City Council Meeting   2/20/2024

Good afternoon.

I'm going to call the February 20, 2024, Charlottesville City Council meeting to order.

Ms.

Councillor Oschrin.

Here.

Here.

Okay, we can cast our votes.

This meeting would be divided into three sections.

The first section is a work session and we will discuss presentations and that do not require a council vote followed by a closed meeting and then city council business meeting at 6.30.

We have three presentations today and I thought we maybe spent about 20 minutes on each.

So the first presentation is from the Seville Scholarship.

Good afternoon.

Thank you for having us.

I'm Ella Joy.

So the Charlottesville Scholarship Program has been around for about 20 years.

We provide financial support and mentoring to high school seniors and adults in our community who are pursuing post-secondary education, either at the college level or through vocational training of professional certification programs.

We run a lean and mean program.

We are here to support our students.

And the CSP actually occupies a unique place in our local scholarship landscape as we offer annually renewable awards that are available to both high school seniors and adults

and we provide, and this is one of the main things that we do, we provide ongoing one-to-one support to every scholar through our volunteer navigation program.

We know that people can improve their lives and economic prospects by following more than one path after high school.

An individual with more fulfilling personal lives and more stable financial situations make their families and communities stronger as a result.

According to research from Georgetown University Center on Education and Workforce,

Even some level of post-secondary education short of a four-year college degree can add nearly a quarter of a million dollars to a high school graduate's learning ability.

Well, what you're looking at is some amazing numbers.

And these numbers cannot have happened without the help of the city council.

Because back in 2001, you seeded this program with $250,000.

And with your support and shared belief in CSP and what we bring to the community, back then,

These are the things we are doing right now.

So we've taken that $250,000 and grown it to $1.1 million in our endowment.

and not only grew it to 1.1 million, but during that same time, 961,000 of the dollars were given out in scholarships to over 188 kids, of which 89 have graduated or received some degree.

Can I ask a quick question about that slide?

Sorry, it said 188 scholarships have been given out.

Was that 188 people or 188 awards?

188 local students.

So if you look right here in the middle of this slide, you see a lot of faces.

These are all local kids.

And you should see one thing in common with all those faces.

and that is a big smile.

And the reason why they are smiling is one, as you can see all these colleges they've gone to, you know, you see some really nice colleges of University of Virginia, that other Virginia college.

You see George Mason, you see a lot of really good colleges up there.

And another thing is, a lot of these kids, they are first generation college students.

So they're the first in their family.

to ever go to college.

And here's the kicker to this, is that a lot of these kids would not have gone to college had not the city council help us start this program in 2001.

They wouldn't even gone to college.

In fact,

What's interesting is that I'm one of these kids.

In the area where I grew up, we had a similar program, and that helped me go to college.

And this cause is generational change.

And because I was able to go to college and get out of the project, I was able to have kids with the college and not be in the project.

So in 2021,

We actually increase the amount of the awards by a thousand dollars a year and we've continued that higher level of support for all of our students.

The financial support is crucial to decreasing our student debt, but even more

of the New York Times

which is something that's still part of my generation.

It's probably a little bit old fashioned because I think that I can go to Facebook and message somebody or something but it's text, phone call and through other means Instagram I'm finding out is a way to get in touch but it's just being able to have that touch and to connect

with our students and to give them that encouragement because I also know that with some of them, that is the only contact that they get throughout the year.

In fact, I have one young lady that that I've been working with and she graduated and I'm continuing

to have this relationship with her.

In fact, I'm working with her to help her to find even higher employment.

So it doesn't just end when they finish college.

You create these lifetime relationships.

And as you can see, one of our standing up there, one of our important navigators who was a part of us for years.

One of the things we also do is in term of eligibility, we are scrupulous.

We use FASFA, VASFA, and income tax returns so that we check their income levels.

And we also check the residency.

All of the students that are considered are from the city of Charlottesville with the exception of the Preston Corner.

And that one also, that one includes Albemarle County high school seniors.

and also an important part of this is that we offer scholarships to city employees.

So as Ella said, we are expanding.

We're expanding it to named scholarships.

And the Preston Corner Scholarship is one of our first named scholarships.

It began back in 2015 and established by the corner family for Preston Corner.

And it has its own endowment, so it's not mixed with the other endowment.

And we provided to one student every four years

We've had two students who've gone through this program so far.

One has graduated from the University of Lynchburg, and one from the University of Virginia.

So to give you an idea of how this program all works, it starts in March, except for this year, because they have issues with fast.

But it starts in March the 1st.

We generally receive 30 to 40 applicants.

and then those applicants are reviewed by our committee and the list is given to the board for approval and then when they evaluate that list, those students, they look for six things.

They look for financial need, they look for academic success, they look for employment success, they look for clear set goals, demonstrated written language skills,

and a persistence against adverse situations.

So they are very persistent when they face challenges.

So we take those six things and we take those 40 applicants and we narrow it down to 11 applicants.

And nine of those applicants are high school students.

from Charlottesville, one student is a high school graduate from the alternative school, and we say one for an adult who's going to a vocational school or post-secondary school.

and I'd like to add to that, I'm also on the scholarship committee and this is a difficult chore because I can tell you that once we get the applicants and when I'm reviewing them, it's hard not to want to pick every one of them.

We know that we don't have the money but to try to pick the top tier when

Just, but in every case there is a need.

And so we just, we don't have, of course, we don't have the money to give everybody, but we would just love to be able to give every one of these young applicants a chance.

So our community support has been phenomenal.

Not only individual, but corporate and foundation donations have supported the growth of our endowment.

And that's what's allowed us to both increase the number in the amount of the annual scholarship awards.

Community partners are absolutely incredible, incredibly supportive of our program.

and we publicize this through nonprofits in our community who work directly with families and we also coordinate with CHS, the AVID program and the counseling office.

So the CSP team is committed to making scholarships available

not only to outstanding CHS seniors, but to eligible students attending the Alternative City High School programs.

And again, to adults in the community who need assistance in post-secondary education.

And again, in 2023, as Charlie mentioned, for the first time, we had students from Lugo McGinnis Academy applied for a scholarship

And we noticed that those applicants were on paper and were not able to compete successfully with the CHS applicants, which is the reason that we are actually looking at those applications a little bit differently.

and so that is actually what's led us to look at non-traditional high school applicants.

So for our 2024 round of applicants, we have added new essay prompts that allow all the applicants and especially those for non-traditional high school applicants to share more of their story with us and to help us to understand

how post-secondary education would help them achieve their educational goals.

We have committed to setting aside one of our typical 10 annual awards specifically for a non-traditional high school athlete.

So here's our ask.

We've had a great partnership to help these high school kids go to college.

We've helped 188 kids that were first generation that would not have had support and may not have gone to college.

and what we're trying to do is expand into also helping adults.

We know that the city is getting involved with KTEC and what we would like to be able to do is implement the same thing we've done for these kids for adults where we can have an offering, whether they can have scholarship to get through vocational training or recertifications or things like that.

So our ask would be

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

I'll go to my colleagues, but before you leave, I just wanted to make a couple of comments.

One is that I'm so glad that you all now include the Lugo McGinnis.

That's a great idea.

I'm glad that you're doing that.

And the navigator part, it's really, really, I think what makes us a little bit different.

I love it.

I know.

I feel like I'm still a part of it.

I haven't been on it in a couple of years.

I know Lloyd served on it as well.

But it makes it real different.

But I am still part of it because it's probably two or three days that don't go by that I don't reach out or they reach out to me.

A couple of dozen navigators, students that I've had in the past that reach out to me for guidance.

And I'd just like to share these quick stories that a few years ago, one of my students came home for break.

and we met at a local restaurant to go over the fast reform.

I had a lot of questions because, remember, they can't go to their parents and say, how do you do this?

And so we met and so I was going over the program within the young lady left and then afterwards a waitress came over and said, that was really nice what you did.

I wish I would have had that when I was in school.

So just an example of that and as far as

The scholarships that we offer for city employees will be good.

Maybe Sam, if we can let Marion Hardy know, I don't know if it's some type of employee newsletter or something that is an opportunity to apply if they want to get some additional education or something like that.

I just want to say I was on the board for four years and being on the board and being in particular on the scholarship committee, reviewing the scholarship applications, I was just astounded.

I was astounded at the people who are coming up, who they've come through in many cases, and we get a lot of them are refugees, a lot of them are folks who have come from just very, very difficult circumstances.

thousands of miles literally in all kinds of difficulties.

I may have missed it.

Yes, so we are trying to replicate what we've done with students with adults.

Okay.

Well, yeah, well, since you asked.

Let's see how big.

No.

Well, we started the one for the kids at 250K.

I would say that we probably will want to start the adults at maybe 150 because their cost is less than the kids.

So for 150, we can replicate what we did for the kids.

Yeah, this is a program where we will try to raise that money to start that endowment, but we wanted to start here today.

Got it.

All right.

Thank you, sir.

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

And good afternoon, Council Members.

Thank you so much.

We appreciate that.

We just want to start off by saying thank you so much for giving us the chance to present for you and engaging with our presentation.

We are a group of students from the University of Virginia, so before we get into the content, we'll just take a second to introduce ourselves.

My name is Talib.

Hi, I'm Abba Hi, I'm Laura I'm Grace Hi, I'm Justin Hi, I'm Titus Hi, I'm Merida So to get into it, in 2022, 226 people in the Charlottesville area experienced some form of homelessness This is the highest number Charlottesville has seen since 2010

Yet it's not just the unhoused folk who are experiencing these difficulties.

Many residents are facing food insecurity and since the pandemic, the number of people requiring access to free food from soup kitchens and pantries has risen sharply.

Further, in 2023, there were 223.4 property and violent crimes in Charlottesville per 100,000 people.

That puts us in the higher 79% of the U.S.

Poverty and Symptoms are a serious point of concern for the residents here.

In October of 2023, City Manager Sam Sanders promised that the city would prioritize addressing homelessness and announce a plan for doing so.

We believe that the community development block grant could help us pursue the city's goals in a manner that is community-driven and supportive.

CDBGs offer a vast pool of federal funding that is not taken directly from the pockets of local taxpayers, but can be used to assist with the litany of challenges unique to Charlottesville.

Optimal use of CDBG funds are not only promised for greater housing dignity, it is preventative measures for all of the issues that we've mentioned.

Joy Johnson of FAR has brought to our attention her concerns with the community development block grant and the need to reallocate these funds.

We've spoken to other people like Todd Namier from HRC and Mr. John Sayles from CRHA who have also added meaningful insights to our work.

For our agenda for today, we will first explain what community development block grants are, who they're for, and what they're supposed to be used for.

Then we'll explore possible complications or limitations within the Charlottesville CDBG program, including budget allocation, task force composition, and the demarcation of priority neighborhoods.

All right, so what are these CDBGs we keep talking about?

So they aim to provide communities with funding to address a wide range of critical and unmet community development programs with needs and strategic targeted investments.

And so these funds are used to develop within low and moderate income residents from access to decent housing to suitable living environment and expanded economic opportunities.

The CDBG program emphasizes residents' participation in decision making and to empower individuals to address their specific needs.

So, as Joy often says, CDBG money is poor people's money, which is why at least 70% of the CDBG funds should be used to benefit low and moderate income communities.

and to qualify for funds, the project must benefit all residents where at least 51% of them earn at least a low or moderate income.

However, not enough attention has been paid to individuals who experience very low or extremely low income.

All money should target the very low and extremely low income brackets.

The city is only required to address the needs of low income individuals, thus bypassing the responsibility to very low and extremely low income individuals.

Yet according to the city's 2018 housing needs assessment, the greatest need was found in these low and extremely low income neighborhoods.

Therefore, a lack of specificity has resulted in those most in need not receiving the funding that they require.

Our first concern surrounds the use of CDBG funds and through dialogue with Joy Johnson and other task force members, we aim to highlight two main questions.

The first being what is the general breakdown of the budget and are those budget lines upheld?

And the second is how are grant applications prioritized and could certain projects be funded with the capital budget instead of CDBG dollars?

The 2023-2024 allocation for community development block grants was around $410,000.

The breakdown we have found in CDBG and CD documents

states that 15% of that budget goes towards public services, 20% goes towards administration and planning, and the remaining 65% is split evenly among the categories of housing, public facilities slash improvements, and economic development.

The language in the slide gives insight into how those areas are defined.

However, there's a lot of overlap among them.

A project classified as public services can sometimes count as economic development as well, hence the blurred boundaries.

What we are most concerned with, however, is that last column you see on the slide, the 20% that is allocated to administration and planning.

This is a missed opportunity for money that could go towards initiatives that are focused on maximizing community involvement in the CDBG process, like hiring community-informed grant writers, child care services for task force members, and investment in better training for the task force.

So this pie chart just gives a visual as to what the last slide was mentioning.

And again, what we aim to highlight is that little segment in orange, 20% going towards administration and planning.

It's a pretty sizable amount, as you can see on the chart.

It rivals the allocation set towards the buckets of housing, public facility slash improvement, and economic development.

So now that we've seen how the budget is supposed to break down as the pie chart showed on the previous slide, we're going to turn to analyzing how grant applications are currently prioritized in comparison to those budget lines.

Many grant applications aim to do the same thing, but through different organizations.

This often leads to a lot of CDBG money going into one area and not evenly dispersed across issues.

This flawed reviewing process is a result of the lack of training among the task force.

We heard from several people involved in past task forces that the lack of training prevents their effective review of applications.

One member mentioned that there was never an outlined priority list and the reviewing process was inconsistent, citing the need for a more, quote, holistic approach.

So there must be more in-depth training process for task force members to ensure all members are able to effectively and confidently participate in the process of reviewing grant applications.

Now we'll turn to some examples of questionable use of CDBG funding in Charlottesville that may be a result from the lack of training amongst task force members.

So these examples that are shown on the slide are examples of ways that CDBG funds have been used to fund things that could have otherwise been funded by the capital budget or things that failed to achieve the goal of benefiting low to moderate income level residents.

The city allocated a sum of money to fire safety and spent $74,000 on smoke detectors, and an additional $300,000 was proposed for a fire prevention tractor trailer, which was a simulator.

and we just wonder could this money have been used for something else or could other funds have been used for these purposes?

Similarly, close to $245,000 were spent on the Ridge Street sidewalk project back in 2021.

And we think it must be analyzed whether or not this was one of the most pressing issues at the time and whether it deserved over half of the CDBG budget.

So after describing what activities CVBG can legally be used for, we see that it's fairly broad.

And what we're questioning is how closely these ways of spending money align with what low-income residents need or what they perceive to be a priority.

So in collaboration with Joy, FAR, and the CRAHA, we got a sense of what activities might be more important for the city to use the funds for.

And this is just a visual representation of that.

at the Center we have the objective of CBBG which is that low income residents should be able to remain in dignified housing and then surrounding it we have activities that we think align very closely with those goals so in the bright yellow bubbles we see home repairs for instance are an important projects that we think

the city should probably prioritize.

The ones in gray are on the outside and they are things that CDBG can technically be used for but we want to point out that these are things that can be funded from the general municipal budget.

Sidewalks, parks and public works are all really important to living in a nice neighborhood but they can be funded from other sources such as capital funding.

The CDBG program also designates five target neighborhoods for project focus.

So the map that City Government has assembled is outdated.

It doesn't reflect the current income distribution in Charlottesville, so we created our own with the most recent census data that was available, but that's from 2019, so our map is also outdated.

We bring this up because if the City Council operates with the same data, they're going to fall into the same pitfalls that we did.

So if they don't either

Collect more accurate, specific and recent data or loosen the boundaries and communicate with the task force about where the funding is most needed.

They're going to reach the same conclusions, same flawed conclusions that our map does here.

On this map we have the median household income in Charlottesville of each block group.

Using smaller geographical units, which are block groups, as compared to neighborhoods, allows us to get more specific information within each neighborhood.

The color on the maps can correspond to an income bracket, the darker the color, the lower the average income is for that block group.

And you can see that the neighborhoods in Charlottesville are all named on the map.

The ones with the red outlines are those currently distinguished or designated by City Council as CDBG target neighborhoods.

Looking at the map, we can see that there are some low-income areas that are uncovered with the target neighborhood designation.

For instance, parts of Grady Avenue are pretty low income, but they're part of the Vennable neighborhood.

So it means that they are not eligible for CDBG funding.

I should also note that the median income statistic isn't perfect, especially when looking at a smaller geographic unit like this.

The census doesn't provide a value if there are not enough people to calculate the income.

So again, we really articulate that there's a need for either more accurate income

Data, or less rigid boundaries to what these neighborhoods are.

If we jump ahead here, we can see that the next slide is a map, same map as before, but zoomed in on the current target neighborhoods.

If we look at Belmont in particular, we can see that there's a lot of variation within that neighborhood.

As I'm sure you're all aware, a lot of this is because recent gentrification, the northern part of Belmont is now a very high income area.

The previous maps have given us an overview of what Charlottesville looks like right now in terms of income, offering insights for reevaluating how we define target neighborhoods going forward.

This map shows the change in median household income from 2014 to 2019, giving us a glimpse into how neighborhoods have evolved and may continue to do so in the future.

A five-year time frame is only a snapshot of general trends, but it shows us how quickly income changes and how quickly target neighborhood boundaries become outdated.

There likely needs to be more frequent and more accurate collection of income data or there needs to be more fluid boundaries for the target neighborhoods.

With this, we see that Belmont has had a huge increase in income over this time period.

We've also seen that specific parts of Belmont have incomes much higher than other target neighborhoods and have virtually no people that could qualify as extremely low income.

This prompts the question of whether the entire neighborhood should continue to be deemed eligible for CDBG funding.

JPA by this representation actually shows a decrease in income, which we attribute to more students residing there, as their parents' financial support isn't factored into household income.

So if we were thinking about where CDBG money should be going, while JPA may technically fall onto the lower end of the income spectrum, it might not be the best candidate for CDBG funding.

We'll now be moving into a brief description of the task force.

The task force is a group of individuals whose purpose is to represent the target neighborhoods.

We've collected some testimonies of previous task force members to help us understand how the task force operates and what issues or failures members often run into.

The video is clickable, if that's possible.

Okay, that's fine.

The video sort of explains how the task force election and application process is rather unclear.

Applications are limited to mail-in applications, and the outreach is not comprehensive enough to ensure that all community members have the opportunity to apply.

Further, the application timeline is quite short.

We believe that reducing barriers can improve participation from community members.

This can include making meeting times more convenient, providing childcare during meetings for relief, as well as investing in outreach via social media, or other methods of publicizing.

We suggest that these initiatives could potentially be funded by the 20% administration budget.

We would also like to propose an initiative that could work in tandem with the reforms we've suggested for the task force.

This would involve community workshops, which would include participatory budgeting processes that allow residents of the city to play a vital role in making decisions about how public funds are invested in their neighborhoods.

Community workshops are also intended to train those who serve on the task force and carve a space for residents to come together and brainstorm ideas for what changes they want to see in their neighborhoods.

The next idea that we'd like to highlight regards the budget and the administration portion, and if that 20% could be used to help resources and the intentions maximizing the community involvement.

For example, that money could be allocated towards child care for the children of task force members, which could enable further flexibility in their meeting in the afternoon.

or the budget could be used for a designated grant writer wherein residents could see the improvements that they want in their community but don't necessarily know the process of obtaining such things, the grant and the grant writer would be a resource at their disposal.

Dr. Harris spoke about this idea a bit more as a form of a technical advisor who could advise the task force on how to make choices which combine the needs of the citizens and the requirements of the city.

The final option for that 20% would be directly towards events such as community workshops, raising involvement within the community at large about CDBG program.

We had a clip that we wanted to play for you, but I think we can probably send the slides via video, and if you wanted a chance to look at the videos that we included, that'd be nice as well.

So, in conclusion, why should City Council care?

The CDBG program offers a pool of federal money, not coming from Charlottesville taxpayers.

It can be used to address a large number of issues plaguing the low-income community here in Charlottesville, from housing to food security to crime prevention.

For the next steps, we recommend the budget prioritizes should be analyzed more closely

specifically the admin and planning bucket.

Priority neighborhoods should be redefined and the CDBG task force should be reconstructed.

Prioritizing citizen engagement through community workshops.

Thank you all so much.

That was an excellent presentation.

I thought the information in the graphics was really good and your points about better training for the members is

It's an excellent point.

I was a member as a school board rep for many years and I had some experience because I had a planning background but a lot of the things we were just kind of thrown into so that was a few years ago so I think it sounds like more training still could be needed.

Laura, I'm sorry.

In your presentation, in your slide, you said avoid overlap.

I was wondering if you could just go into that a little bit more.

Oh, right there, Void Overlap.

That was brought up by a former task force member in the video as well.

What he was saying was that a lot of times they would have grant applications come in and they were aiming to do the same thing.

So it was like Habitat Humanity wanted something for housing and then another housing organization would come in and so then he was saying how like you then have a lot of money going towards the same issues and there was a lot of overlap where he was like if the budget was like truly respected then you would have enough going to housing, enough going to economic development, things like that.

just a few comments and I know unfortunately we're a little crunch for time with another very important presentation still to come but a few thoughts at Spurt is one I definitely agree I think in the past there were issues with allocations going to projects that were either projects meant to just get something out the door as quickly as possible or as you said patting capital projects that we could have done in our CIP without CDBG

So I definitely agree with that point.

I think we've made some changes internally that are preventing that from happening again, hopefully.

Also definitely agree that the meadows make sense to include as well as breaking down Belmont into more granular detail in terms of where we're targeting our investments.

and the final thought I had about the you reference participatory budgeting.

I know we've had about ten thousand dollar ten thousand in our budget for a number of years for participatory budgeting that started right before the pandemic was never implemented.

I'm wondering if that may present an opportunity for the city to follow through on that if we build that kind of participatory budgeting skill that we can apply that to not only CDBG but

and other programs we use.

And I know a lot of localities that actually use participatory budgeting have done that and used it more expansively.

I guess I had a couple of thoughts.

The first is it seems clear to me, both from your presentation and what we've talked about before, that we need to look at how we can redraw the lines of the districts.

I'm concerned because it just happened to pop up on our agenda for our 530 closed session meeting today that we're supposed to be appointing CDBG task force members.

There are in fact three vacancies, but we have no applications for them.

And two of them are for specific neighborhoods, 10th and Page and Ridge Street.

One of them is for public service programs in general.

That says to me that we have a problem of figuring out how we can make a service on the CDBG task force something that's more doable for more people.

and the

a community servant, is in some ways a real chore for people who don't have a lot of resources and a lot of other people who can cover for them and things like that.

And that's a problem.

So that's something that I think we need to figure out.

The other point that I wanted to make more broadly, though, was to sort of push back on some of what you all were saying.

We have a process in the city already for approving sidewalks.

We know that there are sidewalks in some neighborhoods that for whatever reason don't rise to the high enough level of community safety city-wide that they get funded.

But we also know that in the neighborhoods, that's an important issue for them.

And so when we end up using CDBG funding for sidewalks,

It is because the neighbors there have said that's important to us.

And so in a sense, the CDBG funding for sidewalks is sort of the relief valve, if you will.

It's the other way that neighborhood priorities can get funded.

And that, if you go back and look at the

Original intent of CDBG legislation coming out of Washington decades ago.

That was one of the fundamental purposes was to allow neighbors to set their own priorities irrespective of what the priorities may be coming from City Hall.

Thank you all.

Thank you all so much as you leave the gentleman that's leading.

If you could leave your name and contact information with Kena.

Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you all so much.

You guys rock.

Okay, next we will have Brink Choice Voting.

You can make a quick comment before everyone leaves here.

I think I heard you were a bunch of UVA students, correct?

So, UVA is something we're really trying to push more towards for this coming year.

We've been getting heavy turnout of thing they register to voting at our polling places on election day.

You can say they register in our office.

Or you can just register prior to election day.

It's really hard for our election officers to get that done, and there's 300 people coming through.

So we're working with the university right now to try to get a satellite location for November general elections, moving forward at least for this November for a presidential.

Taylor is on a job.

Hey, I heard you were gay and I was like, I'm getting this all of you.

She got born in two people.

Well, I'll have a part.

All right.

Hello.

I've met everyone here, I believe.

But I am Taylor.

I am the elections director for the city of Charlottesville.

And we also have Bob Hodes, who is the Vice Chair of our Electoral Board with the City of Charlottesville here as well.

We do not have a nice presentation like last time, I did that this fall, so we just kind of wanted to go over the

Concerns that we had raised this past fall with ranked choice voting and all the updates and improvements that the Department of Elections and other agencies have worked on to address for now.

So when we had last spoken with you, I believe it was in August about the feasibility of using ranked choice voting in Charlottesville.

Our position was that we saw no barriers to its adoption.

There were still a few technical issues that remained.

A lot have been addressed since we have last spoken.

There are still a couple of outstanding ones.

But again, it is our office will take the same stance that we've seen no hindering barriers to this.

It's just a few things to keep in mind.

Ultimately, it's up to council and our office and the electoral board will not take a stance in

one way or another whether we are for or against ranked choice voting by any means.

The major concern that we had raised was about the certification of the software.

The certification of the software is still something that it has now been acknowledged by the Department of Elections that they have approved the software.

It has not been certified, but with their approval of the software, they have acknowledged that they believe that it is, they are confident in the approval and they have taken any responsibility.

So before where we were

Unaware of who would be responsible in defending it, say if someone were to challenge the accuracy of the results and of the tabulation software, it is not up to us to defend, which was a major concern that we had.

Can I ask a question about this?

Yes.

We went back and read the statutes very carefully, and it appears that they use the term synonymously.

Most of the time they say approved, there are a couple of certified sprinkled in through the

So if we say it's been approved, then there's not a follow-up certification we're waiting for.

Yes, so I will say that in the Department of Elections documents that they have put together, they do acknowledge that a more, so quoting what they have said, a more defined framework within the code would clarify the distinction between a ranked choice voting software and a voting system and also establish responsibilities and certification.

So for example, in the Code of Virginia, it talks about our voting systems.

So for example, when you go cast a ballot in the scanner in our office, all of our voting systems and voting equipment has to be certified by the Department of Elections.

And because this would be a tabulation software, it is not required to be certified.

So I can reread it again.

So a more defined framework within the code would clarify the distinction between right choice voting software and a voting system and also establish responsibilities and certification.

So, to me, what we have understood this as is that they're saying that when, by making this

in the Virginia Code, making it to where it would be a certification requirement.

It would be in that same section that it currently says all voting systems and software is in electronic poll books must be certified by the Department of Elections.

So there's a gap in the language in the regulation book.

Yes.

But as far as we are concerned,

And it has been used in many places.

So the waiting for certification is really just waiting for a clarification in the code.

Correct.

Got it.

So I'm also expanding on this a little bit.

There is a bill that is already passed the Senate and is now been sent over to the House P&E Committee.

It talks about expanding rate choice voting to other local offices as well as so constitutional offices, school boards, et cetera.

And it has a lot of details in the body of that stating that it would be required.

The software would be required to be certified.

It talks about risk limiting audits and a few things that

Approval of this bill would put a lot of the details that we had questioned before in writing and in the legislation and in code so it would clear things up a lot.

The next thing is that an issue that we had discussed previously is transposing hand counted ballots to be machine readable ballots.

So hand counted ballots are ballots that we have emailed to voters, whether that be a voter that is print disabled so they have a hard time reading and they have machine readers on their PC or computers at home and they're able to receive a ballot electronically so that way they can independently mark a ballot.

and then print it off and send it back to our office as well as military and overseas voters.

They are also eligible to receive their ballots by email and print those off and mail them back to us.

We do not accept electronic ballots but we will issue electronic ballots.

In order to keep the safety and security of our elections, those ballots

are not machine readable.

They do not have any sort of bar codes.

So as of now, they were hand counted by our election officers on election day.

What we were asking for was transposing guidelines, so making those ballots to be machine readable.

So our election officers would be responsible for transposing what this voter has put on x-ballot onto another exact copy of that x-ballot, so it is machine readable.

Because a cast vote record is required in order to use the rank choice voting tabulation software, it has to be made into a machine-readable ballot.

That was not something that existed before, and the Department of Elections has corrected that.

There are a lot of other issues.

Democracy is much more complex than most people think.

Everybody votes, you count the votes, whoever gets the most wins.

But it is enormously complex.

One of the issues that we were concerned about last year was election night reporting.

You can't complete a ranked-choice election until you have every vote

and some of them will have to be transferred onto machine-readable ballots.

All the provisional ballots have to be done, the late-arriving absentees, all that has to be done before you can tabulate the election.

So the concern was, what do we do on election night?

Because people really want to get early results.

Well, the state has ruled that on election night we'll just report the first rounds, you know, the first

You know, in a ranked choice, you ranked, you know, your first, second, third, only the first rankings will be reported on election night because those come right from the scanner.

And then the tabula, now if there are winners in the first round, that'll become quickly evident, although you still won't be able to declare that on election night, even if they are candidates are substantially ahead because there are a lot of absentee ballots that come in later now and a lot of provisional ballots, especially from

from the same-day registration.

Another issue was risk-limiting audits.

Risk-limiting audits are now required in the state, and we're going to have one this fall, as a matter of fact, for the presidential election, be a statewide risk-limiting audit.

A random selection of ballots, we're given assigned a random selection of ballots to pull from the ballot stored, and those are hand counted.

But there's no way you can do a meaningful tabulation of a ranked choice election without having all ballots.

And so the state has determined wisely, I think, that the only solution is to do it like with election night reporting, just use the first rankings for the audit.

And it makes sense because what the audit is meant to do is validate the results from the scanners.

So just having the first round results would certify that the scanners were actually doing what they're supposed to.

And then the tabulation issue is a separate one later.

reporting by precinct.

It's another recent addition to the election law.

All absentee ballots need to be reported by the precinct of residents for the voter.

Previously, we just had a relatively small absentee total, and so it was just another precinct.

But beginning with the 2020 election, there was huge concern that 60% of the votes were in absentee.

and so the political parties and the candidates had no way to know where their voters were and so the General Assembly passed a law and it was signed by the Governor requiring reporting by precinct.

Well again, reporting by precinct is not possible

in ranked choice election because you don't have a meaningful election result unless you aggregate all of the votes.

So again there it is the first rankings that are reported by precinct and the ranked choice tabulation is for the entire collection of ballots.

Wrightons in primary.

on Ranked Choice Voting.

Chris Hughes, who works for the Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center.

That's the organization that created the tabulating software we use.

And Chris is an expert on this.

He said that there are still questions on the best way to handle absentee, write-in votes.

The Department of Elections has reminded us that the law requires

that voters have

The number of write-ins in a given election was very small, which is usually the case.

If the number of write-ins is less than the total number of votes received by the lowest performing candidate on the ballot, then they can all be discarded right at the beginning.

But then there's the issue of the second choices for all those people.

All I can say now is that the state recognizes that they need to clarify the procedures and rules for counting write-ins in a ranked choice election, but that only applies to general elections, so we already have the answer for primaries.

So another thing that we had raised as a potential concern was recounts.

And this is something that still remains to be addressed, is how to handle a recount for an election.

One of the main issues or concerns that we are discussing, for example, it was not a ranked twist voting election, but I always bring it up just to have in the back of our mind is that this past June, for example, there was a recount that happened in Prince William County.

It happened

It was in conjunction with another locality.

It was one of their state offices, but they had to conduct a recount because it was just a couple of votes difference between a couple of candidates.

So it was an automatic recount because of the threshold between the number of votes.

There was an observer present during that recount happening and they objected to how the election officers were handling the recount.

thinking that certain things weren't going to protocol.

This is actually taken to court.

The judge ruled that a specific precinct had to be hand counted.

And hand counting with a multi-seat race is really, really difficult.

It was not an issue for Prince William.

They got the same exact result.

But it's something that we need to keep in mind if we were to ever have to hand count if there were to be a situation like this.

It is not likely.

It does not happen very often.

But it's something that needs to be addressed and kept in mind.

There is not a simple or easy way or honestly close to accurate way to hand count multi-seat races.

You have to use an algorithm and it would be really difficult for our election officers to get an accurate number on how this were to happen.

So that's what concerns us is that it's because it involves, you know, mathematical equations and our election officers would be handling this.

The question on that recount issue, obviously Alaska and other states use ranked choice voting at a state level and more expansively than Virginia.

Well, they're using it for single-winner races.

And for single-winner races, it is feasible.

It's time between me, but it certainly can be done.

But when you have multi-winner races like our city council, then you have the transfer of fractional votes

from one candidate to another.

They were cutting him into slivers of post-it notes together.

Well, that shows how it's done, but you can only do that when, in that case, I think it would be like 20 ballots.

And when you have 20,000, as we would have in a city council election, it's not possible to hand count.

Arlington, they were the pioneers.

No, it wasn't close.

So close enough to require a recount.

Interesting though, it was a good test of ranked choice because the first round winners

We're not the final winners.

The first and third place winners were the final winners in that.

Yeah, so it's just something to keep in mind.

It does not happen very often.

There's not a large likelihood of that happening, but it could.

So I think that for me, my major concern was that our electoral department was prepared for it.

And it sounds like all of your concerns have been addressed.

I know that you can't take a position on it, or that you're not going to take a position on it.

I think that something else that you want to

that I guess we as a community want to think about that should something come up, you know, recount or something and you're being interviewed that or the electoral board being interviewed that you won't be able to tell the public as succinctly as clearly as possible because when you start doing

We may have overstated the problem with the recount.

Because the way recounts are done in Virginia, they're machine recounts.

So all the ballots go back through the scanner again.

Now on election day, the scanners are programmed to reject overvotes.

So if you vote for too many, you get a second chance to correct your mistake, get a fresh ballot and remark it.

It doesn't reject undervotes.

So if you neglect to

or if you improperly mark it so the ballot scanner can't see what you've marked, it'll just get taken in as an undervote.

In a recount, the scanners are set to reject both overvotes and undervotes.

So when you do a recount, you always, I mean, it'd be very, very rare to get the same result in a recount because there will be some ballots where people didn't read the instructions and they circled the names instead of marking in the little box.

and when voter intent is clear, we can count it.

So you get a little different answer with the recount.

So what would happen then is you'd have to have a different set of cast vote records because we would correct those like we do for transposing ballots and so you'd have a different set of numbers that go into the tabulator and presumably the result would be

The same because the number of ballots that would change because of problems with reading voter intent by the scanner originally wouldn't be much.

So it can be done.

We run them all through the machines just as we do for any other recount and then interpret voter

Yes.

Yes, it's the hand recount.

That was clearly an undervote and we saw a little mark in the corner of it.

We're here if we can clearly identify voter intention.

If someone were to challenge that, I don't believe that that was a voter intending to mark in that space and they were to challenge it.

Correct.

Yeah, they were the same.

Everything came out correct.

It's a good thought.

And so when you say the machine rejects the over or the under votes, that then comes to you all and you hand

Are you determined what the intent was?

Correct.

So it doesn't like not count them, it just double checked?

That's when, so for example, if anyone were to ever come to one of our pre-processing sessions or one of our sessions with Kat Klinger counting all of our absentee ballots, our system is different than what you see if you go cast a ballot on election day.

So what it is, is a ballot goes through a high-speed scanner and actual images of those ballots come up on the computer.

So we do them in batches of like 20 or 25.

and images come up on the computer and it will say out of this 25 it will mark two of the balances read and it actually pulls up those images for you to say okay what is the concern here and it may be that someone overvoted in a contest, that someone undervoted in a contest and that would be the machine that we would use in the recount process because it's a lot quicker and it actually identifies more of those issues for you.

at the bottom line is we're prepared to assist in producing an ordinance and writing an ordinance for you if you choose to do that.

The law says that

If there's going to be a ranked choice election, that decision needs to be made and announced at least 90 days before the election.

In reading over the administrative code again today, it looks like that there are two options.

You can pass an ordinance that says all future elections will be by ranked choice, assuming that the ranked choice conditions are met, like the number of candidates is appropriate and so forth.

Or you can just do it for the upcoming election and then

So how Arlington did their original one this past June when they did their first ranked choice election is that they passed the ordinance for the one election rather than doing an open-ended one or saying for all future elections to see how it went and to see how the community liked it and if it was something that

They're meeting on Saturday, and one item on the agenda is to authorize a ranked choice for general elections in the future.

Who is it?

And you all were recommending that we start, would start this next year.

Well, the first opportunity to do it would be the primary in June of 2025.

The only seats that it can be used for ranked choice voting at this current moment is just for your local governing body.

So just for city council would be the only office that could be elected via ranked choice voting.

and we do recommend, so we're not saying recommending to go forward with this in 2025, we do recommend if it's something that you're interested in starting in a primary rather than in a general one because you have a smaller pool of voters out of our 34,000 voters.

You'll get 12,000 in a primary versus 20,000 in a general or something of the sort.

So education and outreach if we can get the smaller pool of voters educated first and then if you were to continue that for a general election.

It wouldn't be as many people.

They would be somewhat familiar with it.

Education is really important.

We wanted to make a point on this.

The state has some resources they produced and they used them in Arlington and they're continuing to work on that.

But we would have a massive education challenge.

There would be some costs involved.

Nothing enormous, but we'd have to have outreach to the community in multiple

Times, different locations in the city.

And it would be our responsibility to explain to the voters how they do this.

But while they're doing it, we'd have to rely on you folks to do it.

If you make this decision, we really want one of you to be there with us at these community meetings.

So if questions come up as to why we're doing this, we would defer to you.

They ask us how to mark the ballots and how they're going to be counted and all that.

Thank you for the presentation.

I appreciate all the work I'll have done to try to reduce our risks and the questions.

I feel better about things than I did.

I still have a little bit of hesitation about this fact that if someone asked us to do a hand recount then

It sounds like we're not quite sure how that would work.

Well, the city attorney would be responsible for, I think, preparing the ordinance for you to consider.

Well, that makes sense to me.

So I think that, oh, go ahead.

I just want to say a couple of things.

One is that

About 15 years or so ago, the Charlottesville Democratic Party instigated its own rank choice voting system.

We were calling it an instant runoff at the time, but it was effectively the same thing.

And I had two responsibilities in that process.

One was to write the rules for it, and second was to actually administer the counting of the votes by hand.

and certainly, I mean we had a couple thousand we were dealing with, not twenty thousand, so it was something we were able to accomplish in the matter of a few hours.

And the one thing that was clear to me was that there was a lot more angst among people who thought that somebody somewhere was going to be able to figure out a way to game the system.

then what was justified in terms of how things actually worked.

And people were saying, I am confused.

And what they were confused about was that they couldn't figure out a way to game the system.

But they figured somebody else who was smarter than them must have figured out a way.

And I kept trying to tell people, no, it's pretty simple.

All the voters need to be able to do, if you have five candidates, just count from one to five.

Ranked people in order.

It's very easy from the voter's standpoint and that the people who were having all this heartburn were the political pros who somehow thought that there must be some way they could get an advantage out of all of this and they couldn't.

And it worked very well.

I'm glad that the General Assembly has allowed us to take some steps in that direction.

that I think is going to be confusing to people and we're just going to have to live with it at the moment is the fact that on those odd year elections we may have some candidates who are running ranked choice voting and some candidates who are running just first past the post.

If you've got school board, I mean school board may be one of the places you absolutely want to be able to do a ranked choice voting system but you can't do it right now.

Yes, it did.

2119, it was a party line vote.

It's now before the house.

Anyway, my point is I think it's a step in the right direction.

The fact that we can't do it for everything is not a reason not to do it for something.

And we ought to keep working.

The other thing I'll say, there was one question that I had after the presentation last year that I was not

I was not sure that I understood how the rank choice voting process would work in a multi-district collection where I eventually realized, frankly, Jim, when you and I were speaking just last week, the light bulb went on in my head to say that I understood what they were talking about.

And the concern was, if somebody, let's say, they only need 51 votes to get elected, but they get 70 votes,

Are those other 19 votes wasted?

And the way that the Democratic Party did it in Charlottesville 15 years ago, yes, they were just wasted.

But there is now a system where they are taken into account in some way.

And I don't even need to know what it is.

I only need to know that somebody understands what it is.

Because it seems to me that that's a good idea in theory.

The argument was that the people who voted for the least popular candidate got their second choice counted.

The people who voted for the most popular candidate didn't necessarily get it counted.

And so that's been corrected now.

You know, I think we're done.

One other quick thing on this to keep in mind that if the General Assembly were to expand ranked choice voting to all constitutional school board, we would still, if council approved it for all of those races,

It still may not be able to be used depending on the number of people that were around.

There's the minimum of three for each election.

So for council, we have two seats open in 25.

So the minimum of three is correct.

But for example, this past year, there were three seats open.

So it actually would be a minimum of four.

And so for all of our constitutionals, it would be a minimum of three for all of those seats as well.

So just dependent on

I'll just say I've been a supporter of RCV, still am, and it sounds like to me it's completely feasible to move forward on the timeline of implementation by the November 2025 primary cycle, so that's

Where I am, as soon as we know if the Governor does sign the legislation to expand it, I would support including those other offices as well in the November 2025 election cycle.

And it sounds like whenever we

Consider and vote on a resolution for the adoption.

I agree.

We had put in a request for additional funding if it were to be something that is approved for that cycle because this will also be in the same fiscal year as a presidential November election.

So even though we asked for a lot more money in a presidential year, we will use all of that money.

So it's not going to be something that our office can take the brunt of the cost of.

So it'll be a lot more overtime for staffing if we wanted to do mailers.

Ballot Cost increase.

So a lot of small things that you don't think adds up, but it does add up.

And if you don't know the answer to that, that's fine.

So for example, if a mailer were to go out to all registered voters, that cost us between $12,000 and $14,000 just for one mailing to all registered voters in the city.

Depending on what you wanted to do, an election officer, for example, we would want to designate a couple of election officers through the day additional at each polling place in order to assist voters that have questions.

So for example, Arlington did, as you would walk in, they had a whole section

and so on.

We've got nine precincts.

So that's 18 people right there at $300 a person.

Over time for staffing, I would suggest that would be anywhere between $5,000 and $10,000 depending on how many outreach events we actually were to do.

Depending, 2025 is our big election year in Charlottesville, for example, in the sense that that's all of our constitutional.

So we have a lot more on the face of our ballot as well as it being a gubernatorial year.

So we've got our statewide races.

Governor, Lieutenant Governor, our, what all do we have in that year?

We have our delegates here, all

No, not that year.

But yes, so we have a lot more seats.

So adding a grid ballot, we had to actually do a condensed ballot this past year.

So having a grid ballot, I think we are going to actually end up on a legal sized piece of paper, which seems silly that it would add a lot of significant cost, but it does because it's a lot harder to get our ballot quality paper.

in legal size form, so it just increases our costs a lot.

Right now, we take the brunt of a lot of our costs with printing ballots.

We do it in-house instead of purchasing.

It costs us about three cents a ballot to print.

If we were to purchase that, it costs us around 36 cents a ballot.

And that's for what we have now.

So if we were to purchase the legal size ballots, those are at 46 cents, I believe.

And I don't believe we're able to get the ballot grade paper ourselves in order to print it.

It's a little hardware expense too.

Yes, so we won't be able to solve that today.

Work up the numbers and let us know.

But before we leave today, I really want each council person to say if they support it or not.

So, Lord, I'm just going to start with you.

I think I know where we are, but I think it's yes.

Yes.

I'm also enthusiastic about it.

Michael, I'm not sure where you are.

I'm just playing.

Okay, so Jay and Sam and Taylor and Sally, we are in support of this moving forward, so we know it's a lot more work that we have to do on this, but I think that you just need to know at this point we want to move forward with it.

To confirm, we are saying FY26 is when you would need that.

You're not saying this new fiscal year, right?

The following fiscal year.

June 25th.

That's FY26.

And small thing to add too is we also have to remember the crop of first time voters that we've got access to in the schools and we can do outreach to them and do simulated votes for their, you know,

I think so.

I think the headline topic about RCV makes sense.

I'm supportive of it, but I think the devil's in the details.

I have a lot of confidence in you, especially in you.

Thanks.

Thank you so much Any other business Sam?

Yes, I've got that motion here.

Thank you.

Pursuant to Section 2.2-3712 of the Virginia Code are hereby moved to City Council convene a closed meeting as authorized by Virginia Code Section 2.2-3711A1 for the discussion and consideration of prospective candidates for appointment to the following boards, commissions, and authorities.

And this is a long-list board of architectural review.

Charlottesville Affordable Housing Fund Committee Charlottesville Economic Development Authority, Community Development Block Grant Task Force, Community Policy and Management Team, Historic Resources Committee, Housing Advisory Committee, Human Rights Commission, Jefferson Area Board for Aging Advisory Council, Jefferson Area Board for Aging Board of Directors, Local Building Code Board of Appeals, Minority Business Commission, Planning Commission, Sister Cities Commission,

Social Services Advisory Board, Toeing Advisory Board, Treat Commission, and Vendor Appeals Board.

Okay.

Can you cash your vote?

Okay.

Motion passes.

City Council is now in closed session.

And we'll return at 6.30.

For those joining by Zoom, there's a separate link for the 6.30 meeting.

Thank you.

OK, we're going to begin our regular business meeting.

Is there a motion to bring us out of closed session?

Is there a second?

I'll second.

Can we vote please?

The motion passes five to zero.

They won the quarterfinals over the weekends, 71 to 40.

The next game is Wednesday at 6 p.m.

Yes, thank you.

Are there any other recognitions or proclamations?

I can't remember.

So we made some appointments in closed sessions for different boards and commissions.

Yes.

For the Charlottesville Economic Development Authority, appointing Mr. Barnhart and Mr. Cawthon,

for the Historic Resources Committee, Julie Basick for the Human Rights Commission, Charlie Burton for the job of board, Mr. Brew, John DeArth in Elaine Phillips,

I'll second those nominations.

Again, any discussion?

If not, can we vote?

Thank you.

Thank all the applicants for that.

It's really, there's still a lot of other openings, but we really appreciate individuals, you know, willing to volunteer and get back in the community in that manner, do different boards and commissions.

So thank you all very much.

number four minutes December 5 draft development code public hearing December 13 special meeting work session December 14 special meeting work session number five resolution to appropriate opioid abatement funds $45,073 second reading six resolution to appropriate additional COVID homelessness homeless emergency response program grant award

Well, now take public comments regarding the items on the consent agenda item just read by the clerk.

Each speaker will have up to three minutes.

Is there anyone who would like to speak on a consent agenda?

If not, is there a motion to adopt the consent agenda?

Second.

Can we vote, please?

Motion passes 5-0 to adopt the consent agenda.

Yes, Mr. Mayor, a few items just for public benefit, as well as partial updates to council.

Two things in regards to infrastructure.

The Belmont Bridge, as many of you as you travel over it, more recently are beginning to see that it is coming to an end, the construction process.

is coming to an end.

The new traffic signals are now up and the old lights and massed arms have been removed.

There's going to be some work being done on the sidewalk on the teen pavilion side, which is going to cause everyone to shift to the alternate side while that work is getting done.

That shift is supposed to happen sometime next week.

Once that is done, then we'll begin additional work that will lead us into March, which is when some utility work will begin to

Hapen, but the project is slated to be done middle of June.

So that is great news for us to be able to see that that project is coming to an end and the Belmont Bridge will be finished around that time.

Also in the infrastructure space, a notice to proceed has been issued in regards to the construction of the new bypass fire station.

That's an ongoing project that we've been working on getting the details.

It's a seven and a half million dollar project.

Substantial completion should be finished in March of next year, although there will be about a month and a half of where

installation of CCTV and equipment, various things and some training and testing has to happen.

But we look forward to May of 2025 as to when the fire department would actually take use of that building.

So it's not a long time when you think about building a fire station and putting it into service.

And then the last thing I'll just share is that I have finalized your work session schedule.

You'll get that tomorrow.

I didn't post it on the website, so I didn't want to pass it out to you without posting it on the website at the same time.

So we'll get that distributed to you tomorrow.

This is a new thing that we're doing and making sure that we can plan out work sessions for as far into the year as we possibly can.

and make those available to the public so that you all have the opportunity to see what council will be deliberating on in work sessions over the course of the year.

The goal is for us to try to plan out and schedule these various discussions and to time them, give staff an opportunity to time some of their action items that they bring to coincide with these items coming up on your work sessions.

Better planning is what I'm striving for, so that's the last of what I have for you this evening.

Thank you.

Can I ask one other infrastructure question?

Sure.

Initially it was power failure because there was a truck that hit a pole that took out the electricity service in the area.

That's been fixed.

Now the road is closed because they're pouring concrete.

Oh, OK.

It's all concrete at this point.

There are six pre-registered speakers, leaving ten slots for additional speakers on Community Matters.

Each speaker will have up to three minutes to speak.

We'll now open the floor to the pre-registered speakers.

Good evening.

On February 4th, ATU members at CAT and Pupil Transportation unanimously ratified their first union contract by a vote of 39-0.

This is a huge milestone for workers' rights in the city and for our public transit system.

We applaud at ATU, we applaud the city's leadership for giving its employees this opportunity, and also for having management's negotiating team settle a fair contract with the union.

I understand that the other recognized unions have also reached agreements with the city, which is similarly great news.

And additionally, we're enthused to hear that the city's blue collar workforce is seeking to join Teamsters Local 29.

However, the job of making sure that the city's workforce has the fundamental human right to be able to freely join a union and collectively bargain is not yet finished.

I'm referring specifically to the workers at Jaunt.

The Americans with Disabilities Act requires that any mass transit system in the country also provide equivalent transportation services to the disabled.

Throughout this country, this so-called paratransit service is sometimes run in-house and sometimes is contracted out to a third party, usually for the sole purpose of saving money by reducing wages and benefits.

In Charlottesville, we contract out our paratransit service, this vital city transportation service to Jaunt, the regional paratransit operator.

After being inspired by the workers at CAT who successfully joined the ATU and unionized, a supermajority of the workers at John also signed union cards indicating their desire to unionize.

The union then asked the John Board of Supervisors to recognize the union and pass a collective bargaining resolution that would enable those workers to unionize and bargain in contract just like we did at CAT.

John, however, refused.

In their response to the union, their board of directors claimed that they're not covered by the enabling legislation that allows public workers to unionize, and furthermore told us flat out that even if they were covered, they would not voluntarily agree to allow their workers to have union rights.

It's truly an unfortunate decision that they decided to repudiate the will of the super majority of the workforce who wanted to unionize, and sadly it's one for which we have no real recourse.

But in the end, their short-sighted refusal to grant union rights will only harm jaunt as they lose employees to cap.

But these workers still deserve the right to join a union, just as much as the city's direct employees do.

That is why we are calling on the city's leadership to explore ending the contracting out of paratransit service to jaunt

and instead running it in-house with unionized city employees.

Jaunt can certainly still exist.

The remaining other six jurisdictions can certainly pool their resources to provide rural transit for their jurisdictions.

But city council has taken a principled stand to make a city policy that the city workforce should have union rights.

And that should also extend to city servants performing Charlottesville's paratransit work.

Jaunt, on the other hand, does not share these values.

and therefore it is inappropriate for the city to continue to contract out this service to them if they're going to refuse to honor their employees' wishes to unionize.

There is no legitimate reason to deny these hard-working public servants the right to have a union when all the other rank-and-file public servants in the city will have such rights.

As such, we again respectfully request that the city explore handing the contracting out of paratransit service.

Thank you very much.

Thank you all for your time this evening.

I just wanted to say thank you for the support that you expressed this evening for moving forward with a ranked choice ordinance and especially to add my thanks to Jim and to Taylor for all of the work that they have invested in the details.

I just wanted to pick up a handful of loose ends that came up in that conversation.

First, I want to thank Mayor Wade for making the point that while it's great that our election administrators are thinking about all of that, nitty gritty, how we talk about that with the public is a separate project.

And we are fortunate that there are national technical assistance providers like the Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center that provide media training for public officials and for candidates

So that all of you and anybody who's running can get practice talking about this and we'll all be singing from the same sheet of music as we're educating the public.

I also want to thank Councillor Pinkston for highlighting the still looming loose end about a hand recount.

and the great news is that the Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center is also a treasure trove of examples from across the country of cities and jurisdictions that have answered that question.

In particular, they've highlighted for me that East Point, Michigan is a community that matches Charlottesville in its multi-winner at large races with a similar tech setup that we have and they've pointed us in that direction to think about solving that question.

So I think we have some leading lights there on that point.

I especially want to thank Councillor Oschrin for helping us clarify this distinction between certifying and approving software because I know that that was a bit of a quagmire for a little while.

If I can add just a little bit of clarity there about what's moving forward in the General Assembly versus what is currently state code.

What's ambiguous right now is that state code mandates that the state certify what's called a voting system, which years ago used to be the catch-all name for all of the tools that election administrators use.

But since that code was written, new tools have emerged like electronic poll books or tabulation software that haven't yet been added to state code to mandate certification.

And so what the bill that's moving forward in the legislature right now

would enumerate those, these new tools that have emerged, and say that the state must also certify those.

But in the absence of that clarity, elect is voluntarily certifying the software.

So what the legislation would do is mandate that they do what they're already doing, which is approve the software.

And as Councillor Oschrin noted, and as state attorneys have confirmed, approve and certify our synonyms in this hunk of state code.

All of you have an email for me with the approval specifications that the state granted last May and for our engineer on council.

That's 100 plus pages of technical specifications and certificates.

So you can go down those details to your hearts content.

With that, I just want to say thank you all.

I know this has been a long project.

Thank you so much.

Good evening.

I'm James Groves, City Resident and Co-Chair of the Seville 100 Climate Alliance.

Recently, Kimley Horn recommended that CAT acquire 28 new buses, two electric, three hydrogen, and 23 diesel.

If their plans implemented, zero-emission buses will constitute less than 18% of new purchases and 9% of CAT's overall fleet by 2030.

Evaluating this proposal in light of climate change,

I conclude that Kimley Horn has set the bar too low.

Consider that the consulting firm ING has forecasted that by 2030, 33% of European transit buses will be zero emission.

33%, not 18, not 9.

Separately, in 2022, U.S.

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm signed an International Memorandum of Understanding stating that the U.S.

would seek to ensure that 30% of U.S.

bus sales are zero emission by 2030.

30%, not 18.

So, nationally, a Democratic Party president has set a goal of 30% zero-emission bus sales by 2030.

Locally, Charlottesville City Council, comprised of five members of the Democratic Party, is being asked to endorse a plan to purchase just 18% zero-emission buses this decade.

Are you prepared to dismiss the Biden administration's guidance?

If Charlottesville were to fall in line with national and international transition trajectories, it would acquire nine or ten zero emission buses this decade, not five.

I'm also uneasy about Kimley Horn's proposed mix of zero emission buses.

Under their proposal, CAT staff would be asked to operate and maintain three different technologies, diesel, electric, and hydrogen.

Throughout the planning process, Charlottesville's transit director and city manager have articulated system reliability as the top priority.

Yet juggling a much larger operation composed of three platforms, including two with which the city has no experience, seems unlikely to deliver trusty service for those dependent upon CAT.

Finally, I sense that Charlottesville is losing sight of its 2030 climate goal, a 45% decrease of greenhouse gas emissions from 2011 levels.

Kimbley Horn's recent presentation highlighted that target as a project goal and then proceeded to unveil a proposal that would increase carbon emissions through 2035.

Additionally, at your last council meeting, City Manager Sandra Slides listed the city's 2050 but not its 2030 climate goal.

That speaks to mindset.

Our path to net zero matters.

Intermediate emissions need to drop quickly, accepting higher emissions for a decade or more as long as we reach the desired end point constitutes bad policy.

Please get serious and prioritize climate action.

Bump up the zero mission target to nine or ten electric buses.

Thank you, Mr. Grove.

My name is Robert McAdams and I live at 2211 Williamsburg Road, Charlottesville, 2211.

A 15 minute walk to bus stops for routes five and seven.

I am retired and live on a fixed income.

With increasing ridership, a key goal for Charlottesville area transit, I am one of the people you need to convince to ride the bus instead of driving my old car.

The alternate fuel study you are considering includes a pilot study of two electric buses.

but it also includes a purchase of many diesel buses.

This expansion of the cat diesel fleet is intended to increase ridership by reducing wait times between the buses.

If that increase in ridership does not happen, the result will only be many more greenhouse gas emissions.

This brings the issue back to me and how to convince me to ride the bus.

I need dependable scheduling so that I can plan my travels.

I also need to know that I am reducing greenhouse gas emissions by riding the bus.

Tonight, my asks of you are, one, during this year, 2024, make real preparations for the 2025 pilot study for battery electric buses.

2.

Conduct the pilot as an earnest attempt to solve problems specific to Charlottesville.

If the pilot study has positive results, then immediately buy more electric buses instead of diesel buses.

Being able to ride a zero-emission electric bus would convince me to do so.

You could build an ad campaign on cat protecting the future with electric buses now.

I am asking you to do everything you can to achieve your goal of a 45% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

Tonight, I rode bus routes 5 and 7 to get here, and I expect to ride them back home.

It can be done.

I urge you to do everything you can to meet that 2030 goal.

Thank you very much.

Thank you so much for your time and thank you for your resounding support for rank choice voting.

I know Taylor and the Electoral Board have done a ton of work getting in all the details right and thank you guys so much for asking your super diligent questions making sure all of our fine details are ironed out because we don't just want rank choice voting to happen we want it to happen well and smooth and seamlessly and that's one thing I'm here to offer is actually as a group

of Coalition of People Who Support Ranked Choice Voting in the Community.

We're happy to support and help educate people, and that's actually something we've already been doing, having spoken to hundreds of members of the community.

One, to educate, and then two, to hear about their enthusiasm.

So if you got more emails from people supporting it, that's probably why.

As somebody who has served the nation, gone to the Naval Academy, served as a naval officer for five years, this is something that makes me exceptionally proud to have done that service and proud to be an American as we continue to form a more perfect union.

When the founders first set up the nation, it wasn't meant to be perfect, it was meant to move us in the right direction.

And rank choice voting is one of those things that move us in the direction to become a more perfect union.

with ranked-toys voting, people will actually be able to vote for who they really want and not feel like they have to play a game.

It brings more powers to the voters and more choices to them.

It better represents us.

And it incentivizes coalition building and more positive campaigning.

So again, thank you so much for your resounding support.

And I'll be seeing you as I continue to support you into implementation.

Thank you, Mr. Cole.

Good evening.

Good evening.

Good to see you all.

And thank you for giving me a few minutes to share with you.

Ms.

Thomas handed out my handout on impact stories, which I'll leave for you to enjoy later.

I'm not going to read them to you.

But I think they help make our numbers come alive.

And the last three pages are particularly impactful when you look at the insurance counseling story and the two community resource stories.

and

We're up to 24% of people over the age of 60.

So even since the 2020 census, that continues to grow.

And that's because, as we know, people love living here.

They age in place here, they don't move away.

And yet other people move back here or move here to retire.

And so we are going to continue to be an area that really appeals to those in the over 60 age group.

Likewise, over 80, 85 is living longer.

And so we're going to see more people with probably greater needs than what we've worked with in the past.

And we know that with the numbers increasing, more people are living alone.

And as we all saw during COVID, isolation is a strong factor in cognitive, physical, and emotional decline.

So it's really important to be able to have services and support

as those examples show where people can come together and get the kinds of services they need.

I just wanted to take a minute to also share with you a new program that we're doing through a grant with TJPDC.

They have started to look at being the mobility manager, which is a really important role, I think, to have within the planning district.

We've been subcontracted to be the mobility specialist.

That's a natural adjunct to our senior helpline.

We'll be a second person that will sit in the same office, we'll take calls, look at helping to share with people what their transportation options are, helping them get signed up for it, afterwards assessing their satisfaction.

and then tracking what gaps in the service exist.

We all know their gaps, but it's always been anecdotal.

When I get asked, you know, are all seniors getting where they need to go, the answer is no.

But when you ask me how many of them or what percent, I can't give you that except to say it's a lot and that's not very helpful.

So we look forward to working with TJPDC to maybe better direct and help us figure out what are the points that will make our transportation system

so much better for everybody, not just seniors.

So I appreciate your time tonight and I appreciate all the support you give Jabba throughout the year.

Thank you so much.

It's one of the boards that I serve on as City Council rep and it's a pleasure to serve on the impact of the work we do in your leadership.

So that was the end of our pre-register speakers.

We have opportunity for six more, I mean, I'm sorry, ten more speakers.

Is there anyone here this evening that would like to speak?

Hi, my name is Dr. Emily Yen.

I'm a Charlottesville resident.

I live at 506 Ridge Street.

I'm speaking in support of exploring a study to move

the paratransit services from John in-house for, I mean, in addition to the reasons that John Ortle already mentioned, I also want to point out that moving these services in-house is going to allow you to supervise the quality of these provisions of services much better.

I mean, these John transports

Thank you.

My name is Peter Gates, Charlottesville resident and assistant secretary of SEAL 100, an environmental organization in the community.

Just want to add a few points to those made by some of the previous speakers about the alternative fuels transit study, that issue.

There are many more ambitious plans and plans in progress both regionally and nationally and internationally.

to electrify bus transit.

Examples are the DC circulator, Montgomery County ride-on, Alexandria Dash buses, Fairfax County, a bit further afield, Frederick County, Maryland, Greenville, South Carolina, Los Angeles and Houston planted totally electrified by 2030.

Anaheim will soon be 90% electric buses.

and just to put it in a global context, a previous speaker mentioned Europe.

China is burning way too much coal, but as of 2022, 65% of their buses and trolley buses were electric.

The second point I want to make is that whatever pace of the electrification program City Council decides on, the key thing for a successful transition is institutional buy-in.

So this pilot study needs to be thoroughly done with a positive attitude.

address a vision of residential and work integrated living, which I think is something that society needs to strive for, but it's going to be a generational, multi-generational task.

And climate change is really hitting home in this generation.

If you look at the Atlantic sea surface temperatures in the main development region for tropical cyclones, they're already at July levels.

And so

Mass Transit is going to be part of any social endeavor in the next several decades and the type of bus is really important unless you assume you're going to max out ridership on all the expanded bus schedules.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for the opportunity.

Good evening.

I'm Tom Olivier.

I live in Albemarle County, but I'm one of these people that thinks the city and the county are actually one community.

I want to endorse the call for urgent acquisition of electric buses by the city.

We live now at the beginning of a climate emergency, one that scientists say, if we don't take bold action to transform our society soon,

We will endanger the future of younger generation students who are in our schools right now.

And you have the opportunity today or this year to take a bold step with the electrification of the city public bus fleet.

And I just hope you will do it.

Thank you very much.

Good evening, Mayor Wade, counselors, thanks for your time.

My name is Brett Jones, I'm a resident of Charlottesville City, and I'm thrilled to hear of your support of Ring Choice Voting today.

I'm just here to thank you for your indication of that strong support.

Myself, I'm also an engineer, Mr. Pinkston.

I'm an electrical engineer.

I specialize in machine learning.

So my job is to find patterns in the world.

These days, I work in cancer research at UVA.

And what are a bunch of computer geeks doing, working in cancer research?

You can fairly ask.

Well, we're looking for structure.

We're looking for structure because everything starts with structure.

Structure is what drives the system, is what drives the outcomes.

In a cancer research, we're looking for broken structure, produces broken outcomes.

And when I hear people talk about politics today in this country, they say, why can't we have common sense solutions for climate or gun control or education, electoral reform?

Why can't we have these things in this country that so many people agree on?

Well, to me, it seems kind of obvious.

It's the structure.

The structure drives us to the outcomes that we see today.

But counselors, although that structure is broken, I think we all agree that structure is broken.

I don't believe that it's broken beyond repair.

and I do believe that ranked choice voting is one of the few things that can make some difference and we can actually do as a very small set of things like that.

It's not a silver bullet, but it will move the needle and we've seen this in Maine, we've seen it in Alaska.

When people know their next election is ranked choice, it changes the way the leaders lead.

And in our federal system, the states are the laboratories of democracy.

I learned about the history of this in the many of the early 20th century battles where the progressives gave us new reforms.

Those happened in the states, not in Washington, DC.

And so the front lines to save this country are in the states.

Virginia, the state lines, as you know, are all local.

So I want to thank you for engaging in this struggle.

We are going to move the needle.

We're going to change the structure of this country.

I'm thrilled that we're in this together.

And I'm part of the coalition with Mr. Coe, and we are here for the Long Hall.

If you guys need us, write your disposal.

Any resources?

We're plugged into a wide national network, and we're here for voter education and the challenges that we all know coming.

Thank you so much.

Any other speakers?

Time, space for a few more.

Thank you so much.

Good evening, Mayor Wade.

Good evening, Ms.

Thomas.

I'm very excited to be before you tonight.

I work with the Office of Community Solutions, and I am here to propose a pathbreaking and potentially transformational opportunity to support the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank in the expansion of their cold storage capacity.

It would be an opportunity that

would benefit not only Charlottesville, but all of the 25 counties that are served by Brafby.

In short, Brafby currently has a cold storage facility, basically a large refrigerator that has the internal storage capacity that's smaller than the average one-car garage in America.

Thank you.

And so this refrigerator unit presents a number of challenges.

It's old, which means that it's expensive, it's coming to the end of its rated service life.

Every repair that needs to be made takes away from the operating capital that BRAFTI has to support their beneficiaries.

is small, meaning that it's hard to navigate inside when you take the food pallets in.

And most importantly, the limited capacity that they have for the store often leads them to have to turn away donations of fresh produce.

This opportunity would support a healthy produce initiative that they started several years ago by significantly expanding the capacity that they have to take in this food, process it, and then turn it around very quickly.

One example, they had a truck pull up unexpectedly from one of the local national

supermarket chains.

And they had about 6,000 pounds of potatoes that they could donate.

And Rafi was only able to take a small portion of that because they did not have the storage capacity.

For a variety of reasons, we have before us an opportunity to support the purchase and installation of a significantly larger cold storage unit for refrigeration purposes.

We benefit from a number of factors in play here.

One is that they installed a new freezer unit about a year ago.

It is much larger, and even though it's larger, it uses less energy to produce a much lower cold temperature than the current unit that they have, which is smaller and only needs to provide refrigeration services.

I'm very excited to have here tonight some people from Brafby if I can introduce them Anna Isaro is their Grants and Stewardship Manager Katie

I just want to make sure I get this right.

Ratzliff?

Karen Ratzliff.

Karen Ratzliff is the philanthropic chief philanthropy officer and Michael McKee.

Thank you and good evening.

I'd like to just give a little perspective about why this need is so urgent at this point in time.

The Blue Ridge Area Food Bank, as you may know, distributes food through a network of community partners, more than 200 of them across 25 counties in Central and Western Virginia.

Last year, we distributed about 27 million pounds of food through these community organizations.

That's enough for about 23 million meals.

And about 30% of that food was fresh produce, which is becoming increasingly important as more people rely on pantries as a primary source of food and really turn to us, not only for the food, but for something that will support their good health.

What we are seeing today though is completely unprecedented and certainly unexpected.

We're averaging about 153 visits to pantries across our network, 153,000 visits to pantries across our network every month.

And that's about 20% higher than at the peak of the pandemic.

It is about 50% higher than before the pandemic.

and we reached an actual high of 173,001 month in October.

What's driving it, of course, is the cumulative effect of inflation, especially in food, housing and childcare.

From a financial perspective,

Our fundraising priority, therefore, is food purchasing.

Farmers and grocery stores are stepping up and trying to do more manufacturers along the mainstay for the food bank.

Just are more efficient and produce less excess inventory available for food donation.

Food drives account for only 1% of what we distribute.

To give you a sense of what that means at scale, in 2019 the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank spent $1.8 million buying food for distribution.

Last year we spent $5.3 million buying food for distribution.

And so when we look at this kind of capital expansion,

There's a choice to be made.

And the money that we would need to spend of our own on the expansion of our cold storage is money that we cannot spend on food purchasing.

And the catch-22 here is that if we don't spend that money on cold storage, Charlottesville area residents miss out.

They're not getting access to the fresh produce.

that others in different regions are able to because of sheer capacity constraints at our Charlottesville warehouse.

And so we're really grateful that you all are considering our proposal.

And our effort is just to make sure that our residents in this community, in this area, about half of whom self-identify as black, Hispanic, or otherwise non-white,

They have equitable access to good nutrition, and that's at the heart of our proposal.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you for some of the technical details.

So this is the full service area, the Blue Ridge area food bank, and in the dark green area you see Charlottesville right in the middle.

So I've learned a tremendous amount over the last couple of weeks working with a team from Bradfee.

One of the most surprising things for me is that the Harris Street location, which is their central distribution hub for the eastern region in which we live,

can provide food and produce to the other regions, but they can't provide fresh produce to Charlottesville simply because they don't have a place to store it at the USDA required temperatures.

Just quickly, the previous slide.

Yes, so the proposal before you is to fund this cold storage expansion.

It would be in full, and it would provide benefits primarily, immediately to the Charlottesville community.

because one of the things I learned was it's basically a big food warehouse.

But they get people because there's public transportation stops very nearby.

It's on Harris Street.

It's right near 250 Loop.

It's very well located.

It's right next to the Goodwill Store or the Habitat.

So they have a variety of people who show up in person and so they have taken some of their valuable interior space inside their main warehouse building and kind of created their own like little food pantry so that anybody who shows up in need walks away with at least something.

That's not what the space was built for but that's what they do.

So our proposal is to use these funds that are available to us to benefit primarily the Charlottesville community, but it also provides ancillary benefits out to the extended network, largely because of the location.

The location is ideal.

It's right near the 250 bypass, which puts it an easy connection to I-64, Route 29, for a variety of reasons.

It's incredibly well located.

Is that helpful?

Yes.

Okay.

Next slide, please.

So, as the recognition of fresh produce, fruits and vegetables has grown in the country, Brafby launched this healthy pantry initiative, and I just share a little bit of the information, because it was a pre-existing initiative that they had going throughout their entire network, and as part of their national food pantry work.

Next slide, please.

So specifically what we're talking about here is their 1207 Harris Street location.

It is surprisingly active and productive for such a small space.

This is exterior view from Harris Street.

Next slide please.

So this is the rear where the volunteers do their work, where the delivery trucks arrive to drop off their food.

To the right is the building in blue, loading dock in the back, and then the refrigeration units off to the left.

Next slide.

again this is another view and it shows you that as the trucks pull in a huge amount of the work that is done by the staff and the volunteers and the produce and food that is offloaded from the delivery trucks is on their loading dock, the majority of which is uncovered at this time and that will become important later.

Next slide please.

So here you have the two refrigeration cooling units that they have right now.

To the left is the white structure, is the freezer unit that they installed about a year ago, and to the right in the darker gray color is the current

Cooler Unit, and we'll talk about some of the interior issues that it presents.

Next slide, please.

I'm going to go through these quickly.

So this is the inside of the current cooler unit.

You can see that the food pallet right there takes up approximately half of the space available inside the structure in width.

What that means is in order to get the food pallets in and out, they lose valuable storage space needed to get the food in and out.

Meaning that they have to turn away these donations.

Next slide please.

This is the interior of the freezer unit that they installed about a year ago.

The proposed unit that we are exploring would be almost the exact same model.

It would be set at a much cooler temperature.

But you can see on the inside that there's much more room.

So their storage columns can be longer.

They can use more of the height.

And they don't have this space that's lost by having to maneuver their pallets.

It looks kind of empty, but this is right because two or three days before I showed up to take these pictures they had just distributed a huge amount of the frozen food out to their network.

Next slide please.

So here's an exterior of the current refrigeration unit.

It is, like I said, it was rated for 15 years.

It is now over 14 years.

You can see some of the buckling and of note here along the bottom are the seals.

It's basically a tilt-up construction, so the unit was delivered.

The pieces were assembled, a frame was built, and then the pieces were lifted up and secured together.

and so each of the horizontal lines are a seal and on the bottom are seals.

Braffby has had to pay out of their operating expenses to replace the sealant in a number of places at significant expense because they have decayed over time, especially because they are the age and they're exposed to the elements.

Yeah.

So next slide please.

Here is the exterior of the door.

So you see, as the unit was installed, there's a hard ceiling, but there's a cap across the top to kind of protect the unit.

That has degraded significantly.

I recommend, I said, well, how much would it cost to replace just the covering?

You see, it doesn't provide coverage of the whole unit.

And I can't remember what the price was, but it was shocking just for the cap.

You can see the hinges are kind of rusting and again the degradation of the seals along the bottom.

Next slide please.

Again the hinges you see a lot of the rusting when made.

Next slide please.

Here are the new condenser units for the current unit.

When I was there for about half an hour I heard them pop on and off for about two minutes every 10 to 15 minutes.

Next slide please.

The current condenser units for the refrigeration unit were on constantly.

They did not cease operation the entire time I was there.

They're very loud and you can hear that probably the internal fans are uncalibrated now, so there's grinding noise and things.

Replacement of those will be required relatively soon.

They've received estimates of about $8,500 per unit just to replace the condensers.

Next slide please.

Volunteers, they do great work.

Next slide please.

Now, what we're proposing is to replace the unit to help them rebuild the concrete foundation that is sagging in some places under the current cooler unit so that it will be much larger, be able to accommodate the new cooler, and then the roof that covers just the loading bay right now where the truck is.

We are proposing to extend that roof line out over the two new units.

A combined investment for the two units will be at completion, about $350,000.

So we are proposing to use money to extend the roof just to cover the current units and the

Condenser units, move the condenser units under the cover to protect them from the sun and the elements, thereby significantly expanding their service life.

As part of the cost sharing, Graf Biedelang wanted to extend the roof to cover the loading docks to protect their staff and their volunteers, many of whom have to work out in the open all year round.

Their work never ceases.

So it's part of a cost sharing.

If we do this project as part of the same piece, Brafby will pay to have the red unit, the red area of the roofline extended.

And that'll accomplish multiple goals with one investment.

Next slide, please.

This is an architectural rendering that was submitted as part of the bidding process of what the extended unit, so you have the two cooler units.

City investment of CDBG funds would cover the left side and BRAC would cover everything.

All their volunteers and staff would be able to work.

We sheltered from the sun and rain and snow and sleep and whatnot.

Thank you very much.

I, you know, for someone who's over the last 20, 30 years, volunteered there many times, that shelter for volunteers would be much appreciated.

So thank you.

So the specific amount of money that is being requested is 215?

No, it's in here somewhere. 215.

I'm ecstatic to support this.

I think it's a great

I think the fact that we're able to help ourselves and also help the network in support of volunteers, I think it's a great project.

We got the presentation about CDBG at the 4 p.m.

work session, and I think this kind of allocation is exactly the kind of allocations we should be making with CDBG, strategic, high impact, long-term impact, and directly benefiting, working in poor people in our community.

There's a lot of information in the staff report and appendices, but I think it was very informative and I think it's a positive thing for our public to be able to learn and hear as much as possible about our decisions.

I'll say that.

The only, or I'll just, one of the things that was just striking to highlight is some people may have the perception the food bank is for people who are unemployed or homeless, but it's just not the case.

It's people who are working full-time jobs, in some case multiple jobs, and one third, one in three people in our city are food insecure, which is just striking.

The only question I have is just one out of curiosity.

This is reprogram money.

Yeah, so that's all great questions.

I would just add to kind of one of your noticeings and what Mayor Wade mentioned.

To my knowledge, the city has not made a direct investment in BRAF-B despite their vital role.

So this is just

a very powerful opportunity to chart a positive path forward, I think.

I started with the city in December of 2022, so it's very difficult for me to speak about things prior to that.

In the appropriation resolution, the approval and appropriation resolution, it spells out the three projects.

I know one of them was the... Page 50 of the packet.

Sorry, thank you.

Was the Rich Street Priority Neighborhood Sidewalk Project.

It was mentioned that about $240,000 was allocated for that project, appropriated back in

It took a number of years, but I think the current listing in the finance system is 2022.

Sorry, I'll be direct.

I knew the answer, but it highlights that why we should not invest in capital projects because we can't deliver them on time.

So that's the point.

But thank you.

I am fully in support of it.

And I think this is a fantastic project in work.

And again, exactly what we should be doing with CDPG.

And that's just to clarify that this is HUD money we would be spending on this.

No.

It is HUD money that went completely through the citizen participation aspect of CDBG.

It was all, the original funds were allocated through the competitive application process, careful and diligent review by the volunteer members of the task force and appropriated for approved activities by council in the past.

And for whatever reason, the funds were not fully expended on those activities.

When I started, I went back through and kind of looked through the accounting system and identified these pockets of money, put the note aside, and then

went through the development of the current program year activities but we had this in the background.

HUD has asked us on several occasions, what are we going to do with it?

Some of the money comes from 2017.

Longshore, we need to show them a reason that we are using this money for is a great opportunity.

Almost by definition, the beneficiaries of BRAPHI's work meet the LMI requirement.

So there are a number of ways we could structure it for HUD through an area benefit, individual benefit, a variety of things.

As part of the development process, I shared this with our program coordinator in HUD Virginia.

They fully endorse it, they fully approve it.

Thank you.

Is there agreement to encourage us to decide to do a March 5 meeting for second reading and vote?

Okay.

I'm looking at page 50 and it shows that there are three sources of funds that are being reprogrammed.

One is from a CDBG fiscal year 2017, 10th page project.

What was that?

I don't know.

All I know is that as I was learning the federal system, I spent 20 years in K-12 education.

I do a lot of research and so I started looking through and wondering what is this money for?

All those projects were approved by council so I could dig up the

My real question, I guess, is sort of getting at this problem of why we have been unable to spend the money.

So yeah, I mean, this

Focus on this project.

Don't let you answer that one.

Good evening, Councilors.

I just want to clarify Councilor Snook's question in terms of why do we have the remnants of this money?

We had a huge project in Tenton Page, the park.

Yes.

So those are some of the reasons why you don't have some of the leftovers.

And sometimes you might allocate money like Chancellor Payne said earlier, due to designs trying to acquire right of way

The project may eventually be placed on hold.

We have a lot of other things, I just don't want to go into every...

if I could address that.

So the three projects that are listed there are projects that were initiated many years ago and have been, according to HUD, closed out.

So they're inactive projects anymore.

In the city SAP financial system, that money is still sitting in activity accounts.

And so this is the format that has been kind of used for a while in terms of the memos.

Wherever you see a zero in the proposed revised appropriation, that means that that account in SAP will be fully closed out.

The one that you're asking about that leaves a $25,000 sum balance.

Okay, so until this happens, it's a 49,000-some odd change.

Yeah, something like that.

Okay, so we're taking out 23, leaving the 25.

Okay, I guess what was confusing to me was how the totals lined up or didn't line up on the page.

I got you.

So if I could...

Just try to also quickly wrap this up with bringing forward what it is that we're doing here.

This is cleanup work.

That's what you all should appreciate this as.

The fact that we're talking about 2017 money right now in 2024 is a sign that we are just trying to clean up the books.

We're trying to go back and get every dollar that is currently sitting.

because there's too much of it sitting.

And bring forward projects that allow us to make the proper investments today that can be done and executed.

Many of the projects of the past, we were picking things that should not have been selected because we could not actually deliver them on schedule, which is why timeliness has been the word of choice for Charlottesville with HUD for many years now.

So to Anthony's point there, that $25,000 balance there is simply what's still remaining to be spent.

and it'll sit there until we find another project to bring forward to clear that account and then he will come forward and start clearing out any remaining accounts in more recent years that still have a balance in them.

I have two very small questions, hopefully.

No, the total project cost will be about $240,000.

The $350,000 each refrigeration unit will cost in total insulation, electrical work, everything about $175,000.

So the unit that they paid for about a year ago and the unit that we will hopefully be paying for through this proposal, the combined value of those two would be about $350,000.

Okay, so that included the pass freeze.

So when they mentioned the fact that they were going to extend the roof a little bit to cover the loading dock,

We then explored the idea of covering the whole thing to protect a $350,000 investment.

And then my second question is kind of going back to what Mayor Wade said about other localities that benefit from the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank not contributing.

That wouldn't be on us.

So that would be a food bank question that is not like our purview to raise those funds or raise that question.

But as you said, we also haven't been contributing.

Yeah, I'm not against this.

Please don't misconstrue that.

I'm just curious as to has there been any outreach?

And because there are people at home, if you do answer, do you mind doing it in the mic?

Otherwise, it's not going to get picked up.

Thank you.

So the reason is the city has the access ultimately to the HUD money that aligns with, the purposes align with this particular project.

Because the center of population is here, we see the largest number of people we're serving are within the immediate area, including the urban ring within the county.

But the rate of food insecurity is also highest in the city of any of the localities served by our branch on Harris Street.

Thank you.

I'd say consent agenda.

Agreed.

That's fine.

Consent agenda as well.

Thank you all so much for the important work that you do in the community.

Have a good night.

Are we, Keena, are we still doing item number eight for the Steve Hicks?

Yeah, I'm not sure how that, if we pitch to fur this item.

Okay, yes.

Good evening again, Councilor Mayor, City Manager.

Tonight, it's a request from CROHA.

Can I ask one quick question, point of order?

So we're the item that was on here for mobile phone company.

And sorry, I'm confused.

Why was this deferred?

I'm not sure why we have no one here to speak to the item, so we can't present it.

That's totally cool.

Do we have to vote on that, or is it just something we agree to?

Yes, you're voting on it.

I'm sorry.

So point of order.

Council has previously approved its agenda to include this item.

I would move that we continue this item to its next meeting.

Further discussion?

Thank you, Brian and Jay, for pointing that out.

Do we have to vote?

the motion passes 5-0 to continue item number eight to the next meeting.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Now we continue.

I'm sorry, Alex.

All right.

Thank you, Mayor.

CRH is requesting that the city council grant approval for them to use the 2026 CIP, committed CIP funding that is in the Capital Improvement Plan to enable them to meet their financing needs for the South First Street Project Phase 2.

The reason why this has been requested is due to cost escalations among other things, which has driven the estimated cost of staging the project from $31.8 million to $41 million in terms of construction costs.

And the total development cost of the project is now at $56.6 million.

Just to give a council an overview of the project, there are two phases to the project, phase one, which is completed and has 62 units.

I think CRH is currently working on closing out phase one of the project and they are moving into phase two of the project and the staff report has a critical schedule in terms of staging phase two, especially with regards to the financing.

I believe they are scheduled to be closing for Phase 2 on April 1st of 2024.

And the current units, existing conditions in terms of number of units is 58 units at this point.

And Phase 1 has 62 units and when they

When they have completed phase two, once the construction work starts going on, are the builders of phase two who have 113 units for that phase, and for phase two and phase one, we're going to have a combined total of 175 units, which is a net gain of 117 units.

You have a project scheduled again, the closing schedule for April 1st, 2024.

And the project is consistent with the comprehensive plan, affordable housing plan, and the city council's strategic visions and outcomes.

So staff supports this project.

In terms of community engagement process, there has been several engagement processes, especially

at the grassroots level.

The project is driven by the residents of the CROH and the city staff, especially representatives from the appropriate city departments have been engaged with the CROH staff and their design teams in terms of the designs.

and the infrastructure components of

Attachment that is part of the staff report to show the City Council of 2020 action granting $3 million for the project and there is a motion as part of the staff report to approve

that CRHA used 2026 CIP funds to consolidate with the already approved $3 million for a total of $6 million to enable them to support the development of this project.

Staff recommendation is approver.

With that, I will entertain any question from the city council.

And Mr. Sales, the executive director of housing authority is supposed to be here.

He's online tonight.

He's online.

Thank you.

Michael, maybe you can help me understand this.

So there was a, Mr. Cthunia as well, there was a commitment for $3 million

And that's in the CIP, I guess.

And instead of needing three, they need six.

That's correct.

I did read this, but I may not be remembering.

No, it's in the CIP specifically for CRHA.

So it's already there?

Yes.

Pride Council approved $3 million a year for consecutive years.

So that was budgeted in the CIP for successive years.

And it was then to be pulled down by CRHA to support various projects within their portfolio as they transformed them.

So this is more of a timing kind of sequence.

So the total cost is almost $57 million for 113 units?

Unfortunately, that is pretty in line with trends.

I'm completely unrelated at the Senate Local Government Committee hearing on Monday.

There was a bill about affordable housing, and they discussed the statewide average cost of construction for affordable housing in Virginia is now over $500,000 a unit.

That includes your federal funding, state funding, but

Yeah, I think in the line, in that line, I think during the COVID, you know, the construction industry, I don't think that has scaled back to date, experienced a huge cost escalations in terms of construction.

Now it looks like we're talking about $50,000.

Yeah, exactly.

I don't think I'm not sure and I can predict what I will come down.

But I know since the advent of COVID, you know, construction cost has been going up, you know,

I don't mean to suggest that this is an issue for this particular expenditure because I think the plan is already too far advanced and we're basically having to close it out, but I wonder whether

We don't at some point have to look a little bit to say what what are we doing to hold down the costs of individual units?

How many square feet are we building these units to?

I don't need an answer right now.

Yeah, because we saw a similar cost escalation for the bypass fire station, right?

So I think if we're going to look at affordable housing, we should also be looking at bypass fire station and all other infrastructure projects.

Any questions down this end?

Comments?

Is there a motion?

Okay.

It's one reading.

Second.

Okay.

Any discussion?

If not, can we vote?

The motion passes five to zero.

Thank you very much.

Mr. Mayor, members of council, good to see y'all.

I'm bringing to you a change to the rental relief program for elderly and disabled folks.

This is something that's probably overdue.

I hear from a lot of folks in the community who've wanted this to happen for a while, but we just didn't get our ducks in a row and we're finally doing it.

Essentially what I'm asking you to do is to increase the income limit for folks who can apply for rental relief and while we're doing that I want to go ahead and peg it to the meeting family income parameter that we use for CHAP and for real estate relief for elderly and disabled so that as those

increase with area incomes, then we can increase it on this program as well.

That will have a carry-on effect to the amount of rents that we use in the formula.

There's some algebra on the memo that's kind of unnecessary, but it's just a way to back into the maximum rent if we use the income figure that we'd be using.

and then in addition to that, we'd like to raise the cap on the maximum grant amount from $1,500 to $2,000.

It was set in code at $2,000 a few years ago but that had been the de facto amount for about 20 years so it's high time we go ahead and do that.

and I'd like to go ahead and get this stuff in the code.

We're getting ready to start the program for this year, so I'd like to just kind of get everything tightened down and, yeah.

How much do you expect that will add to the budget?

Not much at all.

This program doesn't cost a whole lot.

We're talking 300,000 total, so I mean 5,000.

I already built it into my budget request just because I've

I can.

I'd rather not.

Actually, I do have point paragraph number three.

You're talking about increasing from $1,500 to $2,000, and then the previous rent threshold being set at $6,000.

Increase the maximum grant amount from $15,000 to $2,000.

This threshold has not been adjusted in over 20 years.

When you plug things into the formula, the way it works

I think it had a $50,000 cap and then maybe the maximum rents that we used was $6,000 for a long time.

If you just did the formula, you just landed it $1,500 as the maximum.

And that's just what it was for years and years and years.

Per month?

It's to a qualifying applicant.

They'll get a grant in December, a check from the city, and for years that was capped at 1500, not necessarily by code, but because of the way the formula worked.

The formula is it's

and

Yeah, that's the number we use for the formula.

We only will look at, there's a cap on the amount of rent that we will reimburse.

It used to be 6,000, then it was 12,000.

We made 12,000 a few years ago.

No, I see the formula there.

I mean, somebody, when this program was started, decided that 24% of a person's income, a person shouldn't spend more than 24% of their income.

And the way the formula works is we figure out what that number is.

We figure out how much the person spends above 24% of their income, and then the city reimburses the person for 25% of that amount.

That's pretty good.

So is the idea of this that it would basically rise as the AMI rises over time?

Exactly.

So you don't have to come back and treat us to more mathematical equations.

I think it makes perfect sense, and I would move approval of the ordinance.

We'd love to.

Call 970-3160.

We'll start taking applications for this program at the beginning of March and it runs through May 1st.

and I'm going to be paying a visit to Afton so we can do another little video, do some promo.

But yeah, call the phone number, look on the website, Charlottesville.gov slash core.

But call the phone number if you have questions, 9703160.

Thank you for prompting that.

And I do need to ask a point of order.

Could we put it to the consent agenda?

You all right?

Yes, it would be great.

Thank you.

Yes, before you is purchase agreement, purchase and sell agreement for 405 Avon 405 Levy.

This is the last of the transaction steps.

As I've referred to this as simply a real estate transaction, I want to continue to frame it as it is a real estate transaction.

We're buying the property.

The goal would be for the city to take ownership of this site, and then we plan its programming to that in our knowing what it is that we have available to us.