City Council Budget Work Session   3/9/2023

Hey neighbor.

What?

Okay, folks, it's six o'clock, time to convene and call this meeting to order.

First item on business is the roll call.

Mr. Robinson?

Here.

All present and accounted for.

Mr. Mayor, Council, on Monday night we presented you a budget for the FY24 fiscal year, a balanced budget of $226 million that indicated

$13 million more in revenue, mostly from real estate taxes, $9 million, and the food and lodging taxes, sales taxes increased some, but a total sum of $13 million.

That's what we had to play with in terms of new dollars for the fiscal year.

We presented you an outline of how we spent that $13 million There were some new positions Three battalion chiefs, a human rights investigator Human rights administrative support Human resources recruiter, which we desperately need The number of vacancies that we have

a deputy director of human resources, PCOB management analyst, emergency manager coordinator, SAFER grant firefighters, 15 firefighter positions,

that are not new, they are on the payroll, but we had a grant several years back, so it's now time for the general fund to begin absorbing that cost and the city hall ambassador and a few others.

All in all, this budget contains a proposal for $1,000

81 positions, and that's eight less than the previous year.

But within that, you know, we still have some vacancies that we're working to fill and some critical positions, and the recruiter, as she ramps up, will certainly be able to help us address that.

I'm going to have Ms.

Hamer walk through the PowerPoint, highlighting some key areas from the budget.

The budget book will be printed.

It's going to print about now, and we should have it available next week, since Mr. Pinkston insists on having a printed book.

All right.

Sure, thank you.

No school like the old school.

So just a quick agenda for tonight.

We've spent a lot of time already talking about revenues.

We went through the chart Monday night.

So we're going to kind of bypass that a little bit and look at an overview of expenditures.

We also have five of our departments that are going to come and present to you this evening as well.

And so we're going to go through a couple of slides and then we'll kick it off with those presentations.

So as Mr. Rogers talked to you on Monday, there are several major budget themes in this budget.

One is a strong support for the city schools.

We worked to further some of council's priorities.

We are investing in city employees.

We're preserving quality services.

We're focusing on organizational improvements and efficiencies.

And we are maintaining all current tax rates and fees.

So as we look at the expenditure summary the total budget is just over 226 million dollars you can see here when we often talk about the pie how that pie is broken up functionally you'll see that schools account for about 30 percent of that the departments that are going to present to you tonight account for approximately another 30 percent of the general fund

and then it's broken out into the other categories here.

The designated expenses are the revenue sharing that gets transferred to the CIP, also the contracts with the schools, facilities repair is in there as well.

So how did we spend the $13 million?

We're going to go through some of those details.

The contribution to schools, that's a formula that's 40% of all new revenue.

That accounted for just under $4.2 million.

Rent and tax relief actually is a decrease although that is because last year in the budget we had included extra dollars with the idea that we were going to combine a lot of the programs and we were going to pick up an additional because of that timing we were going to pick up an additional half a year

and that did not we ended up not doing that and so while it looks like a decrease the programs themselves and the the relief that's being offered is not decreasing it's that was it was just because we thought we were combining the programs

again as Mr. Rogers mentioned we are adding several new positions some of these are catching up because through the ARP allocations these were things that we've actually already done in this current year we added three battalion chiefs for fire we added several positions for human rights

and Human Resources.

In addition, we created the Emergency Manager Coordinator position, an analyst for the PCOB, the City Hall Ambassador, and then the safer firefighters.

As you know, there was about $2 million of ARP money that was allocated to cover those.

However, we will actually start picking them up in April of 24.

and so what we are doing is we have added a third to the 24 budget that will then offset and we'll add a third the next year and a third the next year and we'll use that two million dollars of ARP money to sort of phase that in.

In addition we added a couple new positions with new 24 revenues a ready coordinator which will be in the Office of Equity and Inclusion a homelessness services coordinator an additional senior analyst for human resources and we're adding six additional firefighters the human resources they had a position that was originally funded as a specialist and that got reclassified as a manager

We also unfunded several positions we took five of the vacant police officer positions and reallocated that funding elsewhere in their budget and human resources that was another vacant position that was reallocated to help offset some of the other the new positions that were listed previously

As Mr. Rogers reported to you Monday night, we also have included a 6% COLA effective July 1 for all employees.

Additionally, for the city's health care, the city is chipping in about $500 additional per employee.

We are not making any changes to the employee health care premiums at this time.

and the retirement allocations are the same percentages but our payroll is higher so that accounts for an increase.

Additionally we have the contributions to non-profit and outside agencies the ones that are listed here are more the ones that we've tossed around we used to call it contractual that got confusing so now we're calling it governmental right

Intergovernmental so these are the ones that are essentially agencies that are governed by either MOUs or regional agreements these these agencies are reviewed generally by the budget office in conjunction with the county budget office to make sure that we're all moving

in the same direction in terms of how we're funding.

A couple things on here that don't qualify under that, of course, Pathways.

That has been a fund that has been funded through Vibrant Community.

We have been funding that at just under $85,000 a year, but with ARP for the last two years, we've been

providing about 1.5 million in funding.

And so while that's not sustainable, we did add additional funding to get that up to $500,000 in the budget.

Additionally, the vibrant community fund overall, we added an additional $200,000 to the pot.

So those account for the increases for the agencies.

Additionally we have a couple interagency transfers these are dollars that are allocated in the general fund for example transit that you'll hear from tonight they are largely funded by state and federal dollars but the local dollars do come from the general fund in terms of a transfer

so that transfer is increasing about $300,000 and then in addition we are upping the debt service transfer and that is largely the majority of that is the no I'm sorry I'd listed that separate I was gonna say the majority is the meals tax but that's actually at the bottom so that is 163 is additional general fund dollars and then at the bottom in the designated revenues

We're increasing that another $162,000, so that's just a little over $320,000 increase for debt service

Additional changes as we know fuel costs have increased information technology is increasing for computer and infrastructure replacement we as you'll find in different parts throughout the budget because of COVID that was one area when we were trying to cost save vehicles and other equipment got put on the back burner trying to catch those up

That's the vehicle replacement funds that are listed here and vehicle repairs are going up and maintenance are going up as a consequence of that delay so that's why that's an increase here

Additionally contractual increases are going up some of that is related to escalators that are in existing contracts some of that is related to inflation and some of it is related to some creative uses of contractual labor for jobs that we can't hire for

utilities overall that's electric bills software license and maintenance and then rent is actually going down and I think the large part of that decrease is probably attributed to the police department because they've been able to get rid of some of their rental space

and then looking on down to the designated expenditures the transfer to the capital improvement program is going down about 1.2 million there's a couple of contributing factors here one is the transfers that we have been putting in have been

As you know, escalated above and beyond our 3% policy because of the Friendship Court Project.

Some of that based on their LCTAC application has been pushed out to later years, so we're able to draw that down.

And additionally,

The new version that's in the proposed budget changed a little bit from what you saw in the Planning Commission because we are actually going to take advantage of the contingency funds that we put aside both during COVID and otherwise to try to spend some of that down.

So the transfers that are currently in the budget for the CIP adhere to our 3% policy, but that's about where it's capped.

The building maintenance and pupil transportation those are contractual services from the schools and then the debt service is by policy that is the equivalent of one cent per meals tax so as that revenue goes up a little bit more gets to the debt service fund

and then facilities repair during COVID.

We have historically for many years funded that at about 400,000 a year.

That was another area that we reduced during COVID and we're bringing that back up.

So all told, this is where we are for how we're spending the new dollars.

Any questions?

No questions?

I have a couple questions.

Just to be clear, you mentioned the city, the 40% of new revenue, as you put it, going to the city schools, that's actually 40% of new property tax revenue.

Okay.

I'm curious about because I don't think I don't know this will be touched on by any of the later speakers what is the position of the ready coordinator for perhaps Ms.

I didn't take it as that, sir.

Thank you for the question.

For that particular role, there is not a status on it because we would need you to approve it as part of this budget and then I can hire for that person starting in the fiscal year for July 1.

So currently your Office of Equity and Inclusion is me, me, and me.

and also along with our leads for the downtown job center, our home to hope program and our ADA coordinator.

So the ready individual would help to provide an umbrella not only over the great work that those programs are already doing,

So one of the things that I've found when I've talked to people about your job is they say, well, what does the Office of Racial Equity, Diversion, and Inclusion actually do anyway?

Do they just sit there and be liberal?

Absolutely, yes, sir.

So first of all, the office is new.

That was one of the charges within my job description was to establish an office of equity and inclusion.

So under Mr. Rogers, we were able to establish that really starting July of last year.

And so under that office, we have absorbed our downtown job center run by Roy Fitch, Jr.

that job center has been around for quite some time but was nestled in economic development we've moved it out under equity and inclusion so that they can not only focus on providing good quality jobs within the city to anyone but also our lead Mr. Fitch has financial opportunity experience which I recall from last budget season Councilmember Payne mentioning

and also equity experience as well so thinking about if there's any disparate impact when we're thinking of our jobs.

Our Home to Hope program which helps individuals who are formerly incarcerated come back into the community and receive the supports they need is also under the Office of Equity and Inclusion that program was really the brainchild of former Mayor Nakia Walker and

has done some amazing work including winning an ICMA award and so they are part of our Office of Equity and Inclusion specifically because the work they are doing is really removing some of those barriers for individuals who want to be successful and move through their life and happen to have this

this issue that occurred in their background that sometimes can very unfairly prohibit them from moving forward.

And then we also were able to move our ADA coordinator, Mr. Paul Rudisell, from our neighborhood development planning department

to the Office of Equity and Inclusion.

And that was very intentional.

That was because oftentimes because that person was nestled in NDS, it was thought of that really they only focused in on plan reviews, for example.

But your ADA coordinator is actually a federally required position that does far more than that.

So under the Office of Equity and Inclusion, our hope is that our ADA coordinator will really be able to spread his wings, really look at Title II and Title III as it applies to the city, be very proactive with their work, and one of their largest tasks that they will be doing as soon as we are able to solidify a contract

Keep in mind as well that Ms.

Marshall is, while she's Deputy City Manager for Race, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, she has a full portfolio of oversight of half the departments in the city.

So adding support to her staff will help her

Thank you.

Next question I had, and I don't know whether this will be addressed by any of the later speakers, so I'll ask it now.

We're looking at a very large additional amount for the Blue Ridge Regional Detention Center.

I'm wondering, is it purely that we're locking up more juveniles, or is there something else going on there?

I don't know who's responsible, okay.

So for the Blue Ridge Juvenile Detention Center, that calculation uses a three year average of

not individuals, but the time that they are at the detention center.

And what we are finding is where the city is certainly reducing incarceration for adults.

For juveniles, we have juveniles that have been in the detention center for far longer periods of time.

Actually, in the regional jail board meeting today, one of our citizens, Kate Fralig, noted that on average in the adult jail,

people stay roughly two to three days that is not the case in our juvenile detention center at that time so based on that three-year average of I want to call them bed nights but that is homelessness coordination coming out of me but based on the amount of nights that juveniles from the city are in the detention center

On city charges Only on city charges That is why our percentage you did see an increase We increased as well as Fluvanna County Some of our other counties that participate in that regional center saw a decrease

Absolutely, and the individuals at the detention center have been really great to work with as far as answering questions about issues such as that of the length of detention, but also providing information about what they are trying to offer

youth who happen to find themselves there in order to make sure that they perhaps do not return.

I thought one of the interesting things, only because I never would have thought of it, is they actually keep fees.

And so the individuals who are at the detention center who take care of them and learn how to, I guess it is still technically animal husbandry,

while they are there.

Those are the questions I had.

Yeah, it did.

Thank you.

They do have a board.

It is comprised of local government representatives.

So, for example, from Albemarle County, Mr. Walker sits.

And you're our person there?

I am.

That is also a formula as well.

And it's based on lodging.

It's lodging, right?

Yeah, all the lodging tax.

So it's actually a year behind.

And during COVID, they actually took a big hit.

And if you recall, we had talked about some ARP money to help make that up.

And this is just catching up.

that represented the board on that committee.

We had our meeting this week and we talked about that as well.

Just a few quick questions.

The City Hall Ambassador position, I know that was created

as a COVID-era response, and the latest President will end the orders later this spring.

Do you want to talk about that, Jason, or do you want me to?

Yeah.

I'll talk about it.

Okay.

The Ambassador Program we installed because as we were opening City Hall we thought it would be a good idea for citizens to be greeted by city employees as they came in

and part of our COVID protocol, they come in, they register, they get a visitor bag, they get matched, they get escorted to their location.

And so it's still COVID related, but kind of a holdover.

But I think that as a matter of customer service,

Okay.

And the other is with the Pathways Fund, I know in one sense it's an increase in terms of the recurring line item, but compared to last year at $1.5 million it's a decrease.

So our work session next week is about nonprofits and agencies and vibrant community will be part of that I don't know that Ms.

Okay.

And similarly, I had a question about the SPCA and some of the concerns about the treatment of animals and staff, and I know Albemarle's been engaged on that.

I have engaged my peers in the county to help understand exactly what they have done so that we too can do our version to evaluate what is really happening.

I understand that the state has made a visit.

We've gotten a report on that.

It's actually better than what anyone would have thought based on the accusations that have been made.

I also reached out to invite the ED or board chair to come before you in an upcoming work session so we're working that out right now to give them the opportunity to speak to you directly about what has been basically what the charges are against what's happening there plus just give them to give you a report because they have not been before you in a couple years is what I understand

I meet with the county next week.

We'll review exactly where we stand on the matter and then determine what next steps we need to follow.

What is missing, as I appreciate it, is that we don't currently have

our liaison to work with the SPCA on a regular basis like the county.

Questions, counselor?

So as we mentioned to you we have a couple of departments here tonight that are going to make a presentation to you and this chart is we spend all of our time or most of our time during these budget work sessions talking about the general fund the five departments that are going to come talk to you tonight account for exactly 33.7 percent of the general fund budget

but they also some of them also span other departments as well so you know fires all general fund parks and rec is general fund and they manage the golf course which is accounted for separately additionally public works spans through general fund they have a few programs in the utility funds and the fleet fund

Good, thanks.

Appreciate it.

I wish she pulled the presentation up.

But Mayor Snooks, Council, staff, thank you for allowing me to present to you tonight.

And as was indicated, this will be a brief overview of what services and things are going on in the fire department to justify our budget.

I can see this one.

I brought my computer.

Start off with...

is our call volume and that's just the first eight months of FY23 as you can see 5600 calls thus far and again that's the first eight months of the fiscal year that doesn't account for any of the nine days in March because that

Total goes up daily because every day we run calls and just some of the type of incidents that we go to are fire related 105 EMS related and good to note that not all EMS calls we transport so we do a lot of go patient checks which we would respond but not transport the patient to the hospital so that number is reflective of citywide how many times we've been dispatched to EMS

and then we also do other calls for service and that equates to 1773 calls thus far this year or as of the first eight months question what are other calls for service they include hazardous conditions service calls good intents and false alarms so what is good intent

Someone called because they think they had an issue.

Yeah, they had a good intent.

They thought they saw something that was an issue, so they would call the fire department.

We would respond and come to find out.

It was a good intent to call, but actually it wasn't.

Could be classified as that.

Yeah, next slide.

This is another excellent service that we provide, and it's the proximity dispatch.

As you can see, it was implemented in FY21-22, and at that time when it was implemented, there was a 56 percent increase in our EMS call volume.

Okay.

Actually, the red is the only one that, you know, we are still looking and that could be just the time of the day because traffic patterns change here drastically.

So those numbers could have been affected by, you know, delays in traffic to get there.

But for the most part, there was a huge increase in each neighborhood and the campus.

Okay.

And as I indicated before, we respond to every call, but in terms of transports for FY23 so far, we've transported 2,110 people.

And what does that mean?

We have revenue contribution to the general fund of $445,113 total this far that's been posted to the general fund for FY23.

Next slide.

And to mention on that, too, that number does not include the cost for the billing, because we pay a company to do our billing, which is Digitech, and there is a fee to that, so there is a small portion of that that's not.

Some community outreach things that we've been involved with, we were awarded the community block grant, and we received 1950 devices, which include smoke alarms, carbon monoxide detectors, and range hood fire stops.

thus far we've installed 1630 of those devices in people's homes in the city that's a huge undertaking that's a lot of man hours and stuff so it shows that the men and women of the fire department are actively working and providing service to the city this was a city-wide initiative however we focused heavily on West Haven 10th and Page and Rose Hill

and we're going to continue the effort till we install the remaining devices.

Staffing, currently we're allotted 117 full-time employees.

That includes administrative staff.

Our operations staff consists of 98 position.

We're currently seven.

We have, I said six, but it shows seven.

It's seven vacancies.

and we are actively in a hiring process so our goal is to be through the process and in a position to hire at the beginning of the 24 fiscal year budget and with the additional positions proposed by the city manager able to be in align with our hiring process so we should have a nice list and the ability to bring on those additional that has been proposed by the city manager

Some of our staffing challenges is employee turnover.

I think, you know, we're no different than the other department, but we're losing members to other departments and to the private sector.

The reason being, the market is being competitive.

And we are a great department, but

When people are deciding where they want to work, where they want to stay, they base their decisions off of more than the working environment.

So employee retention is one of our staffing challenges too.

And FY23 alone, we've lost 10 members for our department, two of the executive staff and eight in our operational staff.

Next slide.

Overtime, this is a very complex slide so I'll try to get it so it's understandable.

We're 56 hours for our operations and they work 24-hour shifts and for overtime for single days so if you come to work today and you get held over for tomorrow that's one shift we've had 507 shifts and that's not one person that's an actual

Average of six members per day that we're hiring on overtime and if you want to look at 48 hour shifts where people have to stay over two consecutive days it's 306 shifts and 72 hour it's been 372 days and what does that mean that means if I came to work this morning

I will not go home until Sunday morning.

So it's a huge undertaking on the staff.

Burnout is a question.

Mental health is always something that we check on and we have dashboards to see how many critical incidents they respond to so we can move them around.

But still, we have to maintain minimum staff in the seats field so when the citizens call, the units will respond.

How does that affect the budget?

And you'll see there we've had a very consistent overtime budget of close to a million dollars each year.

FY21 is not reflected correctly because CARES money was used to pay that down to offset that and I think that was 1.2 million of overtime.

So if you look at it, it's been consistent.

And when you look at FY23, what's budgeted or proposed, it's $400 and some thousand dollars.

As of the eight months, we're already at $800,000. $800,000.

and I can get you exact figures if you need.

But that shows that our staffing levels is what's driving the overtime.

So, Chief Thomas, what is that like?

So that, you know, they just don't have the staff or someone calls in and they, if they're there, they know that they can't

has a sense of obligation and so they know that they have to stay over.

It's not one thing.

It would be so much easier if it was.

It could be the six vacancies where people have left the department, which generated vacancies.

We have people on FMLA.

We have people in long-term military.

And we have injury leave.

And then we have sick leave.

We call it the unknown.

So we can justify the number of people that we schedule to be off

But the unknowns when someone just calls in or has a different issue, we can't control those.

So those are the things that are doing it.

And the other thing, piece to the puzzle, is our units are specialized.

Not everybody can come in and drive a ladder truck or till a ladder truck.

pump an engine, perform ALS skills to the citizens, or BLS skills, or hazardous material, deal with those things.

So you have to have people, and you have to have people with capabilities, because if I don't have any engine company drivers, I could have 100 people at work, but I don't have anybody driving my unit, so I have to have specific people to do specific tasks.

Adding the six firefighters should help once they're trained and in full service at the academy.

We should see some movement in the overtime, shouldn't we?

That is a goal.

As long as we can retain our employees and we don't have to hire people and then I lose six as soon as I hire.

So before we get to the new

Yes, ma'am.

So everything is right with the world and you wake up tomorrow and you've got seven new people.

The additional six that are proposed would help even more.

Are each one of those positions, whether it's the seven that you don't have and the six that you want to have,

in particular categories.

I drive the bike and ladder truck.

I drive the pumper truck.

I'm EMS certified.

Both.

Our main thing is to hire good people and that want to stay here for a while because the turnover rate is what's really the hindrance because if I lose someone for whatever reason with tenure

moving forward with overtime.

We hire the seven people that you don't have.

We perceive that overtime will go down because you would have more people than you do now.

That is the goal to retain the current staff that we have to hire the vacancies and to add the additional to assist with a relief factor.

So when we have these unknowns, we will have a relief factor.

So if you call in sick today, someone is there that can fill in.

So I don't have to force that shift to stay over.

and again that's why I said that was a very complex line and you know I'm more than willing to talk later or at the end of the five minutes because I've got strict instructions trust me and here's again these are allotted positions if we're fully staffed currently this is what our shifts look like we have 33 on A shift 32 on B shift and 33 on C shift

and if you see the last last line is the current relief factor we have two one and two so I can have two people call in sick and still maintain without having to hit overtime on B shift I can only have one that's in a perfect world and like I said I have six vacancies so that's what we are allotted next slide this is

This is present day.

I have 31, 28, and 29.

So on B shift, I'm negative three, and C shift, F negative two.

And what does that mean?

I'm hiring overtime.

There has been one benefit right now, because if you see our scheduled leave is seven, so we can have up to seven people off a day for vacation or holiday.

And this is not really the season where everybody is taking

Vacation.

Coming up in the next few months, spring, summer, we're going to see that being full.

So we've been able to manage and work around it with the shortages, but we're still hiring overtime, but not as much as it was because we had

We had a lot of people out on injury leave last year which generated a lot of overtime.

We were 21 people short.

We had nine people on some form of leave and then we were short by 12 and we had a recruit school that's graduating in the upcoming months.

So those things contributed heavily to the overtime and so we're starting to see some relief but we still got work to do.

And the next one.

And this is what we would look like with the additional six that has been proposed by the city manager.

That would give us 35 on one shift, 34 on B shift, and 35 on C shift.

And that would give us a relief factor of four, three, four.

Not the area code, it's people.

You know, it would be nice to say seven and do four across the board, but we're very appreciative of what the city manager has proposed.

But again, there's still work to do.

And that's, you know, the down and dirty, quick and brief, so I would, you know, stay within the time frame.

I'd be glad to answer questions on how my WP Rodgers here with me.

I've got two retired in well one retired in February one retired is retiring April 1st in this fiscal year and

So today is controllable.

Two years from now, that's going to be a whole different story because my whole senior staff is eligible.

Now, whether they're going to go or not, that's something else we have to deal with coming up.

Just one question.

You said retention is one of the big challenges.

Is that something you're seeing as a trend across departments across the state?

Money.

our surrounding counties are offering you know where we used to be a commodity where we were the only career organization locally and now our surrounding counties are going career so where you had a pool of people to choose from and you were the only one choosing you could have a pick of the litter but now that everybody around us is choosing from the same pool it's competitive now and who's offering the best

I know Richmond just got the safer grant that we had and they have they were awarded 72 people and they're doing lateral transfers so they're taking I just left a state meeting they're taking from all of their and we haven't got hit with it yet

Hopefully we won't, but, you know, 72 is a lot of people.

Albemarle is hiring, they just advertised that they're opening their hiring process, and they have a similar pay plan in us, but they do have one that's different from us that's very attractive.

I think it's a little bit of both.

We're very competitive in our pay range, but once you're in it, I mean, because I don't know the last merit raise that the city's given, so that's where you're at.

So I've got members who started five years ago, and outside of the COLAS, that's where they are.

And if they go to another department, they have step plans.

So if you've got five years of service, you step up.

And that's very attractive.

Thank you.

The STEP program, I know we submitted it at the same time as our other public safety partners there.

and now I think it's collective bargaining right here and that is a potential bargaining component.

I'm sure someone else could speak a whole lot more about collective bargaining and how it plays in there and the legalities behind it.

That is part of the fire department budget.

It's in there, I think is a contribution to other civic groups.

It's at $450,000.

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Next up is our Deputy Director of Public Works, Mr. Rion.

We just moved you.

Stacey, don't get nervous.

Thank you so much.

I know we just had fire, and now we're coming to the fun department, Parks and Recreation.

I believe that we are the gateway to the city department.

As you can see in Parks and Rec, we have a very large portfolio.

We have 28 parks within the city.

and counting.

Next year, hopefully next year or the year after, we'll be adding another park to our portfolio.

We have 45 playgrounds, 22 playgrounds is located on school property.

Park and acres, including the school, is roughly about over 1,000 acres.

That is mobile acres.

And then also,

Every year we are expanding over six miles of paved trails within the city, over 30 miles of natural trails.

When it comes to our mortar and our facilities, we have four swimming pools, two indoor and two outdoor, plus four splash pads.

Four Recreation Centers, two of them are, as I like to call, our regional facilities, Carver Recreation Center and Smith Aquatic Center.

And then we also have a award-standing skate park.

And then with our 18-hole golf course, as Chrissy mentioned, that's an enterprise fund.

And then a city market.

And then we also do have some shared maintenance with the county.

That is our Ivy Creek

and our Darantau that we work with.

Next slide.

Now we're coming into the budget.

As you can see, Parks and Rec has a big portfolio, and that is why we are roughly $12.4 million.

This is our expenditure budget, and with many budgets, as you can see, if you look at the pie, our personnel and our other personnel costs is a big chunk of it.

personnel, roughly about just under six million, that is full-time personnel.

And then you have another one called Others, that is our temporary budget, and that is just hovering over $2.3 million.

Yeah, it is a large temp budget, but as I like to always say, when the community wants to play, Parks and Rec works.

So we're open seven days a week,

and we have facilities open over 80 hours and that is why temp dollars or temporary staff are the backbone of recreation.

If you look at our budget as you can see we have actuals all the way from 19 FY19 all the way to our proposed and you'll see a specific trend parks and rec is outward facing department meaning if we shut down

We shut down.

Unlike if you look at utilities department, water is still flowing, you know, employees can still work.

But as you can see in our actual 21, as you can see, we dropped in terms of our revenue because we were closed down.

But if you look at when we got out of 2022 to 2023 proposed, we are welcoming people back into our recreation centers.

And then for our proposed budget, we are hovering at, again, as I mentioned, $12.9 million of expenditure.

Next slide.

This is our revenue projections.

Again, in our COVID years, as you can see, our revenue stream dropped.

And just so astounding that I was just talking to one of our colleagues that the last facility that truly opened up was just May of last year, and that was Smith Aquatic Center.

so moving forward we are planning on opening up Honesty and Washington seven days a week unlike last year we had an alternate schedule due to staffing but this year we are projecting to have all our facilities online staffed and hopefully we'll see an increase in our revenues as well.

Next slide.

Now the fun part, what's new in our department?

We have a departmental master plan.

This is our first comprehensive master plan in Parks and Rec, which I'm very excited about, because this gives us a pathway of strategic planning for our department, really finding out from our community what they truly want within our community, and that's how we can refocus.

and then realign, rebrand and then also with that evaluating our organizational structure accordingly.

New things that we looked at too, in 2018 we had a needs assessment and we looked at our needs assessment this year because we are looking at why are people not coming back to the recreation centers and to our programming and we said let's look at what the community wanted in 2018.

And our first program I saw was community events.

And what we did is we ramped up our community events, winter ball, snow and play.

We have family game night, which is occurring this Saturday at Carver Recreation Center.

And we have found some good results for that.

We're also looking at really focusing on our teen youth adult program.

We are just in the grassroots levels right now looking how can we look at partnerships and how can we reach out to our teen and young adults.

So we are focusing on that.

And again, we're looking at different types of recruitment strategies.

As you heard by the chief, it is retention.

It is how do we recruit.

We are also having a small hiccup in recruitment.

So what we have done just this year, we looked at

all our positions and all our areas and we found out we are struggling in lifeguard recruitment and we are also struggling in counselors because summer is coming up and there is an uptick of parents within this community looking for some type of activities for the kids during the summer.

I called the Y the other day.

They opened up the registration.

They were full in eight minutes.

We just opened up our registration.

We are halfway full with our registration, so we need the staff to back it up.

We worked with the Human Resources, and we came up with a retention plan, an incentive plan for that.

Hopefully that will help us to move forward.

Next slide.

Challenges.

Again, challenges is

Starting with our service levels.

We are struggling with our standard of care.

We are struggling with our community offerings.

And again, if you look at all those, it's because we just do not have

Staff in order to meet the needs.

We also have staff shortages.

Again, money is important.

And then also flexibility.

Work from home.

Flex hybrid plan.

We're trying to incorporate that more.

In Parks and Rec it's very hard to have everybody to do that because some positions, we have to be at the pool.

You have to be at a facility.

So we're trying to look at different means.

And then retention.

Staff appreciation.

We really are really struggling with staff appreciation.

Our morale is down.

When you look around, certain communities pay us up, and Parks and Rec need to be more competitive with the market.

And then again, trying to come up with some form of retention, mentor program.

How do we do a professional development plan?

So if you are in, for example, a maintenance one position, how do you get to two?

is that if you're here with the city for five years, how do we work that type of plans?

And we're really struggling on that.

Next slide.

So now we're getting to service.

And as you can see, if you look at the chart, I've done 19 and 22.

19 was before COVID.

And 22, we're just coming out of COVID.

As you can see, these are admissions.

How many folks came to our centers?

And I'll focus mostly on 22.

As you can see, 22, there has been a drop.

If you look at Aquatic Center, the drop is around about 48% due to Smith was closed for a very long time.

And then we had closure of outer pools.

One year we operated with only one pool.

Last year we had a flexible schedule with both pools.

And again, as I mentioned, we are hoping, we are opening up our outer pools this summer.

And then our non-aquatic facilities, those are our recreation facilities.

Our admission has dropped 18%.

And we're also looking at, in this fiscal year right now, we are seeing some trends.

One of our strategic plans is how do we invite the community back?

By inviting community back is having more events at the facility with no charge or very less charge, just so that we can introduce them back.

to what we offer.

Next slide.

And again, programming, recreational programs, very, very important.

These are programs that you register, and this is across our portfolio from aquatics all the way through recreational and athletic programs and stuff of that.

As you can see in FY19, enrollment was just under 11,000 people.

And then FY20, we're just above 6,000.

So you ask why?

It's because, again, we came out of the pandemic.

We really let go our instructional staff.

during that time, and then a year later we had to open up our facilities and we struggled to recruit instructors and staff.

And we are still trying to slowly but surely build up our portfolio, but it's going to have to be a hybrid approach.

Hybrid approach meaning looking at do we hire staff in,

versus do we have a combination of contracted services?

Can we find an organization that does yoga and do a contract in order to meet the community's needs?

Because there is a need.

Community is asking us, hey, can we have more classes?

Can we have more swim lessons?

There's a long wait list, and we'd love to, but we just cannot recruit.

Next slide.

Again, staff levels.

Here we go.

11 vacancies with our full-time positions.

And again, last year we had 10.

That doesn't mean we haven't hired.

We continue hiring, but there's this thing called turnover.

Again, turnover.

And what we are asking our staff that are leaving our organizations, we are making a forceful effort is to sit down with our staff and ask the question, why?

Tell us why.

And there's a theme.

money, and then also turn around within our leadership in our recreation department.

Yes, this is our third director in the past few months, totally, and that's legitimate.

And for us to recognize why, if we understand the why, we can then work on an improvement plan on to meet those needs or improve those needs.

So we are getting feedback from staff.

But again, 11, we have most of those positions out at parks.

Parks, and Parks is really struggling in order to hire.

And again, exactly the same thing.

We have temporary staff that makes $15 an hour.

We have a full-time maintenance worker one only making $17 an hour, plus benefits.

So it's a real struggle where you see a maintenance person who would leave Parks and Rec and go to different Parks and Rec making more money.

So next slide.

And as I mentioned in the beginning of the slide, the backbone is our temporary workers.

As you can see, we are still lacking 236 in order to make it for this season.

We hire a large amount of lifeguards and a large amount of CSA.

That's why I see the numbers up high.

At the moment, we have, I believe, 178 temporary staff.

And it's across our portfolio, as you can see, from athletics all the way to adaptive.

Recreation.

So again, we are struggling in our camps is try to recruit them and try to retain them.

And in closing, this is Parks and Rec.

Yes, sir, so I have just one I've been, you know, talking about, you know, with the recent uptick in shootings and things that I think that this is one of the keys, one of the tools that we can use to address that and that is to kind of have some type of program and

for that kind of 18 to 30 year old, kind of those particularly young males that just may need something.

And, you know, I've been part of the studies and things that do, and I just don't see them kind of, you know, when you get feedback of what programs that you want, really kind of going out into the community that I'm thinking about to ask them what they want.

Good question.

So how our parks and rec is divided up, we have a programming section.

And they look at different genres of programming.

And we are very flexible of pivoting

to the community needs, especially at this pivotal moment where we have lower staff numbers so we cannot offer.

So right now we have the opportunity where we can look at partnerships in order, internal partnership and external, communicating to the police department, communicating to community attention in order to

move with the trends of the community.

And I think we'll be able to do that, but we will not be able to sustain that.

For example, right now there is a gun violence problem, and we do need to improve our teen and youth programs in.

But when I project that this will be a long-term plan, we will then have to find funding in order to sustain, i.e., if that's the path, we're going to have to have a dedicated individual, because as I mentioned, we have a program department, but they have four, five, six, seven different genres.

I think that that's definitely something we may have to look at in the future, but what I'm

envisioning is that you advertise that someone may have a degree in parks and rec from university or what have you, but they may not be able to have their connection and relationship to go out in the community to ask the community what they want.

So I guess it would be how you write the job description and things like that.

So that's definitely down the road.

Thank you for the presentation.

It's very helpful.

It was interesting at the event that the chief had the other night over near, over in Tenth and Page, I heard a woman, a mother there beside me talking about, you know, she would essentially love to be able to put her kids in more sports, but just the cost of doing that, and it is interesting

as we look at the city holistically the importance of things like parks and rec to help our youth find profitable ways to spend their time and grow.

I think it was Deputy City Manager Marshall who mentioned to me earlier today that you all are working on a master planning effort, a strategic plan

which I guess will inform sort of what programs you hope to have in the future and staffing as well.

MR PRICE- So right now it is in our procurement office.

We're just waiting for our procurement office to release it to the public.

That process will take roughly around about one or two months.

We will then negotiate.

That will take anything from another month to three months negotiation.

Yes, eight minutes.

Because it's a comprehensive master plan.

What's in the comprehensive, the RFP right now, it is basically getting focus groups, serving communities, asking the communities what they truly want.

Let me say that during our strategic planning process, the retreat later I guess in May now, if you have a thought about how

you want to see Parks and Recreation reimagined to engage with the community.

I think it should also be, you know, I don't need to read the whole RFP, but I definitely want to read the outreach part of it and see what their team looks like that's going to be working on it.

So, but yes, yes, I think that we need to have that not just as part of this, but overall in general, you know, our outreach, but definitely for Parks and Rec because

I think we can do a different way of outreach than traditionally has been done.

No, it's fine.

One question I had and I'd have to go look at these paper documents that I have.

In terms of the funding that you have to pay your staff including the temp staff, how much of that

again when I look at maybe crystal clear to me but how much of that the funding it takes to staff your organization is impacted by the loss of I guess revenue of people not participating in programs or people not coming into the centers.

Do you have a sense of what sort of percentage hit you've taken on revenue because you've not had the participation due to COVID in your programs?

Or is it not really funded that way?

You're funded more from just general appropriation.

Am I making sense?

So again, it's a very hard question to answer, but I'm going to try to do my best.

Reasons being is

2023, FY23 will be our first full year of being open.

But how we are funded is, and I'll give you a quick snapshot of registered programs.

Most of our registered programs are run by, as we call, instructors.

And without instructors, we cannot offer programs.

So when you look,

that if we cannot hire instructors, we cannot offer.

So if we cannot offer, we cannot generate revenue.

When you look at out of pools, for example, they have lifeguards, totally, total different type of

Senario than a recreation center.

If you look at a recreation center, we know exactly how many staff we need to operate that building.

It's a consistent number.

But with lifeguards, it all depends on how many people are in the pool.

So at any given time, for example, honesty.

Honesty takes 10 lifeguards to operate at any given time.

Compared to Smith Aquatics, a minimum of three.

So if we don't have lifeguards, which is happening right now, we don't have lifeguards, what we have to do is we have to close down certain areas of the pool so that we accommodate at Smith the three bodies of order.

But if we only have

three lifeguards, we can only operate one of those bodies of horde, and that's how we've been managing.

So, for example, if a family comes in that wants to play in the slide section, unfortunately, if we don't have the staffing with the schedule, unfortunately, we cannot offer that to that individual.

That is not what we want to do, but when we look at the scope,

It deters some families from coming in.

So just to interject though, their budget is established as part of the general fund.

All right.

We definitely agree with what I said earlier.

I also wonder, beyond the conversation tonight, how to coordinate between human services, social services, and schools on those youth programming to have the biggest impact possible.

Just quickly, you've made a big shift to contracted employee services.

I guess I haven't just gotten a good sense of what is the scale of that and what is kind of the

So in parks and rec, most of our contracted services occurs on the park division.

Park division reason being prior

Prior to our pandemic, we had a struggle of hiring seasonals.

And then two years ago, we just could not employ folks.

And that's where we started outsourcing, for example, mowing for the schools.

Then we looked at our horde unit, horticulture unit.

They normally a staff of eight, but now we only have four.

How do we get the schools beautified?

So we outsource just that section.

And we're looking at a model where if we cannot recruit staff,

But the services still need to occur.

For example, if we can't recruit, you know, there's going to be a situation where we can't beautify the downtown mall parts.

Thank you.

And just one other.

I don't know the details of it, but I've heard from some people who work as temporary staff in Parks and Rec that there's been recent changes that has limited their ability to take on shifts.

I've heard from some people who've worked doing after-school programming at West Haven that they've struggled to have staffing for it because there's folks who want to do that job, but they're kind of being blocked from it because of a change in the, I guess, billable hours or something they're able to work.

I can answer that.

There was, if you recall, we issued the new personnel regulations in October, and one of the changes after a lot of consideration was a change in the maximum hours a temporary employee could work.

because of what it triggers in terms of additional costs in terms of pension, et cetera.

So there is that limitation, and that is new.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor, Councilors, City Manager, Deputy City Managers.

Okay.

Next slide, please.

I'll just let you skip through the whole thing.

We'll just skip to the end now.

So what's new?

This is where we will start.

So I'm new.

And it's been a busy few weeks.

And I'm really still getting to know the community and our officers.

And I'll just start off by saying I've been nothing but impressed

with this police department and the men and women that we have.

We have a good foundation.

We have a lot of work to do, but I'm very optimistic.

Beginning right away, we have put together, it already kind of existed, a chief's advisory council, and one of the first things I've charged this council with, and it's a representative within the agency at all levels, including professional staff, is the development of our mission, vision, and values, and we are going to need that developed and put into place before we start talking about our strategic plan, which will ultimately guide everything we do.

You'll see there a main portion of this strategic plan will include a new performance management program.

This will include a planning session for every employee, which is an expectation session, and then a six-month progress discussion of where they are, and then annual evaluations.

and while this sounds very basic it is something that is needed and our staff needs to know where they are and there needs to be clear expectations of not only what we expect as the leadership of the agency but what the community expects.

Excuse me, Chief.

So that sort of performance management program has not been in place?

Okay.

All right.

Yes.

Thanks.

Okay.

Next slide.

Okay, looking forward, I want to begin with building community partnerships because that's probably the most important part to what we need to do as an agency.

We all have been talking about the gun violence and what we've been dealing with here in this community of late, and I've said this before, we cannot address these issues alone, only as this police department.

and we can't go into these communities and say hey remember us we're back without building trust and building these partnerships

So as of Monday, I have assigned a full-time sergeant as our new community involvement coordinator, that's Sergeant Eric Thomas, he's full-time, and his job is to, and we sat down and I kind of gave him what the vision of this assignment is going to be, but is to create these programs that are designed to involve the community in what we do in the police department.

one of the primary or one of the initial things he's been charged with doing is to identify key stakeholders in the community maybe around 15 or 20 to serve on our community action team or chiefs advisory team where we would meet monthly and gather input from these key stakeholders as to what they want to see from our community outreach I mean we're going to do the coffee with cops and the ice cream things and all those things but

But I want to hear from the community, from these stakeholders, what does our community want to see if it's police department and what kind of outreach do they want to see?

Some basic things that we will be doing is a community police academy.

This community police academy is going to look a little different than most.

It will, as a part of participating in it, it will require participants upon graduation to volunteer at least 10 hours a year with the police department to work with us on different programs when we're out doing community events, stuff of that nature.

And again, it's about building relationships between our staff and the community.

Another portion is going to be to put together a police and faith coalition and this will involve faith leaders within this community and the police department where they will sit down with me monthly or maybe every other month but again it's those what you get out of these types of meetings with the chief are these organic conversations between

between the police department, our staff, and members of the community.

And you can move forward from there, and ultimately trust will be built.

But that's going to take time, and it takes programs such as this.

this is another program that we actually just sent a staff member up to New York City to look at a program they have it's a pathways program that the NYPD is working with with their schools with with youth at a very young age I have not gotten a brief out from what they've got from when they come back so I look forward to seeing that

and then a pilot program for the guardian score program and so this is more towards the end of the year to look at but this is a program I've been asked about a lot it is a survey program officers have business cards there's lots of different have a QR code interactions with the community they give that card and it is a real-time survey basically just evaluating that interaction with law enforcement again

How I vision this is more towards the end of the year kind of as a pilot to see how it works in Charlottesville every jurisdiction that has done this it's it's been rolled out a little differently so it needs to be unique and fit this community so again that'll be towards the end of the year if you go back I'm sorry external communications

So we are going to continue to do our community walks every Thursday.

They are not going to come to an end.

We just did one in Fifeville tonight or this afternoon.

And we're just getting a lot out of it, just talking to folks.

Again, those organic conversations, talking to folks on their doorsteps, on a sidewalk, in a park, and just listening to stories and engaging with the youth and other members of the community.

And then town hall type meetings, similar to what we did last week.

We will do more of them.

I got a lot out of that meeting and I thought what it showed me is this is a community that really cares and wants to be involved in the solutions to the challenges that we're facing.

And then engagement on social media platforms.

being more externally facing of what we're doing within the police department.

When I got here, what I have found is a police department that's just doing a lot of really good stuff, but we're not telling anybody about it.

And we got this wall up.

I hope we can do that this August.

We will.

Thank you for brought that up.

We are going to be doing National Night Out this year in August.

Next slide.

addressing gun violence so when I when I arrived I talked about the three things that we are looking at and that is our three priorities which was building community partnerships and addressing gun violence that was priority number one and they go hand in hand number two recruitment and retention and number three is the treatment and wellness of our staff

Gun violence, so we have assigned a full-time detective to the FBI Safe Streets Task Force, actually met with the U.S.

Attorney today and his staff, kind of just a meeting to get together, and we have actually used those federal resources in the recent case of the homicide that occurred on Hardy Drive two weeks ago, and they have been instrumental in assisting us with resources to not only bring justice to these families,

to try to find out where the guns are coming from and other ways to go ahead and address these gun violence.

So I expect them to be a very good partner with us

Data-driven responses to crime trends, putting police officers where they need to be, when they need to be there.

And so we've done a few things, basically, you know, putting officers in hot spot areas, focusing on procedural justice principles while in those areas, meaning getting out of their cars, speaking with folks, meeting people in the community, and that has been, the officers have been doing an amazing job with that.

The stories I'm hearing, I wish

You all could be in the meetings I'm in all day and hear the different stories.

They're just doing a wonderful job.

And then filling a crime analyst position.

Again, if we're going to have data-driven approaches,

to these issues that we're facing, we need to make sure we have people to analyze that data.

That is a vacancy right now.

Our records manager is doing dual jobs right now.

She's doing an amazing job with that work.

We've had somewhere around 70 applicants for the crime analyst position.

so we have to get through them so I'm excited about that and that's going to be really good.

Redistrict patrol areas from eight to three and assign a lieutenant to each one of them that's an accountability piece so when we have our comp stat meetings our regional comp stat meeting which is when we sit and look at data with ourselves and UVA police as well as with Albemarle County Police Department that lieutenant for that district is going to stand up and tell us what's going on why it's happening and what they're doing about it

And then they're also going to explain different community strategies they're working on within their assigned district as well.

Again, it's an accountability piece and it'll allow us to be a little bit more focused.

And again, I spoke about the regional ComStat meeting.

We had one, losing track of time, about two weeks ago.

And it was great.

And again, it's our regional law enforcement partners sit down, look at all of our data, kind of figure out what's going on, why it's happening, what they're seeing, what we're seeing, because a lot of this stuff doesn't stop at our borders.

And then the implementation of a crisis response team.

I had a commander and a sergeant recently go up to Alexandria and look at the model that they are using for their team which is more of a community focused, community based model to the ICS which is Incident Command System model of responding to high threat, low frequency events like barricaded individuals, school shootings, active violent incidents

We have to be prepared to respond to those and currently we are not So if something like that happens in this city tonight, Virginia State Police would be responding And so I feel like it is important for us to have that capability because we answer to this community and make sure we do it right and we're going to build that from the ground up Next slide

Recruitment and retention.

So we had a hiring blitz recently.

We had 20 applicants show up, a few certified, meaning they were already certified police officers from other jurisdictions.

So we're excited about that.

We're having another one at the end of this month.

We have added a community member.

Well, right now it is Mr. Mendez from PCOB.

He is on our hiring panel right now, and I plan on adding a community member to that hiring panel as well.

So that's the one part of our process after you take the written and physical agility test.

I spoke a little bit about the internship program and the pathways program.

I will be briefed on that here soon.

Commitment to the 30 to 30 initiative.

the prior Chief Brackney had actually committed to the 30-30 initiative when she was here and so we are going to carry that on and continue to work towards those goals.

So a 30-30 initiative, it is an agreement that a police department will, it is a goal that we get to 30% female sworn staff by 2030.

and there's different things that are involved in that.

Obviously hiring female staff is part of it, where they are within the organization, ranks, command structure, and then other things such as making sure the department has lactation rooms and stuff like that.

So it's just a commitment that we have signed on to and we're going to continue to do.

Again, I'm going to keep talking about the implementation of performance management program because I think that fits in everything we do.

You don't know what you don't know.

and we have to continue to focus on that and make sure we get that right.

Recruitment and retention, so I put social media platforms on here.

Over the last month we went from 13,000 followers to 15,000 followers on our Facebook page.

and so when you can have a recruiting table at a recruiting event and someone will come and talk to you, they're gonna walk away, they're getting right on their phone, they're looking at your social media platforms, what are you portraying?

When someone thinks about the Charlottesville Police Department, what are you portraying outwardly?

And so we're really focusing on that.

and we have identified a handful of individuals within the police department that have access to our social media platforms to capture those events and those things that are the great things that our staff are doing each and every day so and then collective bargaining collective bargaining is going to be a big part we like everyone that's come up here before pay is you know you're going to probably keep hearing about that and I will tell you

policy makers probably across this country are probably hearing the same thing and so we're all competing for the same pool of candidates and staying competitive is very important collective bargaining is going to help with that and so I think you know as we get into that process there will be a whole lot more to be said about that that part so next

the treatment and wellness of our staff so again if we're not taking care of our folks we're not treating them well then we're not going to keep them and it doesn't matter how many people we recruit it's just going to be a revolving door so one-on-ones is something that I started doing recently I'm doing a one-on-one with every one of my employees and to just kind of hear their input everyone from patrol officer all the way up to my deputy chief and so

They need to know that their voice matters, their voice is heard, some of the ideas these young officers have are tremendous and so I'm taking note of them and when we sit down and develop our strategic priorities all that will come into play Weekly updates, I push out a weekly update to all staff of what we're doing because we're moving fast, we're doing a lot in a short period of time and so our staff needs to know what we're doing, why we're doing it

and hear regular communication from me.

So we're pushing that out weekly.

Monthly Q&As, that's just me going to roll calls and making myself available just to answer questions and to talk.

I'm a believer that if rumors start, let's get on top of them quickly.

And sometimes it's best to hear it directly from my mouth.

So we're going to do those.

The Chief's Advisory Committee I talked about earlier, they do a lot.

That's just another avenue of communication.

But this is all about focusing on procedural justice practice internally.

We talk about procedural justice practices externally with the community about how we treat people but we cannot expect our officers to treat the community in a procedural just way if we're not walking the walk internally.

If we're not treating our officers and our professional staff fair, giving them a voice, listening to them, explaining to why, then they're not going to do that with the community.

So we're really focusing on that and their wellness, our peer support programs, and kind of building that back up.

Again, I'll keep hitting on performance management.

Next.

Current staffing.

I've been talking about it.

We have about 30 vacancies.

The number up there says 34, but that's with the sworn of 115.

And we've reallocated those funds of five of our vacant positions to fund other programs within the police department.

So our current vacancy with 110 is actually 30.

So we have 30 vacancies, which is high.

again I've talked about what we're trying to do to address that to Councillor Payne's question earlier I'm sure I get the same why what can we do to what's caused it I think it's probably a lot of different things

I don't think you can blame one individual thing on why we've lost folks.

And this is something police departments are seeing across this country.

But we've got to get it right.

I think pay compensation is a piece of that.

Environment is a piece of it.

How we're treating our folks internally is a piece of it.

So all of that matters.

Next slide.

this is the calls for service and staffing and the recent numbers I have so you see 2022 37,000 in 2023 so far just this year we've had 7,800 calls for service so we're on track for about 40,000 calls for services here next slide

So again, some of our challenges, about 30% vacancy rate, focusing on hiring, training new officers, focusing on getting those officers who apply through our process.

That's a challenge sometimes.

So we're short people, that means we have short staff in recruitment and retention, backgrounds, all of those things.

So we have a grant for a limited term to hire a background investigator to assist with the background investigations.

and retaining staff both sworn and our professional staff because and I say this all the time without our professional staff we couldn't do our job so I think it's important that we continue focusing on their recruitment and retention as well and those vacancies that we have of our professional staff.

and maintaining a competitive pay and benefits with other area jurisdictions.

That's going to continue to be a challenge because whatever we do, Albemarle County is going to do, UVA is going to do, and it'll be that back and forth.

But just trying to stay close, I think, is very important and to keep us competitive.

And then last is the training.

Again, that's going to be part of our strategic plan, but we are going to be putting together training development plans for every rank, like a track, if you will.

So for a lieutenant, there should be a track.

Yes, absolutely, thank you.

So we were able to put together, before I arrived, actually Chief Durrett, who was able to put together a take-home car program that allowed for every officer to have a take-home car.

It allows us to be competitive with our surrounding jurisdictions who do something similar.

It is a recruiting tool.

But I will also say this, it's also an operational need, and if we have an incident in this city, especially because we're short right now, and I need to upstaff quickly, getting officers in here in an efficient manner is very important, so I can upstaff really quickly, they already have their crews at home, and we can address whatever issue, emergency, whatever that case may be, quickly.

so it's important and so I know that was an increase in this budget is our take home car program and that is

because I'm going to be honest with you, I plan on being fully staffed at some point.

We're going to work hard to do so.

I want to put, I won't tell, I won't look back at Captain Nix when I say this.

I'd love to put 20 people in this next academy.

I don't, we can't train 20.

I don't have that many FTOs at this point, but I think we could get 12 to 15 in this academy class.

What's your evaluation tool for your outreach program?

If they're working.

Well, I think first I need to sit down with that group.

We're talking about those key stakeholders to find out what the community wants.

Because right now it's really just about listening and building relationships.

and that needs to be organic and takes time.

Ultimately, at the end of the day, at a very high level, mothers feeling safe sending their kids to the bus stop or teachers feeling safe doing a walking bus without our police officer having to be there, which is what we're doing now.

To me when that happens, that's success.

Now I know that's at a very high level, right?

And so I think there's a lot of things that can measure success.

The survey that I'm talking about, right?

That measures relational policing practices.

So what is relational policing?

So policing can be very transactional, right?

Traffic stop.

That's a perfect example.

It's like a transaction as opposed to a relational interaction, which is much more personable, right?

And that's what we want of our officers.

We want them to be more personal.

We want them to talk to folks and build relationships.

So that Guardian Score program measures that.

and so I hope to have that in place towards the end of the year.

We got to make sure we get that right.

I have to get buy-in from my rank and file as well to do it because that can backfire.

So that's why I said towards the end of the year because just like I have to build trust within the community, I need my staff to trust me too before we roll something for it to be effective.

But it is an effective tool.

We used it in Warrington.

Fairfax City uses it.

A few colleges use it as well.

Absolutely.

So it's actually to the individual officer.

So you have a, it's a business card.

Every officer has business cards and has a QR code on the back of it.

If you pull someone over, you give them that card.

They can only use it one time and you have a dashboard and it talks about your scores and comments and all that kind of stuff.

You spoke about earlier on in the presentation about the action team as one of the community involvement initiatives.

Yes, sir.

Yeah, so it's first of all, right now we're in the process of identifying who those key stakeholders are that should be on.

I want to make sure I have a wide range of thought, diversity of thought, diversity of opinion.

And so when we meet monthly and speak about things we're doing within the police department internally, right, like opening it up, you know, this isn't a secret place.

you know and so having those conversations how are we doing recruiting almost like what we're talking about here this is our vacancy rate this is our recruitment retention these are you got any ideas you know these are the community outreach things we're doing ultimately as that relationship

and trust starts to build, you start involving them in much more things that we do at the police department.

And it's important, I think, for the community to see us as a team, whether it be when we have an increase or spike in shootings or whatever the case may be, and we are being outward facing and talking to the community about it, that we're all standing side by side talking about these difficult issues.

So that's the ultimate goal of that.

But again, it's really about those building relationships.

And then just one other question, one of the changes in the budget obviously is the reduction of five full-time equivalent police officer positions.

So I think one of the things that needs to be done, and I'm not sure if it's been done or maybe a long time ago, a staffing study.

I need somebody to come in, whether it be the Police Executive Research Forum, IACP, whoever, and come in and do a top to bottom staffing study to tell us how many officers do we need for our calls for call volume and stuff like that.

I wouldn't expect to stand in front of this governing body and tell you I need this amount of cops without something in front of me from an independent organization saying they need this amount of cops.

So that will take some time and that's kind of how I envision coming back.

Good evening.

Good evening.

So facing a lot of similar challenges that everyone else talked about when it comes to staffing stuff, and I'll get to that within the presentation.

But what I kind of wanted to do was give you an overview of public works, all the different parts to it, environmental sustainability that you've worked with extensively with developing a climate action plan.

But what I also wanted to mention was according to the outreach that we did with this plan we produced it for you in a very short period of time something like that would take you know a year or so to develop with a consultant but our staff pushed that out fairly quickly and we were

awarded by the American Public Works Association for community outreach and how we went about talking to the community and getting their input for that.

So kudos to our environmental sustainability team.

Engineering, they're responsible for traffic.

A lot of different requests we get about, hey, is the street safe?

Can we get a stop sign here?

Should we be doing traffic diets and things like that?

We also have our VDOT

Project Management Team there that's responsible for 116 federal, state, and local matching monies for that VDOT program that they are responsible for delivering.

We also do stormwater and development review with our engineers.

That also is in the engineering area as well as with our inspectors who make sure that things that are presented to us on a plan is built correctly in accordance with what we say as a state agent to review some of these different stormwater requirements.

Facilities Development, who are working very hard to ensure that we get that $72 million Buford project going, is a team that is responsible for the 58 city assets that we have.

They're responsible for any capital improvement for that, and that also includes the schools.

And talking about the facilities, again, there's facilities maintenance, who performs that maintenance on those assets as well.

and they were also awarded American Public Works Association Award for the work that they did with the, it eludes me right now,

the Smith Rec thank you thank myself just now and of course fleet management responsible for your 667 pieces of vehicles and equipment and that also includes school buses and different electrical vehicles and different other type of gas slash green vehicles next slide

So we're going to talk about hiring vacancies.

We're going to talk about service levels because of that and some of the things that's impacting it.

And then we're also going to go into, you know,

not just want to talk about the different issues that we're encountering, but looking forward as to what we want to do for the department in the future and in future budgets.

We stand at $24 million right now.

That's everything.

And that's a 10% increase from last year, so $2 million from last fiscal year.

Next slide.

Vacancies, I know that's a big issue, everybody's been talking about it.

We're standing at 143 positions, 24 vacants, but I wanted to give you a story of those vacancies.

So three are in HR process right now, three are pending offers, and two are going through the interview process currently.

Some of the major hires that we've made over the year, council was gracious to give us management analysts for budget, and that was to help with the VDOT program that we have and resizing that program and to be able to get some of the reimbursables and things to keep our financials straight and hopefully not give our budget teams a whole bunch of heartache with how it's managed.

So we're gracious for that position.

That was filled up just last month.

We've got an administrative assistant position.

There was a lot of movement that happened within the department.

Some functions came from other areas and back into us when they were moved out initially, and they didn't come with everything.

And one was this administrative assistant, again, in engineering to help them get

a lot of their processes moving forward.

And again, another position the council was gracious to give us was the senior project manager for engineering.

That is also in the VDOT program to help us manage that $116 million program.

Next slide.

So the issues.

Inflation.

We are faced with inflation material-wise and contract-wise.

One of the challenges that we face with contracting, so our different contracts get renewed throughout the year.

Some may get renewed in July or October or something like that.

So when we're building a budget, we're looking at what inflation could be then.

And so then we put that in there, and of course, depending on how it may come up, we

We may or may not be wrong.

And so at that point in time, we have to go back to the well.

We may have to ask or say, hey, we underestimated or anything like that.

So that's a challenge with our staff to try to kind of predict what the market's going to do and how that inflation may impact contracted services.

Material costs as well.

Roughly in about the 20% range of how things have increased.

Doors, asphalt, any type of material to do construction.

Stone for backfilling for roadways.

everything's increasing and so when you do a budget for this is what I'm going to need to construct these different things and of course you go out to bid and you come back with a large number it's sticker shock and we use it as information and data to be able to then inform how we do future budgets but of course

that's an issue right then that you face so then that also has a service level impact to where can we do these things given that we're going to encounter cost increases so that's that's one other thing salaries like everybody's been mentioning we're competing with our our sister municipalities

and we're competing with the private sector.

So one thing that we encountered with the federal audit was just changed in last year, February, where CDL drivers had to get formally trained to get their CDL drivers.

At one point in time, you go to work, you get the on-job training by someone in your organization, you go take the test, you're good to go.

Now you have to have a formal class that you have to do, and so we're sending people to PVCC to get that formal training, that formal class.

Well, the people who we are competing with knows that, and they go to the PVCC class, and so where we're offering something sub-50 grand, these private entities are coming in and say, you graduate from this program, we'll give you 75 grand.

And I'm sure I've heard it on the radio when I'm listening to the radio driving home, you've heard about how Walmart's offering 75 to 80 grand, or how Averitt's offering

for the long haul drivers.

Hey, you can go home every night and we'll pay you this.

You're just driving regionally and we'll give you 80 grand and then after a certain time, you'll get 100K.

So we're competing with that and it's very tough.

but I'm sorry going into labor shortage of course when we put out ads and again project managers or with drivers or any type of other type of position

Depending on where we get in the process, someone may get another offer from somewhere else and they're going.

It's a tight competition out there just for personnel.

So what have we done to try to address some of these different challenges?

So what we've done as far as hiring, we're working with HR to look at, okay, so we may be competing with a person at this level, but what if we hire someone, we create a program where we hire someone at this level, and then we can train them up and once they meet a certain criteria, then they'll be this and we'll pay them as that.

So we're not competing with everybody else for this, but we're competing for people here and then we train them to get to that.

That's one thing that we're working with HR to try to curb some of that impact.

CDL drivers, we're going to look into how do we do that in-house, how to have a trainer in-house, so then that way we can formally train in-house and not have to send them to the different schools to where they're exposed to the private recruiters.

To temptation.

To temptation.

It's not like they still can't hear the radio station ads and everything, but it's a way for us to be able to try to minimize the impact from what we're experiencing with the CDL drivers and different offers that they're being given.

We're also doing a lot of going out into the communities, thankfully, working with the recruiter who came to our area, came to our department,

and we're utilizing a recruiter to go out to some of the schools to look at to say hey we have these positions are you interested we're even going to try to my management analyst for HR

try to help those students like how you help them to fill out applications for scholarships, how you help them to go and fill out your information, go take your SATs, hey come sit down, let me help you fill out a NeoGov application and walk you through that so we can get you into the system and you see a job,

Apply.

That's all you have to do.

You hit the button, apply.

So we're thinking about how we can handhold through the process just to try to optimize, optimize, optimize.

That's a word that I've been kind of preaching to my staff recently, and that's going to go into this next thing.

Next slide.

Looking into the future.

So optimization, optimization, optimization.

We completed just this past year a landfill diversion study and we want to look at how we can optimize recycling for our internal municipal facilities.

Space Utilization.

So we have people who are out there who are trying to do great things like how we're trying to do with put people into positions.

So we need to have a seat for them to sit at when they come to the city.

And so we need to look at our spaces and how we can optimize those spaces, just what we did within the public works building for people we had coming in, i.e.

the

Management Analyst for Budget that I just showed you early in the slide.

We did some space reconfiguration within our area to be able to put three more seats in there.

And so we'd like to do that for the rest of the city.

To be able to look at spaces, if someone's got a really long office, how can we

maybe put some kiosk in there to be able to put butts in seats and all that also has to be working in conjunction with other functions within the city because if you're here for a certain period of time i.e.

if you're teleworking do you need a full desk all the time and so then that that's also an additional data point that we can give to city leadership on how they determine where they put people and that's where we kind of want to do that's where we kind of want to go with space utilization

accreditation.

So like I said, pieces have been moved out of the department and thing and holes have been created.

a lot of knowledge lies within people and in their brains and we want to put those things into SOPs and so what accreditation does is it helps you according to best management practices based off an American Public Works Association how do you go about doing this process and you put that in SOP so if Stacy Smalls isn't here anymore Joe Smith who comes in after me or Jill Smith who comes in after me

can come and sit down and have an SOP about the different processes, the different things that's going on in public works and can hit the ground running a lot faster.

And it's great to also have those things because we do it here one way and we do it there another way.

For example, project management in facilities development and project management in engineering.

So we're trying to build in, at least at a base level,

core things you need to have to be a project manager.

And then like how we want to train up as you go up further in facilities development and as you go up further in engineering, you get that further instruction to be a engineering project manager or a facilities development project manager.

But as a base coming in, you get a certain level on how public works does project management.

City lease properties.

So as we're moving more into that and the different services and inspections that we're providing for these properties, we need to have resources associated with that.

How does someone submit us a work order?

When are we going to be timely in reporting to those work orders?

Mr. Smalls, I have a question for you.

It's a blend of the two.

Our folks use a combination of SAP work, something one, two, three, can't remember.

Survey, thank you.

Survey one, two, three, and paper.

So yeah, so one thing that we're looking at is how we can, again, asset management, which is the next bullet, thank you for bringing that up, counselor.

We wanna look at how we can do asset management, all of our assets, what's the condition of it, and then being able to then say, we can wait on this,

or we need to do this now.

And so with the precious resources that we get, we can put those resources to where it needs to go at the time it needs to go there.

Yes, sir.

And then finally, climate change, thank you so very much for your emphasis, Council, on climate action.

It didn't stop once we got it implemented into the comprehensive plan.

We've developed a work plan that we're communicating through city leadership.

that we're going to try to accomplish over the year.

We're going to assign champions to who are going to be people who are going to be responsible for these things so that at some interval, we can come back to you and say, this is what we have accomplished.

These are the challenges.

These are things else we need to do.

because we don't think that the climate action should just stop once it was approved in the comprehensive plan.

It should continue going forward.

And so there will be some sort of input in our budget considerations going forward.

Questions, counsel?

I liked everything I heard.

Yeah, that sounds great.

I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor.

So the different challenges that we had, one thing the staff was saying was, oh well, we're going to have a bunch of snow this year because we had a whole bunch of acorns fall down.

Usually when we have a bunch of acorns that fall down, we're having a large snow, and so knock on wood, we didn't have that.

But that's a consideration with our drivers.

We were blessed that we didn't have a response as we did the year before.

It's still March.

I do have one question.

One of the common complaints that I have gotten from a whole lot of different sources is about delays in getting plans of projects approved by the engineering department.

Is that an issue that requires more people?

That third one is a catch-all.

It has to do, it has staff implications, it has training implications, and it also has what we're doing now, what we're doing internally, working with the Neighborhood and Development Services, and how we fine-tune that process.

Again, optimization.

How do we go through and ensure that once it gets in, there's tracking of how it gets in, how we meet with, when do we meet with the engineers and discuss how many times we go through a review process.

It's a large animal and a big elephant to eat.

And we're going through the process of correcting it.

So if I had to say it's not one small silver bullet, there are a couple different bullets.

And technology is a big part of it.

My purpose in asking the question in the first instance is just to find out if there is anything that we as council need to do, such as last year when we said, have another project manager, maybe move some of these things along.

If there is not something that we need to do in terms of approving additional folks, then the next thing for us to do is to look to the city manager and the deputy city manager

and whoever all else is in the chain of command to say, what are you all going to do to fix this problem?

Because we've got projects that may not get built because they've had to wait so darn long for approval processes.

So what I will go back is, when I go back tomorrow, I'll have conversations with the engineering department so we can look at, and one of the things that we have discussed is

that same type of growth, that concept with project management.

How do we do a growth process with our engineers?

How do we lay down and put into writing SOPs with

do an accreditation.

How do we do that with our engineers so that everybody knows and everybody does it the same way?

When we're looking at reviews, everyone's reviewing it the same way.

A consideration given for this project is given the same type of consideration when given that way.

It's all looked at, reviewed the same way.

And so that when an engineer or developer submits a project to the city, they understand

Every time what we're going to be looking at in the considerations of how we're going to evaluate it, it's going to be in a standard type of way.

I will go back and have those conversations.

We are working on that.

Again, like I said earlier, working with NDS to better optimize that process.

We are doing that, but from what we can do in engineering.

Yeah and I completely agree with everything that's being said I will say that you didn't have a building official for a long time right?

Thank you very much for your focus on that.

I know I fussed at him a couple of times, but I didn't do it in public.

So he's working very tirelessly with Stacey and with Jim to improve the systems of the technology.

Good.

One thing that Mr. Sanders also put into place was having his two department heads to meet with the developers and the engineers when there's an impasse.

And we've been able to move projects through that process.

So that's been very helpful.

That's something that Mr. Rogers and Mr. Sanders put into place.

Thank you.

That's the Richmond trainer.

Mr. Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of council, I want to work you through a couple of things today about CAT.

So I've had an opportunity to come before you a couple of times.

When I first got here, I had my opportunity to kind of look at how we reinvent CAT.

So that was an optimization plan, and I presented that to you all back in May of 2001.

I mean of 21 and then I did an update to you guys back in January, January 19th to be exact of 22 that talked about the state of transit and that opportunity and so this is a culmination of that and a continuation in the FY24 proposed budget.

Next slide please.

So transit has two divisions.

There's a transit division and there's a pupil.

We're gonna first talk about transit.

The proposed budget,

is $11,995,750,000.

$775, which also includes $2,002,000 as a pass-through to Jaunt.

We have 94 positions, of which today 24 are vacant.

14 of those positions are operators.

Four of those positions are mechanics, one hostler or a cleaner, and then three administrative staff.

At this point in time we are concentrating on the operators but we are taking a back seat and we'll talk a little bit about that to our pupil so transit is kind of sacrificing our recruitment efforts to make sure that we recruit school bus drivers first.

Next slide.

So I wanted to give you a little bit of an opportunity to see because transit is a little bit different than other departments in the sense that we do get a ton of our money from state and federal.

So just giving you kind of a, I don't know why those things slid, but kind of an opportunity to see that there's two specific areas that we get.

We're using some additional CARES or ARC money right now and then there's a pass through to Jaunt.

So there's state assistance, $2.7 million.

We are continuing a state grant, zero fare, it's called the TRIPS grant.

The first year was half a million dollars.

It goes to $376,000.

You'll see that in the sheet that I provided to you.

It scales down.

The fourth year, the city is responsible, the city and the county are responsible.

for maintaining the zero fare for one additional year.

So in the fourth year, which will be in 27, I believe, that we are on the hook for paying for about a half a million dollars make up for what we would get from our fare box.

We get money from Albemarle County, a small amount as a supplement from UVA.

advertising, and then a general fund transfer about $2.8 million.

Next slide.

So how does it come out to our expenses?

The majority of our expenses are in our operations side.

That's where the drivers are.

Our supervision, customer service area, that's $6.7 million.

The administrative side, which is based on my department, it hosts all of the staff

The senior staff, that's $1.6 million and some money for some professional services, contracts, maintenance, $3 million, marketing, a couple hundred thousand, safety, a couple hundred thousand, and then an additional pass through to John, of course.

Next slide.

so I don't think I'd like to think about priorities in the sense that challenges are our priorities so I've kind of did a little bit different than my colleagues in that we do have all of us have challenges but these we've made our challenges our priorities for FY24 so we're going to focus on restoring pre-pandemic service levels we're not there today we're in pre-pandemic level we would have been running 25 buses at peak

We're running 18 today.

We want to continue our efforts to restore that service.

We want to improve service on Route 6.

We'll provide service to Crescent Hall and South 1st Street.

Today it operates on a 60-minute schedule.

We want to change that to a 30-minute model.

We want to hire more operators and mechanics.

Again, 14 vacancies for drivers, four vacancies for mechanics, so that has to be a priority for us.

The challenge is, of course, like everybody else in the region, everybody's hiring for mechanics, everybody's hiring for operators.

We've had some great efforts and we've increased our

pay our starting pay to $21 we've seen some movement especially on the school side but we need to continue those efforts and be vigilant in making our efforts to take care of transit side we will also be introducing a new service in this region to Albemarle County the first micro transit project two areas that they've identified

We'll be going through a formal procurement process in the next couple of weeks.

That will be challenging because the goal for us is to try to get it up and running hopefully in the late fall of this calendar year.

Improved reliability and frequency, better vehicles is a major issue for us.

On a daily basis, we've got 36 vehicles in our total fleet.

we struggle sometimes to get 18 to just maintain our scaled down service we have 10 of our fleet that are hybrids which are battery electric and and diesel they've been our most unreliable vehicles that we have in our fleet so when we buy new vehicles we need to be very careful about what we buy because we have to keep those

at least 12 years and run them a half a million miles so it's not that we can just change them out so we need to be very detailed in what we buy and then we need the right size when we coming out of post pandemic our service levels we've had a conversation about getting to at least a 30-minute model but you'll ultimately get into a 15-minute model

and there's a lot of efforts that we need to do improving the infrastructure and of course hiring more people.

Next slide please.

So we're gonna go into what Pupil.

So Pupil is almost $4 million, 3.9.

There's 28 positions.

They reduced the budget for the coming FYI fiscal year.

They took away 10 positions, 10 driver positions.

So we will fill positions.

So just one clarification, they, in that sentence, the school board requested that.

We didn't make that cut.

Was it related to the

It's a combination of things.

They study what they believe is the historical trend and made an assessment on what we've been able to accomplish and suggested that because we have not been able to get to full staff, we've been able to make it work with less.

So the desire was to do that this time this year with a reduced number and they have offered to consider a budget amendment should anything prove to not be workable.

I'll express so that he won't have to we are concerned because we think that the reduction could actually create a timing issue in that it takes a lead time to hire a driver so if we find ourselves behind an eight ball with having filled all the spots that we have and a need is still there

we won't simply be able to take someone off the street and put them behind the wheel.

So our goal would be to continue to work with the leadership at the school system to be able to discuss that and I intend to do that with Dr. Gurley directly and keep that conversation open.

No, I appreciate the acknowledgement.

One of the things that we want to do over on the pupil side, we have average travel time

for our route to about 40 minutes.

I believe that is too long.

We're basically five square miles.

We should be able to get that number down to around 30 minutes, having our students on the buses, which will help immensely with overcrowding issues, some behavioral issues sometimes when you get a little rowdy.

Keeping them on the bus too long is, there are other problems that can arise from having that.

And then we're going to explore the feasibility of adding EV school buses to their model.

I firmly believe the EV model for schools is one that is very doable.

it tends to allow itself for charging in the middle of the day which is what you need so you charge overnight do your assignments in the middle of the day I mean in the morning charge in the middle of the day go back in the afternoon the model works pretty really well some concerns on the transit side because of the amount of time that you have to operate but you know looking at the school side is we may have a home run there

Next slide.

And that's pretty much it.

Yes, ma'am.

Are the issues because the buses were not very well built or is the issue because of the small area that we have?

You know, like I can buy a car from somewhere and it's going to run better in other places than here because of stop and go or not enough highway traffic or whatever, whatever.

So that's a great question.

The answer as I see it is we don't want to be bleeding edge, but we want to be leading edge.

What I mean by that is

The product of the hybrid commercial buses was not fully vetted and well designed because it has a truck engine and batteries.

So what we have experienced with the EV, the hybrids, we've had to replace every 10 of them we have, we've replaced all 10 with a set of batteries at a popular $100,000 per set of batteries, per set of batteries.

We've replaced all of them have replaced engines at $35,000 to $40,000.

and now we're approaching replacing another set of batteries just to get rid of them because we have to have the amount of mileage and years to replace them, that's FTA's rules.

So we are potentially, we are petitioning FTA to see if we can, they're so close to being able to be replaced, if we can forego the $500,000.

but that's a concern for us because we want to be reliable and if we being reliable means we need to be able to depend on the equipment that we put on the street and if we're buying things that are new technology that hasn't been tested and we don't allow ourselves an opportunity to see bigger properties how they're incorporating the new technology because what they're doing when they introduce new technology

is they're using it as a part of their spare ratio.

Just two questions.

The first, there's that 2.2 million for jaunt pass-through.

That was not in previous budgets.

This is the first time I've seen the budget.

So is this a recognition of

making sure that everybody's aware that that money has been passing through.

It happens every year.

Thank you.

And the second question, in previous years on the revenue side there had been about 250,000 coming from like UVA miscellaneous I believe was the line item and this is the first year that revenue from UVA is going away.

We're running fare free and that $250,000 or so was for their payment to us to allow their students and their faculty to use the system and because we're running fare free everybody is

So if we hire more people, is that going to cut down on your time from 40 minutes to 30 minutes?

So the more drivers I have, the better planning we can do, the better route designing we can do, we can actually reduce the amount of time that we have a student or a person, a citizen on a bus.

So for us to go from like a 60 minute model to a 30 minute model, most people would just think it's just adding one more bus, but it may not be that because of the design, I may actually have to add two buses to make sure there's ample recovery at the end of the line to keep everything on track.

Don't worry, I don't have my CBO.

I'm a good driver, but don't worry.

On the electric buses, we talked about this.

We are at the almost finishing the kind of the research portion of our feasibility study.

We'll be coming back to Council to report we started that just about ten months ago.

And we're at a point now where we should be able to let you know that we looked at the model

based on trying to do a full battery electric model it's probably going to be very hard for us to fully implement a battery electric model but there is some routes that we have that we want the new model we want to go to where we would be able to put in a battery electric vehicle the concern there though is

because we run 19 hours, we discount when they say they can run 200 miles in a total charge, we discount that 40% because there's topography and issues stopping and starting, it has a degradation on the battery, we don't get the full charge.

So therefore, each route would take at least two battery electric vehicles to complete.

which means we would have to buy more vehicles which are more expensive.

A normal diesel bus costs us about half a million dollars.

I heard a lot of people say that, but I doubt that.

I've heard that my whole life in transit, that there are CNG vehicles.

They said they were $30,000 when they came out, higher than diesel.

That delta is still there.

And CNG technology has been around 20 plus years.

Well, the discussion that I've seen suggested that sometime in 2022, the cost curves crossed for cars to where the total cost of ownership for an electric vehicle being bought now is less than the total cost of ownership of a gas vehicle being bought now.

and the assumption was that as the technology improved that same crossing of the cost curves would occur in the buses and trucks version of things so maybe not this year maybe next year those cost curves could could cross so that you've got not only the cost of purchasing but also the cost of maintenance fewer moving parts etc

I hope you're right, but I just know that we have seen battery electric vehicle costs that were at $800,000 or now at a million dollars in one year.

Any other questions?

Thank you, Mr. Williams.

Mr. Mayor, Council, that concludes our presentations of our department here tonight.

I hope that this has been illuminating for you in terms of looking in detail at some of the department budgets.

Let me say, I have really appreciated this because this is the first time, this is now my fourth budget cycle that I've been through.

It's the first time I've actually had somebody from Public Works come talk to us or somebody from Parks and Rec come talk to us about the budget.

We periodically get the fuss at Mr. Williams about things.

I can't say that's a unique endeavor.

But this has been a lot more information than we've ever received, and I just really appreciate that.

I will also say, because I can anticipate already what the folks on Twitter and Facebook are going to be saying, a lot of the complaints deal with the size of the police budget, and they want to know why we haven't been able to slash the police budget to 60 percent or by 60 percent or whatever.

The point that I've tried to make to people is that it doesn't make a lot of sense to spend your time looking at line items to say, well, okay, the salaries are X number of dollars.

It should only be half of that.

What you really got to look at is what are the services that you decide you don't want to have?

and nobody has come to council that I know of to say in any responsible way, here are the policing services we don't want to have.

We want to have them all, but we just don't want to spend any money on them.

And so I guess the argument that I would make in all of these cases is if there is something that people say they want us to cut,

I'd like to have specific suggestions from people as to what programs they want to cut, not what line items they think ought to be reduced.

So just one point on that budget, though, the way that we budget the COLAs every year, we budget as a lump sum, and then in July, or for the next year's budget, that catches up.

The police department's budget only went net increase was $288, which does not cover the cost of the COLA that council provided last July.

So in theory, their budget went down.

This was very helpful.

Oh, we have public comment.

Okay, public comment.

I did not remember seeing that on the agenda, but that makes sense.

What is the plan for public comment?

You're right, it is on there.

I apologize, folks.

Okay.

Well, if there's...

Oh, okay.

Come forward.

Come to the microphone.

Tell us who you are and tell us what you have to say.

Thank you.

I won't take three minutes.

I'll be really fast.

So my name is Sandra Avalas-Po.

I'm with Charlottesville United for Public Education.

So good evening to our

Mayor Snook, all of the city council members and managers that are present.

I wanted to just make a comment based off of what we're hearing from the community.

So there's a number of things that we've been hearing.

Reconfiguration is one of the huge things that we definitely want to make sure that we're pushing forward.

and having a budget for.

Another thing that we're hearing a lot is transportation.

So the updates that we heard today for making sure that we're prioritizing our school bus drivers and putting them first, that is great news for us to hear.

But the main thing that I did want to come here and say is that I just wanted to make a comment.

in terms of safety because that is the number one thing right now within our community and we've been seeing within our community a lot of people hurting so and we're seeing it being reflected in our students and in our schools and so you know we all hear the saying that

Hurt People Hurt People, and so making sure that we're putting our efforts and our time towards healing our children is going to be one of the most important things because they are our future.

And so if we want to see violence cut down, we need to make sure that we're there for our children in these really, really essential and like crucial points in their lives.

And so, yeah, our condolences go out to all of the families, to our community, and we're hoping to see a lot of shifts within our communities towards positive changes and healing And if Charlottesville United can offer any support towards that, I would love to be able to coordinate or help towards that

But that's it.

Thank you guys so much for all of your efforts.

This was actually a wonderful work session.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

I suppose I should ask, is there any other member of the public?

I see a whole lot of city employees here, but anybody online yet?

Want to talk to us?

All right, well, going once, going twice, adjourned.

Thank you.