was very thorough, very interesting.

And so I guess that's part of the really sort of the next step to be able to develop the plan to fix these things.

Is that right?

Yes.

Okay.

All right.

It sounds like you have some money to spend on it and you'll probably be needing some more at some point.

Oh, okay.

Sorry, I won't get ahead of it.

Are there any other questions you have for your ADA coordinator?

Right.

Excellent.

I remember when I pointed that out to the mayor who was the mayor at the time that the ordinance was passed, he was surprised to find that the ordinance that he had adopted back ten years ago required approval of the ADA coordinator.

A surprise to all of us.

Indeed.

But thank you for being here.

And I know we're sort of in a work in progress with the ADA rule makers and rule keepers I guess with I mean how does that work?

The transition plan is really what the federal government is looking for.

If a complaint comes in, they're looking for the fact that the locality has a plan, which by the way, some don't, that they've looked at the plan, some don't, and that if there is some sort of deficiency, there is a reason and a plan to mitigate that deficiency.

Also just making sure we're not doing blatant things.

If you all decide to renovate this whole building,

You must make it ADA compliant.

If you touch it, you fix it.

Some people don't believe that.

I know a recent one that came in from a locality dealt with, I think it was, there's been a lot with vision of not giving access.

There's been issues with not fixing deficiencies once they're pointed out.

So we are actually doing, especially under Mr. Rudisil and also giving a shout out to our city engineer who is a walking ADA code book, we are actually doing good work and I think that with some scheduling and with some prioritization

OK.

Great.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

I'm Roy Fitch.

I'm the Employment and Financial Opportunity Manager with the City's Downtown Job Center.

I listed out some of the services that we provide.

Some of the services are resume creation and editing, resume building and advisement, specific job searches,

dedicated client computer stations are located at the center itself.

We also do mock interviewing, point out and lead people to education and training resources, provide leads on job fairs.

We also have a number of, well I take the opportunity

to make referrals to community partnering programs, job leads, of course, and job referrals.

Let me see here.

Some of the data that I pulled out are that, so I say the job center.

it's actually myself so when I'm referencing the numbers it's important to then understand that we are working on the staff and so when you see 166 client appointments those are appointments with me 59 of those clients were first-time visitors so that's good that despite the fact that there's a staff at the moment of just a team

of one.

That's so awkward to say.

An army of one.

There's still word of mouth and there's positive interactions that lead to 59 clients hearing about the downtown job center and coming in to visit.

40% of the clients revisit the Job Center more than one time.

That's not because the other 60% don't like coming to visit me.

That's because there are a lot of the services provided

can be a one-off thing where you can take care of it at one time or in one appointment and you can have success and they can move on.

And then 77% of Job Center clients reside within the city of Charlottesville.

We do have Albemarle County that's served.

We also have other surrounding counties and you'll occasionally get some out of state.

Some of the successful partnership collaborations include one of the more recent large ones and very successful ones is UVA Pipelines and Pathways.

We also have the Ready to Work program that's a collaboration between the Office of Economic Development and Virginia Career Works.

We also work directly with Virginia Career Works.

I'll go backwards.

It's important to

know that we still have a really good working relationship with the Office of Economic Development.

That's a department that the job center was previously housed underneath Network to Work, PVCC.

They had a career center up until I think spring and that has since went away.

and then of course I had Vice Mayor Wade in mind and I put the Albemarle Career Center.

And then I also wanted to point out too that the Job Center provides bank on financial literacy guidance and that is done

as an entity as the Downtown Job Center, but we do partner with CEO.

It's a nonprofit organization known as the Coalition for Economic Opportunity.

Yeah, this is really interesting.

Absolutely.

And that's something that's actually been fun to

delve into and take on more recently.

I've been reaching out to, well, there's been some partnerships like maybe parents with MACA Head Start or maybe the city of Charlottesville public school system, but then there's been some newer partnerships as well that I've been working on.

For example, the STARS program for troubled teens and then also more recently

Yes.

Yes, that is correct.

And that's...

That's important to know too because the job center began as a, at one point the job center was a staff of a manager, two coordinators, a client engagement specialist, and an intern.

And the GO programs that were ran by the Office of Economic Development

That largely drove some of the successes that the Job Center had as far as workforce development is concerned.

So it's good to have the partnerships that are listed here to continue to meet some of those needs.

Got it.

I just want to add, you know, I think you understand the collaboration that we all do and

and we help each other out.

I was away the last couple of days and I know you responded to some emails that came to us.

So thank you so much, brother.

So yeah, yeah.

I appreciate your work.

No questions.

Councilor Payne, any questions?

No.

The only comment that I wanted to make is that I know that we have a number of different programs that are kind of pointed in the direction of trying to get people jobs and economic opportunity and we have just embarked on the purchase of KTEC and that strikes me as an opportunity yet again to

to try to figure out a comprehensive strategy, a comprehensive sort of ecosystem for dealing with all kinds of people who need help getting an economic jumpstart.

I'm glad that you all are doing well in your share of things and hopefully that same competence can be multiplied.

Yeah, that's a really good point.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Mr. Mayor, Ms.

Hello.

Thank you all for the opportunity to present.

We've been operating at Home to Hope since 2019 when the program started.

We did a lot of

did a lot of programming and things like that to get us in the space that we're in now.

And we have two other navigators now, Courtney Brown and Devin Coles.

We've been under management and supervision throughout the city.

We started at Human Services.

We were in the Office of Economic Development.

And now we're with

Home Team.

We're all a team together now, so I kind of forget what the name of the office is.

Different acronyms.

But anyhow, a little bit about our stats.

Yeah, okay.

15,000, man, y'all been busy.

Well, I mean, it definitely feels like that.

My average total caseload is 40 participants and active, current, like active participants are 15 to 25 at any time.

Little bit of the demographics, 62% male, 38% female, race, 54% black, and 40% white, six identify as other, and 50% of our program participants identify as homeless when they initially complete a home to home intake.

Yeah, in terms of Home to Hope.

2019, you told me that.

Okay.

Yes, we started in 2019.

Yeah, so what happened is we started training, and then we were trained, applied for the position for the city.

and then we got the position started under the Office of Human Services.

Then we moved over to the Office of Economic Development under Holly Lee.

Do you all interface with the Fountain Fund?

Absolutely.

And that was my fault for not forwarding, but you can see some of their partnerships on the slide.

This group is impressive.

They're impressive with the work that they are able to accomplish.

They're impressive with being able to give of themselves to others, sometimes when they want it and sometimes when they're not quite ready yet.

but all of the access that you see above council is what the investment in Home to Hope goes to because when someone leaves incarceration they leave with well nothing and so how do you get a job if you don't have a phone how do you get a job if you don't have a house because people like addresses how do you get access to mental health care and physical health care

Yeah.

So you had almost 400

was 400 people in FY23.

Yes.

So could you tell us about your ICMA award?

I have friends that are current and former city managers and they just think the world of ICMA so I think the world of ICMA and I'm not a city manager yet.

Well, I'll tell you, we, at that time, Darrell Simpson, who worked in the downtown job center with Roy Fitch, he actually brought it to our attention about the ICMA.

We all got together, he talked to us about it, then he wrote

to them about everything that we did in the program, all the fabulous stuff that we did in the program, I'll point out.

I know.

Not just one, but they are also cover models on PM Magazine.

Yes.

Indeed.

Yes, ma'am.

And I will say with the almost 400 intakes that we receive, we don't just

like just do the intake.

So we receive the intake, reach out to them, schedule their appointment, they come in, we assess them, and we want them to know that we truly understand what they're going through because we have the lived experience.

We know exactly what they're going through because we have been to prison and jail.

So we support our peers.

We are their peer, and we let them know that.

So we build that connection with them.

And that's why you will see up there that it's a repeat.

They continue to come.

Our program doesn't end.

It doesn't have an expiration date.

So we love Home to Hope.

It's our baby.

We truly, truly love this program.

and whatever we need to do to continue to work inside of this program, it's our passion.

Because you are your client's hope.

They can see what life is like when they get out because you, too, figured it out.

However you figured it out, whoever was there to help you and support you,

And so because you have the lived and learned experience, you can have lived experience and not learn anything, but you have the lived and learned experience so your clients can say, well, they could do it and figure it out.

So all I have to add is that I receive many unsolicited.

Kudos for your work in the community, how passionate you all and how well connected you are to the client.

So I know I always see all the different events and the tables and things in the community.

So just I'm glad that this, again, is part of the programs that we offer as a government.

I'll speak to that.

I'm the liaison between Home to Hope and ACRJ, and I have been since the program began.

So I work very closely with the counselors at the jail and the work release department.

Actually, during COVID,

I helped facilitate the HEI program like we helped with the HEI program when the when our peers were being released back into the community we provided them with the cell phones that are required for the HEI program so that they could come out if they needed assistance with the funding to where they were going to stay so that they could be released we did that we talked to Lee I talked to Lisa Hensley so does my coworker

who is a counselor at the jail, Vince Sweeney, our partner who's a counselor at the jail and works at Region 10 as well.

So we are inside of the jail.

Without being in there.

Let me correct that.

We are also approved to go in as visitors.

So before the pandemic, we were hosting support groups and teaching rap in the jail.

We have our pamphlets in the jail, our business cards, like they can even complete intakes to our program before release.

Well, I just want to say one of the things that we learned during the pandemic was that work release and ankle monitors and things like that truly are alternatives to incarceration and they're not just

a waste of everybody's time and money.

They save money.

They save time.

Most people don't require as much supervision as jail imposes.

There are some who do, but most people do quite well with not only the little bit of supervision but also the assistance that comes with the supervision.

that you all were able to provide.

Absolutely.

And I would say, like, definitely prove that the HEI works.

Absolutely.

And we also work with Mr. Joseph Pletania and Mr. Hendley for alternative sentencing.

So we go into the courts to testify as character witnesses to help our

participants and we're working with the restorative justice program to try to see exactly how we can work within the system to just show that it's an alternative.

Great.

And make it more equitable.

So you said that the improvements that they were planning for the jail, did that

No, we're just believing that we don't need an expansion at the jail.

It's my stance on it.

They were specifically talking about HEI, which is home electronic monitoring, and just as the mayor said, giving additional opportunities for, instead of punishment, for rehabilitation.

Thank you all so much.

Thank you.

Any questions?

Just one question.

Obviously it's an incredible amount of work that you all do on a daily basis.

I was just curious if there's anything kind of in the work you're doing where you see this is something we really wish we could do or this is an opportunity that we clearly see we can make an impact but

I would say like more programming like professional development and things like that that we went through just small things that we can do like starting businesses opportunities like that to create more income

And, you know, a lot of our, we're a city program, but a lot of our participants are in the county, so it's very hard to house.

And I know City Manager Saunders is really working on

something to help with the housing crisis that's going on.

But a lot of our participants are struggling with finding housing and struggling with homelessness.

So we do want to try to work and try to get our participants housing, more housing opportunities.

When they come out, I'm sorry, Mr. Payne, you want to go?

Oh, go ahead.

So if we had

more housing opportunities inside of our program, more funding to assist with that, then that would help us a lot.

I made contacts.

He went one of those.

I go out and I find private landlords.

I make connections with them.

I'm connected with several private landlords in the area.

And I bring them down to the office and introduce them to everyone.

But the funding is just not there.

when it's time for them to make the application and different stuff like that.

And it's not even the employment because we've made connections with employers in the area like the Kempton, Home Two Suites.

We had a continued partnership with Panera Bread.

We can get our participants employed and, hey, my boss runs the downtown job center.

So we can do that.

It's just when it's time to get that funding for housing, we're kind of limited.

And when you run into that housing issue I'm just curious is the biggest thing you confront that people aren't able to get a voucher or if they have a voucher they can't find a landlord who are accepted or is it that you know maybe they're not they don't need a voucher but the the rents on the private market or

You know, just far too expensive.

Like, what are you seeing in terms of the lack of funding?

All of that.

Yeah.

Affordability.

Yes.

Everything.

Thank you.

If not, I will speed through the end because I know my boss is next and feel an eyeball.

So just wanted to let you know that much of the objectives of the Office of Equity and Inclusion really is fulfillment of the city manager's work plan action items when it comes to accessibility,

or community interventions, financial opportunity or community support.

That is all housed within your Office of Equity and Inclusion.

And most importantly, it's a very visible way to infuse Council's commitment to JEDI and to not only the organization, but as these team members work with members of our community externally as well.

So some success factors are listed.

We'll make sure that you all get access to this PowerPoint.

But for our ADA coordinator, it's that pesky transition plan he's been working on.

For the Downtown Job Center, it's really continuing to expand on partnership programs and employers.

For Home to Hope, it's that navigation that they just talked about, figuring out ways to continue community partnerships.

and engagement with individuals for example who may be facing substance use disorder.

Doing that work is points of success for them.

And for equity and inclusion, generally, we are members of the Government Alliance for Racial Equity, GAR, and to continue that membership, working to increase the city's Human Rights Campaign Municipal Equity Index score, which we were able to increase 25% from last year to this year for a score of 99.

I will get that pesky one point if it kills me.

to give us a flat 100 and then also just looking at how we educate internally our team members so that they can provide excellent external services.

There are some challenges however you heard quite a few of them with the departments really meeting the needs of our community is our challenge.

The transition plan as you all can guess is going to suggest some pretty costly fixes to make sure things are accessible for all.

National and local employment trends can impact the job opportunities that Mr. Fitch and his new team member who's soon to be hired will be able to place people in and also with those job opportunities how much is the pay and that's something he can't control he might be able to get someone a job but if they still can't afford here that's a problem and a challenge also that access to a wide variety of affordable housing as your home to hope senior peer navigators just mentioned

It's very difficult to do anything without appropriate shelter.

And even if you have a job and a cell phone and peer support, I still can't promise you access to housing, which is critical.

We also are fully recognizing that there are legal impacts of challenges to equity-based laws that are going on currently, and also any potential impacts that state legislators can have on equity-based work.

but there's opportunities.

That includes adding JEDI principles to ReadyNow, engaging in our dedication to accessibility, working to increase employment opportunities with the city through HR's hard work on job descriptions and equity in corporations along with their willingness to look at internships and apprentice style work along with Mr. Fitch working hand in hand and continuing to provide needed and unduplicated support for community members who are reentering after incarceration.

That is all we had.

If not... Councilor, any questions?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

It's our pleasure.

No?

There's something more?

No, it does not.

Oh, I beg your pardon.

That's right.

City manager work plan.

You want to hear from me?

So I'm going to go quickly through two-part presentation.

The first part of the presentation this evening is just to bring back this document that I shared with you last month in getting into that rhythm of me coming before council and the public and basically giving an update as to what it is that I'm working on.

The first presentation of this document was just to get it done.

Now I'm giving the first quarter's update.

So what I did in this particular moment was go through and highlight anything that I edited, anything that I changed or added.

So everything is highlighted in yellow and there's a couple of strike throughs for things that I was able to take out.

There will be a fresh version of this posted on the City Manager's page on the website that will show what the update is through this first quarter.

I'm just going to highlight a couple of things and then I'll move on to the second part of the presentation.

Just to give you some examples of what I did and if you remember the last time that you saw this there were a lot of references to quarter, second, third, fourth quarter.

I went through and was able to identify what the actual month is that we will get these items done so that you can see when you can begin to expect certain things to be presented to you or brought to your attention as well as discussed and shared with the public.

and you'll go through the document and you'll see that I did that all the way through.

I think I only made one change in the target measure column because I did point out to you that the action items in the target measures don't change.

I set those in the beginning.

The only reason for changing that particular line item under housing is because if you drop down two boxes, defined land bank feasibility is the same as seed land bank formation.

I was just moving too fast trying to do too many things.

So I'm going to just point out the organizational excellence item because it's the long one, it's the big one, it's referencing vacancies and positions just to show you that we've been doing a lot of work in this space hiring a number of individuals and or getting jobs posted and it goes on to the top of that next page.

identifying for you the various months that we anticipate getting things done, the status, the number of interviews, advertisements, drafting of resumes and things like that, just to show you that we are moving through, trying to get the key positions filled, continue to try to focus on getting that done.

and two boxes down you see the complete compensation and class modernization box takes up a number of things.

We're continuing to work on our step plans, met with HR today in reviewing some of the work that was done.

The next update on that particular item is for HR to go back and meet with the departments to review some of the questions that may have come up in their review of how they place their employees or recommended placement of their employees.

The goal will be to reconcile that and to then have them bring to me a final version of where the steps are, where everyone is placed on the step plan.

And that will ultimately begin our process for costing out what is this going to cost, being able to determine what it is that we're going to be able to do.

As I identified when we first started on this journey this was going to probably be a multi-year implementation.

It still feels that way unfortunately because it's going to be very expensive for us to do this but ideally the plan is that I should be able to give staff some indication potentially where they may fall or what we might be able to do at some point in the month of January.

The goal would be to do as much as we possibly can this first time around and what's most important for me is to try to figure out how do we ensure that we can touch all employees so that everyone gets to see some sort of change as a result of doing this because the hardest thing for me to be able to see that I could do is to not affect everyone and then have to deal with those folks after the fact and their questions of why not me and not necessarily having an answer for that.

so I'll just highlight that it's costly as I've told you it's going to be very expensive to implement collective bargaining as well so with collective bargaining being three contracts that must be signed and then we'll work into working with the rest of the workforce as well all right just a little bit more of the same scenarios of identifying various things being able to put specific months as to when we'll get those things done

and then I was bold enough to do something that you all didn't ask me to do so hopefully I'm not in trouble but you know I'm not afraid I just do things.

At the bottom of this work plan I took your nine strategic outcome areas and your commitment to JEDI and I put them in tiers.

One question that I get a lot as I'm out and about in the community now is what are council's priorities?

And then when I tell them that you have nine strategic outcome areas and a commitment to JEDI, they always look at me and say, that's a lot.

And I said, thank you.

I just want somebody to tell me that I'm right.

That is a lot.

But what I wanted to do was to just try to focus a little bit on tiering them.

Mm-hmm.

in a way that it begins to make sense to people when they see that, yes, a lot and we're doing all these things all at one time.

But when you look at how the funds are being allocated and the priorities that are being very much focused on and how many people within the organization are focusing on them,

It gives you a chance for you to see how they fall into tiers.

It is not in any way an indication that something is less important because council's made that clear.

All of these things are important.

But what it does is it just helps us in our internal conversations is to begin to deal with them in tiers.

Some of them are interrelated and we kind of deal with them that way.

So that's what you'll start to see, especially as I move into this next presentation.

So David, if you could pull up the other PowerPoint.

What I've done here is just to quickly walk through a variation of what is the impact of you picking Samuel Sanders to be your city manager.

This is where change begins.

So I am beginning to outline how I am internalizing the responsibility that I have in this seat.

So your strategic outcome areas are really about your priorities and as I indicated we need to really think about them as priorities and we need to prioritize the priorities because it gives us the staff the direction that we need.

Those two words there service and impact are very important to me.

this entire team have heard me say that often they will continue to hear me say it that is really I guess what my marching orders are for everyone we're here to serve people and to make an impact and that is what I will continually say and continue to remind them that that's what it's all about for me so that's what is important for us to be able to see that that's the work that we're doing and many city governments don't necessarily focus on the impact aspect of it they just check boxes of service so again there's your nine plus one so you're ten it's a lot

always sticking it to you to remind you how much it is.

Then prioritizing those strategies just again pointing out that there are tiers to that work.

All of them are important and as you saw in the work plan all ten of them are identified because I did not want to leave anything out and our team is beginning to join me in recognizing that they too want to find themselves in these priorities.

So one of the things that came up in our conversation initially is when they saw the nine plus one, they questioned, but what about us?

We're not actually in any of those categories.

So one of the steps that I took was to really speak to the idea that organizational excellence has segments.

So there are three segments, the people segment, infrastructure segment, and the human needs segment.

So that gives all departments and offices that were not clearly within the 10 a chance for them to see where do I plug into this?

because again I don't want anyone to be left out believing that this doesn't apply to me I don't have to prioritize anything everyone has to prioritize everyone has to lift everyone has to push forward so this gives us a chance for us to have those conversations internally

and then we'll begin to talk about that and I'll begin to display that going forward.

So there'll be a people segment, infrastructure segment and a human needs segment that will start to add some additional details as I give you updates on the work plan.

I'm not going to change the work plan document.

I'm just going to add these particular segments for updates on information that I'll provide.

Community Safety and Support as an operational framework.

Operational frameworks are what I'm beginning to talk more and more about.

As you saw, the team members that presented today, Todd, that was really good.

He really picked up my version of the work plan.

I did not give everybody that instruction.

I just told them I wanted them to show me how you're planning your year.

Here's an example by showing of mine, and I'm beginning to see that because I've asked everyone to give me their work plan or version of a document that shows how they plan for the year.

just so that we can look at it and talk about it.

It's not to really direct anything except to ask questions and then make sure that they are thinking about things ahead of time.

But from an operational framework perspective on community safety and support, public safety, partnerships and housing, those things are really going together a lot as our conversations on homelessness and working to intervene with the unhoused, to intervene with gun violence and other aspects of the community.

So we're beginning to talk in those operational framework perspectives, and I'm going to break that down a little bit more for you too.

So those are really just indications of how we get to realize council's vision and then it gives us a guide as a staff how do we achieve those strategic outcomes and that's really the detail that I wanted to show you kind of what we're talking about.

When we talk about community safety and support it's an internal and an external focus where it's a coordination that's required we're trying to enhance experiences improve efforts and realize outcomes.

and the three collaborative areas that we're working on right now and this doesn't this is not an exhaust it won't be an exhaustive list ever but this is just what we're spending time on right now this is the work that's being done is in these three categories of mental health intervention and prevention violence interruption and prevention and homelessness intervention and housing and security.

So under mental health intervention and prevention, we actually have staff working on alternative response and a co-responder model.

There will be an update coming to you because we plan to launch this particular initiative hopefully next month.

Opioid abatement because there are state funds coming in regards to various settlements against pharmaceutical companies.

So there will be a steady stream of cash that will come to the city.

It's not a lot of money, but we want to plan how we use that money and make a difference with those that

are in that particular category of having had a substance use or need support.

And then Marcus Alert implementation, we have a deadline looming, it's coming.

We're going to have to figure out how to implement and the goal would be to do some work along the way that gets us there so that by the time the deadline arrives we are fully implemented and not actually rushing at the last minute.

Violence Interruption and Prevention.

We've had many conversations about that.

As you all remember, you gave a $200,000 grant to the city manager back in the time we were approving the budget.

I have spent those funds, so I'm going to share with you how I spent those funds.

And then we're talking about violence reduction planning because it's important for us to think about how do we prevent things from happening.

and then we also have another program that will be coming and I know Whitmore and Stacey will be interested in that pre-arrest diversion program targeting youth.

The goal would be to try to avoid incarceration to the best of our ability by offering alternatives that would intervene in those situations.

and then under homeless intervention and housing insecurity capacity assessment is what we're doing right now.

We're looking at what the various needs are.

We'll be coming up with some project to determine what the feasibility is.

I would imagine that would be in the next few months.

And then systems change and impact would be the long term strategy.

That's the longer term work that must be done in order for us to figure out how to make a real difference in the number of individuals that find themselves having difficulty with housing.

So that $200,000 fund that you all awarded to the city manager, Mr. Rogers didn't spend it.

He gave the group some work to do.

They came back with recommendations, and then he left before approving anybody, getting any money.

So I got the pleasure of making these grant checks available.

We gave $30,000 to the village to bring back the Black Knights Jefferson District Youth Football League.

I was able to go out to a couple of games and see them play.

The mayor was there with me, along with Chief Thomas.

It was an opportunity to see young people doing positive things, so that was one of those great opportunities for us to do that.

We gave $95,000 to the Uhuru Foundation for the Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise program, also a youth intervention program.

And then we have $75,000 set aside for that pre-arrest diversion program for youth that Human Services and our Police Department have been working on together.

that we hope to bring more details back to you shortly.

One thing that I also was reminded of by our budget director is that this $200,000 is in the budget.

This was not a one time I thought it was.

So that means I get to spend it again.

So I'll be looking for additional ways to intervene, especially with youth and figure out ways that we can do some things to make a difference in some of the various issues that we face, including those that we are thinking about today as we're dealing with some matters in our community.

One of those priorities would be you all have some funds remaining in your strategic planning fund, and I've worked with our budget director to make sure that we have $120,000 in that that can be used.

The goal would be to bring a group called Cities United here to help with some community violence reduction planning.

It's a national nonprofit, very much a best practice model.

They were recommended by the Gun Violence Task Force, and a number of organizations in the community are aware of how they work.

So the goal would be to try to engage them to come and help us figure out some things that we may do for the long term.

It wouldn't be short term items.

This would be about coordinating, bringing the various groups together, getting them to cooperate, and then look at additional things that we might do down the road and ultimately be able to find ways to use that $200,000 grant and any other funds that I may need to ask you for.

And then social equity.

So this is what I was referencing mainly about the change and what happens with me.

So I am a new public administrator type person.

When I talk about not being grown up in government and thinking about things differently, I did a lot of research and come in and do this job.

And one of the things that came up was that there is some tenets to new public administration that focuses on democratic citizenship, public interest, public policy and service.

I thought that was pretty interesting because when I got here I realized that this place is really a good example of that democratic citizenship.

We have a lot of engagement in the work that we're doing and the goal would be to make sure that as a council body you're always looking at what the public's interest is and therefore turning that into the right policy.

and then giving us the opportunity to serve those folks with the changes and the impacts that you want us to make.

So I turn this back to what social equity is and that is really a priority for me and what I've been having various conversations with the team about is that it's fair, just and equitable and that's what we have to remind ourselves that everything that we need to do is about fairness, justice and equitable.

and that's the formation of public policy the implementation of that policy and then the management and the distribution of the service that results from that policy and once we can recognize that there is no institutional structural barrier then we know we've been successful we have a lot of work to do a lot of communities around this country are struggling and have not been able to figure out how to do that I'll tell you the reason I came here is because this place says that they want to do that and that's what I want to be a part of so that's what I'm wanting to prioritize in the work that I would like to have us do

So when we talk about social equity, we're talking about JEDI.

You all adopted a commitment to JEDI, so our goal would be to figure out how to make sure that people begin to understand.

So the best way to start that is to define the words, make sure that we're using the right language.

The goal would be to help our team across this organization understand what JEDI is, what it means, and eventually what it begins to look like in the work that we're doing.

What we're going to be doing is that we're going to make sure that people see that equity is everywhere.

That's one of the things that was said to Ms.

Marshall upon her arrival here, that equity is everywhere.

And in order for that to hold true, that means we have to bring it into every conversation.

That's what we're beginning to do a lot more of.

So let's talk a little bit about organizational structure.

These are some of the changes that I'm making at this moment as I move forward.

Because these two items hadn't been officially announced, I'm just making sure that people know that.

Rheon Anthony is our Interim Director of Parks and Recreation, and Stephen Hicks is the Interim Director of Public Works, in addition to him serving in my old job.

as the interim director as the interim deputy city manager for our operations both of these because the two leaders previously are no longer with us so we are in a transition and the goal is to be able to get these positions worked out as soon as we can we're not rushing into those we're just trying to make sure we're thinking about what's most important and then we'll get new individuals in place very soon

Office designations.

I'm announcing tonight that I'm forming an Office of Emergency Management officially.

That is to prioritize emergency management as a key function of this organization.

It is something that we have not done previously, even after 2017, which I was very surprised to learn that we did not do that.

Something that we should have done.

Jeremy Evans, who currently serves as the Emergency Management Coordinator, will continue to lead that effort.

And the goal would be to make sure that we are as prepared as we need to be in case anything else were to happen in the future.

including a natural disaster.

Also announcing the formation of the Office of Sustainability that's to be led by Crystal Rittervold.

What's important about this particular scenario is that currently the Environmental Sustainability Division is embedded within Public Works.

I am extracting that particular division from that department and placing her as an extension of the City Manager's Office.

again pointing out that climate is everywhere and all of our team members have a role to play in that and by prioritizing it in this fashion we then get the attention of the entire team and can do the work that needs to be done so that we're ready to really engage in that particular subject for the long haul because you all decided that climate action was one of our top 10 priorities.

and because I'm not done I'm currently interviewing for the deputy city manager for administration that is the HR budget finance IT position and I have as of last week begun advertising the deputy city manager for operations position to make that a permanent designation as well and lastly I am revising the deputy city manager for racial equity diversity inclusion currently held by Miss Marshall and new title for that position is a deputy city manager for social equity it

The priority that I have here is to make this portfolio a portfolio focused on human needs and justice.

The Office of Sustainability will be within this portfolio and that is also where now the Office of Social Equity instead of the Office of Equity and Inclusion will be.

Because a lot of the things that are in that office, the social equity office, are about being all over the entire organization.

The goal is to make sure that everyone begins to see that and they begin to participate.

It is not optional to be in the climate conversation, the same as it's not optional to be in the equity conversation.

If you work here, you must be willing to be in it because that's the decision that's been made.

and that is the task that we've been given.

So with that I'm going to end there and say to you I also wanted to show you this is what the portfolios will look like with the advent of the third deputy joining the team.

That's a lot, but that's what we're here to do, is to get a lot done.

The Deputy City Manager for Administration, as I mentioned, HR, Finance, Budget, and IT, and then Deputy City Manager for Operations, NDS, Public Works, Transit, and Utilities.

You'll see that Parks and Rec is a part of what's there for Ms.

Thank you, sir.

Questions?

Fantastic.

Thank you.

Getting any sleep these days?

I am.

Today's my last day this week.

All right.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, folks, it is now we're going to begin the 6.30 business meeting.

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

Counselors, any announcements?

So I just wanted to I should have done this at the last meeting and things got away from me and I didn't.

I wanted to thank the police department for handling the

move out of Market Street Park with a lot of delicacy and a lot of pizza.

I think that the pizza was an important piece of the diplomacy that went into that that made the events of the 21st of October very successful.

Also, right around that time, Officer Travis Woods was seriously

injured or had a stroke after an incident and I know that there has been a lot of concern about Officer Wood.

We're told that he is doing pretty well these days.

Early on he had some up days and some down days but for the most part the days have been up and so we're grateful for the fact that things seem to be working out better for him and

Wish him all the best and certainly thank him for his service to the community.

Are there any items for recognition?

I don't have any proclamations this time.

Ms.

Consent agenda number three minutes, October 10th.

Joint Council Planning Commission public hearings.

Four, resolution to appropriate victim witness assistance grant, victim witness assistance program grant, $258,342.

Second reading.

Five, resolution to appropriate funding from the Supreme Court of Virginia Behavioral Health Docket Grant, $67,792.

Second reading.

Six, resolution to appropriate Virginia Department of Education Special Nutrition Program Child and Adult Care Food Program funding, $30,000.

Second reading.

Seven, resolution to appropriate Fire Department FY22 State Homeland Security Program grant award, $51,764.

One of two readings.

Eight, ordinance to

Ordinance for Renewal of the Ting Franchise Agreement.

Okay.

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

Each speaker will have up to three minutes.

If you are one of those who has preregistered, your moment will come in a couple of minutes.

It's not right now.

If you have anything to talk about on the consent agenda, raise your hand.

Let me know.

Is there a second?

Second.

Any further questions or comments from Council?

Not?

Please vote.

Is Councilor Payne with us?

I am yes and yes.

Okay.

And just for the record, we had already at 4 o'clock approved his participation remotely, so you're legal.

Thank you.

City Manager's Report.

Just one item from me in that I just wanted to make it clear to the public that the work plan update that I presented during the work session today, the actual document will be posted on the city manager's page, so you're free to go and visit and see what we're up to.

Good evening, Captain.

We're fine.

Fine.

So we are here tonight to present to you the first quarterly report for 2024, the current fiscal year.

I'll just say right up front, this is very, very early.

So what we talk about today is as good as what our crystal ball tells us today.

Don't take this to the bank, for sure.

But we have collected so far about 13% of our revenues for this year.

As you will recall we adopted a budget of $228 million and we have revised.

We meet monthly as we are developing the budget for 25 and we are working on revising those revenues.

As you will see on the chart which is on the second page of the

Report, the revenues continue to surpass our projections, which is both good and bad, as we like to be closer, but we'll take what we can get.

Real estate tax, although our sales are down, our sales prices continue to rise.

So we are seeing higher than expected revenue on the real estate end.

Personal property with the 23 budget we talked about with COVID the vehicle values were high.

They are declining much slower than we had anticipated.

Sales and use and meals continue to outperform.

This is something that we're seeing across the state.

Although as of I think last week the state sent out something saying their revenue projections, while they have been exceeding

what their budgets were they are looking to a return to normal whatever that means and so as we look at these revenues a lot of these are based on human behavior which is a little bit hard to factor in to our projections but we're doing the best we can.

An interest income is another big one as when we were doing projections last year we did not anticipate interest at the rate that it is now.

So when we factor all of these in, as of right now, we are looking at revenues that are exceeding our revenue projections by about 7.7 million.

I caution you to say that it does not equate to a surplus.

That is one half of the equation.

And again, it's early on.

And so we'll continue to monitor these.

We'll talk about these projections a little more as we work through the 25

budget development process.

Good evening, counselors.

So just moving on to the investment section of the presentation, there are a few slides.

We're almost there.

There we go.

So this update is based on the end of the first quarter in the fiscal year, so ending September 30th.

And moving on to the next slide, I'll just touch briefly on the city's investment guidelines.

So the state code has a lot to say about municipalities and what they're allowed to invest in.

Obviously we follow all of those guidelines, but additionally we have internal investment guidelines that we follow.

And those are more restrictive than the state code.

And so primarily, you know, we're managing towards the goals of safety, liquidity, and yield.

And just as a reminder to Council, the other internal restriction we have that

We talked about with Council several years ago as just an exclusion of any companies invested in fossil fuels.

So that restriction is still in place and that is shared with our investment managers so they are aware of that as well.

Moving on to the next slide.

Monthly cash flow.

So you can see there's sort of a corridor over the course of the year that our cash flow ebbs and flows.

Obviously as we approach tax deadlines it will go higher.

June is sort of the high watermark for the city's cash flow from a financial perspective.

as we have real estate and personal property tax revenues coming in.

And then those funds are spent down over the summer both as CIP projects are usually underway at a higher rate and also the fact that there are no major tax deadlines or anything like that.

So we are coming into a period in November and December and January where revenues will be increasing and cash flow will be increasing.

So we'll obviously be looking to put that to work.

as expeditiously as we can.

Moving on to the next slide.

So this is just a comparison of June to September and some of the slight changes that have occurred in the portfolio.

You may notice a slight decrease in holdings in U.S.

treasuries and a slight increase in negotiable CDs and corporate notes, and that's primarily a function of

the yield spread between those different types of securities and so that's something that we discuss with our investment manager as the market changes as we have maturities in the portfolio they will look to invest those as advantageously as possible while still following all the investment guidelines that we have so

Just to give some examples, and Chrissy mentioned this, that it can be difficult to forecast interest earnings over such a long time period, especially with as much uncertainty as we've experienced with the Federal Reserve.

But we have maturities that we purchased two or three years ago that were yielding, you know, 50 basis points, and they're being reinvested at 5.5 percent now for two or three years.

That's why it can be so difficult.

We generally don't forecast rate increases when we're doing interest rate projections.

We just kind of go with what we have at the time period.

And so that's why you'll see some variations in this forecast when it comes to budget time.

I think there's one more slide.

So two charts here.

One shows our investment portfolio sort of managed to a one to three year index.

And you can see that indicated here that the largest portion of our portfolio now, 43 percent, is invested in that two to three year time period.

And so that's just an indication that we are taking advantage of those higher rates.

And a lot of economists as well as the markets sort of forecasting that they may believe that we're sort of at the

End or approaching the end of this rate hiking cycle that we're obviously trying to lock in those higher rates where we can and hopefully that will help us over the next few years when it comes to interest earnings on the budget.

Going back to a slide that was up during Ms.

Hamill's presentation, it looks like the projected interest income for miscellaneous revenues, interest income for the FY 2024, you're thinking maybe as high as $3.6 million?

That's right.

That's right.

Yeah, that was a long time ago when we made that forecast.

There have definitely been a lot of rate hikes since then, but we have sort of created a model now that we're using where, at least for the current fiscal year and the next year, we're forecasting two rate decreases a year, and we took those and allocated them across the balances that we have, and we feel like this is going to be a closer number going forward.

I'm all in favor of an extra $2.5 million.

Thank you.

Any other questions for Mr. Andover?

No.

Thank you all so much.

Thank you.

It's good to have this report to know we're on track.

Now, community matters.

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

If one of the first eight speakers is unavailable, a speaker on the waiting list will be moved into that slot.

Each speaker will have up to three minutes to speak.

We will now open the floor to preregistered speakers.

Jay Oschrin Thank you, Mayor.

Good evening.

Good evening.

I know you're going to be talking about jails a lot tonight, but I want to talk about something else about the bus service.

Improving the bus service in Charlottesville must become a higher priority than it currently is.

The angst that many people have about traffic and parking as a result of the upzoning is a reasonable concern.

That is why the construction of sidewalks and protected bike lanes along with better bus service must happen at the same time, not five years from now.

It is a package deal.

You cannot do one without the others.

It is like the proverbial three-legged stool.

I can't cover a bike-ped bus in three minutes, so this is only about buses.

Here are some things to consider.

More buses, more lines, higher frequency.

A transit system will be more successful if you don't need a schedule.

Fifteen minute frequencies, four buses per hour means that wait times average seven and a half minutes.

The main discussion about buses is currently centered around bus fuel, but it doesn't really matter if it's not getting people out of their cars.

Frequency is the main thing that will do that.

Smaller buses, like the rental car buses at the airport.

I know this seems counterintuitive if you want to increase ridership, but if you have more buses, they don't have to be these behemoth vehicles that are intimidating and impersonal.

Smaller buses feel more accessible, more human scale.

Have some fun.

Decorate the buses.

Pipe in music.

Make the seats comfy.

Make it fun to ride the bus.

Call the bus drivers people movers or captains or chauffeurs.

Get the kids in school to have a naming competition for the buses Profile the captains on the city website, help people get to know them Have a bus driver training school in town, KTEC

Pay the captains more.

Current wage is about $21,000 an hour, which is about $42,000 a year.

Not good enough.

It's a tough job.

First there's the driving part.

Then there's a ton of responsibility.

There's also a security angle.

Driving for eight hours a day, five days a week, is not easy.

How about a starting wage of $25,000 with a top out at $35,000?

Make it a sought after job, not a necessary evil.

Celebrate the captains.

Maybe have a bus driving Olympics every year to showcase their driving talent.

Fix up the bus stations for heaven's sakes.

How about some shade and a place to sit, a little color too.

Make it feel like you are a winner, not a loser, for riding the bus.

Increase the number of hours that the buses run.

Have special routes like church buses on Sunday and shopping buses during the holidays.

Every resident gets a free pass for the first year.

Kids always ride free.

Set up a sponsorship program for fare assistance after year one.

Give prizes to people that ride the most.

Have bus locations available on your phone like Uber so you can gauge your wait time.

Make it easy for bikers or handicapped people to store their wheels.

Mr. Oschrin, your time is up.

Next is Roy Van Dorn Thank you, Mayor, City Manager, Council.

I purchased my home on Rugby Avenue about four years ago.

With a lot of sweat equity, I remodeled and repaired the home.

Four years later,

My real estate property taxes have doubled.

You soon will be considering upzoning for every parcel in the city, especially the R1 zones.

As envisioned, the goal is to increase density and therefore the value of land will increase due to the potential capacity of more development.

That's real estate 101.

The benchmark for this increased valuation will be based on comparables by those homes sold with similar zoning.

As we have seen the flurry of high density applicants, developers will select the best combination of location, lot size and capacity and their return on investment as they should be.

Yet as we have seen most will not be affordable housing.

However, for those of us who do not want to become developers, the impact will be higher assessments due to this development by others.

I believe as part of your review of the zoning code, you owe the community a clear tax strategy resulting from the Council's decision to upzone.

As we all know,

The statement about keeping the rate the same somehow does not mean a tax increase is simply not accurate in this case.

What will happen is that the real estate tax rate may stay the same, yet the payment amount will increase.

In most kitchen table conversation, that's called a tax increase.

We have less and the city takes more.

Many in this community are doing with a lot less today and part of that is the ever increasing taxation on everything from food to homes.

That is multiplied by the ravages of inflation.

Speaking of inflation, I've given you an article that I ask you to read from the Wall Street Journal.

This article is about the national impact of inflation is having on housing.

Many have said that increased density is the primary answer for achieving affordable housing.

I believe if you read this article carefully what is clear is that the cost of housing is a national problem and not the availability of land.

That simply ignores the elephant in the room.

The high cost of acquisition for homeowners and developers alike have reached a crisis stage.

In conclusion,

Thank you, Mr. Van Dorn.

Good evening, counselors.

My name is Lisa Drain.

I am a city resident.

I've also been serving on the Albanbauer Charlottesville Regional Jail Board as your citizen representative for the past two years.

This evening, you will be presented with a resolution to approve almost $5 million in interim funding as the first step in the renovation of the jail.

As I said when I came before you last January, I oppose sinking money into a facility with a decreasing population.

at 230 people, it's the lowest in 25 years and a building that currently has unused housing units.

While I do agree that the oldest part of the jail should undergo upgrades,

The ACRJ Board considered doing just that in 2019, but rejected that plan in favor of undertaking a much bigger renovation project down the road, which this is.

I strongly feel that the bulk of the estimated $49 million, which is really $73 million when you include interest, would be better spent on deeper funding for community organizations serving those

at most at risk for entering the criminal legal system in the first place.

I would like to see us change our priorities for use of taxpayer funds, but I know this won't occur until we all change our mindset about who is a criminal.

It's ingrained in many of us, but I urge you to let go of the notion that some people are just evil and will never change, and therefore deserve to be behind bars.

You've heard the phrase, harmed people harm people.

The majority of people in the carceral system who are accused of causing harm were in fact victims of harm themselves.

And of course, they're disproportionately black, brown, and poor.

Often this harm occurs as children.

It could be mental or physical abuse or even the harm caused by living in poverty, inadequate housing, a lack of opportunities, poor health care.

We know there's a strong connection between this kind of childhood trauma and violence.

Our current carceral system does little to alleviate harm or to rehabilitate people.

More often the system just increases trauma.

If we keep putting money into this system, including the jail, nothing will ever change and you will be complicit in perpetuating that system.

Look at the troubling situation that's happening at CHS right now.

If the answer to the problem is serious disciplinary actions and repercussions for those bad kids, we'll be doing the same old thing, offering only the same punitive responses to harm.

And if these young people end up at the Blue Ridge Detention Center, it's just a few steps up the hill to ACRJ.

So addressing the issues at CHS, which of course go much deeper than just fighting, is closely connected to how you view and fund

the jail, including this renovation.

Alas, I know you will likely vote to authorize the interim funding.

You've toured the jail and seen the condition of the 1974 wing and of the wing of the facility.

I want to speak on the sign-in letter.

A diverse group of community groups, re-entry organizations, educational and tenant organizations has signed on to this letter.

All of these organizations have one thing in common.

They work with vulnerable populations and low-income people in Charlottesville.

The signers are your constituents and they speak with one voice.

We sent a copy of this letter to all of you last week.

I wanted to read it now.

The People's Coalition Jail Committee Legal Aid Justice Center and a wide range of community groups focusing on education, housing, reentry opposed the large scale renovation of the Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail.

The initial estimated cost by Mosley Architects is a staggering $49 million.

In 27 years when the bond is paid for the cultural communities were balanced, like Ms.

Drain said, $72 million.

This unsound use of taxpayers' dollars put future generations in debt.

Punitive car sales systems like a new jail only serve to perpetuate the mass incarceration of black and brown people fail to keep us safe.

We depend on our taxpayers to be invested in you know affordable housing which we continuously deal with homelessness.

Homelessness continues to bring

to the system because whatever situations they're in, they might continue to deal with the police.

So if we continue to stop dealing with mental health, substance abuse, trauma, and tragedy that continue to oppose upon our people, if we have other resources that are put into the community as well as the jail sale, but what are they going to do when they're in there in a less amount of time?

How is that specific

renovation in that specific area, which is supposed to be endowed to mental health, how are they going to deal with that?

Mental health could be a whole time that they're in there.

So would they be in that particular room, which would be something so bright, something so beautiful, but it's only for a mile to mid.

So that means if it's anybody that is beyond mid, they're being sent away.

So what if they come in there with a substance abuse and mental health?

Is that area going to be able to treat both?

No, it's only going to be able to treat mental health.

They say that their staff is staffed, but I feel that because the staff is tired of sitting in the situation that they are now, that they're feeling like they're the inmates.

So now they need a new renovation.

So this should have been done years ago.

So if we were going to have our people sitting in those cells, they should have been comfortable if they were going to be in there before now because they couldn't breathe all this time.

So put yourself in the box and have an understanding of what it's like to be in a cell.

But it's human and humanity.

Thank you, Ms.

Barker.

Ellen Cantini- Hello.

I'm Ellen Cantini-Murava from 225 Montebello Circle, commenting on the VRF project, the 12-story student high-rise proposed for the corner of JPA, Emmett Street, and Stadium Road.

This project was applied for as a planned unit development, or PUD, a zoning category used for projects that are outside the scope of regular zoning rules.

It's not a surprise that there are two PUD applications

for student high-rises in the pipeline at this moment because there will be no such thing as a planned unit development in the new zoning code.

Developers have been exploiting the PUD category to circumvent the normal zoning rules, and they're scrambling to get their outsized projects approved before this loophole gets closed.

But the VRV project doesn't even conform to the specifications for a PUD under the current code.

The city staff report brought up the following conflicts.

First, contrary to the city code PUD specifications, the Verve design is neither innovative, attractive, nor environmentally sensitive.

Second, the architectural style is not only inconsistent with the neighborhood, but the scale is inconsistent with Charlottesville in general.

Even planning commission members described the scale as scary at their October meeting.

A further conflict with PUD specifications is that the VRV project will reduce existing mature tree canopy, which is already insufficient in this neighborhood.

The city staff report also pointed out conflicts between the VRV project and the city's comprehensive plan.

Staff noted the scale of the project and its negative impact on the adjacent neighborhood, and they especially highlighted the excessive height.

A height, quote,

that is 34 feet higher than the maximum height allowed within any of the city's zoning districts, unquote.

Due to the conflicts with both the PUD specifications and the comprehensive plan, city staff concluded that they could not recommend approval of this project.

The JPA neighborhood is already under siege from developers rushing to cash in on student high rises before the new zoning code is in place.

Two have already been approved on JPA.

even though UVA plans to house all its second-year students on grounds by 2030.

The city doesn't need an even bigger student high-rise, especially at this location, adding 400 cars along with bikes, scooters, 1,500 pedestrians to this congested and hazardous intersection.

Our neighborhood has always been an invigorating mixture of ages and occupations, homeowners and renters,

but it's getting harder and harder to hang on to the stability and sense of community that makes living here worthwhile.

Please reject this PUD application.

Thank you, Ms.

Condini-Maraba.

Happy Turkey Day to you, too.

Hi.

My name is Demarcus Brown, and I'm a resident of the city of Charlottesville.

I was born here, I'd like to point out, and I work for the Legal Aid Justice Center, and I also represent the People's Coalition.

I'm here to talk about the renovation, the request for renovation and expansion of the album on Charlottesville Regional Jail that this council is here today to consider interim funding.

I would first like to point out that it is imperative that any expenditure of taxpayers dollars, especially ones costing over a million dollars, should involve community input and engagement.

Community engagement and input should have been the first priority before the beginning of any process, where it should be the first priority before the beginning of any process concerning the jail expansion.

The task force of directly impacted people, their families, and service providers and community reentry groups should have been informed of this process from the beginning.

This should be done immediately.

The A&E firm should develop tiered proposals laying out different options for renovation and the cost for each one.

This should not be an all out or nothing proposal.

We believe in care, not cages.

We are here to demand care instead of cages.

Money spent on preventing incarceration is a much better use of the car.

community's resources than one building likes the cages.

This means investments of affordable housing, mental health resources, and reentry programs.

Charlottesville has a housing crisis.

We have all heard of our unhoused community members and the need for housing options.

We need to invest in preventing incarceration, not building a better jail.

We should be spending money on community services and supports to prevent people from going to jail in the first place, not by building a new place to confine them.

I want to highlight that the current proposal increases the square footage of the jail.

But I should point out that there are unused newer areas in the jail.

Two of the housing parts in the newer section of the jail are unused.

The parts of the jail built in 2004 are unused.

Why is this?

It is our priority, really, in preventing better conditions for people who are incarcerated.

Excuse me.

Let me correct myself.

Mr. Brown, your time is up.

Thank you.

Next is Kirk Bowers.

Is Kirk here?

He was.

may come back to him.

Good evening.

My name is Darrell Jones.

I live in the city of Charlottesville.

I'm here on the

On behalf of the People Coalition, I'm here to talk about the new jail and the city council considering for interim finance to develop a proposal.

Care not cages.

We are here to demand

Instead of cages, money spent on preventing incarceration is a much better use of resources than one building, a nicer cage.

This means investments in affordable housing, mental health resources, and reentry program.

Charlottesville has a housing crisis.

We have all heard of the unhoused community members.

and the need of affordable housing.

We need to invest in preventing incarceration, not building better jails.

We should be spending more money on community investments and preventing incarceration service and support to prevent people from going back to jail in the first place by not building a new place to find them.

And another thing, I think the money should be spent more in with the way these youths are out here running rampant with guns and stuff like that, and the high rate of crime, money should be put into more of building something for them instead of looking at being violence, being gang members, because with that incident that happened over the weekend, last week with that boy with that big gun, where the issue is he getting that gun from?

Money needs to be put into studying

on what could be preventative of giving these children the better options.

It looks like the youth and the black and brown kids are being just put to the side.

And another thing, I get it if it's not affecting a lot of people here, they don't care about it.

You know, it's not in your neighborhood, it's not that.

But I think the money could be used wisely.

And instead of building new sales, when you're building new sales and getting new people in there, what, you're just going to have them in there, just being in there without getting any resource.

or education or any guidance, putting in and getting them some GEDs, putting their money into putting the people that you already got in there so they have a better option than looking for something to come out of here, how to fill out resumes and stuff like that.

Thank you, Mr. Jimmings.

Hello.

My name is Ann Benham.

I live on Observatory Avenue in the JPA neighborhood.

Since early in the zoning process, residents of our neighborhood have raised a number of concerns about the proposed rezoning.

of our area.

We brought them up in a meeting with Mayor Snook and Councillor Puryear in August and emailed them to the whole council the day after that.

But none of these concerns have been addressed at any of your meetings.

We ask that you consider them before you vote on the new zoning code.

First, please maintain residential zoning for the streets between Stadium Road and JPA.

The draft code proposes RX3 zoning for these streets.

That would allow buildings up to 175 feet wide, which would dwarf the existing one- to three-story houses in this area.

would also allow only 10% tree cover after 10 years of planting, which is a shockingly low figure, whereas residential zoning would require at least 20% tree cover.

The JPA neighborhood is already below the tree canopy standard for a healthy neighborhood.

Furthermore, commercial development is not really suitable for these streets.

Every resident lives or would live within one block of JPA which is proposed to be zoned CX5.

So there's really no need to add commercial uses to the narrow strip of side streets.

Second, please do not make the intersection of Shamrock Road and JPA CX8.

If you've been to Shamrock, you know it's very narrow and winding.

and too much so to support eight-story buildings on each corner.

At your November 1st work session, the topic of transitions between zoning categories came up, but not with respect to the JPA neighborhood.

The draft zoning map allows CX-8 zoning across the street from RX at Montebello Circle and CX-5 adjacent to single-family homes on streets between stadium

and JPA.

Please reconsider these transitions.

Lastly, some urgent studies are needed before rezoning of our neighborhood.

An infrastructure study to begin with which was done for the RB and RC neighborhoods but not for our neighborhood.

and a traffic study for a neighborhood that already suffers from extreme traffic congestion.

This study must include the extra traffic from the already approved student high rises at 2005 and 1709 JPA plus the future developments on Stribbling and at the UVA Piedmont housing complex.

Thank you, Ms.

Benham.

Next.

That is Kirk Bowers.

Did he come back?

I guess he went home.

I know he was here earlier.

Okay.

So now we have eight more spots.

A few other folks had signed up and are on the waiting list.

Contrary to popular belief, being on the waiting list doesn't mean you are automatically the next folks up.

So I'm just going to say who else?

Are there other folks who would like to speak here today?

Okay.

Let me take this woman here.