City Council Meeting   6/3/2024

Sam, we're running it.

Yes, sir.

Ms.

Thomas, get to go.

Hello.

I called the June 3, 2024 Charlottesville City Council meeting to order.

Ms.

Councillor Oschrin.

Here.

Second.

Well, I didn't.

I mean, I approve.

I am fine with the proposal as it is, but I didn't know if this was a good time to talk about it.

The feedback that I received is that some matters the ship may have sailed.

Okay, then let's do that.

That would be great.

Yeah.

Okay.

Second.

Now becomes 22.

Okay.

And it's been moving properly.

Second.

Can you please cast your vote?

Okay.

All right, this in motion passes.

The first will be a work session where we are here and discuss presentations that do not require a council vote.

And then we're going to close session.

And the first report that we have is the Human Rights Commission annual report.

Thanks so much.

We're going to position this so we can maybe both talk at it.

Can you hear me okay?

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you all for welcoming us here this evening.

I'm Todd Niemeyer, director of the Human Rights Commission, and we're going to present to you our 2023 annual report.

We'll kind of tag team some of these things, but

will go back and forth, keep it interesting.

So the contents of this report, we're going to talk a little bit about the roles of the commission in the office, some of the key takeaways from our calendar year 2023.

We report on the calendar year.

I think we've always done it that way.

I know that's never a good reason for things, but to be honest, it's been set up that way because we typically hold our elections for officers in the commission in January and new commissioners are pouring in March.

So we typically follow the calendar year.

So that's why that's set up that way.

We'll also bring to you some conclusions from 2023 and a little bit of what's going on in 2024 to give you updates.

So a little bit about the structure of the two bodies.

So we have a Charlottesville Human Rights Ordinance that basically created the Human Rights Commission and the Office of Human Rights back in 2013.

The difference between the two bodies, obviously the commission is one that you appoint and nine volunteer community members.

They address systemic issues.

They work with our office to do community outreach and they advise you all on human and civil rights issues.

The office provides

support to the Human Rights Commission.

It's staffed by four full-time staff and one part-time intern, and the team is here.

I believe our intern is also joined by Zoom, so she's watching.

And we address the individual complaints of discrimination that are covered by the ordinance, as well as conducting community outreach both as an office and in partnership with the Commission.

just to give you a little sense of how our office is structured.

That is basically the layout.

This is the first year that we've been fully staffed with all, with person in each position, which is pretty exciting for us.

It's really made a difference in terms of how we can develop procedures and get things done in an efficient way.

Um, and I don't know, maybe I'll just give a shout out sod is there.

Maybe you can wave that sod is our intake specialist.

Shiel is there.

Our investigator in training, Willie is outreach for us and

Jenny is our intern.

So we have a really great team.

It's really been great to have a full team this year.

Thank you.

And I want, I want to thank City Council and the City of Charleston for allowing us to have a full

Office.

It's greatly appreciated.

In plain language, basically what we want to do in Section 23433 of the Human Rights Commission ordinance is add as a role to assist individuals with complaints and discrimination, to provide awareness and education and guidance, to review city policies, to seek federal work share agreements with the EEOC and HUD, to make legislative recommendations to the city

And those are taken directly from the Ordinance but reworded in plain language just to make them a little bit simpler to understand.

And we're going to address each one of those.

But before we get there, just want to remind you, I usually bring this up once a year when we talk about these things.

When we talk about individual service, we try to break these things out into categories in terms of how we provide services.

So first and foremost, we talk about complaints, right?

Because we talk about receiving complaints of unlawful discrimination that are jurisdictional to the city.

Those are the things that we actually can investigate or offer mediation or other alternative dispute resolution services for, and those are defined clearly in the Charlottesville Human Rights Ordinance.

An inquiry, on the other hand, our services that we provide that are either unrelated to a complaint and or they are an allegation of discrimination that falls outside of our jurisdiction.

So if something comes to us from Albemarle County, for example, that

does present an allegation of unlawful discrimination.

It's not within our jurisdiction we would refer it to the appropriate agency, state or federal.

Another category that I want to bring to your attention is navigation and advocacy.

When we get an inquiry, which is defined above, that doesn't relate to a complaint of discrimination, but it's something that someone seeking a service that's outside of what we do, and we provide either a referral to another service provider or assistance with accessing services or communication with other agencies, we classify that as navigation and advocacy.

And that's an important thing because when we talk about the numbers coming up here, you'll see that we've had a shift in trying to get away from that navigation and advocacy piece because it

It can really take up a lot of time and can take away from our ability to address complaints.

So you'll see that in the numbers and I'll talk a little bit more about how we're addressing that.

Okay, first of all, so this is the first point that Ernest read and I'll probably take this section for a few slides because most of this is what our office handles.

So the role of the commission in

addressing complaints of individual discrimination is around public hearings and appeals.

They haven't had one of those in a long time.

I think the last appeal was probably back in 2015 or something like that.

I have to look back in the notes to tell you exactly when.

So they haven't had one of those recently.

So most of the individual casework comes to us.

So this is a quick summary of the numbers.

So we record every incoming contact.

That's emails, phone, walk-ins, all of that.

And we had 2060 in 2023.

I remember last year, there was a question, how many unique individuals are served by that?

And so 288 individuals were served last year.

Sometimes that's a little bit of a rough number.

When we get a call that's anonymous, we'll assign it an anonymous and a date.

And sometimes we're not sure if we're counting the same person twice, but I think roughly speaking, that is correct.

288 unique individuals served.

of the 214 inquiries, we just defined that as either a non-jurisdictional complaint or a contact about something other than discrimination.

98 of those inquiries, 46% originated in Charlottesville.

Housing continues to be the most often identified protected activity in both inquiries and complaints.

of the total contacts, 66.9 were classified as navigation and advocacy.

So that's a lot.

That's obviously over half.

And that shifted a lot during the middle of the year when we had a realignment of this is what we really need to focus on.

And we cut that down quite a bit.

And I think we credit thought a lot for that as being our intake person to screen a lot of that stuff and refer it to the right place.

Congratulations.

Thank you for that because that was really important for us to be able to provide more efficient services for complainants.

We had five new complaints open last year.

There are actually seven filed.

We've since refined the process so we don't have missed filings of non-jurisdictional complaints, but we dismissed you because they were non-jurisdictional.

So we had five new complaints officially opened in 2023.

So a little bit more about the takeaways.

from Assistance with Individuals.

Again, 2,060 incoming contacts, 103 inquiries and complaints in Charlottesville.

And that's a combination.

I think we said 98 inquiries.

In addition, those five complaints makes 103 total combined.

And seven new complaints open, two found non-jurisdictional.

Here's the numbers just kind of broken out a little bit more by contact type.

I don't have to go through each one of those, but we do break them up so that we can kind of see

Where is our work going?

How many of those things are people calling us back?

How many of those people calling us?

Where there's a third party asking us for advice about someone else?

And then how many total incoming things are we seeing?

So there's a breakdown for you.

And here's a comparison over the last few years.

You can see that in 2023.

We were just a little bit less than in 2022 total incoming contacts.

I think that's probably a little bit due to

A change in venue one because we located ourselves from the old office by city space down to the new office next to the post office.

But I also think that also reflects a shift in away from navigation and advocacy and more towards the work around complaints.

So that's a little summary for you there.

And if at any point in this you have a question for me, just let me know.

I'm happy to answer them.

You might have covered this, but I just want to clarify.

It does, it does.

Thank you for asking.

Another thing that I want to point out in this section is in terms of inquiries and complaints I mentioned earlier, housing was the most often identified protected activity and this is a snapshot of the data from 2018 through 2023 and as you can see

We've had substantially more inquiries and complaints around housing than the next highest one, which is employment.

So just keep that in mind and we'll get to talking a little bit later about what the commission's priorities are this year.

But both last year and this year has been on housing just because it's the most thing we hear about most often.

Also, just wanted to point out that that, here's how it kind of breaks down in terms of the services that we provide.

We divide the services that we provide into these various categories just to get a sense of how are we spending our time?

Where are things going when we receive or responding to something?

And again, navigation and advocacy was a big chunk of that.

So that's just something to point out.

And I would say by mid-year, we reduced it, I think by half.

and Michael Payne.

and honestly, some, for some things, there are great service providers willing to take the workload and then some, we have work to do on that.

So that just points to some additional needs.

If you look in our full annual report in your agenda packet, you'll get to see more of a breakdown, but I just wanted to call your attention to that.

Okay, so now we're going to tag team again.

You ready for this?

All right, so a couple of things that we try to do as an off, as the Human Rights Commission, it shows our four action items that we have done

We try to attend any community events that we can as a commission as well as attending anything dealing with housing since it's so important to us to try to get information so when we come together we kind of streamline our efforts that we're not over here over there but we find out what is the most important thing to the community and what we can put our voices behind that we can either write a resolution or send up legislatively to you guys to hopefully get

And in this section, this 2-43B, we kind of consider this the outreach point in that section of the ordinance and so to that end, our outreach coordinator, Lily, had organized and attended 187 different community outreach activities and so that ranges anything from going to table and event or

assisting with community education presentation, many different things.

So she was out there getting the word out about our services as well as networking with other partners just to try to raise awareness around human rights and develop networks that support people in our community.

Is it this one?

So three action items that we have done with a review of city policies is we've written a letter in support of Louisville's zoning recommendation.

We've sent a letter to the city council about the expansion of the Salvation Army Shelter and sent another letter in support of Louisville's zoning code.

We also, again, the revisions, you supported that as well.

and ours is very small in this role.

Our job there is just to make sure that the commission has what it needs to do these reviews and give them the backup to host people like the captain from Salvation Army to ask questions and develop a set of recommendations.

So that's our job, administrative support on that end.

So back to the federal work share.

I'll take this one because

HRC didn't have to do anything last year because we were stuck in the middle of including all the new revisions that HUD passed down to us in the ordinance.

So fair warning, we're going to probably be coming back to you with another amended ordinance because when we did the last amendments to the ordinance, we brought that back to HUD and they provided some additional guidance, I'll say, which means we're going to do some more revisions.

I always look at the opportunity to revise the ordinance as that, an opportunity because

Not only do we need to fix the things that HUD has asked us to fix, it's also a chance for us to review other aspects of the ordinance that could be better organized or more clear.

So we're going to be bringing some other things to you as well.

That's a great question.

Well, so and actually

It's an even more interesting question.

I think is what is it in our June meeting of the commission?

We're going to have a presentation from our intern who did a study for as part of her honors thesis at William & Mary around human rights commissions in Virginia and elsewhere.

But right now there's different types of them.

There's those that do enforcement work like we're talking about for individual complaints and then there's those that do outreach.

There are

The ones that do enforcement work are mainly located in Northern Virginia, so that's Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax and Prince William and then us.

So we're a little bit south of them.

Richmond now has a Human Rights Commission.

They had one previously and recently re-upped it.

It's still a commission.

with no enforcement ability, but I know they're moving towards that.

Virginia Beach has a very long-standing Human Rights Commission that's mostly focused on community outreach.

They're actually really great at that, and that was the reason that they formed because around community issues and issues of accessibility in the community.

So there's also one in Newport News.

And are there any other ones?

Not like every locality, hence the like the

You'll see, if you look in the report, there's a lot of things that come in from Albemarle County.

They don't have a Human Rights Commission or an Office of Human Rights.

So people come to us because we're close.

Thanks.

Thanks for the question.

Yep, so anyway, in the ordinance revisions, you should expect those.

I think we're going to get those hopefully in front of the Commission for Adoption in June, and that's adoption for recommendation to you all.

Yeah, so I want to give a thanks to Councilman Snook for attending our representative panel that we had back in January.

That was really appreciated.

It gave us a lot of information.

Sad to see that some things did not happen, and I stayed legislated with at least getting that one cent to help with school funding of buildings and things like that.

So, but, you know, it's nice to have that information.

And in fact, like an update for this, I guess we have our next work session this Thursday on the 6th.

We have invited some panelists to give council a little bit of an update and to answer questions about current status on housing issues in Charlottesville.

So if I do anything on January, it's on June the 6th.

June the 6th, 6.30 p.m.

We will have some people there.

Yeah, so we want to

So Todd has done a lot of this and as far as helping us change the way we work and the way we do things.

Because one thing that I felt, because I've been on the commission for a while, is that we really were spinning our wheels and trying to do, get things done, planning things and what we have done is we've moved to

Streamline and everything.

And everything dated, normal things are expected with you guys as far as when you want things for legislative recommendations.

They can get that to you in a timely manner.

that you have time to look at it.

If you need to bring it back to us, you can do that.

But we were seeing that we were having some issues with getting traction just for us to make sure that we were being as an effective human rights commission as possible.

We'll talk a little bit.

That might be coming right up that we'll talk about work plans and stuff.

And again, that's our job is to provide the support that the commission needs to, for example, change their HRC rules and procedures, which is sort of like the bylaws in addition to the ordinance that guide what the commission does.

So we work with the commission on doing those things.

And again, yeah, the annual meeting planning and strategic planning.

OK, here we go.

Here's the chart.

Oh, look, that's how this works.

OK, I'm going to do like one at a time.

I forgot how we set this.

Oh, OK, let's go back.

You got it.

How's that?

All right.

So in 2023, we narrowed down the focus to housing and issues to provide substantive recommendations to City Council or to the Council this year.

And this year, we are building upon SSS that has helped to streamline and find a goal to work on.

In 2023, the commissioners used their platform as a public appoint advisory board to assess or amplify local housing issues.

So we had a couple of panels last year.

We had one where I think we had, I think during COVID, we had a virtual one that was that was a success.

And then we had another where we had the Haven

who else do we have?

Patrimonial Patrimonial Patrimonial Patrimonial Patrimonial Patrimonial Patrimonial Patrimonial Patrimonial Patrimonial Patrimonial Patrimonial Patrimonial Patrimonial Patrimonial Patrimonial Patrimonial Patrimonial Patrimonial Patrimonial Patrimonial Patrimonial Patrimonial Patrimonial Patrimonial Patrimonial Patrimonial Patrimonial Patrimonial

very much for accepting those recommendations.

Great.

Sorry about the layout of that slide.

That was kind of interesting.

Before you go to the next one.

The middle slide there about the publicly appointed advisory body for housing.

We usually have an opening on the Housing Advisory Committee that, you know, and so if you find someone that's particularly passionate about it, it is really

Quick as well, the Charlottesville Affordable Housing Fund CAF Committee, which makes recommendations on funding as had vacancies that have been vacant for, I think, over a year at this point.

We'll see what we can do.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and maybe that is definitely a good point for more information and maybe even instead of an ad hoc committee, maybe someone on our board could do that and be a part of one of those commissions and committees and can bring back information for us, you know, straight from those committees.

So this goes back to the work plan I was talking about, that I wasn't supposed to talk about three, two slides ago, but I'm talking about it now.

So it's after a field day today, so I'm coming off a field day and all that stuff at school, so I apologize.

This is, again, this has been very important for us and our commissioners appreciate having this work plan and knowing what we're expecting and what we need to do whenever we have a meeting.

That when we walk in, we have a plan and we're working toward that plan.

I believe in that because it helps us stay focused and not picking and choosing all over the place, but it helps us stay aware in what's needed.

How do we do it?

How do we do a public hearing?

Where do we need to do it?

What is expected of us as a commission?

We have one.

What does Remy and those guys need to make sure it works out?

Find what do we need to do as a commission?

Is there anything special that we need?

In the current version of the ordinance, it's a pretty complex process.

If you look at it, their role can go as far as introducing new evidence, cross-examining witnesses.

It's not just a review of record at the moment.

So it's a pretty complex process.

We're actually talking about that process now.

And is that a reasonable expectation for the commission as a volunteer body?

And is there a better way that they could serve the purpose of a public hearing if we

make some tweaks to that ordinance so stay tuned because that's I'm glad you asked that because that's important and once we revise it we want to make sure that commissioners are prepared to execute what they plan so you know any other questions on this slide thank you for that question oh look now this one goes backwards let's just pull the whole thing up you know my PowerPoint skills are

and Michael

such a wonderful team I don't think we could do you know half of what we did this year without them so thank you so much to you guys it's really amazing and what we've been doing with that in this year so just kind of sliding over to the updates we're really trying to solidify the procedures it's hard to create a set of procedures in terms of how to run an office when you don't have a full team now that we have a full team we can figure out how to delegate things how to make things a little bit more standardized so that they run efficiently which is super important when it comes to

addressing individual complaints of discrimination because they're very complex processes.

And so, again, kudos to the team because we've all kind of contributed to writing our procedures.

We're kind of, I would say we're at the halfway point for writing most of those procedures, maybe even further.

We've got some really solid drafts on all of our procedures.

We're going to work through the rest of the year trying to make those finalized so that they really work and they're very efficient and fluid.

again at the end of last year we had 16 open complaint cases that includes the five that we opened in 2023 plus the ones that are ongoing again it's a big process to open a complaint and when especially if it doesn't resolve an alternative dispute resolution like mediation it can be a very big process to

to finish and see an investigation all the way through to its conclusion.

So we're really excited to have, again, the team in place so that we have the processes in place to process complaints quickly.

And that's going to be especially important when we enter the Fair Housing Assistance Program Workshare because HUD's expectations are that we will process these complaints efficiently and effectively.

Again, going back to that navigation and advocacy piece, 67% of all of our incoming and outgoing contacts were classified as navigation and advocacy in 2023.

and 49% of those were housing navigation.

So again, can't emphasize enough how complex the housing need is out there.

And there's some great providers out there doing the hard work.

It's just that the demand is so big we have work to do to meet it all.

And what we're going to continue to do in our office is focus less on that, especially as we move towards the fair

Housing Assistance Program certification because we know that we really have to make a priority to process complaints and that's what the ordinance mandates us to do.

here's a little snapshot of the work plan that we have that runs through the end of June so we did base our work plan in the office on the fiscal year because I know that's how City Manager's work plan is functioning so tying it into that these are just the key things that we're trying to work on again most of these are things we've talked about we're working on revisions to the ordinance

We've worked with the Commission to develop their work plan, which is now in effect.

We've been digging deep into our standard operating procedures, and I think we're half, if not three-quarters of the way done with those.

We are expanding our community outreach considerably thanks to Lily's work.

and we're continuing to build our staff capacity through training.

So everybody in the office has had new investigator training.

Sodden and Shael have both taken the EOC's counselor training, so intake counseling training.

We continue to look for equity training opportunities whenever they arise and just trauma informed care, mental health first aid care, all those kinds of things.

We try to make sure that everybody has a good grasp on those things and we'll continue to do that as opportunities arise.

This is our work plan for the rest of the fiscal year or the I'm sorry at the start of the 2025 fiscal year and into next fiscal year so

We're going to continue to pursue that interim certification as a Fair Housing Assistance Program.

Again, we'll probably provide that ordinance draft to you sometime later this year, so stay tuned on that.

We'll continue to execute the Human Rights Commission Work Plan, which is timed in a funny way because we time it to start again at the time they do their strategic planning when new counselors or commissioners are appointed in March.

So that's kind of, it runs through March of next year, and then we'll move on and develop another one.

We will hopefully finalize those standard operating procedures and kind of get them all set in kind of a manual for how to run the office, which I'm really excited about.

And again, continuing that community outreach.

And I know we have some specific ideas.

Lily and I won't spill all the beans, but Lily and I are continually talking about ways we can do regular programming.

I know we're collaborating with Ashley to do some internal equity work as well for city employees.

So stay tuned on that because more is to come.

and again continue to build capacity in staff to train folks to handle individual complaints of discrimination and to be prepared when we get the FAP work share to take advantage of all the training opportunities that come through HUD when we enter that.

I've got a couple.

One's very small, but you said that 49% of the 67% of the Navigation and Advocacy Calls were for housing.

Such a good question.

Of the total Navigation and Advocacy contacts,

Good statistical question.

Great.

Thank you for that.

And then in the report, you mentioned the challenges of non-English speakers in finding out about the office and also interacting with the office.

And I know he wrote that

developing a comprehensive language access plan is one of the tasks for this coming year.

Yeah, I mean, I think we're pretty well on our way.

I feel fairly confident right now that we can

So let me sort of lay out the things that we're doing.

So we now have for interpretive services, we contract with the IRC.

So if somebody comes in or contacts the office who's a non-English speaker, we can present.

We have some printed cards in the six main languages that are spoken in Charlottesville.

We can present those in their language.

They can grab the one they want and put their information on it if they're able to.

We contact the IRC to schedule an appointment with an interpreter to find out what services they need.

That's how we can handle the intake component for people who are non-English speakers.

In addition, with IRC, we can do all the interpretive services needed for the intake and complaint process, taking affidavits.

They're pretty comprehensive in that regard.

What IRC doesn't do for us is translation services.

So actually taking a document and either going from English to another language or another language back to English.

And so we're working with another company in Alexandria currently to translate many of our main documents and anything that comes through

through an investigation or something like that that needs translation, we work through them.

And it's been pretty amazing.

It's really complicated, let's say, to translate, especially into a language that reads from, say, right to left.

We've been doing a lot of our brochures in that.

And just the formatting, getting all that stuff in the right place is really tricky.

And so they've been amazing because we'll take a stab at it with the translation that we get, send it back to them.

They'll help us format it.

We'll get it out.

So it's been great.

We're in the process.

So I feel like we have a structure now to deal with most of our needs.

But you never know.

That's what I found with any of this stuff is, you think you got this system down, and then you get a new case, and you go, oh, we didn't anticipate that.

So for right now, I feel like we have a good plan in place.

And I know Ashley's working on a comprehensive language access plan for the whole city.

OK, great.

Not yet, but there could be.

What's currently being translated is we have an intake questionnaire.

And I know the city website, you can click an accessibility button to change the language of the text on the website.

We will also have a list of all of our intake questionnaires in the six languages that we're getting them translated into.

Great, glad it's in progress.

Yeah, it's exciting.

Yeah, thank you both of you and your staff for all the good work that you do.

I called last week.

I guess it was the week before last and had an issue.

You know, we're very helpful.

So I appreciate that.

Can you remind me when you actually have a complaint?

You know, things have gotten real.

Someone has lodged a complaint and there's some actionable

next step that should be taken.

What does that look like?

I mean, what sort of, I guess, legal remit do you have?

Okay.

Well, I heard two questions in there too.

If somebody brings a complaint against the city, like in which the city is the name to respondent in the complaint, we wouldn't handle that just because that's a conflict of interest, because legal counsel for us is the city.

So obviously that would present a conflict of interest.

However, we could refer that out to either the Attorney General's Office of Civil Rights, the EEOC, or the Virginia Fair Housing Office, depending on the type of complaint it was.

Now, if it's a private sector respondent, so you mentioned a landlord,

What we first do is get the basic facts of what they're presenting, determine if it's jurisdictional, filed timely, and presents what we call a prima facie case of discrimination.

Is there a protected class identified and did the harm that they experience equate to mistreatment or some other disparate treatment based on that particular individual's protected class?

If that's all true, then we would authorize that as a complaint.

and we can authorize mediation services to try to resolve it through a settlement agreement.

If that doesn't work, or we can even do informal dialogue as well.

It sort of depends on what the nature of the case is, what the complainant is seeking, that sort of thing.

But we usually try to resolve through alternative dispute resolution first.

If that's unsuccessful, then we move toward full investigation.

Once a case goes through investigation, you ask to get a good one because housing is a really particular one.

It has some different stipulations than do all the other protected activities.

But in the case of a housing discrimination complaint, once the investigation is complete, we render a finding as to whether or not there's reasonable cause to believe a violation of the ordinance took place.

If we find that there's no reasonable cause, the complainant has the ability to appeal that decision to the commission.

Commission can either uphold or overturn that decision.

If they overturn it,

They could potentially send it back to us and say, we need more information.

You need to investigate this more deeply.

We don't believe that the finding is supported.

Or they may say, we think this should go back to mediation.

There's a lot of things that could happen based on commission review.

Again, that's the public hearing piece of what they need to learn out of here.

If there's a finding of reasonable cause in a housing case in particular,

We'd be in consultation with city management and city attorney's office if it was approaching this The city is obligated to file a civil action on behalf of the complainant and that's that's part of what we call substantial equivalents to federal fair housing law which is a requirement of entering that Workshare with HUD and that's why that exists in the ordinance so that's really where the teeth would come in that's where the teeth would come in but again I

you know if there's a finding of reasonable cause a lot of times when this is in talking with other offices that do enforcement around the state most of the time if there's a finding of reasonable cause most parties will want to move to mediation especially the respondent because they may feel okay this is getting real it's going to either go in front of the commission for a vote as to whether or not to talk about it publicly or they could settle in court or I'm sorry in alternative dispute resolution like mediation

or in the case of housing, if either party says we're ready to go to court it goes straight to court and regardless the commission or the city attorney's office would file a civil action.

So there's different ways for remedy.

What the commission can't do is that they can't award damages nor can the office

We can't issue injunctive orders.

We can't work punitive damages.

We can't do any of those things.

That's left to the courts.

But we can do other things.

And they can sometimes, if it's something that city council has power over, they may say make a recommendation to council.

Like council, it may be good for you to address this through either a funding change or a budget change or something like that.

So those are different ways.

There's creative ways that they could address it.

But that's kind of the scope of it.

Sorry if that was confusing.

Yeah, it certainly has changed.

When I first got here, it must have been 30 years ago, I did it for the NAACP.

When complaints came to NAACP, one of the first things we had to do is find out if the individual had gone through.

At that time, it was a lot of companies that people felt that they were discriminated against.

We had to make sure that the train that we got from the state of NAACPs, they had to go through their company's grievance procedure first, you know, type of thing.

One question, one of the things mentioned in the report is the move to the new physical location, which you called out to have been good for collaboration, but has created a specific challenge in that your intake staff is essentially doing intake for three separate city departments.

Is there anything that could be done that would be

Yeah, it's a particular challenge just given that location, the structure of the space, which we had an idea that might happen and then saw how it would play out in reality.

You know, kudos to SOD for all the hard work and sort of fielding all the different visitors that come to the office.

We actually have some pretty

Brian Pinkston, Juandiego Wade, Lloyd Snook, Michael

there's unforeseen things that you'll have to deal with and we're working through that at the moment, but thanks for asking about it.

Okay, yeah.

Yeah, just it was interesting to read the report that within housing that disability is the most common protected class receiving complaints which

You know, perhaps it wasn't shocking, but it's not maybe not the first thing I or many people in the community think of when they think of housing discrimination yet.

Thank you.

Lloyd, anyone else have any questions?

You guys are rocking the roll.

Thank you so much.

The next item is the transit area strategic plan.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of council.

Garland was the director of Charlesbury Transit.

Have the pleasure of presenting to you our transit strategic plan.

This is a requirement by the state.

It's a legislative requirement that we have

our transit strategic plan adopted by June 30th.

This is a combination of work that's been gone over about 15 months now.

We're at the final stages.

We've had a lot of, I believe, public

interfacing and feedback.

I'm going to bring up to you today our consultants from Kimley Horn, Nicodomo and Sam Sink.

And I want to give a special shout out to Ben Chambers who has really helped me shuffer this thing along.

We've had some key positions in transit that weren't there and without Ben's help, I don't know if we would have made the timeline.

So thank you, sir.

All right.

Good evening, Mayor Wade, council members.

I'm glad to be here tonight.

My name is Nick Adamo.

I am a transportation planner at Kimley Horn and project manager of the consultant team that is supporting cats in the city on the development of the transit strategic plan.

As Garland mentioned, I'm joined by Sam Sink, my technical lead and task manager on this project, and we're grateful for the opportunity to brief you all on the TSP.

All right, we'll start with a brief overview of the TSP project and process and then walk you through the work we've completed today over the last year or so.

We'll then shift to the bulk of our content today, which focuses on the actual TSP document itself and what you can find in there.

And then we'll leave you with some next steps as we chart out our finalization and submission to the state.

Feel free to raise your hand if you have any questions as we go.

We'll leave some time at the end to have a discussion as needed.

So the Transit Strategic Plan document is a document that all transit agencies operating in the more urbanized areas of the Commonwealth are required to complete in order to ensure

that transit services are planned and implemented to meet current and future community needs.

The program is managed by the Virginia Department of Brown Public Transportation, DRPT, which has published guidelines that help agencies craft their TSPs and ensure consistency among them.

As a result, CATS TSP will serve as a strategic planning document, a blueprint of sorts, for service planning as well as operational and capital needs over the next 10 years.

And once complete, the TSP will replace CATS transit development plan previously required by DRPT from 2018 as the agency's key planning document that will guide improvements to our service over the next 10 years.

Throughout this process, we've been able to evaluate existing service and performance and development improvements that work to meet existing and projected needs and respond to changes in demand both current and future.

Overall, the process and outcomes of this planning effort will mean that CAT is prepared to better serve the region in the years to come.

So as Garland noted, we've made a lot of progress over the last year.

We kicked off the project last summer with a series of public engagement events and activities, including an online public survey and a series of pop-up events across the community.

Our public survey last summer got over 500 responses, which we were very pleased by, and helped us really refine our understanding of how current riders use and how they feel about the system, as well as really reinforce what rider priorities or improvements are.

We've also convened a stakeholder group made up of city and county staff from various departments, other local and regional transit agencies, state and regional partners, and representatives from key community institutions like UVA.

This group has guided us along the way and has helped us broaden the reach of our outreach and engagement efforts.

We also sought out the opinions and experiences of our frontline transit operators and staff who, of course, are essential in providing service day to day and know the needs of riders and our operational constraints and opportunities better than perhaps anyone.

All in all, this first phase of engagement last summer really helped us augment our technical data and evaluation and analyses and guide the development of our recommendations and service improvements.

are second phase of public and stakeholder engagement.

This spring focused on our full draft TSP document, and that included a four-week public review and comment period of the document that ended just last week.

We made the full draft document available for review online with an online feedback form that was used to collect comments on the draft document.

We received 23 comments on the draft document, 80% of which expressed support for the plan.

We also provided briefings to local and regional stakeholders, including Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission's Regional Transit Partnership and our TSP-specific stakeholder group.

Similar to what we're doing with you all today, to walk them through the contents of the plan, get their feedback, and really partner with them to help us spread the word and get feedback from their communities and constituents.

To further spread the word, we also launched a robust print and digital promotion campaign with posters at the downtown transit station, large format ads on board buses, social media posts to, again, let people know that this is out there.

We're looking for comments as we work to finalize it.

And we partnered with our stakeholder partners as well to further amplify that message.

All of this brings us here today, our briefing to council, which we see as a key near final step in our process.

I wanted to quickly touch on our public survey findings from last summer's public survey.

Unsurprisingly, folks told us that the most in-demand type of improvement was about frequency.

People want more frequent routes that will allow them to make better use of the system.

We also heard a lot about the need for expanded hours of operation service earlier in the day, later at night, both during the week and on weekends.

We also were able to reaffirm through this process that transit provides many different benefits to many different members of our community and people use transit for more than just getting to and from work.

Our survey respondents indicated that they ride cat as a safer, more cost and time efficient way to get around compared to driving and that people use the system not just to get to work but also to shopping, recreation, medical appointments, school, etc.

We also found it's pretty important to hear from folks who don't or cannot ride the bus today to understand why that might be and what it might take to get them on board.

Sorry, were these from the summer 2023 service?

and overall our work completed to date has brought us to our final draft TSP documents that we feel is technically sound and community informed.

So we'll now talk a bit more about the actual document itself.

There are a few key points that we think are really important to underscore here.

As I noted earlier, the TSP will serve as a blueprint for CAT as it works to improve and enhance service over the next 10 years.

Perhaps most importantly, the completion, council approval, and submission of this plan to the state to DRPT is required in order for CAT to be eligible for state funding.

and the plan chapter four and five lays out a forecast for what levels of funding will be needed in the future to make all of this happen.

Equally important to note is that this plan is non-binding and its approval does not lock us in to the recommendations forever nor the forecasts.

It doesn't mean sudden overnight changes for riders either.

The plan is designed to be flexible and can be adjusted in future updates.

and these future updates will include annual written updates that CAT makes to DRPT every year and more minor full document updates every five years.

And this type of flexibility is super important as CAT, other transit agencies across the Commonwealth and the country, frankly, are facing a lot of challenging, and the exciting as well, changes in terms of funding, technology, regional coordination, fair policy, et cetera.

So the TSP is made up of five main chapters, as well as an appendix.

Chapters one and two really seek to set the tone for the plan with the vision, goals, and in chapter two, an in-depth analysis of CATS current performance, as well as various factors that influence the demand for transit, including current and future land use, jobs, population, and the socio-demographic makeup of the community.

really to ensure that we're not only meeting the demand for transit, but providing transit for those in the community who need it the most.

Chapter three includes our planned service improvements, you know, how we're improving frequency, coverage, hours of operation, things like that.

And chapters four and five lay out how we will implement these improvements over time with details on implementation and financing.

So in the slides that follow, we'll dive a bit deeper into chapters three, four, and five, which are really the meat of the document.

So starting with our planned improvements found in Chapter 3 of the document.

We have identified 40 service improvements, many of which are taken from recent separate local and regional planning efforts, mainly CATS System Optimization Plan from 2021 and TJ PDC's Regional Transit Vision Plan from 2022.

Both these studies and these planning efforts were the outcomes of pretty quality planning processes and public and stakeholder engagement.

A lot of time and effort went into them.

And reflecting these recommendations in this transit strategic plan document will ensure that this past work continues to be documented and really sets a good stage for them to be implemented.

All service improvements are fiscally constrained, meaning that they must be aligned with funding that can be reasonably expected and grouped into one of three time frames, short term, bid term, and long term.

This is all in keeping with the DRPT guidelines for TSPs.

And these time frames span the next 10 years between fiscal year 2025 and 2034.

We've also included a number of what we call unconstrained improvements in projects, those that we don't yet have the funding for, but we want to document it because we feel strongly that they are needed in the future.

We've also included a number of non-service improvements for future consideration and study that we'll get into shortly.

So in the short-term bucket of improvements, what we can expect in the next one to four years, these improvements really represent the lowest hanging fruit in terms of what we can address and achieve and really serve the areas in our community with the highest ridership potential.

So this includes targeted updates to route alignments, where the routes go, as well as improving service frequencies in the weekday.

We will also continue the implementation of the micro-cats on-demand micro-transit pilot currently serving Pantops and Route 29 North areas of the county.

One example of a short-term improvement is on the screen here, in which we will split the existing Route 2 into two new routes to better serve the community.

And at the end of the short-term summary, at Year 4, we will have implemented most of CATS System Optimization Plan recommendations, and we will have 30% more service out on the streets compared to today.

And here is a full list of everything in that short-term bucket of improvements.

looking to the midterm, years four through eight, continuing our improvements to frequencies during the weekday and making some additional targeted route re-alignments.

Also looking to improve weekend frequencies during this timeframe, including the reintroduction of Sunday service across the system.

And one example here on the screen of a midterm improvement is shifting the alignment of the Route 9.

at the end of this midterm timeframe.

We will have completed all of the recommendations in the system optimization plan.

We will begin to implement recommendations from the regional transit vision plan and we will have 70% more service out on the streets compared to today.

And again, a full list of our midterm improvements is shown here on the screen.

And you'll find this in chapter three of the full TSP document with a lot more detail.

and finally our long-term improvements, years 8 through 10.

We will continue to improve our weekday frequencies so that all routes offer service every 30 minutes or better, emphasis on or better.

We really want to take what we heard.

and found from the community in our data analysis, which shows a lot of demand and need for more frequent service.

We'll also continue to improve our weekend frequencies, so much so that Sunday's service on most routes will have a matching span of service to that on Saturday, really for that consistent weekend service across the board.

An example of this shown on the screen is increasing frequency on the Route 8 to every 30 minutes.

This timeframe and the long term will continue to implement the Regional Transit Vision Plan recommendations.

And overall, once this is complete, the end of year 10 will have 110% more service on the streets compared to where we are today.

and again our full list of long term time frame improvements.

Our unconstrained improvements, things we don't yet feel confident that we can forecast the funding for, but we would love to do additional improvements to weekend service frequencies, reintroducing more Sunday service across the system, and continuing to tweak the alignments of routes and maybe extend some routes as well.

Our full list of unconstrained improvements are here.

That list you just heard encompasses our service recommendations, so improvements to the actual routes.

There are a number of other topics that we think are equally important from what we heard and what we found in the data.

We call these our non-service recommendations and we see these topics as pretty ripe for future study, consideration and assessment, improvements to the customer experience, transfer opportunities, internal processes like tracking and monitoring on time performance,

There's been a lot of discussion and activity around regional coordination, our fare policy, whether or not we introduce fares to ride the bus or keep it fare free.

This plan does not take a stance on that.

We've prepared scenarios that reflect both scenarios.

knowing that is a very robust discussion to come in the future and a number of other non-service recommendations that will continue to keep tabs on knowing that all in all these things as much as the service affect the rider experience and the quality of the system.

Thanks, Nick.

So in Chapter 4, we looked at what it would take to actually implement all of these service recommendations.

And obviously, we'll need some more vehicles to put all this extra service out on the street.

And in addition to that, we also have the scheduled replacement of the existing vehicles.

And so taking those two things together, we estimate that we would need to purchase approximately 74 new buses over the course of this 10-year plan.

that assumes that we are following federal guidelines related to transit asset management requirements and following the statewide transit asset management plan that DRPT has, which Cat is a member of.

and is beholden too.

So we also are assuming that any vehicle purchased after 2027 will be a zero emissions vehicle that is in keeping with the zero emissions feasibility study that's, you know, we wrapped up the feasibility portion of that this spring.

So that's in keeping with that.

And then in addition to the vehicles, there's also some capital needs that will be required in order to implement this additional service.

Primarily the existing cat facility will need to be upgraded and expanded to accommodate those additional vehicles as well as upgraded to be able to accommodate zero emissions vehicles.

and then from a kind of, you know, just service on the street perspective, you know, we did hear about the need for additional bus stop facilities, shelters, benches, trash cans.

Quick question.

In addition to the CAT facility, or maybe this is included in the CAT facility, would the downtown transit center be anticipated to need significant upgrades or changes in order to accommodate this growth in the fleet?

Just the Avon site part of the service recommendations in the realignment of some of the service is You know making downtown a little bit a little bit less of the focal point So we'd be putting some additional resources to you know more crosstown connections.

Yeah.

And so Chapter 5 deals with kind of the nuts and bolts of how we're going to program and pay for this ten-year plan.

So DRPT requires that the recommendations be financially constrained and the cost estimates and other details, you know,

To get it financially constrained, we're making some assumptions.

So DRPT does like to note to agencies that those details can be updated as conditions change.

None of this is stuck in time.

Those recommendations, they strive to maximize our use of federal and state resources.

We want to try to minimize that local contribution that's required for the base service and for the expansion of service.

The improvements, especially the frequency increases, do require some pretty significant increases in operational funding.

Again, we tried to make use of as many federal and state funding sources as possible to minimize that local

operational impact, but there are, especially in 2026 and beyond, you know, a need to increase the level of local support.

And that's not just because of the service expansion.

That is also in large part due to the transit ridership incentive program grant or trip that would be expiring in 2025.

And that helps to subsidize the fare free operations.

and then the Federal Cares Act will be unavailable after 2025 as well.

So that's part of why there is an uptick in costs in terms of the local funding starting in 2026.

Also want to note that the adoption of this plan is required by DRPT in order for CAT to receive future state funding and I believe the deadline for that is June 30th.

Thanks, Sam.

All right, so that's the bulk of our content for you today.

Yes.

Oh, I apologize.

I thought you all had access to the full document.

That's fine, yes.

Yes, also happy to provide the presentation, of course.

Additional light reading for you all.

Alright, so the past few months have been pretty productive.

In April, as I mentioned before, we had our briefing to the regional transit partnership, as well as our reconvening for the final time, our TSB stakeholder group.

Early last month we published the draft TSP as it exists online for public review and comments.

We've concluded our public comment period and we are now in the process of finalizing the documents.

And now we're in June, believe it or not, seeking Council's consideration for approving this plan in two weeks on your June 17th meeting so we can package everything up, get it to DRPT by June 30th and really

Look ahead to start implementing everything, which we're really excited about.

Sure.

Yeah, I don't really have too many questions.

I feel like a lot of this we've discussed before and obviously a non-binding required document.

I think it's good.

It's given us flexibility for significantly expanding services.

And I would guess for the first time, including zero emission goals as part of it.

So I feel comfortable and totally ready to support the document as presented.

I guess one question is just

with the Fair Free component that's called out that there are scenarios with and without Fair Free.

I'm curious if like transit agencies as we grow, are transit agencies seeing that Fair Free is significantly helping ridership or because it's obviously not a huge portion of our budget, but it seems like that's a decision council will need to make in the next year or so.

So I'm just thinking about it.

Great question.

It is a clear question.

So what we try to do is allow council to make the decision.

So you're going to have an opportunity to work with the Board of Supervisors, our Board of Supervisors, to make that decision about fare free because it affects them also.

If we turn the fares back on, we can't just turn it on in the city, what happened in the city and the county.

one of the things

and

In Richmond, there was a big push to get GRTC to go fare free.

They actually ponied up a significant more money to actually allow them to go fare free next fiscal year.

And they're having considerations about extending that.

They have seen a spike in ridership.

We have seen a spike in ridership, even though we're still running what we consider to be lifeline service.

So I believe it is helping.

Definitely.

Yeah, and my bias is I think it's a positive thing.

I think it helps make truly public transportation.

So hope we'll be thinking about and prepared for that as council in the next year or so.

Not a question, but the only other thought was just in the financial

Feasibility component of it, just the midterm about $10 million of new investment needed, long term $20 million, which on our own may be feasible but very difficult unless we really make it one of our top priorities as City Council.

But it just hit home how transformative it would be to have a regional transit authority with a dedicated funding source, which I know everybody is working towards, but it just really hit that point home even more.

You've said it many times and I've said it to this body before.

Eventually, a dedicated funding source will relieve the pressure off the general funds from the city and the county.

Ultimately, wherever you want to go, I don't think the general fund is going to be able to support that.

Hello.

I've got a quick follow-up to Michael's question about Fair Free and your response that we would have to talk with the county.

Does the county get a vote in that, or do we just chat with them?

Yes, they have a vote in the sense that they fund us.

So they are a funding partner, they are a crucial component to whether we turn it on or off.

So there does need to be discussions between the two legislative bodies about whether we continue the model we have now.

They were funding us before, they were part of the

the model allowing us to go fair free.

Right.

I wasn't trying to start a fight with them.

It's more that because right now you're the legislative body.

They buy service from us.

Right.

Yeah.

Okay.

Thank you.

And then right at the beginning,

Nick, you mentioned that this is all based on projected needs.

just demand for transit.

So we did a pretty robust demographic analysis.

We took census data.

We really looked at where the jobs and the population are today, where they will be projected to be in the future.

We looked at several different cross sections of the community where there are low income communities, people of color, zero car households, people that historically have a much greater need for and reliance on transit.

We map that out and we really just try to connect the dots, so to speak.

Make sure our provision of service, the lines on the map, the frequencies are really matching, not just the demand, but the actual need as well.

Sam, if you have any additional technical details?

Yeah, I think you might be better suited to talk about that.

Don't ask us about data.

We get excited about it.

Yeah, we used a tool called replica as well, which uses anonymized travel data, real world travel data, to see where people actually are traveling.

Okay, cool.

That's correct.

Okay, excellent.

But we also wanted to make sure we didn't leave any gaps.

So the plan evolves over making sure that there are no gaps in services and there are no areas that are left behind.

Right, yeah, yeah.

But that's based on the initial math.

Correct.

Yeah.

Okay, and then it's tweaked at the edges.

Okay, great.

Excuse me.

Yeah, I've seen various, this report in various stages for quite a while and it's really, I know it has to be gratifying to see it all kind of coming together so kudos on the good work and

It's, again, it seems like there's been a number of the different reports and unconstrained and constrained and all that.

It's sort of finally finding its way into a single document.

And I also like the fact that, at least from what I saw on the slides, that you've also integrated the component about the battery electric buses or whatever, the non

Yeah, the non-diesel buses.

So it looks like what we've got is like a really complete, integrated, tight report that we can move to move forward.

So I have a couple questions.

Yes, but it's not necessarily in this study.

So we are in conversations right now.

I'm waiting patiently.

It's not us.

I know.

So we are in conversations right now with the police department.

They have asked about occupying the space on the second floor of the transit center.

We are required as a transit agency to take the lease that we are going to and we had to send it to FTA and they sent it through their legal review process.

They tell us that could take up to six months.

We are quickly approaching that six month mark.

But we were also informed that the legal person who was doing our review has left the organization.

That was about two, three weeks ago.

But I was assured that they're still going to make their time, Frank.

So with that said, FTA.

The reason we have to have FTA is because, and I think I need to make sure the public and everyone on this dais understands,

The transit facility is the city's on paper.

16% came from the state and only 4% came from us.

Because of that funding model, they own the property.

If we were ever to sell the property, the proceeds do not come back to the city.

The proceeds go back to the federal government.

They helped us to buy the land acquisition and construct the building.

It is technically their property.

I'm not sure what the process would be.

We would have to figure that out.

It would amount to that, but it's very complicated.

I don't think I've ever seen that happen.

So the question that you're posing, normally when they put

that level of funding in a project, it's going to be there until it's... It's not that they like fronted it and were paying it back and gradually it becomes more and more hours over the time.

Well, obviously there were decisions made when that was built that some of us might now say were not wise.

Well, you will have, if we are able to secure approval to move forward with the plan, PD will be on the mall level.

And we have in FY25 budget approved the return of customer service representatives that would actually resource the first floor again.

So the building would go back live.

If these two things can come together at the same time, the entire building would be activated.

It's the Professional Standards Bureau, so the Fourth Amendment Analysts and Investigations.

So it's office-based?

Yeah, office-based.

I don't want to minimize the bike team would operate out of that space as well.

And we've also talked about being able to stage support for community activities on the mall.

And additionally, we want to have a presence, a police presence at the transit center for walkthroughs and in general.

Because we have seen a little bit of an uptick in some matters concerning some incidents that are happening.

And it brings back another set of bathroom usages past 5 p.m.

Correct.

It is.

It's been empty almost a year and a half, almost two years now.

Since I'm out at Ava.

So with that said, please come see me.

I want to show you our facility because part of what we, the group that we were able to take to Champaign, Urbana, the facilities there were breathtaking.

And we want to make sure you understand where we are and the development that we are, that we have development plans.

We actually have preliminary funding for improvements, significant improvements at the CAT facility.

That's part of this report is improvements to that.

I do want to make a quick point.

I mentioned this to Simon Lloyd last week, but I really liked actually how the buses that were new went out without stickers yet, because then you could tell that they were the new buses.

So you got to see like, hey, these are the ones that are out there.

They are being added to the fleet.

The other question relates kind of to the use of the downtown transit facility.

One of the things that I was impressed with in going out to Champaign Urbana

was the notion that at their transit center they had things, screens showing you when the next bus was due, and they actually appeared to be correct.

and I'm wondering what it's going to take to get something like that.

I'll tell you, the times I've tried to ride the cat bus, more times than not, the bus has not been where it was supposed to be.

The app hasn't told us when it was going to be there, even within a half an hour of accuracy.

Yes, so thank you for the observation.

We share your concerns.

We have concerns about the software packages that we're using.

We're assessing that now.

The goal would be to submit a grant application in the coming year to change our software that allows us to be real time as opposed to predictive, because that's what it is now.

and Michael Payne.

It's supposed to be there, and all of a sudden you look at your app and say it's two minutes away, and no bus is coming.

That's because the schedule said it's supposed to be there, but there's no bus.

When we do real time, which basically we're turning each vehicle into almost like a cell phone.

So the system actually pings it, and you would actually see real time where it is.

That is a little bit expensive, but I believe it's in there, it's any.

And then the last question I had is to what extent in this planning process has anybody attempted to look say five years in advance to say we've got all these places being built out 29 North we should be doubling the service to 29 North?

I'm going to make sure I say this correctly.

The cat as a city department

can only basically highlight where we think it needs to happen.

We have more control over potential service changes in the city, not the county.

We have to have conversations with the county about not that they have not been at the table, but making sure that everybody's on board about putting in service enhancements into the county as they expand their model.

They have been at the table, so I will say they are a willing partner.

We are talking.

But it's not as if I can put it in.

We're going to do it.

They've got to fund it.

So until that model changes, CAT has to go to the legislative body and them about funding where we go.

We want to do more service.

Every time we need to do more service, we need more vehicles and more bodies.

Thank you.

When it comes to anticipating future growth, that's a big benefit to this planning process.

We looked at current land use, population employment data, and projected out until 2040, I believe.

We have that data mapped on where population growth is expected.

We have that mapped and documented in the report.

So we're really trying to be proactive and not reactive.

Lloyd, do you remember what the system was that provided the screen in the updates?

I wanted to check because I noticed a screen like that at an actual stop when I was visiting Lynchburg a while ago and we talked about it at RTP.

So it's like a solar panel on a pole with a screen that updates and it's live.

for where the, and so I got that company name and we were talking about it, but something that, this is just some background for everyone who doesn't go to RTP.

We would love to be able to coordinate with UTS and all the services so that you could have potentially one app that shows you where all the buses are instead of having to have one for UTS and one for CAT and all of that, so.

So I just had kind of one comment and you know because I when I was doing planning for the county and I was the one representing the county to do

expand transit in the county and it was kind of cumbersome process that sounds like hasn't changed much.

But one of the things that would happen during this process is that we would get all types of requests for people right now that are, you know, there will be SOVs, you know, and, you know, they said, yeah, if you put it there, I would use it.

and we would do it or go to the city because I was with the county and of course they wouldn't, they wouldn't, I mean because it's, you know, because we talk about roads, we don't kind of go in this type of detail.

It's just like, you know, VDOT will build the road, they will maintain it for life and it's, they pave it every few years even if it doesn't need it.

And so what are we doing to make sure that, you know, we're,

Great question.

So the study process that we just went through kind of hopefully ensures that we are getting it right.

But also it is our goal

as an organization to not just put a shell of a service out, that when we put service out, it is done to a point where people would, it would be useful for people to use it.

Putting an hour service out is a band-aid.

It's hard for people to use the service, and if I miss the service, I have to wait another hour.

So minimum standards of having 30-minute service has the ability to entice people to try to use service.

If you get beyond that lesser, meaning 20-minute service or 15-minute service, now you have really robust service, which makes it really convenient for folks to use your service.

We're not there yet.

Building a standard to at least 30 minutes on every single route, county is the first step.

And then look at where the majority of our activities happen first, turn those dials up, get 15-minute servers or 20-minute service.

Then we will see, I believe, our ridership model spike.

And then that leads to other opportunities for us to potentially garner more state funding, which means we can actually add more service.

to that scope.

Got it.

Thank you, guys.

So the only thing I will say is the 17th, we will have a resolution that will come before you that allows you to basically adopt this plan or authorize this plan so we can get it to the state.

So on the 17th, we will see that coming for you.

Thank you so much.

Yes, sir.

Pursuant to Section 2.2-3712 of the Virginia Code, I hereby move that City Council close this open meeting and convene in a closed session as authorized by Virginia Code Section 2.2-3711, A3 and A641, discussion and consideration of the acquisition of real property

for a public purpose where discussion in an open meeting would adversely affect the bargaining position or negotiating strategy of the public body.

And two, discussion and consideration of the investment of public funds where competition or bargaining is involved, where if made public initially, financial interests of the city would be adversely affected.

It's our second.

Second.

Please vote.

Okay, motion passes.

City Council is now in closed session.

We'll return at 6.30.

And for those that are following by Zoom, we will, there's a separate link for that.

So see you again in about an hour.

Thank you, everyone, for coming.

I'll call the general business meeting to order.

Yes.

Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, can we vote please?

Motion passes five to zero.

We are going to have a moment of silence.

It's been a busy week.

They actually came in this afternoon.

The first one is from the city treasurer.

The treasurer's office would like to remind taxpayers that the 2024 first half tax deadline for real estate and personal property taxes

is Wednesday, June 5th.

Taxes can be paid in person by mail over the phone or on the city's website.

Taxpayers can pay online using e-check free of charge by visiting www.Charlottesville.gov.

Please contact the city's treasurer's office prior to the deadline if you have not received a tax bill.

And the second one is from Commissioner of the Revenue.

Charlottesville's Commissioner of Revenue would like to remind businesses who collect meals tax or transient occupancy tax of recently enacted rate changes for those two taxes.

The new rates will be effective on July 1st, 2024.

For businesses in the food industry, the food and beverage tax or meals tax will increase to 7% from the current rate of 6.5% effective July 1st, 2024.

The first return that should reflect the rate increase is for the month of July 2024, due August 20th.

For businesses in the hotel, motel, or short-term lodging industry, the rate will increase to 9% from the current rate of 8% effective July 1st.

The first return that should reflect the rate increase is for the month of July 2024, due August 20th.

Please update your point of sale or accounting software accordingly.

Thank you.

Before we go on to proclamations, I just want to make an announcement that the beloved brother passed away last week on Male Walker of Male's Dino on Main Street.

We will be preparing a proclamation to be read at his funeral on Saturday.

He was a father, a brother, an uncle, a friend.

and a blessing to everyone that knew him.

He was a 2014 Chuck Lewis Passion Award winner.

He was the owner of Males Cafe for almost 40 years.

It's one of those places that if anyone came to Charlottesville and they wanted a good soul food place or a good place to eat, Males was the place that you took them.

It was a place where you could go and see professionals, laborers, the whole cross section of the community.

stopped there for a bite to eat.

He provided food for different sports programs.

I know as we are preparing for 100 Black Men, our summer camp for M-Cube, he provided meals for all of our meetings and all of our summer programs.

He was just part of our program.

So we are really lost by that.

He hired individuals in the community that may have had a challenging background or legal backgrounds.

He gave everyone a shot.

And I could go on and on about the things

We're going to celebrate his life Saturday at First Baptist Church on Park Street.

It's at 11 o'clock.

And it's just a great, great loss.

And I just wanted to say that we're still kind of working with the families, the family to get everything in order for the proclamation.

But we will be reading it at his funeral on Saturday.

So I just wanted to publicly, publicly acknowledge that.

what he meant to the community.

So thank you for allowing me to say that.

So we have some proclamation.

Natalie, before you read, her sport, I just want to say a couple of words about Ms.

Carter, who is here, that what she's done to uplift

Women in Women's Sports in the community is awesome.

She's tireless.

She does so much in the community.

And I just wanted to take the opportunity to publicly thank you because you just toil behind the scenes.

You never ask for recognition.

You just do the work to uplift women in women's sports.

And I just want to thank you for your work.

You can go ahead.

I just want to add some lean to your message about Mills Cafe.

That's where my mom and I would go when I was very small and our little secret girl dates leave the boys at home.

And likewise, just on top of what everybody else has said, I just wanted to highlight from what I understand, his family has created a GoFundMe to try to help keep Mills Cafe open as well as other arrangements.

And if you just googled,

This is for HER Sports.

Whereas HER Sports, founded by Jessica Carter, CEO, is a program that uses sports as a blueprint for girls to succeed in life, with a mission to provide a holistic experience that will create positive youth development and overall health and wellness.

Whereas girls drop out of sports at a rate two times out of boys by age 14.

By the age of 17, more than half will quit playing sports altogether, and 56% of girls do not participate in sports.

Whereas female athletes often must work harder to gain respect, to gain interest, and to gain support and media exposure Whereas her sports seeks to overcome obstacles and break down barriers such as gender stereotypes, high costs, lack of access, lack of social life, lack of female coaches, balancing academics, body image, and lack of confidence Whereas her sports is grounded on the core values of hustle

Health is wealth, unity is community, strive for excellence, trust the process, lead the next, and earn respect.

Whereas her sports recently held an awards ceremony to acknowledge the accomplishments of local female athletes and coaches in Charlottesville and surrounding counties through community nominations and voting.

Jessica, would you like to say anything?

No, thank you so much for this honor.

I'm actually, thank you so much.

I'm actually a resident.

was born and raised in Charlottesville.

So I am a walking blueprint of what sports I've done.

I've done a lot within the community.

I do a lot of mentorship.

So I thank you all.

If you would love to hear more, I would love to sit down with any one of you all to discuss more about what we provide in the community.

So thank you all.

Thank you so much.

So next is a proclamation recognizing gun violence awareness day, June 7th, 2024.

Whereas every day more than 120 Americans are killed by gun violence and more than 200 are shot and wounded with an average of more than 18,000 gun homicides every year.

And Americans are 26 more times more likely to die by gun homicide than people in other high income countries.

And whereas Virginia has 1,121 gun deaths every year with a rate of 12.8 deaths per 100,000 people, a crisis that costs the state $14.2 billion each year of which $288.3 million is paid by taxpayers,

Virginia has the 36th highest rate of gun deaths in the U.S.

And whereas gun homicides and assaults are concentrated in cities with more than half of all firearm related gun deaths in the nation occurring in 127 cities.

And cities across the nation, including Charlottesville, are working to end the senseless violence with evidence based solutions.

and whereas support for the Second Amendment rights of law abiding citizens goes hand in hand with keeping guns out of the wrong hands.

and recognizing the increase in homicides and other violence involving firearms and increased calls to domestic violence hotlines.

And whereas in January 2013, 15-year-old Hedaya Pendleton was tragically shot and killed in Chicago and on June 7th, 2024, to recognize the 27th birthday of Hedaya Pendleton, who was born on June 2nd, 1997, people across the United States will recognize National Gun Violence Awareness Day

and Wear Orange in tribute to the memory of Hedaya Pendleton, other victims of gun violence and the loved ones of those victims.

And whereas the idea was inspired by a group of Hedaya's friends who asked their classmates to commemorate her life by wearing orange, choosing this color because hunters wear orange to announce themselves to other hunters when out in the woods, and orange is a color that symbolizes the value of human life,

and whereas anyone can join this campaign by pledging to wear orange on June 7th, the first Friday in June of 2024 to help raise awareness about gun violence and whereas we renew our commitment to reduce gun violence and to pledge to do all we can to keep firearms out of the wrong hands while supporting responsible gun ownership to help keep our families and communities safe

Now therefore be it resolved that the Charlottesville City Council declares June 7th, 2024 to be Gun Violence Awareness Day in the City of Charlottesville to honor and remember all victims and survivors of gun violence and to declare that we as a city must do more to reduce gun violence.

We encourage all Charlottesville residents to support local efforts to prevent gun violence and to honor and value human lives.

Good evening, everyone.

I'm Trisha Howell, and I'm a volunteer leader with Moms Demand Action.

And I am honored to be here to accept this proclamation.

I just want to say thank you all, Mayor Wade and counselors for your work on reducing gun violence in our city and our counties and communities across the United States.

We wear orange on this day to recognize those who have been impacted by gun violence.

And we just want to thank you all again for all your efforts in helping to reduce it.

We, as mom's demand action and other gun violence prevention groups, look forward to working with you all.

further to continue to reduce gun violence.

So thank you so much.

Thank you, Trish.

As you take your seat, we, at least I do, get letters from high school students.

As part of the English class, we're there to write on something that they're passionate about.

And a majority of my letters that I received this year was about gun violence, about the availability of guns in the community.

And it's a concern of theirs.

9th, 10th, and 11th graders.

And so it was difficult letters because I responded to each and every one of them, specifically or personally.

And so it's something that our young people are definitely aware of and they're concerned about.

So thank you again for your effort, Trish.

So thank you.

The next one is me.

whereas despite advances in medical technology and research, men continue to live at an average of five years less than women with Native American and African American men having the lowest life expectancy and whereas educating the public and health care providers about the importance of lifestyle

and the early detection of male health problems will result in reducing rates of mortality from disease and whereas the Commonwealth of Virginia Men's Health Month will focus on broad range of men health issues including heart disease, mental health, diabetes, prostate, testicular and colon cancer and whereas residents are encouraged

to understand the importance of positive health attitudes and preventive health care practices while increasing awareness of importance of healthy lifestyle, regular exercise and medical checkups.

Now for the City of Charlottesville City Council, recognize June

2024 is Men Health Month in the City of Charlottesville and we're called and observance to this, to that attention to our residents.

Sign on this date, Mayor Juan Diego Wade.

Whereas all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights, and whereas lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual individuals have had immeasurable impacts on the cultural, civic, and economic successes of our country, state, and city.

And whereas the City of Charlottesville is committed to supporting visibility, dignity, and equality for LGBTQIA plus people in our diverse community,

and whereas the LGBTQIA plus community continues to be a target of violence, harassment and discrimination and yet continues to thrive through the efforts of the community itself and through the support of the LGBTQIA plus affirming agencies and individual allies and whereas support for LGBTQIA plus equality continues to grow, education and awareness remain vital to ending discrimination and prejudice against LGBTQIA plus people

And whereas because of the acts of courage of the millions of people who have come out and who have demanded justice, our Commonwealth and community have made great strides in recognizing that love is love and that no person should be judged by anything but the content of their character.

And whereas celebrating Pride Month influences awareness and provides support and advocacy for Charlottesville's

and

Thank you very much.

So after all of that very lovely uplifting talk, I get to do this.

Coming out of the closed session, this has to do with boards and commissions.

So Mr. Philip Garber, his appointment to the Retirement Commission has been rescinded.

Second.

I'll vote.

Thank you.

We're now on the matter for community matters, so there's only one registered speaker, leaving 15 slides for additional speakers from the community.

Each speaker will have up to three minutes to speak.

We're now open the floor.

Is the first speaker available?

It's Saif Oflin.

Did I get it right?

All right.

Hello.

I'm Cy Wolflin.

I am a climate justice policy manager with the Community Climate Collaborative, C3.

I'm new to C3.

I'm new to Charlottesville.

I'm new to Virginia.

Thank you so much.

So C3 has engaged with the transit strategic plan by offering the community a set of talking points to guide their feedback from the perspective of equity and climate justice.

I was glad to hear earlier in the presentation a note that trash cans are considered with bus stop improvements.

It's a small and often overlooked feature that represents how robust transit systems provide services beyond just moving people from place to place.

We celebrate the expectation that from the beginning of 2027, CAT will no longer purchase any new diesel buses.

Kickstarting its transition to 100% zero emission bus fleet.

As the councillors are aware, C3 has been heavily involved in advocating for this transition to occur as soon as possible.

So this is a very welcome indication of the city's commitment to reducing community

Greenhouse gas emissions which are especially high from transportation.

The TSP outlines an objective to increase service on all routes to every 30 minutes at a minimum with select services on high volume routes increasing to every 15 minutes, along with a limited reintroduction of Sunday service.

As long as these buses achieve high occupancy and reliability, the combination of transitioning to zero emission buses and increased service

could move Charlottesville closer to a clean and decarbonized economy.

C3 is especially glad to see that the TSP advocates for mixed-use planning, which is foundational for a successful public transit network.

C3 supports transit-oriented development and smart growth for Charlottesville and celebrates this indication that transit and planning will be more closely interlinked in future developments.

The city has not yet decided whether to reintroduce fares after the cessation of the DRPT trip funding for a fare-free travel

which will happen in July 2026.

I was glad to hear Garland note that in his opinion fair free is a very important positive for CATS ridership and service.

We're glad to note the plan investigates the negative impacts of any reintroduction affairs which would result in a 10% drop in ridership and reduce CATS portion of competitive funding under state programs such as merits operating assistance.

This is especially important in light of regional authorities like the GRTC's state of commitment to continue offering free fairs

supplemented by partnerships with businesses that benefit from transit access.

C3, thanks, Cat and the city staff for their work in designing a plan with equity focus service improvements and a collaborative climate forward vision.

Thank you very much, Ms.

Ophelin.

That's the only registered speaker anyone else like to speak.

Consent agenda number three minutes from the May 16th through the 18th site visit to Champaign Urbana, Illinois.

for resolution and there are three resolutions for approving the 2024 to 25 annual action plan for CDBG and home programs and appropriation of associated CDBG funds approximately $438,617 and associated home funds of approximately $83,016 second reading.

Number five, resolution to appropriate

$130,713 from the 2024 City Climate Protection Program, Program Support Grant with LEAP, and there are two related resolutions.

The first is a resolution to reallocate 2024 Climate Protection Program Support Grant funding.

And the second is a resolution to authorize the city manager's signature.

for the Memorandum of Understanding between the City and the Local Energy Alliance Program for grant funds to support the Climate Protection Program and promote energy performance improvements.

Six, resolution to appropriate $172,182 from the Virginia Department of Social Services to serve clients who are receiving auxiliary grants, adoption assistance, and independent living services.

One of two readings.

Seven, resolution considering a sidewalk waiver request for, I'm sorry, we moved that one to the end of the meeting.

Number eight, resolution appropriating $7,988 received from the Virginia Department of Social Services for the percentage of income payment program, one of two readings.

Nine, resolution to reallocate tax and rent relief budgets.

Ten, resolution to transfer $9,064,000

Could I ask a quick question, Madam Clerk?

So I was not in participation with the trip with Champaign Urbana.

No question, but just wanted to highlight because I think the community can look over the consent agenda, but the leap item I think is just worth highlighting for the community in that if I'm reading it right, it's investing in a community energy resource hub together with C3 jointly funded by the city and county.

That's something that we've talked about several times over the years and that hub would help people

Navigate actually getting energy efficiency or renewable energy installed in their homes.

Please vote.

passes five to zero.

Yes, sir.

We have one item of update from each of the deputies who's present.

I wanted to make sure community and city council was aware that Carson Recreation will be hosting its first Sunday, sundown community celebration.

and Booker T. Washington Park on Sunday, June 9th from 12 to 2 p.m.

That includes free swimming at the pool and activities on the lawn that are free for anyone to come, families, individuals, anyone that would like to have a great time.

And Booker T. Washington Park is located at

1001 Preston Avenue and there is parking available next to the swimming pool or at the lower level of the park.

Thank you very much.

Good afternoon, Council.

I wanted to remind the Council and the public about something that was in a previous report.

And that is that the Charlottesville Albemarle SPCA has terminated the existing agreement that the city and the county have with them.

That termination will be effective in March of 2025.

They're interested in continuing to have a positive relationship with both the city and the county, but they allege that the funding mechanism that the current agreement has is, excuse me,

and

on behalf of the city, have a meeting with the county and the SCCA to kind of understand their operations a little bit better, kind of what they're involved in, what contributes to their costs, understand a little bit more about the 3,000 animals that come through their shelter on the public side to figure out if there is some sort of gap that we can close before March of next year.

But it is significant.

It could potentially have some pretty significant budget impacts.

Yeah, we're meeting every four to five weeks, continuing to have conversations.

Admittedly, it's a little slow moving at this point.

It's a lot of, you know, they have a new executive director, so we're kind of getting to know her and her team and more about their operations.

When you walk into a meeting and terminate a contract and say this costs us four and a half million dollars and the city is contributing 300,000, well that's a big difference.

There's a lot to learn, a lot to try to figure out and hopefully a lot of progress that can be made.

Adding to the challenges, they run on a calendar year budget so they're hoping to kind of understand the city's commitment way sooner than we would be able to normally provide that because we run obviously on a fiscal year budget.

It's very concerning to hear particularly in light over the past year or so the significant concerns from the community and allegations about potential misconduct at the Charlottesville SPCA.

That's certainly on the table.

We haven't discussed that specifically, but certainly if they're invited, I'm sure they will come and make presentation.

As I said earlier, at this point, it's a lot of kind of getting to know each other, trying to understand their operations.

We have talked about the findings that they experienced last year and heard about the corrective actions that they're taking and kind of how those things happened.

Thank you.

And just for

Clarification, the reason why we have a contract with them is because we are required by the state to provide animal services.

That's correct.

The city is required by state law to provide certain services that the SPCA does provide.

In addition, there are other services that they provide that I think we would all generally agree are good things.

You know, for instance, for stray cats, you know, they'll trap those cats into the trap due to release.

The SPCA relationship is City County SPCA.

We would also want to make sure that the county is being briefed on it at the same time so that the same information is made available because we're all going to be at this negotiating table when it's all said and done.

But we'll definitely bring that forward.

Thank you.

One other thing, well, two other things.

Deputy Freese is not here because he has a child graduating, so congratulations.

That wasn't really meant to be in my report, but I just thought I'd say that.

But the item that I do have is just wanted to share for the public brief counsel on this notion of a new initiative that I was going to launch.

But this afternoon, I launched a transparency portal on the city's website.

And the purpose of this is for me to be able to share critical information with the public on matters of significant interest.

We will, from time to time, feature things we want you to know about and highlight their availability in this location.

I've started this initiative with a letter from me on what transparency means to me.

I've asked that the three collective bargaining agreements for police fire and transit be placed there, which was done this afternoon.

I also asked for a link to Inside Charlottesville, the city's public affairs program that we relaunched last month.

and that's a show where I have a regular segment and will continue to produce material that is intended to inform the public and create opportunities for you to connect with us as well.

So just wanted to be able to share that information with you and then basically say keep going to that page and take a look at what's there.

The goal is to continue to feed the kinds of information that we know the public is interested in having.

One of the next things that I'm anticipating placing there would be the sidewalk list.

That is the one thing that people have been asking me about for a long time.

When are we going to get all these different sidewalks done?

So as we finish the work to prioritize that, I plan to put that list there and you'll be able to take a look at the schedule and what we plan to do over the next year, two years, depends on how we lay that out.

So just wanted to share that as the last item and just let you all know that

Yes, thank you.

If you read the letter, I say that.

Yes.

Consistent.

Belmont Bridge.

Yes.

Go ahead.

I don't have it in front of me.

There's no information about what time that is or anything else.

It's probably still TAD.

Yes, I'm sure they are.

It should be a fireworks display.

It should be.

It's 11 a.m.

I'm sorry.

That's a good point too.

It's actually happening.

Yes, it is happening.

Thank you.

So now we any other questions or comments?

So, good evening, Mayor and Counselors.

I'm Lauren Hildebrand.

I'm the Director of Finance.

Chris Cullinan, I'm sorry.

I'm the Director of Finance.

I'm the Director of Chilities.

Chris Cullinan is also with us who's the Director of Finance.

And we're going to, we're gladly presenting our annual utility rate report this evening.

And I'm going to go first and go over the operations overview and then

Chris is going to follow up with all the financial information.

Sorry about that oversight.

And I'm going to try to now do this slide thing.

A little bit about the water distribution wastewater collection system.

We have over 14,500 customers we serve.

We deliver 4.5 million gallons of water every day.

We maintain 170 miles of water mains, 168 miles of wastewater lines,

and last year we addressed over 7,400 work orders.

So these are customers request when they need maintenance on their system and we respond from a staff standpoint.

It also tracks the maintenance.

To review water quality, which we care a lot about, we complete an annual customer satisfaction, a customer confidence report every year.

And this is in compliance, to be in compliance with the Virginia Department of Health.

It was just recently prepared.

The 2024 report is found on the city's website.

And we, along with Ravana, do hundreds of samples on the drinking water.

and it indicates that the quality of our drinking water meets and exceeds all regulatory requirements and expectations for safety and reliability.

I also want to talk a little bit about our lead service line inventory.

In the last 18 months, EPA requires all water providers to inventory their water service lines, whether it be public or private on the private side.

within their system and identify any lead service lines that may exist.

And this was really in response to what happened in Flint, Michigan years ago.

And I'm very happy to say that we have no lead service lines in the city's public system.

But in the fall of 2023, we began exploratory excavation

of nearly 400 high-risk homes to confirm whether they have lead at all.

So far, we've completed over half of those and no lead's been found.

And I just want to thank the community of those 400 homes that, you know, we have to get on their property and we get permission to get on their property and then we excavate near their meter and we, you know, do a small excavation to get down to their service line to indicate what pipe type they have.

So far,

of the Project Zealand Track to meet the EPA deadline of October 2024.

Talk about the stormwater system.

We have 15,000 billable customers and we maintain over 8300 stormwater structures, 130 miles of line and 460 outfalls.

a little bit about the stormwater system priorities.

Our top priority is asset management.

And we implement this through our capital improvement program by taking projects off our stormwater master plan that include water quality or other things or long-term drainage improvements that need to be done.

Along with that, we're most keen on regulatory compliance through implementation of our MS-4 permit.

And that acronym stands for Municipal Separate Storm Sewer Permit, where the MS-4 comes from.

We do not have a combined sewer system, which we're happy about.

We've got a separate storm, separate sewer system.

We also have M and House crews that concentrate on planned maintenance and emergency repairs associated with stormwater.

And prior to 2008, we found there was very little replacement on our water, wastewater, stormwater assets.

And we began a very aggressive capital improvement program at that time to address the aging infrastructure.

And we recognize that if we didn't do this, that and council was very graciously approving this program at the time, and they've continued to prove, approve the program as we progress through the years.

We realized that the system could easily fall and disrepair because it was not in very good shape.

To date, on the water side, we've replaced over 24 miles of the system, and we've spent over $30.6 million.

On the wastewater side, we've rehabilitated or replaced over 40% of the wastewater system, and we've spent over $36 million on storm.

We've rehabilitated or replaced over 14.7 miles of the system, and we've spent about $11.8 million.

want to talk a little bit about Ravana Water and Sewer Authority.

They're the authority that provides our water treatment and our wastewater treatment.

And they've got some very large community water supply projects that are about ready to get started that they're in the planning or design phase.

And I want to just touch on Ravana a little bit because Chris is going to review when he goes over the rates that Ravana

Costs make up over 50% of our water and sewer rates and a great portion of that

is the debt service associated with these projects.

And three of the major projects that they're getting ready to start is the South Ravenna Reservoir to Raggedor Mountain Reservoir Pipeline and Pump Station project.

This is a project they anticipate to complete in 2030, cost over $80 million.

And it is to transfer water from the South Ravenna Reservoir to the Ragged Mountain Reservoir.

And it'll give them a lot of flexibility when it comes to meeting our water supply.

We also have the Ragged Mountain Reservoir to Observatory Water Treatment Pipeline and Pump Station Project.

And this replaces the pipes and pump station that convey water from the Observatory Reservoir.

to the Ragged Mountain Reservoir because those facilities are very old.

They're over 100 years old and they've seen their end of their useful life.

We also have the Central Waterline Project that this is five miles of 24 inch 30 inch waterline that's mainly located in the city and it's to connect the Observatory Water Treatment Plant to Longstreet or along 250.

and they over the last year along with the city participation have met with all the neighborhoods that are being impacted by this project to explain what's going to happen.

Right now they're completing the design and they anticipate construction could begin as early as next year.

These show some of the forecast that Ravana gives us over the next five years.

This shows their increases associated with water and sewer and how

they could potentially impact the city and what their proposal is for the city.

Sorry, just real quickly.

So is that showing the percent increase in their CIP budget and then percent increase of rate that would be passed on to the city?

This is just their general increase.

There's financial forecast that they put together a forecast so we can do our forecast.

No, it's not.

It's not.

But that's just to give you a little flavor.

They've got a pretty hefty CIP that makes up over 50% of their budget so that they're implementing right now.

in the Department of Utilities does a customer satisfaction survey every year and we're very pleased with the results year to year and we

You know, we find generally they're pretty stable.

Some of them tick up a little bit, but from a reliability standpoint, people think their water service is very reliable 100% that they're satisfied and neutral.

Regarding sanitary sewer service, they find that their sanitary sewer service is very reliable and they're 98% satisfied and neutral.

The value we saw tick up a little bit on water, sewer, and natural gas.

and the value they pay for their water service is 99% where it's excellent, good and fair and sewer service is 95% excellent, good and fair.

A little overview of our natural gas system.

As most of you know, we have gas that we provide in the city as well as the growth areas of Alamoire County.

We serve 21,050 customers

We maintain 340 miles of gas main lines, 304 miles of gas service lines, 36 regulator stations.

We addressed over 10,000 work orders last year based on customer requests or maintenance that needed to be done on this system.

I mentioned earlier with regard to the water, sewer and storm water.

Prior to 2008, we did very little on those systems, unlike natural gas, where in the late 90s and the early 2000s, we replaced every bit of the system except for the West Main Street area.

I want to note that we are getting ready.

We're in design of replacing the last mile of legacy cast iron pipe that's located in West Main.

We were fortunate last year to get a federal grant over $7 million to fund that replacement project and we anticipate basically the project for the line goes from McIntyre Road on West Main through the corner and we anticipate construction could start as early as next year this time.

A little bit about our customer satisfaction survey for natural gas, reliability.

People think that their natural gas service is reliable, 99% are satisfied and neutral, and the value that they pay for their natural gas service is 99% excellent, good and fair.

We also ask a question about how important it is to have gas available to your home, and 89% are extremely very or somewhat important to have gas available to their home.

As most of you know, we're in the middle of completing a decarbonization study and because we have a fossil fuel utility we felt that we should look at a decarbonization study

so that we can align with the city's climate action goals.

We anticipate it will be completed in the fall of this year.

In the meantime, we are holding community listening sessions to hear what people think about the decarbonization study.

And we have these listening sessions scheduled for July 9, 16, and August 22.

People are welcome to sign up to get information on these listening sessions and sign up for these.

two of these sessions will be virtual and one will be in person, but they're welcome to scan the QR code and we'll make sure they get on the list to attend.

But we recognize that the decarbonization study won't be done until the fall, but we have some short term actions that we're going to implement in FY 2025.

We are proposing a new gas connection fee starting in January of 2025 and you'll hear

more about that on the next agenda item.

New weatherization program is planned to be launched in the fall or winter of 2024.

We're evaluating the existing rebates.

We're partnering with the Office of Sustainability to select the annual carbon offset projects.

And we're increasing the frequency of our ever-popular energy saving tree program.

We usually do this in the spring so far.

We've given away over the last three years 700 trees.

You've never seen so many happy people when they're

given a free tree and they can strategically plant this tree so it provides the most energy efficiency for their home.

But we're expanding this to also be in the fall so people have an opportunity for free trees twice a year.

We also have an online billing pay service.

This was based on input from our customer satisfaction survey.

In October 2021, we launched a new bill, pay portal, and it offers paperless billing, pay by text, and enhanced automatic payment options.

More than 12,500 customers have already signed up.

for Paperless Billing and over 4,350 have registered for auto pay and based on our customer satisfaction survey, 98% are satisfied and neutral with our payment portal.

I will say along with this program, we do an utility e-newsletter that was launched in coordination with this bill paid portal and we have over 10,000 subscribers

of which we see a really high open rate.

That's how you kind of tell whether your message is effective in a very low unsubscribe rate.

Thank you, Lauren.

Good evening.

My name is Chris Cullard.

I am the city's director of finance, Lauren.

I don't know.

Being the director of utility sounds kind of cool.

And she's doing such a great job.

She gets to play with better toys.

She does.

So she's described for you this evening the planning, the expertise, the sort of human capital it takes to operate the city's utilities.

But it also requires adequate financial resources.

So I'm gonna start at kind of a high level the impact on the average customer and then kind of walk through each utility a little bit to explain Some of the increases that we're looking at but we are as you see up here for the average residential customer uses the average amount of water Generates an average amount of wastewater uses gas and has an average size city parcel We are looking on a monthly basis a slightly an $8 increase per month

Compare that to a year ago.

A year ago, it was a little bit higher.

It was about $9.42.

But we are looking at an increase for water, wastewater, and gas to both the volumetric rate, which is based on how much you use, as well as the monthly service charge to recoup some of the fixed costs of the utilities.

And just as a reminder, there are three pieces to the utility bill.

The two pieces we're talking about tonight are the volumetric rate, as I mentioned, the multi-service charge.

But then the other key piece is how much you actually consume.

And so, you know, customers have that ability to control their bills.

To some degree, there's obviously some point when there's a minimal amount of utility that you need to consume.

But, you know, for conservation reasons, but also for financial reasons, there is an incentive to reduce that impact as much as possible to the extent possible.

And so I'm going to walk through each one of these in a little bit more detail.

So on the water side, the budget for this upcoming fiscal year is a little bit over $18.5 million.

It's about a 10% increase over last year.

As Lauren touched on, for both of these dollar bills, water and wastewater, you notice the green slice of that dollar bill.

And that's the portion of the city's cost for Ivana operations and debt service related to their capital improvement program.

For the upcoming year on the water side you see it's about 54 cents or 54% of that dollar bill a year ago is about 50 so we're seeing an increase with that and as we touched on a little bit earlier we do see an increase coming over the next number of years as Ravana undertakes these large water supply projects

And then the last couple of slices there on the right side, these are the city's cost.

The cost to operate the water division salaries benefits, the sort of consumable sorts of expenditures every year.

There's a slice there for the city's debt service for our water distribution system, the asset maintenance that Lauren talked about in her presentation.

And then a small slice there for the share of water share of the customer billing and customer services.

Just briefly, the question that Mr. Payne asked earlier about, that we show those increases to Ravana, it's not to be clear that the city increase at the bottom of there was not the overall rate increase.

But that is going to be a big driver, as I mentioned, and so there's a chart in the rate report where we do a projection over the next five years that includes

Everything you see on this dollar bill to the extent that we can project those things.

For water it's about nine to nine and a half percent per year and for sewer it's about six percent.

Obviously those change from year to year for various things but we try to put something in there to give some indication of the order of magnitude of rate increases that we're looking at down the road.

On the wastewater side, we have a total budget in the upcoming year of a little over $17.5 million and this is about a 6% increase over the current year.

Again, the water, the Rivana piece is the biggest piece.

It's up slightly from 58 from 56.

Then the other slices of the dollar bill as well, very similar to what I described for the water side of things.

For stormwater, this is essentially unchanged.

As Lauren mentioned, and I highlighted at the start of my portion of the presentation, there's no change being proposed to the stormwater utility fees.

The fees have been in place since the inception of the utility back in 2013, I should say, are still in place.

This is something we're going to look at in the upcoming year in terms of the scope of work, the scope of infrastructure, the cost associated with the stormwater utility, and then evaluate the revenue requirements thereof.

To this point, the current rates continue to meet the revenue requirements of that utility, but we have a new stormwater utility administrator in place, and this is something we've been wanting to do for a few years, but now that he's here, we'll take a little bit deeper dive in preparation for next year.

and finally on the gas.

The gas is a little unique.

It's a very different creature in many ways from the other utilities.

The overall budget here is a little over $28 million.

The number is very similar to what we had this year but we are proposing a rate increase and the big driver of that is really, we have the green slice which is the price of gas.

That price, we actually adjust that on a monthly basis through the purchase gas adjustment.

If you actually look at your utility bill, you see something called the PGA.

And that just simply is an acknowledgement that gas is a commodity that's traded on a daily basis.

Its price fluctuates.

The amount that we pay every month changes.

And because the utility is operating on a break-even basis,

To the extent that the price of gas goes up, we pass it along to our customers.

If the price goes down, we pass that decrease along as well.

And so we set these rates effective July 1st of every year.

We're doing the best projection we can of that overall year.

But the reality is that piece of the dollar bill is being readjusted on a monthly basis.

The other slices of it are associated with the city's operations, the city's maintenance, the city's infrastructure, the billing, the payment in lieu of taxes, all those things.

And that's really what's driving the rate increase.

for the

The price of gas, we've seen it become relatively stable over the last year.

If you recall a few years ago when the war in Ukraine started, there was a worldwide rush for gas in anticipation of the winter.

That situation obviously is still not settled, but at least in terms of the price of gas, we've seen the market sort of even that out over the last few years.

So that has stabilized to some degree.

Chris, could I interrupt?

Sure.

Was it paying sufficient attention?

I guess you're hiring a new person.

It's an existing position.

I've been vacant for some period of time.

Stormwater Administrator.

on the stormwater utility.

And so what you see here, this is the proposed changes in the volume metric rate.

Again, this is the portion of the bill that's based on how much you use.

And so you see those increases there associated with 1,000 cubic feet of water and wastewater and for natural gas as well.

Quick question.

Sure.

That is the first block of consumption.

Unlike water, water has two rates.

There's a winter and a summer.

What you see here is what we call the composite, a combined of the two.

It's the same increase for each one.

Wastewater is one rate.

Natural gas has different blocks based on usage and what kind of customer you are.

Yeah, if you actually look at the, if you look in the ordinance of tonight's action agenda or action item, you'll see that it's actually several numerous lines of rate changes and increases and so forth.

So we try to boil it down as best we can to capture that for the purposes of this presentation.

And as I mentioned, for water, sewer and gas, there's a monthly service charge.

It's a recognition that there's certain fixed costs of the utility that we incur regardless of how much you use.

and we're proposing for water and sewer only an increase of $1 per month for each utility.

So currently, the average residential customer pays $6.50 per month for water, $6.50 per month for wastewater.

We're proposing that it goes up to $7.50 for each as well.

And so that's a $2 per month increase.

And so as you see there on that chart, roughly 95% of all of our customers are in that first slice.

Those are all of our residential customers.

And we're not proposing any changes to the natural gas

and a lovely service charge at this time.

And so that concludes our presentation.

I guess the concluding thought I would leave you with is, you know, I doubt there are many folks who look forward to paying their utility bill each month, except maybe for me, but I recognize that I might be outside the norm on that.

But I would certainly argue, though, you know, in exchange for these financial resources, we believe in the customer satisfaction survey data supports this, that we're providing a good value to our customer for these essential services.

Questions?

Yes, this is a, I know we got a briefing on this last week and so I didn't, I wish I had gotten a chance to ask you then, I'm sorry that it's now, but actually sorry, this is for the next agenda item.

Yeah, sorry, sorry, sorry.

And just,

So what we're projecting over the next five years is an average increase of about nine to nine and a half percent for water rates and about six percent for wastewater.

And those include everything.

Those include Ravana's cost, the city's cost, city's debt service, all of those sorts of things.

But a big driver of that is going to be Ravana's cost as they've presented that to us.

And again, every year, those things are all reevaluated.

But I've got no reason to doubt

that we're going to see ray increases somewhere in those neighborhoods going forward.

Any other questions or comments?

If not, I will now open a public hearing.

Is there anyone who would like to speak on this item?

With no further comments, the public hearing is now closed.

Councilor, we can have further discussion if we would like.

We can decide to carry this to a consent agenda item on the 17th or have further discussion.

Consent agenda is fine for me.

Okay.

All right.

So, now I move on to item number 14.

So, second agenda item is about our connection fee for residential gas installation.

little background on the topic.

We've seen over the last five years of decline and new natural gas connection request about 62% decline from 2018 to 2023.

And you can see that illustrated between the city and the county.

The majority of the new gas connection requests are in the county with their new development in 2023 14 were in the city out of the 147

Currently, the city offers gas service installation of 250 feet at no cost to residential customers if the city's investment by the revenue generated with it generated with it shows a payback within four and a half years.

So somebody currently per code request, natural gas installation, we look to make sure they are installing qualifying appliances that offer us sufficient revenue to pay back that installation within four and a half years.

But what we're proposing starting January 1st is that Charlottesville gas will no longer offer this service line installations at no cost for residential customer.

And we're proposing a fee of $340 for new residential service up to 150 feet and services that extend 150 feet will be required to pay the cost.

Excuse me for the excess footage.

This fee was evaluated based on actual cost that we incur.

We also took a look at various utilities across the country, which

There are very few gas utilities even have a connection fee because it's all about promoting natural gas usage.

But those that had a connection fee, they were about $300 on an average, but it was only, you know, it wasn't really a great sample.

It was probably less than $10.

And so the $340 is pretty much in line.

You have to base your fees on actual cost.

We are also proposing to use these funds that we collect from the connection fee

to finance our expanded energy efficiency program.

I mentioned in the last presentation that we'll be rolling out in the fall and the winter to promote energy savings and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

I start at this end, Lloyd.

Do you?

It's not a bad, not a bad deal, I guess.

Yes, okay.

A couple of questions.

Let's say they have 175 feet, so they have to pay for 25 feet on their own.

What's the, do we have a cost per foot?

Is it like a ballpark?

Like you could tell me any number right now and I'd be like, oh, okay.

I'll get it to you if you don't mind.

And then this is about utilities in general.

So if, like you just said, this is the question I wish I had asked you last week.

If we base the fees on actual cost, so that's where we get the 340 number.

That's actually, those are facility fees you're referring to.

So those aren't for us to install.

We don't install water and sewer lines, frankly.

Development will install water and sewer lines.

That's how it's kind of set up.

And that facility fee, and it's

It's kind of, it's a normal that people have some sort of what they call a connection fee, but it's really to offset the capacity that they're buying.

So when a new development builds a house or a multifamily commercial building, they have to buy into the system.

So depending on the size of the meat or that'll indicate the capacity they need,

And so those fees were set based on the capacity that they're buying into the system.

We don't do the same thing in gas.

It's not reserving capacity.

It's just not the same.

Water and sewer is done a little differently.

Does my confusion on this make sense before I keep going?

No, no.

It's really comparing apples and oranges because that is a facility fee that was established for water and sewer based on reserving capacity of the system.

and it's intended to be new development is paying for that capacity.

This one is the gas side of the house.

Right, which is good.

I'm just thinking about it in the context of if we are trying to encourage infill and you get socked with an $8,000 fee to hook up water and sewer for an ADU in the back, or does that

Because the gas is optional, but water and sewer is not.

So, you know, we've actually had, we are still trying to figure that out based on the new zoning ordinance.

Yeah, okay.

And because if somebody has, needs additional capacity and sets a new meter, that's when that, that fee takes place.

Yeah.

In addition.

So the water and sewer capacity fees are based on the size of your water meter.

And so if it's infill development, if there's no net increase needed for the size of water meter, then there's no charge.

If you do need to upsize it, you just pay just the difference if there's already a meter there.

And so the reality is with a lot of the redevelopment that we see,

There's either no fee being charged because there's already a meter in place and you're just replacing something for something.

Or in some cases you actually see a smaller water meter needed because it's building more water efficient.

We have more accurate water meters.

So when we bake these fees into our financial proformas, we really don't put a lot in there just because unlike our county service at the word, he was experiencing a lot of green field growth and new meters.

We don't really see that, and so in a year we may collect some and some years we don't, just because of the nature of our system and where it's being built.

And we certainly, so we've had some real preliminary discussions on how we're going to implement that.

Okay.

Any more questions now?

Michael?

Just one clarifying question to be sure.

So is this ending of the connection or establishing a connection fee?

It's connections for anybody that connects to our system.

So it would include Albemarle County.

That's correct.

No, yeah, that's it.

I'm sure it must feel a little bizarre to be proposing this to us.

But I know for many years, a lot of people in the community have been coming to us about ending, subsidizing, hook up for natural gas.

And I think this is a substantial action to actually accomplish that goal.

So I think it's exciting for the community and the utility as a positive step, even for me.

It feels a little weird that you're

We'll call it a climate initiative.

Right.

So what we've been talking about.

Oh, got it done.

So I will now open up the public hearing.

Is there anyone from the audience who would like to speak on this?

I don't see anyone moving forward.

So I'll now close the public hearing.

Any further discussion from council?

Is there agreement also to carry this to consent agenda or regular item?

So consent agenda.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you.

The next item we have is another public hearing.

Anthony, is this you?

Good evening, Council.

Mayor Wade, Ms.

Thomas.

I'm here again to present the proposal about the Community Development Block Grant.

It's part of the cleanup work that we've been engaged in over time.

We're invited to explore supporting an initiative by Public Works to facilitate some infrastructure improvements at Johnson Elementary Playground.

It's a widely used

Community Playground, much like we did at Washington Park last year and we're very excited about this one.

It won't require appropriating any new funds, just reprogramming unspent funds from prior years and the project will bring about

Elimination of trip hazards coming out of the school building, repair and drainage for cracked sidewalk that makes it very difficult for mobility impaired students and their families to get in and around in the construction of a new ADA compliant entryway into the playground and park area from the parking spaces, the accessible parking spaces.

And then we've also talked to the school and public works about some rehabilitative landscaping and some repairs of additional outdated equipment, some new

ADA compliant benches to allow students to kind of sit outside.

They can accommodate wheelchair and a variety of other enhancements.