City Council Meeting   7/15/2024

We're all excited.

Hello, I call the Charlottesville City Council July 15th meeting to order.

Ms.

Councillor Oschrin.

Here.

Councillor Snook, hopefully is on his way.

Thank you.

I move for approval of the agenda.

Okay.

Here's Lloyd.

It's been moved and properly seconded.

So you're here first.

This meeting will be divided into three sections.

The first section is a work session where we're here and discuss presentations that do not require a council vote.

And the second will be a closed session.

And then there will be a regular business meeting at 6.30.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Council, Mr. Sanders.

I'm Crystal Ritterwald, Director of the Office of Sustainability, and I'm joined this afternoon by Emily Irvin, our Climate Program Manager.

Thank you for having us here this afternoon to share the inaugural Climate Action Report.

It's an update that is planned to be provided on an annual basis.

For starters, I would like to thank Council for investing in the work.

You adopted Charlottesville's first Community Climate Action Plan in

2023 as an amendment to the comprehensive plan.

We now have a dedicated three-person climate team in our Office of Sustainability.

We had FY24 capital funding allocated for climate action for the first time ever, and now included annually in the five-year adopted CIP.

And in this presentation, you will hear that referred to as a climate fund.

We used some of this funding to serve as the required local match for federal grants.

We are allocating funds to several new initiatives that you'll hear about today.

And we're committed to using this funding to lead, by example, as a government organization to support climate actions in the community and to leverage outside funding where possible.

I would also like to start this afternoon with a sincere thank you to my team members, several here.

colleagues, peers, partners, and friends for the collective hard work and support that has gone into the last couple of years as it relates to our climate program.

I feel a sense of momentum and a real sense of urgency like never before.

And that urgency is making itself very tangible today, given our extreme and extended heat conditions and drought warnings.

Increasingly, we are experiencing the results

of the Climate is Everywhere Directive that opens the door for many city departments to do climate work.

Increasingly, we're also finding opportunities to work with our neighbors, Albemarle County and the University of Virginia, and you'll hear about all of this momentarily.

Climate change and the impact it is having is an enormous global problem that demands action at every scale.

And while many of these actions are beyond our local control,

We are locally committed and making progress.

Climate action comes in many forms of programs and projects and policies and possibilities that we're learning about.

Climate action work doesn't always, all or always have to be hard, but some of it really is and we're learning to appreciate both the wins and the incremental steps it's taking to get there.

If we can show that bringing the clean economy

into our community, for our people, for our businesses, and our environment, we can help not only build resilience, but to demonstrate the benefits of this critical transition, and particularly the local benefits.

We see and appreciate that this community is engaged and involved, delivering relevant and unique local programs and services, also expecting and demanding a pace of climate action that gets at the needed results.

Collectively, we're trying to do our part

and we're encouraged to be part of a network of other communities working to do their parts.

What you will be receiving today is a climate program update that includes a rapid summary of the work that's been done by the city and community partners recently completed or recently accomplished as well as some exciting initiatives that are teed up for this coming year.

We'd love to spend all day talking to you about this but we are sensitive to the fact that we have a time limit.

So we are going to celebrate for a moment

But just for a moment, as there is much work to be done.

And so with that, I'd like to turn this over to Emily.

Thanks.

All right.

Hi.

Let's see.

I'm going to see if I can figure out how to work this.

Oh, look.

It's easy.

All right, so my name is Emily and I'm the Climate Program Manager.

I want to start off by thanking you all for your time this afternoon and for your commitment to climate action.

So first I'm going to give you all an update on our most recent greenhouse gas inventory.

Then we'll take a look back at the work that's been done over since the passage of the climate action plan.

Then I will give you a preview of our newly launched climate and sustainability dashboard.

And then I'll end up with an overview of the work that's on the horizon for the updated work plan and we'll have time for some questions.

So this is a slide that everyone has seen before, but I wanted to start off with what our high level emissions reduction goals are and what the climate action plan is.

So Charlottesville has community wide emissions reduction goals of 45% by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2050.

And we have a strategic level climate action plan to help us guide us towards those goals.

So the plan promises an annual update, an annual progress report

and this is the first one of those updates.

So this is not an update to the plan itself, but a progress report.

And City Manager Sanders has asked the Office of Sustainability to align the annual update with the fiscal year.

So this update actually covers the 18 months since the adoption of the Climate Action Plan.

So under, first, next I'm going to go through the inventory.

Under our commitment to the Global Covenant of Mayors, which Council signed on to in 2017, we do an annual accounting of our greenhouse gas emissions.

So going forward, we're going to align these emissions inventory updates with this annual CAP update.

So this chart shows Charlottesville's 2022 community-wide emissions.

And in 2022, our community released approximately 268,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent, which is about 42% less than in our baseline year when we released 460,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent.

So when I say CO2 equivalent, what I mean is that this inventory includes carbon dioxide,

Methane and Nitrous Oxide or N2O emissions.

When I talk about community wide emissions, I'm talking about all the emissions from our community exclusive of our municipal emissions.

We account for our municipal emissions in a separate inventory because the way of our reporting works and I'll get into the details of that a little bit in a moment.

They represent less than 5% of the community's total emissions, which you can see on the next slide.

Our municipal emissions were a little over 12,000 metric tons in 2022, and they're down 36% from that 2011 baseline.

So this pie chart is inclusive of all of our community emissions.

The municipal wedge is included here.

and shows the breakdown by sector.

So municipal emissions are shown in the light blue wedge.

That accounts for the emissions from city and school buildings, cats operations, the city's vehicle fleet and our street lights and traffic signals.

As you can see, buildings account for nearly two-thirds of emissions in our community.

So this includes our homes, our businesses, non-municipal government facilities, and industrial buildings.

This data is collected mostly from Dominion Energy and Charlottesville Gas.

Transportation accounts for almost another third.

That's the dark green wedge.

This data comes from VDOT and Amtrak.

There are two small sections.

The yellow is from waste, so our garbage and our wastewater.

This data comes from the Planning District Commission and Rivana authorities.

And then that last salmon colored wedge is related to fugitive emissions from natural gas infrastructure.

And that's a number that we get from Charlottesville gas.

So the next two slides are really data heavy.

I'm not going to spend very much time here.

I just wanted them to be in the packet for you all and for the public.

This chart shows our community-wide emissions each year, each inventory year since the baseline, and this next slide shows the municipal emissions each year since that baseline.

So as shown in the first graph, our community-wide emissions are down 42% since our baseline year, 2011.

And so considering that our 2030 goal is 45%, we're getting close, and that's really good news.

We saw a large drop in residential energy use in just the past year.

since last year, 2021.

We saw an almost 11% drop in residential emissions, and this might be influenced by the weather, a mild winter, but grid greening is also really having an influence as our electricity service gets cleaner.

On a per kilowatt basis, emissions from electricity are down about 38% since 2011, and this is a trend that we expect to continue

as Virginia's Clean Economy Act starts to have an impact on what our emissions in this sector look like.

Also, since the baseline, transportation emissions are dropping.

They're down 41% since 2011.

Some of this is due to fewer vehicle miles traveled, which is data that we get from VDOT and is in the inventory

That's down about 8%, but the trend is really driven by increased vehicle efficiency and the adoption of electric vehicles.

In Charlottesville, one in six new vehicles registered in the city in 2022 were electric.

So municipal emissions were up very slightly from our 2021 inventory, about 1%.

We believe this is largely due to the return to normal after COVID.

and the return to regular building occupancy and usage.

But again, overall, our municipal emissions are down 36% since our baseline year.

So beyond being committed to doing this inventory on an annual basis, we are also committed through our Global Covenant of Mayors membership that we publicly report our emissions.

So we use a platform called CDP, which used to stand for Carbon Disclosure Project.

And that is a global nonprofit that helps businesses and communities around the globe to track and report their emissions, including nearly 200 cities here in the United States.

So in 2023, we earned a CDP score of A minus, which that is considered to be in the leadership level.

And that's up from a B in 2022, which is considered to be in the emissions management level.

So that upgrade in our scoring is due to the formal adoption of the Climate Action Plan and then also the kickoff of our resilience planning effort through the Resilient Together Project.

So we earned both our mitigation and adaptation badges from Global Covenant of Mayors, which means that we're in compliance with that commitment that was made back in 2017.

And just a little note about the years, so our

It takes a little while for the data to be collected for an emissions inventory.

And so that's why our newest inventory that we just completed is for calendar year 2022.

And then I reported them through CDP in calendar year 23.

And so that's where that difference in the years is coming from.

So in the next section, I'm going to give an overview of climate actions that have been accomplished since January of 2023 when the climate plan was adopted.

There's a written report that accompanies this presentation that was in you all's packet today.

I hope that you all have had an opportunity to skim it and that you

get a chance to actually read it.

There's a lot more detail than what I have time to provide here.

But for now, I'm going to give an overview of the initiatives and projects that we've been working on.

And I will touch on projects that are being led by the Office of Sustainability, are being led by other city departments, and a few projects that are community partner led.

And as I mentioned, there's a lot more detail in the report.

I'm going to go over this by sector also.

So if you think back to that pie chart that I showed a few minutes ago, the biggest wedge was the dark blue wedge.

That's our building's wedge, which accounts for about two thirds of the emissions in our community.

So as you, it shouldn't come as a surprise that there's been a lot of activity in this sector over the last year and a half.

So the Office of Sustainability and the utilities department both work with the local energy alliance program, better known as LEAP.

They were here to talk to you just a few weeks ago.

to promote energy efficiency programs throughout the community.

Energy efficiency is one of the best ways to use less energy and therefore reduce emissions from the built environment.

LEAP also works with our electricity provider Dominion on their low-income solar program and they work to make solar adoption easier for market rate clients through their annual solarized campaign.

On the municipal side, the Office of Sustainability partners with Public Works on our energy and water management program, which works to conserve energy and water in municipal facilities and schools.

Also on the municipal side, we are happy to have now have in place a master energy performance agreement that will allow us to start doing energy upgrades and energy retrofit projects on city and school buildings.

along with measuring and verifying the savings that are coming from those projects and tracking the cost savings as well.

I know you all have heard a lot about the gas utility decarbonization study which is currently underway.

The new gas service new connection fee that will go into effect in January is an early result of this study and we certainly count that as a climate win.

Efforts in this sector that are community-led include the numerous EV charging and solar installations at people's homes and businesses using the permitting system.

We know that in 2023, Charlotte's villains applied for 123 solar installation permits and 16 permits for installing EV charging at their homes.

also being led by community-based organizations through their climate services program that launched last year, the Community Climate Collaborative, better known as C3, provided energy consulting services to nonprofits and small and medium-sized businesses, many of those free of charge.

We know that our partners at Piedmont Housing Alliance completed the first phase of their Kindlewood redevelopment project this year and those new homes are built to federal high performance building standards and are partially powered by solar.

So like I mentioned, this is just an overview of the work that's happening in the community in the building sector.

Can I ask a quick question?

Certainly.

Going back to the prior screen, to talk about buildings, what impact, I know there have been building code changes that have occurred.

I guess they come out every three years.

My understanding is those continue to ratchet down or up depending on how you want to look at it in terms of energy conservation.

Are we tracking that in some way?

Yeah, so updating the building codes is something that has to happen at the state level.

And so that is certainly something that we keep an eye on.

So anyway, you all have heard a lot recently about CATS alternative fuel study and of course their transit strategic plan.

And so we're very excited about the upcoming battery electric bus pilot and the decision that you all made to have CATS fleet B-0 missions by 2040 is a big climate win for this community.

This year our office relaunched our EV infrastructure grant program that is aimed at helping to install publicly accessible charging near businesses and recreation sites and that is a program that is open and we would love to hear from businesses who are interested in publicly accessible charging.

There have been a lot of improvements to Charlottesville's bike and ped infrastructure this year including ADA compliance in more places

and our first ever concrete barrier protected bike lanes on the Belmont Bridge.

I've heard varying opinions about them, but Veo's e-bikes and scooters are helping Charlottesville community members to reduce their car trips, meaning they ride scooters in lieu of taking cars.

And so this is like a mind-boggling statistic to me, but almost 450,000 miles were ridden on scooters and e-bikes last year, helping to avoid nearly 60,000 car trips.

which is really cool.

And on the community side Charlottesville residents of course are very involved in working to improve our city's transportation systems.

C-30 missions bus advocacy letter had nearly 650 signatures and the Piedmont Mobility Alliance of course is working in our community to advance accessible active transportation.

So on this slide, we're sharing a list of climate actions taken in the past year that don't fall into the buildings or transportation sectors, but are definitely noteworthy for their climate value.

In the interest of time, I won't go into detail on all of them, but they're in the report and we're happy to answer questions.

So the LED Streetlight Project, which was funded in the fiscal year 24 CIP, is getting kicked off starting on the 250 bypass near McIntyre Park.

and this will be a multi-year effort that will result in both energy and cost savings.

In 2023, Parks and Rec planted nearly 352-inch diameter trees on public right-of-ways and parks and school yards and they have plans to plant approximately 175 more this fall.

separately, they planted almost 1300 saplings at nine forest restoration projects in city parks around town, removing invasive species and restoring 20 acres of forest.

The city's flood resilience plan was recently approved by the state, which is a prerequisite that makes us eligible for implementation funding.

This was a multi year project that was completed by the city's water resources protection program.

Community-based organizations like Relief and the Charlottesville Area Tree Stewards planted additional trees on both public and private property and help to care for all the newly planted trees.

So Emily, I was going to ask this afterwards, but I see for the streetlight conversion, several slides back where you had streetlights slash traffic.

Is that traffic signals?

Is that what you referred?

Yes.

So the bulbs or how they powered that, is that energy efficient?

So the purpose of that project

is to replace the old bulbs with LED bulbs, which are much more energy efficient.

And so most of the street lights in town are not the traffic signals, but the street lights are owned by Dominion.

And so we are working with Dominion to have them accelerate the replacement schedule.

They will replace them with LEDs when they burn out, but that could take a very long time.

And so the cost savings that will be recognized by replacing those bulbs with LEDs

I assume they use different ones than they use in-house because we love ours, but it takes a few seconds to warm up a little bit.

I could see them talking to Judge.

But Judge, it was pink, it was going from red.

Yeah, so we basically pay a monthly rate per fixture, and so it used to be that it was cost prohibitive and actually a disincentive to switch it to LEDs.

And in the last contract that was negotiated on behalf of many public bodies in Virginia, that monthly rate has made it much more, now it's cost effective so that the payback is in this like

Okay, great.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

Are you guys ready for me to move on?

Yes.

Any more questions?

Okay.

Um, so let's see.

Oh, I'm going the wrong way.

Okay, so so far I've been talking about mostly mitigation actions, so reducing our emissions.

But I also want to take a moment to highlight our resilient together project, which is in collaboration with Albemarle County and UVA.

And this is our climate adaptation and resulting resilience building project.

We publicly launched this project back in September of 2023.

and have been working since to share information with the community about the local impacts of climate change and then also to learn from the community about their risks and vulnerabilities.

We've done this education and outreach through a variety of waves, both public and private presentations, staff and stakeholder workshops, public events and then recently we've been working to raise awareness about cooling centers that the city is operating and also heat

the health impacts of heat stress.

So Resilient Together received a grant through EPA's Environmental Justice Government to Government program, which is part of the Inflation Reduction Act to support inclusive community engagement.

We're using those funds to fund a project within a project called the Climate Resilience Cohort, and I will talk a little bit more about that in a couple of slides.

So I want to take a few minutes to talk about other federal grants that we have worked on this year.

This has been a large part of our work.

So as you all know, there's unprecedented, this is an unprecedented time for federal investment in climate action.

And much of that investment is coming through these competitive grant opportunities.

So I already mentioned that environmental justice government to government grant.

The county was the lead applicant on that, but the city is a primary partner and the funds will go to the resilient together project.

Parks and Rec staff collaborated with sustainability staff to apply for and win a forest service grant that will support an updated forest management plan.

We were successful in securing $420,000 through EPA's clean school bus rebate program for two electric school buses that will be joining the fleet in 2025.

The city has been allocated through Department of Energy's Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant Program $76,000 which will be used to fund home energy audits in low and middle income households throughout the city and helping them to take advantage of additional federal efficiency incentive programs

Our utilities department was successful in securing $7.1 million for replacement of that last mile of cast-iron pipe in the natural gas system with more modern materials.

And that will reduce fugitive emissions from our natural gas infrastructure.

We are awaiting news on a $1.6 million application to another DOE grant program C-site.

and should we be successful in that opportunity that will fund energy, retrofits, solar and job training at KTEC.

So applying for grants is a lot of additional work and but it's kind of critical for funding a lot of projects that we want to do and we're really grateful to the support of our grant staff in the Office of Community Solutions.

They are always willing to help even when we don't give them a lot of time.

So we're really grateful for that.

So this next portion of the presentation is a little bit of a surprise that we are excited to share with you all this afternoon.

We know there's a lot of interest in our work and we're aware of the need to get as many community members activated and engaged in this work as possible.

So we're pleased to announce the launch of our Climate and Sustainability Dashboard.

So this dashboard is an engagement tool that we'll both increase awareness of and transparency of our work.

It'll make the climate action plan more accessible and it will be a place where we can tell stories and share resources and showcase and highlight the work of our community partners.

The address for this new dashboard is down at the bottom there in the blue box.

And you can get to this through the city's website or by putting that address into your browser.

It currently has three main parts and if you look up to the top right there, there's three links.

First I'll show you how the dashboard displays the climate action plan.

So when you click on climate action plan up there in the corner, it brings up a new menu that we call the accordion.

And you'll notice these categories are aligned with the chapters in the climate action plan.

So for example, let's click on buildings and energy.

So that brings up a display of each of the strategies and key actions of each segment of the CAP with a status in update for each action.

And so yellow means additional resources needed, which can either mean staff or financial resources.

Blue means in progress and green means complete.

So now we'll go back to the main part of the dashboard.

and if you scroll down, you go back to that main page and then you scroll down, you'll see these tiles displayed beneath the main banner by sector.

And so this is the menu that routes you to all the information about our inventory, our programs initiatives and community partners.

And so, for example, if we click on the transportation tile,

you get one of these topic tiles and it gives you information about the subject first and then you keep scrolling down and you can learn about various actions that the city is taking and ways that our community members can get involved and actions that any individual can take.

So all of the action items are organized on the what you can do page.

Again, organized by sector.

So as an example, if we click on buildings and energy,

that pulls up a new page with links to resources and actions.

And you can see here this links to LEAP and to their Solarize campaign, some federal benefits, energy savings tips.

So these static slides don't really do justice to how cool the dashboard is.

So we hope that everybody, you all and the folks maybe listening at home, will take some time to explore it.

And again, the address for that is climateaction.charlottesville.gov.

So for the final section of this presentation, I want to spend a few minutes talking about the projects and initiatives that are upcoming.

So part of the packet that you all receive for this afternoon is our new fiscal year 25 climate program work plan.

So you'll recognize many of the items that are on it.

These are ongoing projects or in process projects that rolled over from last year, but there's also quite a few new items.

So I want to highlight some of those.

So we are getting ready to launch a community-wide EV charging study.

So this study will evaluate our community needs for EV charging, considering public, private, and workplace charging.

This study is being undertaken collaboratively with Albemarle County, so it won't just be the city, it will also be county areas.

And we're working with a consulting group that has done comparable studies in Norfolk and Virginia Beach.

They will also examine the opportunities for municipal light duty fleet electrification and help us to lay the groundwork to be better poised to apply for infrastructure funding grants.

So I just got a quick question.

So yes, for the most part, you pay on a per kilowatt basis.

And depending on who owns the charging station and how fast the charging is, that impacts the rate.

So, you know, Albemarle County used to have free charging at the county office building, but that you now have to pay for that starting July 1st.

And I think that they're not really trying to make any money off of those stations.

They're just charging for the electricity.

But for example, some places you go and there's privately installed charging stations and you pay a little higher rate.

There's quite a few models for who owns the stations.

A lot of third party companies own the charging stations and then maybe they pay a cost share to the property owner.

So there can be some cost sharing opportunity there.

municipalities install charging and, you know, charge whatever the going rate is in the region.

So yeah, there's several models and the study will look at, you know, how can we incentivize charging?

What are the, what should like, how can we incentivize private entities to install charging?

Like, what are the differences that the city may need to make up?

So the next project I'm going to talk about is one that I am personally very excited about.

So many people are aware of the incentives and programs that are available to individuals through the Inflation Reduction Act, but there's often a lot of confusion about how to access those benefits and programs.

So through an expansion of our annual program support agreement, we are going to work with LEAP and C3 to set up a community energy resource hub.

This hub is going to be both an online and an in-person resource for the community to help them navigate federal, state, and local energy programs and for both commercial and residential buildings.

So planning for the hub is already underway.

and we aim to open it to the public in January of 2025, which that aligns with the state launching their federally funded clean energy programs.

And the hub will serve both city and county residents and is planned to be co-funded.

So I mentioned this next project briefly when I talked about our grants work.

This year we will update our urban forest management plan, which has not been updated since 2009.

This project is partially funded by USDA grant with supplemental funding from the climate fund.

The updated plan will be aligned with the newer comprehensive plan, the climate plan, and the climate risk and vulnerability assessment.

And it will cover the entire urban forest on both public and private property.

The Office of Sustainability is supporting our urban forester and the Parks and Rec Department on this work.

So I mentioned a little bit resilient together and our climate resilience cohort So we are working to launch this cohort right now, which is a sub project within that larger resilient together project This piece is funded by a four hundred and sixty thousand dollar EPA grant We are currently looking for up to ten community-based organizations who serve vulnerable and underserved

underrepresented community members.

Each organization will receive a $40,000 sub-grant to participate in the planning process and also to implement a community-led resilience building project.

The application for that sub-grant opportunity is currently open and interested organizations should visit the Resilient Together website to learn more and to access our application materials.

Question about that?

Yeah.

How, other than you coming here today and broadcasting that, which is important, and I want you to say that again, how do people find out about this?

So we did a news flash.

We have been on the news.

It came out today in Albemarle County's newsletter.

Is there any direct outreach?

We are doing direct outreach to organizations.

We've had meetings with community partners who signed letters of support for the grant opportunity and we've also had meetings with other outside entities.

We've been sort of shaking the bushes and getting people aware of this grant opportunity for a couple of months leading up to the launch.

Yeah, so what we're doing is every organization will get $15,000 to participate in the cohort and the planning.

And then every organization will be guaranteed $25,000 for their implementation project.

But if they want to work together,

to implement a larger project.

They'll have the opportunity to pool their funds.

Great.

So this piece of the project is really designed to ensure that the community engagement for the Resilient Together project

is equitable and inclusive and that the interests and needs of our most vulnerable community members are centered both in the plans and in the implementation.

We're pleased to share information about our municipal energy performance program.

This one has been a long time coming into fruition.

Back in 2022, we worked with an engineering firm to perform energy audits on all city facilities, including schools.

These audits gave recommendations on all the energy savings projects that could be done at each facility, including lighting, HVAC, controls upgrades, and they also include solar potential, emissions reduction potential for every facility.

It took quite a bit of time, but we recently were able to establish a master energy performance contract, which is the design build project delivery mechanism that's uniquely well suited for these kinds of projects.

The first municipal energy savings project using this contracting mechanism is underway and with a second in the planning process.

And the original energy audits that were part of this project did not contemplate building electrification and so another upcoming element of this work is a municipal building electrification study.

So another project that has been in the works for quite a while that we're excited about for this new fiscal year.

The Office of Sustainability is planning to launch an internal sustainability in the workplace program.

And this will promote employee action and engagement across the city organization.

It will focus mostly on energy and water actions, but also include climate and inclusivity elements as well.

and launch of this program will also include the establishment of an inter-departmental climate action working group that will bring staff together from across the city organization for mutual learning, collaboration, and accountability in our climate work.

So in the interest of time, I'm going to skim over some of our other upcoming initiatives.

We are still working to bring CPACE, which is a financial tool to help commercial entities fund clean energy, energy efficiency,

and Resilience Projects to Charlottesville.

We're working with Public Works on a high performance building standard for all city and school buildings as well as updating the city's green building policy.

We're exploring power purchase agreements as a way to develop solar on city and school buildings.

We have convened an internal staff group across the relevant departments to get ready for our two electric school buses that are coming and to plan for electrification of the rest of the fleet.

We're working with neighborhood development services to launch an e-bike incentive program later this year We're working with public works to expand and parks to expand our 24-7 drop-off composting program And we're also working with parks to do a pilot electrification of some of their landscaping equipment

So that was a lot, and I think I hid everything.

And we hope, like we said, if you haven't already had time to look at the accompanying report, that you will check that out.

Sure.

And yeah, like you remarked at the beginning,

It's just incredible to see in just a few years how far this work has gone.

I remember in 2020 talking, I think, with people in CIVO 100 who just wanted one additional climate staff member hired.

And that was the big ask.

And now there's a whole department reporting directly to the city manager's office, million dollar fund, all this work going on, formal climate action plan and the comprehensive plan, and really just a short number of years.

Two questions related to the work plan.

Maybe it's just not in the FY25, but one is a couple years ago, I think Leap was ready to move forward with installing a solar panel fleet at the Charlottesville Airport.

and that's something that I guess they report didn't really engage with.

I know it's a little separate from us, but there's a authority that we have representation on.

Actually, it's very funny, like that solar would be in the county.

However,

I think that was a model considered a community solar project, not a power purchase agreement.

And you're right.

I think there wasn't interest at that time.

OK.

Yeah, I just know it's in the county, but we have representation on that board.

And the second question is related to the resilience work.

In my mind, one of the biggest things in resilience for the city to do is improving our floodplain regulations and anticipation of increased flooding events.

Is that something that your team would be involved with or is that separate in public works?

Yeah, so I would say that as we have our staff working groups that are part of the one of the resilient together tracks,

That is the kind of thing that will come up.

And like, how are we going to address that work?

Yeah, I mean, as we as that flood resilience plan was being developed, I believe it has presented a challenge to the city in terms of roles and responsibilities on that topic area.

And the further we go through the resilient together work, and the further it becomes understood and clear that

Increased flooding is a climate-driven risk.

it will put us in a position to think about how to tackle that.

Yeah.

Well, I appreciate that.

And again, I've said it before, but I think it's a huge climate risk.

It seems like it was a technical issue, but the Rivana pump station, I think, shows how flooding is a force multiplier that can interact with a technical issue and create just a lot of problems.

Oh yes, if you are interested in the climate resilience cohort, the address is resilient-together.info

No, that's it.

I am also excited to see how cohesive this has become in the last couple of years and also the progress that we've made towards that 2030 goal.

I mean, pretty close.

It's pretty exciting.

Yeah, is there, if we meet it before then, do we move the goalposts or what's the plan?

I don't think it's jinxing.

It's okay to talk about it.

Yeah, I mean, that would be a community conversation, what we want to do with that.

Since we adopted our targets, the guidance that some of the reporting CDP, our reporting agency gives is that communities in the United States, especially more wealthy communities, should have higher what they're calling science-based targets.

That's a jargony word.

Our targets are absolutely science-based.

They were based on the IPCC recommendations that were in place at the time that we adopted them.

This climate work has many moving targets in it.

And so now the recommendation is that in wealthier developed countries, our goals should be stronger and faster to really contemplate the equity components of meeting the

1.5 degree target of the Paris Climate Agreement.

So it would be opening a big can of worms and having a new community conversation about whether we want to update our goals before 2030.

Yeah, because we do have that other goal coming up afterwards.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, great.

And then I am very excited.

I know

We touched on it just for a second here, but I am very excited about the e-bike subsidy program that Ben and everyone has been working on.

So I'm looking forward to that debuting.

I just wanted to give that another little plug.

Yeah, thanks.

Good.

Yeah, just excellent work.

As I was reading, can't say I read every word, but as I was looking through the package, skimming, scanning, reading, what was there, I felt the same as as Michael, just gratitude of how far we've come.

I felt like we at least now have a solid plan and we're making progress on it.

So kudos to all of you all.

Lloyd?

First, I start by echoing the thanks and the praise.

I have a couple of specific questions.

I'm wondering, there was mentioned that the CPACE program, there was some obstacle to our participation in it.

So that is a state level program that we would have to pass an ordinance to opt into.

The Office of Sustainability can't do that on our own without some legal support.

And so we just need the attention and time from our legal office to move that process forward.

Is this something that is like an annual process to apply for?

Yep, if we can.

So the state PACE authority has

Standard Forms.

They make it pretty easy for communities to join the state program and we just need to make sure that our legal office is in agreement with those forms and we would bring an ordinance to council to officially join.

and then that would be it.

Okay.

I note also that there is a mention of we did not succeed in getting a grant from the EPA's Renew America Schools Grant Program.

Yeah, that was a very competitive grant opportunity and we were pretty disappointed because we had gotten very good feedback during the feedback.

and then we also made the kind of difficult decision not to reapply for that funding because for the second round EPA really drastically changed the format of the opportunity and it was really designed to serve communities who hadn't done

Energy Audits or anything on their buildings and since we have already gone through and done these energy studies on all of our facilities, we didn't need to start at the beginning and kind of start reinventing the wheel again.

So we are always on the lookout for other funding opportunities that could fund that project because I do think that the project that we developed through getting ready for that original Renew America Schools opportunity is a really strong, solid project and we are

Yes, great.

Having a study done to figure out what a green bank might look like for Charlottesville, an interesting sentence in there.

Preliminary background information was shared and recently, along with research assistance support,

A study has been re-initiated with results anticipated later in 2024.

Sure.

So you were in the meeting that we had last year, yes, with some folks from the UVA's Baton School and they thought maybe they could bring some funding and do the study and then that kind of went by the wayside.

So one of the community members who's a professor at UVA

came back to us

You may recall my particular question was whether Charlottesville or Charlottesville Albemarle or maybe the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission, what the scope would have to be?

How small could you be and have an effective green bank?

That's the kind of thing that we needed to know.

Yeah, and I mean, a lot has happened even in the meanwhile since we've had that meeting through the Federal Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund program.

There are a couple of big national financing coalitions.

Right, and that may be where trying to figure out how to scale a bank to our community might be harder and less effective than figuring out how do we stand up a hub that connects our community

And then the last question I had is sort of a broad question.

It seems to me that a lot of what we have done is we sort of brag about the fact that we've reduced our greenhouse gas emissions by 42%.

A lot of what we've done is to sit there and say, yeah, go dominion, because they're responsible for a lot of that change.

And my guess is that what we're working on at this point would seem to be sort of low hanging fruit.

In other words, easy to get at, to get reductions.

Maybe the next 20% may be substantially more difficult to achieve than the first 40%.

Yeah, so we are doing some modeling to have a better idea of what that curve could look like.

But so we are fortunate to live in Virginia where we live in a state that has a clean electricity standard for electricity, like it is really making our work much easier.

But we still do have to do the work of electrifying everything, right?

As the grid gets cleaner, we want to use more of that electricity

to power our homes and our transportation systems.

And so you're right, like in the emissions reduction space, much of what we're seeing is from that grid greening.

But I do think the work that we're doing is starting to contemplate how we can start doing that harder work, right?

We are working to help electrify transportation.

We are working to help people

take advantage of all these incentives to do the work of electrifying their homes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I concur with everyone said, I just want to know if you all are working with

Seva Gazz on a decarbonization study.

Crystal's been instrumental in helping to plan some of the upcoming... Yeah, I mean, I think there's a series of listening sessions happening this summer and the study itself was put on pause in order to

Get that feedback from the community.

I will say out loud, I know that there's some confusion and frustration because people would like to see the menu of decarbonization options and to be able to pick and choose, but we're not there yet.

And there's an acknowledgement that in order to consider some of the options, it's important to understand like, how do people feel about their fuel source?

How do people feel about the potential or the need to change?

It's interesting, I think you saw at the work session,

You have a number of people through the survey that indicated high value for gas and a high concern about climate.

These are things that we have to wrestle with.

And then I believe there are people in this community have some really good ideas that they could say to us.

And so why wait until the study is done before we invite people to say, if you have decarbonization ideas, please tell us now.

Now would be the right time.

So there's still two more sessions.

Actually, I'm so sorry.

I actually have one more question.

Do you all have any legislative priorities you would like us to help communicate?

Okay.

The legislative committee meets in September.

Okay.

So, yes, you want to send any preliminary things.

That would be great.

I was just going to say there is a little section on the report of where we were able to engage legislatively and with state level advocacy if you're interested.

Thank you.

Thank you all for your time.

Thanks for having us.

Hello everyone.

Appreciate you guys taking the time to talk with us today.

We're going to go over a few key points in the interim cycle.

So we just wrapped up in April, you know, with the previous cycle and we have orientation starting up in August.

So it's a good time to sit down and talk about what

Some things that keep up that maybe we want to talk about or make some decisions on.

So we're going to get started some things you might want to ponder on or think of them.

So if I can do this.

All right.

We're going to do a brief overview of the whole process.

Very simple overview.

If anybody does want to know more about the process, after this, we can meet with you in the little 2-2-1s.

If you're curious about it, we'll do a brief one.

We're going to go over some suggested adjustments that we've been kind of kicking around and considering.

A quick slide about opportunities and partnerships and then maybe like a list of the decision points and the next steps for the Viper Community Fund for the next process.

So basically, and a lot of you are familiar with this, the way this works is in August we will start the orientation cycle.

That includes orienting applicants, new applicants.

We actually do a Q&A prior to that for people that are just kind of curious or not sure about it.

So I'll do a Q&A session.

People come down and just learn about what it is.

Then we start orientations.

We do applicants first, then we do review team members.

We go over any changes, updates, application process.

Application is released usually around mid-September, depending on a lot of different things.

It's open for about 30 days.

We close it, then the review team starts.

The reviewing starts.

We set up the evaluation matrix during that process, which is used by the review teams to be as quantitative and as objective as possible.

Usually that wraps up October to into January by the time we do all the site visits and do all the reviews and the teamwork.

Funding recommendations come out between January and February and then in March we start coming back and meeting with you about how the next thing works.

Funny thing to me is that we're talking about, like the applicants are always blown, their minds are blown, that we're talking about July 1 money in

July of the current year for the next year.

It still can be tricky to talk about which fiscal year you're talking about.

And then we do post-award feedback sessions.

I did those this year too.

So with the applicants and the review team members, we do post-award feedback sessions.

We sit down and either be a Zoom and in person.

They tell me what worked, what didn't work, and they help me tweak the process to see what I can do to make it simpler for them or if that's possible.

So some of the suggested adjustments, number one, you probably won't be surprised as we've been kicking around putting a cap of $150,000 on requests.

We had, I believe, six applicants in the previous year that asked for more than that.

One of those was split into, some of those were split into two different applications.

So there might have been an applicant that applied for 150 here or 100 here and 75 there.

We're thinking about doing it at 150 organization at this point.

It doesn't do any drastic impact to the whole process, but it does limit people that want to ask for more.

We're planning to make 75,000 and above the site visit trigger instead of 100 because there's a lot of organizations that we miss in that 75-100 range that would be helpful to go see and meet and talk to about what they're asking for.

were asking council to develop or approve a process for how organizations are added to the fundamental list and removed from the fundamental list.

So if you can remember there was a group of fundamental organizations that we have that provided a significant or important or otherwise necessary service and there currently isn't a very clear system on how they are in or out.

That process predates my work to a certain extent so I don't really

Right, so we're trying to bring attention to it to clarify it, and I'm aware of that, but I think it's time to maybe discuss it at some point.

We think that's time.

And I think too, talking about how groups go in and out of that, how it works.

The review process may change some of this year too.

They mentioned the Office of Community Solutions.

We're working together pretty closely now.

This year we're planning to have that team do a preliminary review of all applications for technical reasons.

Are they eligible?

Do they align with priority areas and community member team?

And then the community team is focused on the impact.

and the

and then we are going to eliminate, we're shooting to eliminate that dual score thing where we have like a 2A or you know like the quality and importance.

We're trying to merge the importance criteria into the matrix so that we're left with one score that's less confusing for applicants.

So we'll get rid of that matrix and you'll just have a singular score that encompasses everything into one number or letter, however it works.

We're going to try to develop some exclusionary criteria, whether that is, these are just some examples.

If someone is requesting consultant fees or for projects not benefiting city residents, they don't particularly work in the city.

If they're not within the defined priority areas and potentially deficient in what we'll be reporting status.

that's starting up this year new.

So the Office of Community Solutions and I are also going to have a more robust, more organized reporting mechanism.

And so it's going to be cleaner, clearer, and more informative, really, as opposed to how it has been.

And so those could be some reasons why someone will be excluded from the process.

We're going to shoot to provide additional information about agency requests in the report that we present for context.

And we're hoping to have more notice to counsel before, so you have more time to read, review, and ask questions before the public period if that's something that we can execute.

The timeline does get a little tight, even though it's a year.

It still gets a little tight.

I know it sounds crazy, but it is something we have to consider.

and we plan to present the hops applications and just hops.

Quick question.

Right, and we're bringing this to use for consideration too.

If there's something that council wants us to add or not add, that's what we're bringing this to you for to consider in the next month so we can add it or delete it.

That's a good point, by the way, because once we release the application and the instructions, we really have to stick to it.

We're not going to be able to adjust it or change it during the process.

Once we're out, we're out.

and so that'll go out and that information will go out towards the end of, typically the end of August.

So we have a little over a month.

I can extend that a little bit if necessary, but it does, to be honest with you, the big issue is the holiday season.

We're trying to do this stuff over Christmas and New Year's.

It really complicates things.

We can't ever seem to get back on track after the holiday.

So I'll try to get as much done on the front end as possible.

Oh, wrong way.

We are continuing to work with the Center for Nonprofit Excellence and the Equity Center for best practice and community engagement support.

It's been pretty wonderful to work with them.

There's another developing community group that includes the CIC, UVA, some other groups too, in order to help newer and kind of developing organizations determine where they fit through a bigger process, whether they're a business or non-profit, for instance, and they were looking to work with us on that as well.

We're continuing to try to work with the county and other community partners for improved private and public collaborations, so other grant tours to see if we can, you know, move somebody over here, or do you have something for these people so we can make them whole without having to fund it all ourselves?

You know it's a competition.

Sometimes just gotta lose.

But those are the things we'd like for you to be considered.

Obviously not here now if you don't want to.

I mean, we could.

But the issue to bring it here is that there's clarity and there's time to discuss it.

So there isn't a surprise when anybody's caught off guard in the review process.

I think we want to make sure that when we release this that you all are OK with it.

As far as the exclusionary criteria, we can make those decisions.

We can go with them one year and change them next year.

Those things aren't huge.

Right, so I'm thinking you said it was six that we're getting more than that you know what

Well, this would be the max request.

We would set the request at max at 150.

So if they could apply for 150, and if they have a fantastic prep application, they would get that 150.

But people have asked for more than 150 in the past.

I have to reduce that down to this cap.

Right.

Yes.

So I think that what you're saying is that if this year if they got 220 or whatever, then next year they will have a $70,000 reduction.

That, yes.

Well, I guess one implication is if you cap it at $150,000,

In full recognition, this is a limited pool of funds.

They would just need to engage with the city during the budget process to make an ask that's larger than that through a different process than the VCF.

And they could still get awarded that money, but it would be a very different process because they would need to engage at the beginning of the budget cycle to figure out do we work that into our budget some other way?

I don't know.

I think what can be complicated is that you are made aware of the Vibrant Community Fund awards at the same time as those budget council sessions are happening.

But it would be, I guess,

I would offer that the clarifying point is that technically if you were to suggest that you prefer setting a cap, which did come up this time around, then that would be the new maximum amount that an individual organization would be eligible to receive.

What we had talked about was if someone still asked above that,

maybe we take that under consideration and bring that back to council a different way, but that would be the only way.

That's my understanding of what I agree with.

I guess the point is just, I think it's reasonable.

If someone's making a $500,000 ask of the city, to me, it seems reasonable to have a deeper engagement with staff and council that's just fully a part of our budget process from the beginning, similar to when we've made investments of five, $600,000 as part of a budget cycle that just wasn't VCF.

I don't know if that makes sense, but that's how I'm thinking of it.

And to me, that seems

Honestly reviewing the past few years of applications to see what the impact would be and it just really became like the number.

I mean it was not as scientific as I'd like to tell you but we looked at the last three, four years of applicants and it wasn't going to really impact

a large percentage of applicants.

I think there was a couple from 150, there was one for about 170, there was a 250 and there was a 480.

So it wasn't like a lot of people that were applying for more.

That's right and it's to manage expectations for the organizations based on how we encouraged for a period of time a zero based budget and so we just understand that there is limited dollars and we picked that number because it was an incremental enough change that didn't impact

And I will say too, as part of this, one of the side parts of this is trying to partner with private donors and organizations to educate them about who we have and are there other ways to fund these organizations kind of centrally.

And it is important to hear Council's reaction to the suggestion of a CAP because now is the time that that information needs to be shared so that individual groups can begin to make adjustments.

One reason why the notion of the CAP is appealing to me is that it seems to me that

there ought

detailed look at the governance structure, for example, of the organization.

I don't know whether you all have been doing that kind of study, but we don't see it.

We don't evaluate anything based on governance kinds of issues, or at least we don't say that we do.

Also, at some point, if we're talking about that much money, it ought to be because the city council

our city council and city manager and so on have collectively decided that that's a particular goal that we really want to emphasize.

I've tried to think of the kinds of things that we give money to with Vibrant Community Fund as things that we look at and we say, okay, that's not a city priority exactly, but it's a really good idea.

And if it's something that's important enough for us to make it a priority and to have some broader effort for

It kind of feels like maybe that kind of money ought to be spent in conjunction with other similar spendings and with some sort of cohesive, almost sort of ecosystem look at whatever that problem might be.

Now that may be asking for a broader analysis on your part and on our part than we have ever done.

But maybe that's what we ought to be looking for.

I think it's a good idea.

It would be interesting if you had like median, you had some statistics in terms of median average, you know, the

maybe not standard deviation, but some way of saying what a good upper number might be.

I personally would be okay with a $200,000 cap.

Thank you.

Yeah, no, I think it makes sense because it does that expectation management.

It stretches the dollar for more organizations.

And then Lloyd and Michael are saying the same thing, basically, as if you need more money than that, you become kind of a separate budget item, not a vibrant community fund item.

And I would pull up the budget to check on the organizations that it would affect.

And you're right, most of them, there's a handful that are right at that $150.

Well, I would say, would we increase the fund equally?

Right.

We couldn't really increase the cap if we're not increasing the total.

The fund.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It seemed counterintuitive to me.

But so I would ask you, are you going to increase the fund?

Right.

In the abstract, sure.

So Michael, it sounds like you're in support of it.

Yes.

And I would be too.

I don't have the numbers poured up.

like Natalie, but I would like to just kind of know what they like because if they're getting, I just use an example of 220 now and we make the cap, they're going to be coming to us anyway, you know, lobbying.

One of the organizations that has over 150 that I would be a little bit concerned about is the Jefferson School.

So that would be... That's a separate.

The Jefferson School applies for a small amount of robbery community fund.

The other part of that is a rent, I believe, that we pay.

Okay, so it's listed in one line out of the budget, but it's... That's a little off.

Okay, great.

Brian Pinkston, Juandiego Wade, Lloyd Snook, Michael Payne

So it sounds like most folks are comfortable with $200,000, and some are okay with $150,000.

So would it be reasonable since this is the first year that we're instituting a cap to just start with $200,000 and go from there?

That works for me, Miss Graves.

I'm fine with that.

I'm fine with 150.

I'm fine with 200.

I don't have strong feelings either way.

Same here.

I would like to see the information then.

That's a separate conversation.

Yeah, we'll.

I'm looking for help in the back.

Michael always says this every year and I agree with it.

Yeah, and every year I think it gets a little better from my perspective.

Yeah, I would just second that.

And I, as you've said, I say every year, but I'll state it again.

I mean, we're a public body.

There is no way to separate politics from a public body's budget.

And I don't mean that in a negative way.

I mean, that is elected.

We hear from citizens.

And you all do too, but just in a different way.

If there's a process where not just this, but CDBG, hops, CAF, where 90% of the recommendations in the process are followed,

But 10% of that total budget is adjusted.

To me, that's about as good as a process I feel like a public body could ever get to.

Lloyd, any other comments?

So I appreciate y'all work on this.

This is, you know, it has been with three budgets, but in my mind, we sometimes get through the big numbers, the millions of dollars and then we're down to, you know, $1,500 for this nonprofit or not that because this is to really where

The service is out the hands of the city touches the residents in the most tangible way with these non-profits and so they come out, you know, and so your work is really important and I appreciate you all being so helpful because I know that you all provide incredible customer service because people tell me that they come and you are very helpful.

Thank you.

Sam, I think that this would be also a good time to just get an update.

I was recently talking to Marianne Doyle with C&E about just the status of non-profits in the community.

Is that something like probably during this time if we could

get, you know, a five or ten minute update on just, you know, I don't know if she could come like now or, you know, you could choose a time just to get an update on the status of nonprofits, general speaking, in the community because they play such a big role, it would be good to

I would like that.

If others would want that as well.

Sure.

Fine to have them come at some point.

Thank you.

Yes, I would move the following for a City Council closed session pursuant to Section 2.2-3712 of the Virginia Code.

I move that the City Council, the City Council, close this open meeting and convene in the closed session.

As authorized by the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, as follows.

One under Virginia Code, Section 2.2-3711A1.

for discussion and consideration of assignment, appointment, performance, demotion, salary, discipline, and a resignation of a specific named employee of the public body and two under Virginia Code Section 2.2-3711A3 for discussion and consideration of the acquisition of specific real property to mitigate displacement of residents and or their property where discussion in an open meeting would adversely affect the bargaining position.

Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, please cash your vote.

Okay, City Council's man closed session and will return at 6.30.

For those joining by Zoom, there will be a separate link then.

Thank you, we'll be back in about an hour.

As for the delay in starting, the closed session went a little bit longer.

Thank you all for coming out to join our regular business meeting.

Yes, sir.

Second?

Second.

Can we vote please?

Okay.

We're now going to observe a moment of silence.

A lot has happened over the last week in our community and the world.

I just wanted to very briefly acknowledge Jim Shea and B. Lambert.

I know a lot of people in the community knew them as activists, not people who worked on the inside, but they'd been involved for decades, anti-Vietnam War movement, gay rights movement,

The very first meeting in Charlottesville politics I ever went to, there were four people, there were two of them and they continued to be involved with the Police Civilian Oversight Board, Human Rights Commission.

We also have an announcement from Alex Zahn, highlighting the 16th annual Summer Think Shop.

With this year's theme is Yes, You Matter.

The purpose of this event is to provide a fun, educational, and positive experience for area children, Campers ages 6 to 12.

It will take place at Burnley Moran Elementary School on Thursday, July 18th from 10.30 to noon.

The main highlights are Mila Marrero, a 12-year-old creator of mental health boxes, a drum call, a dance troupe, saxophones, and various other groups.

Community Minders, we have eight persons that are pre-registered to speak, leaving eight slots open.

And once we get through the first eight, I'll just identify individuals in the audience if you'd like to speak.

So we'll start with our first speaker.

Hi, good evening.

I'm here tonight to talk about the impending sale of the Carlton mobile home park.

I'm concerned, as are quite a few people, that this sale could potentially result in the displacement of our neighbors who currently reside in this park.

The funds that the people who live there would receive if they were forced to leave would not be adequate to cover the cost of leaving.

and moreover there just aren't enough spots for mobile homes if they survive the process of being moved to be moved into which leaves the people who live there in quite a predicament as it's very unclear where they might be able to go and unlikely that they might be able to continue living in our city.

Along with a group of other people, I give canvas in this neighborhood, and I've spoken to several people.

One woman asked us to relay that she has lived in this park for 44 years.

It's her home, she has nowhere else to go.

Another person told us that the trailer is the only thing she really owns, that she inherited the money that she bought it with, and losing the trailer would essentially mean losing everything, losing all of her wealth.

And a lot of people in this neighborhood have families that would be displaced, a lot of small children.

And furthermore, people who live in this neighborhood are people who work doing essential jobs.

They're a vital part of our community.

And I, for one, don't want to see them displaced and not able to live in the city that they live in, work in, and help to run.

So I am asking

that this council would collaborate with Habitat for Humanity to put in a counter offer before the August 6th deadline.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Thank you for the chance to speak to all of you tonight.

As you mentioned, Mayor, I have a set of stories for you to read at your leisure.

I just wanted to take this time to thank you for your support during the budget process and generally for collaborating with Java.

We go from talking about numbers at the budget time to wanting to share with you some stories that help you actually feel the difference that we make.

It's a lot more fun and more rewarding.

I would just point out that pages two and three talk about our J-REC, our Respite and Enrichment Center.

And I think what those two stories show is just how simple something like a manicure or a shave, what a difference that makes to people with dementia feeling like they have dignity.

And I think we forget that sometimes.

And then I would just point

to page seven, which is a much longer article, but basically it talks about how our health educators have been able to help a person from Charlottesville better understand how she could eat healthy and meet some of her needs for her disabilities and chronic diseases.

but also feel good about what she's eating and then gave her some ideas to even do some things with her daughter to make it an activity and that she just felt like that health educator heard her and then gave her some good ideas and I think that's what so much of what we do is about is stories after that are our agent service coordinators and although the example is from one in a different county they're very similar to what we do everywhere and

It's just important that seniors and caregivers feel like they have a place to go to get heard, to get solutions, to get help.

So our help comes in so many ways, both practical things that you can hold in your hand like a meal and then the advice that can help you carry yourself through the day.

So I always like being able to share some of our heartwarming stories with you and

I don't want to take up a lot of your time reading them to you, but you can enjoy them when you have a minute.

Thanks.

So Mara, I want to thank you for your service.

I know it's been recently announced that you will be retiring.

And I serve as a city rep on the board.

And we hear these powerful and impactful stories at our monthly meeting.

And I think that this, I know this community will look and feel a lot different without Java there to keep an eye

and being an advocate for aging.

So thank you so much for your work and we'll be sure to read this.

Thank you.

I am Executive Director of Friends of Charlottesville Downtown.

I will be speaking on behalf of the Friends organization whose mission is to create a better-than-ever downtown for the entire community.

I've had the privilege of working with most of you all over the past two years in our efforts to do just that.

I submitted a series of written testimonies to you from our business community, our downtown businesses, and I hope that you'll get a chance to hear some of their personal stories tonight.

You already know that the mall is struggling.

Since 2017, we have gone from 3.5 million visitors annually to 2.5 million visitors annually in 2023.

If that trend continues, the mall will not survive.

There are some key themes that we saw in the testimonies from our downtown businesses.

They're losing customers who don't want to come downtown.

Their staff feel unsafe.

While their sales are declining, they have increasing costs and responsibilities.

They're dealing with biohazard waste and a deteriorating environment, and they don't feel like the police have the authority to help them solve these problems.

We at Friends of Charlottesville downtown are throwing everything we have into supporting the downtown mall and we are struggling to convince people to spend their time and money on the downtown mall.

And despite living in a wealthy community that cares very deeply about Main Street, we are also struggling to encourage philanthropists to support our marketing safety and community building programs.

If we don't work together to solve these problems, the mall is seen as a lost cause and our supporters do not want to continue putting money into good money after bad.

I want to emphasize that we are not here to complain and that we want to demonstrate compassion to find better solutions for our entire community.

We understand that there's very difficult decisions that need to be made.

And hope that you remember that investing in a thriving economy is the only expenditure that will bring additional funding for other priorities that the city has.

This is not an either or conversation.

I think Charlottesville is at a unique inflection point where the city council, city management and the community at large are willing to work together to solve our problems.

In my remaining 25 seconds, I would agree with what she said.

And what I would say is I've been on the mall since 97, 98, I don't remember.

And I've watched it go up and down and up and down.

And we are as bad as we've been in terms of perception of it being unsafe.

All of the businesses care about the people that are on house in need and services.

We all reach out to them.

And we want to partner with you to find some immediate solutions

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Good evening, Councillors.

My name is Elizabeth Stark.

I'm a resident of the Woolen Mills.

I live on Fairway Avenue in the city.

I know you've heard from a lot of folks this weekend and, you know, early this late last week about the Carlton Mobile Home Park and what it means to our community and what it means to the residents there.

And so I just want to reiterate how important your support for a potential redevelopment project is there.

Myself and other members of Charlottesville DSA, along with folks from Legal Aid Justice Center, Sin Barreras and other local organizations

spent our weekend canvassing the Carlton mobile home park and speaking with residents there.

You know we heard from stories people like what they have there.

They can afford to live there.

They can't imagine what will happen if they can't live there.

They have invested in this place and this space and you know they very much you know

wish some residents wanted to stay and have things stay the same.

Other residents were incredibly excited about the prospect of redevelopment and some kind of new and safe, affordable, efficient housing.

So, you know, I just want to sort of hold up that community and say we saw so many beautiful neighbors who care about their neighbors, a diverse community that knows each other and

is really deeply connected.

So I know you have big decisions to make and it's a big funding commitment, but I really hope that the City of Charlottesville will honor that and not let this become a private development and displace this vibrant community.

So thank you.

Good evening, Mayor Wade and Councilors.

In February 2013, the City developed a water resources protection plan that established a fee payable by landowners from Pervious surface.

I'd like to urge Council to introduce an item in this fall's legislative packet that will nudge developers and landowners towards establishing more canopy cover.

Currently, property owners are charged yearly $14 per 500 square feet of impervious surface.

Let's request in the legislative packet that mathematician botanists at Virginia Tech calculate the beneficial effects of canopy coverage in reducing the stormwater runoff from impervious surface.

Such a calculation, a canopy credit, would provide a positive incentive for people to plant trees.

Establishing tree canopy coverage reduces runoff.

Come up with a science-based formula that rewards landowners for canopy coverage and implement that canopy credit.

Keep the initial amount of the water resources protection plan fees revenue-neutral.

That is, the same amount of money will be assessed on landowners collectively to support the city's stormwater infrastructure.

But with the enabling legislation, landowners who have a high amount of impervious service without count

Dr. Balancing Canopy will be responsible for an increased fee.

They will pay more than they're currently paying.

Landowners who provide canopy coverage will pay less.

From an administrative point of view, the canopy coverage and previous surface combo could be calculated every five years for each parcel in the city using GIS.

and aerial photography with the investment of minimal staff hours.

There are existing nudges in the zoning ordinance to preserve canopy.

I'm thinking about Section 491, tree preservation and replacement, which requires a permit prior to the removal of any tree with greater than eight inch diameter of breast height.

This nudge is not working.

have seen multiple trees removed without the benefit of permits since the zoning ordinance was approved.

That well-meaning rule is not enforceable without public and arborist awareness and many more zoning compliance employees.

Earlier this evening you heard about parks and wrecks, ambitious forest restoration of 20 acres with 1,280 saplings projected to be planted.

Currently,

The 6.5 acre trailer park shelters many people, while supporting close to 40% tree canopy.

With the proposed redevelopment, the canopy coverage on this site is likely to drop to 10%.

Charlottesville is unaffordable, and with the loss of canopy and the housing, it becomes less livable.

Thank you so much, Bill.

So we'll note that.

The next speaker is Ada Majisti.

Did I pronounce that correctly?

Honorable council members, good evening.

Thank you for allowing me to speak today.

My name is Aida Mengeste, and I stand before you not only as a concerned community member, but also as a housing intern at the Legal Age Justice Center.

I have spent hours door knocking at the Carlton Mobile Home Park, engaging with residents and hearing their concerns about the potential sale of their homes to a private developer.

Families shared their fears and frustrations, recounting how this news has shaken their sense of security and stability.

Almost everyone I spoke with was eager to sign petitions to voice their opposition to the sale.

highlighting the deep-rooted attachments they have to their homes.

This sentiment is clear.

Carlton Mobile Home Park is not just a collection of residences.

It is a community.

It is where children have grown up, where neighbors have become family, and where countless memories have been made.

As a housing intern, I have witnessed the profound emotional and practical implications that the displacement of these families would have.

It is critical that you act to protect and preserve the fabric of our communities.

We cannot ignore the voices of those who would be directly impacted by this sale.

These families are not just statistics.

They are our neighbors, our friends, and integral parts of our city's social and economic tapestry.

I urge you to consider the broader implications of this decision.

We have an opportunity to explore alternatives that prioritize the well-being of our residents, such as collaborating with Habitat for Humanity to purchase the park on behalf of residents.

In closing, let us reaffirm our commitment to being a city that values its residents over profits.

Let us stand with the families of Carlson Mobile Home Park and their fight to preserve their homes and their community.

Good evening.

My name is Heidi Diviabertu and I live in the Locus Grove neighborhood.

I'm a member of the court square enslavement memorial

Advocacy Group out of respect for enslaved ancestors.

We are the group that have placed flowers weekly for four years now at the corner of Zero Park Street and East Jefferson.

Last week, our group delivered to the City Council our concept plan for a proposed Lorraine and Eugene Williams Honorary Park adjoining the slave block site at the same corner.

In June, we presented this idea to the Historic Resources Council.

The HRC encouraged us to move the concept inside the court square rectangle itself.

In this way, the new memorial park will replace the former Stonewall Jackson statue.

Our group agrees and we are designing a new concept sketch for this 5,000 square foot memorial park.

We propose the following approximate wording to appear at the two entrances.

Lorraine and Eugene Williams Memorial Park repurposes McKee Row, situated here from the 1890s to 1918, which was an historic black residential and business location.

then at the center of town.

It inaugurates a spirit of apology and reconciliation in a place where all communities can unite.

The park is a site of justifiable civic pride representing the collaboration of diverse citizens and neighborhoods of our county and city.

It revitalizes the court square as a place to hold memorial gatherings, to engage in quiet meditation and prayer, and sit on benches with children eating lunch.

honoring Charlottesville civil rights leaders as well as descendants of those enslaved and all black residents.

It represents the truths about the past and embodies promise and hope for the future.

So we thank you, counsel, for allowing our group to engage further with placing a memorial park at the court square.

and in the remaining minutes I would just like to add to pile on to what other folks have said here tonight.

I've spoken to you before about the Mount View planned unit development and how aggrieved I am to see these magnificent ancient trees scheduled to be removed.

We know that they are the best decarbonizers

and this land could be used for affordable housing, all of it.

You could go back to the original drawing board and keep those trees in there and make it be for affordable housing.

So thank you for listening.

I hope not.

No, thank you so much.

The next and last speaker for those who pre-registered was Defendants Fine Out.

is that person here?

I will go to the, okay, so we'll open it up.

Who would like to speak?

We have an opening for it.

Hi, my name is Joan Kovach.

I live in Dilwyn, and I'm a co-owner of The Beautiful Idea.

Someone from a group text of business owners on the mall requested that anyone who is free tonight should come and speak to the impact on our businesses of unhoused people being on the mall Last year in our shop.

We installed a community free fridge a place where people can leave food for others in need and people can come in and take food no questions asked Plenty of unhoused folks have made use of this fridge as well as random customers who were grateful for the chance to grab a meal after a long day without an extra trip to the grocery store

We knew that our regulars would be pleased to see and engage with the free fridge, but what we didn't expect was how many great responses we'd get from people just coming in at random, not knowing our store beforehand.

We've had people see the fridge for the first time and be excited to come back with donations.

We've had farmers wanting to donate eggs and businesses around town who are glad that their leftover portions at the end of the day could go to a good use.

We've even had instances of young people leaving our store after an evening event coming back to knock on the locked door asking if they can grab some food to bring to someone who seemed like they needed it.

We also allow the general public to use our restroom and honestly this has more often been relevant to exasperated tourists just trying to pee who frequently become customers after the fact.

But we have also heard from unhoused folks who are tired of being shouted out of stores for having bodily needs.

There have been no negative consequences to our bathroom being available to everyone.

That said, I personally would love to see the city provide restrooms and water fountains downtown.

I know some folks may be anxious to interact with people they perceive as very different than themselves.

I think that's pretty normal.

But how we choose to respond to that anxiety says everything about us as people and as a community.

Most people who take food from our fridge are excessively careful.

They ask if they're allowed.

They're amazed and they're grateful.

They talk about coming back when they have extra to return the favor.

It hurts my heart to see people be so cautious to accept the simple generosity of some donated food, especially when there's so much joy in the faces of people who donate.

There's been a lot of discussion lately around unhoused people, and it's easy to get caught up in theoreticals.

I would like to propose that instead of focusing on our fear as a community, we could be creating more spaces to bridge the perceived gaps between us.

Because from where I'm at, all I've seen are people happy to share and be of service to each other and people grateful to be treated with dignity.

Thank you for listening.

Thank you.

Council.

Thanks for letting me speak.

Blair Williamson, I'm a resident of Amal County.

I have two businesses in the city.

I grew up coming to the downtown mall as a kid.

We would go to my grandmother's house on Lewis Mountain Road and take the bus downtown because that was safe to do even, you know, as a 10, 12 year old would go to Army Navy store in Wiley's and Woolworth's and

Brown's gifts for really fancy things like wedding gifts.

We had lunch at the Timberlakes.

We went to the hardware store.

We had an ice cream, crazy ice cream and candy store.

It was magical.

It was a magical, magical place.

Everyone in town came to the downtown mall because it was the center of town.

Fast forward 30 to 40 years and the magic is tired.

You've heard from Greer in the past year how that there are over a million fewer visitors

to the downtown mall, a reduction of over 33% in one year.

Why are people not coming?

They don't feel safe day or night.

The locals don't need to be approached more than once or twice to make the decision not to come down again.

Parking is a bit of a hassle and they have to pay and walk further than they would if they were in Berkshawyer Stonefield.

If you were a woman walking alone on the downtown mall, there's a really good chance that you'll be approached by someone wanting money.

It's hard to say no because we're all compassionate people and we want to help.

We know that simply giving a handout will only bring more panhandlers to the mall.

Sometimes we say I don't have any cash and other times we simply pay and walk away knowing that neither was the right solution.

Ultimately, the downtown retailers and restaurants rely upon tourism to stay alive.

We've already scared off the locals from the county.

The tourists don't know to be afraid until they get here.

The weekend wedding business keeps the hotels busy and hopefully the wineries for the downtown mall is wasting away

with little to no attention being directed to making it a vibrant place to live and work.

We have ordinances that don't allow panhandling.

City Code section 2831 says it shall be unlawful for any persons to solicit money or other things of value or to solicit the sale of goods or services.

I often hear that we don't have that ordinance.

I Googled it today.

It took me 30 seconds.

I found it.

You know, if I'm walking from Magpinets, my knitting shop, to here tonight, I, you know, was approached two times.

I didn't feel threatened, but, you know, I'm used to it, unfortunately.

Section 7A says, on private property, if the owner, tenant, or lawful occupant has asked the person not to solicit on the property, or has posted a sign clearly indicating that solicitations are not welcome on the property.

Let's post some signs, you know, I'll help you pay for it if that's the problem.

Henrico County Post and Short Pump in their shopping areas and then they give you an alternative location to donate if you feel compassionate and want to help.

At present, we're only holding people accountable to the level they can be accountable.

It's past time for studies and commissions.

It's the time to enforce the laws and ordinances that we have, trying to bring them all back to life and hold everybody accountable to the same level.

Thank you.

I'll take someone, anyone over here want to speak?

My name is Freeman Allen and I live next to Darden Tau Park.

Like Heidi Bertu, I'm a member of the Court Square Enslaved Memorial Citizen Activism Group.

We wish to collaborate with the descendants of enslaved ancestors of Charlottesville and those of the larger Central Virginia region as our community places a significant memorial park at Court Square.

An important part of our concept sees a fountain at the center of this part.

We feel it's important for this fountain to have an inspirational plaque attached and ask that you consider the approximate following statement which we offer.

It is long past time that we honored the enslaved people who were sold here.

The plaque would read, from 1760, and perhaps earlier, through 1865, tens of thousands of men, women, and children were sold or resold at or near this location.

The city of Charlottesville acknowledges this with apology and regret, and hereby appreciates the incalculable contributions made to the economic and social well-being of our town and surrounding counties.

through the generations of unpaid labor and infrastructure creation of these people.

Their sale here at Court Square and their immense contributions have been too long ignored.

This central cleansing fountain transforms a space of painful memory into one of civic repair.

With the fountain's purifying flow, the city of Charlottesville pledges

to create justice that runs down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I particularly want to call out to you that we are recommending that this park be named Lorraine and Eugene Williams Memorial Park in this manner.

We are not only

acknowledging the past, but we are standing beside these remarkable champions of civil rights who have changed the shape of our current history and acknowledging and honoring them as well.

Thank you, Mr. Allen.

Take someone here from the center.

Yes, ma'am.

Hello City Council, just thank you for letting me speak.

Mayor, Mr. Snook and Michael just wanted to let you know that today I had just tagged you in an article that I had found on Facebook that I found very disturbing and it kind of

brings everything here together talking about the people that are going to be displaced at the mobile park, talking about the unhoused on the downtown mall, and so on and so forth.

A friend of mine, Barbara Fitch, brought it to our attention that the property management, it's bestial properties,

They own a property on Page Street and I'll just bring it to your attention right here.

And talking, bringing it back to the comprehensive plan, the rent is $4,350.

Now, I don't know about you all and discussing about the comprehensive plan, nobody can afford that except for people with really extremely deep pockets bringing it back to the people that are going to be displaced from

the mobile home that have been here for years and years, people that are struggling on the downtown mall.

I don't know what happened to the property that was on 29 that was supposed to go towards housing people.

So the city of Charlottesville is just moving completely backwards.

The one thing that really, really disturbed me about B-Still property is the fact that they

They provided, it was really kind of normal for them to rate language, racial profiling in the 10th and Page neighborhood.

They go on about the house itself and bedrooms, blah, blah, blah.

There is a camera mounted on the front porch to the left of the door.

Note in capital letters, please note that Page Place is located

near a low income neighborhood.

Our location is very walkable to UVA grounds in downtown.

We recognize that not everyone will feel comfortable.

I don't know about any of you all, but I call bullshit.

That's unacceptable.

That is unacceptable.

That's wrong.

And here you all, like 100%, you go ahead, move forward with this comprehensive plan.

And if you think that affordable housing, we all know that it's just a buzzword.

The only people that are going to be able to

Michael,

And this is disgusting.

I wish I could read you because I don't have any time left, but just the points made to this.

But I just wanted to say, Mary, it was on your page and you responded respectfully to a woman

who was asking you to look into about a dog not that I want dogs chained up but I find that really disconcerting that you couldn't have just said thank you I will look into it that's all we want is just that's not that's not respectable it's not thank you so I really like somebody to look into be still properties and Michael I'm gonna give this to you because you're the only one that

And I know I don't have any time, but this is my neighborhood, and that's the Salton's.

It's like a slap in my face.

And I wish y'all would please, please care about us.

You can have three minutes.

Yes, I don't understand.

So please, you all, think about this.

This is horrible what's going on down this town.

And it's going to get worse.

Mark my word.

You're going to see worse.

Somebody better care about the homeless.

Like I said before, there's somebody up in heaven looking down and everybody's going to go away from here.

You got to care about the people.

Thank you so much.

Hello.

My name is Senlan Means.

I am a Charlottesville resident.

I was born here.

My parents had a store on the downtown mall through the 80s and the 90s.

And I myself worked downtown for 12 years.

And I'm currently a co-owner of The Beautiful Idea.

I just wanted to say that I have never felt unsafe.

As a woman, I go down there at night all the time, never felt unsafe.

Our customers never complain about feeling unsafe.

Our business is doing great.

And I think one reason for that might be that we treat the unhoused folks with respect and dignity and just treat them as they should be treated.

And I do not think that more police is an answer to this problem.

I get really annoyed that we talk of it as if the unhoused folks were the problem.

But they're not the problem.

The problem is that they have nowhere to live.

And so I think instead of focusing so much on the economy and economic issues, the first thing we need to do is find some affordable housing and somewhere to have them live.

I'm happy to have folks sleeping on the downtown mall personally.

If they can't have tents in the park, might as well sleep on the mall.

Seems like a pretty good place.

Thank you.

We have three more speakers.

Anyone else like to speak?

Hi, thank you.

My name is Susan Bashline.

I'm co-owner of Magpie Knits at 111 West Main Street.

I have been co-owner of this business for 11 years.

So I've been on the mall almost daily the whole 11 years and I've seen many things good, bad, indifferent.

Our business attracts women, children, as well as men to the mall and to our store and unfortunately recently it's been a bit of an unattractive place to visit.

Daily we encountered trip hazards from things on the mall, not along the edges, blocking walkways.

And we're kind of, I'm asking for maybe some common sense, either enforcement or governing to make it a little safer place.

I, for almost a month, there was a walkway blocked between our store and York Place, which, you know, I easily could walk around.

But it was definitely blocked by dogs, people's things.

And I've been watching the news and seeing all the news reports about these scooter companies who are now being fined for scooters being left on the mall, or on the mall, on sidewalks, because they're a trip hazard for visually impaired people, which I totally agree.

But so are these things.

And so I'm asking if there may be some common sense governance that if we're going to enforce that, that we really need to make it safe to walk on the downtown mall without tripping.

And I'd love to be able to have a, I understand people need a place to sleep.

I understand that.

You know, sides of, you know, along buildings or places, but these walkways, I mean, the people are out right in the middle of the sidewalk all day with no recourse.

It's scary, first of all, for people who aren't used to it.

We're used to it.

We see it every day.

Some people aren't.

You know, it's a fact of life.

Every city has the problem.

We do understand that.

But we're just looking for maybe some common sense, you know, to help us make it a more enjoyable place.

And my other kind of problem that we've been having are unleashed dogs on the mall.

I've been told many times that there's not a leash law on the mall, that dogs just need to be under voice command.

and then with a quick search today, I did find there actually is a leech law on them all from 9th Street Bridge to McIntyre Road on them all to Water Street to Market.

So I sure hate to have find out that a child was hurt, a dog was hurt or another dog because of these unleashed dogs.

So again, looking for common sense, if there is an ordinance that needs to be a leech law, that the police would know it and help us enforce it.

It's a little scary for people who are afraid of dogs or to have a dog walked up to them.

I haven't had a problem I'm a dog lover.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, City Council.

My name is Michael Kaplan.

I'm with Friends of Seville Downtown.

And I want to thank you for your willingness to make those tough decisions that may not be popular with everyone, but are necessary to protect the economic and social well-being of our city.

Inadequate action by prior councils has led to the devolution of life on the downtown mall and it's become an unregulated park where people are sleeping and sitting morning, noon and night and creating a jagged environment that is, as you've heard, is deterring customers and tourists and visitors.

What we need is an intentional park with some regulation somewhere else where people can go and we then need you to enforce no camping on the mall because what we have now is a deteriorating downward situation that unless you act soon, it'll be lost.

Everyone I talk to says they've stopped coming downtown.

It's no longer fun.

As you heard other witnesses say,

It's driving away people who love downtown dearly, and I've been coming here my whole life.

It's a long time.

And it's merely through the absence of focused intentional leadership by our council and a set of regulations that are respectful to the unhoused, providing them an alternative, and making sure that the bricks do not become an unregulated pop-up campground.

Last speaker for this opportunity.

Anyone else like to speak?

Okay, I'm going to close the community manners at this point.

Ms.

Consent agenda number three minutes April 1st regular meeting number four resolution to appropriate funds for the Virginia Department of Education special nutrition program summer food service program

$100,000 second reading five ordinance authorizing a grant of public funding to subsidize the South 1st Street Phase two redevelopment project of Charlottesville redevelopment and housing authority second reading six resolution of the Charlottesville City Council approving the city's participation in the proposed settlement of opioid related claims against Kroger

Second.

Second.

Do we know?

Ms.

Marshall is online.

Council members, at this point we do not know the percentage of what we'll receive from the Kroger settlement.

What this does is it lets the state know that you all want to continue to be a part of the group settlement since the Commonwealth of Virginia, every locality, every county and city has decided to go in together.

It would be given for the same purposes of all of the other settlements and so each of the settlements has within the settlement document some guidelines as to how to spend that money specifically for opioid abatement as well as harm reduction in education.

Additionally, there are standards from the opioid abatement authority in Virginia where if you

use their gold standard for all of your expenses which thus far the expenses that you all have approved which would be the Narcan vending machine so that our fire department may be able to provide that service and educate individuals would fall into that gold standard if you use the gold standard to get a little bit extra money from the state so that was always the plan was to stick with their requirements of usage so again with harm reduction think of things like Narcan

providing fentanyl strips or what some other localities have done, supporting substance use treatment facilities, for example.

Thank you.

So it's been moving properly.

Second, any other discussion?

If not, can we vote?

Yes, we have a two-part report.

Ms.

Graves is going to go first.

I forgot to tell her she was going first.

Hello again.

Back in the business meeting to provide you all with an update to a new and developing program that is getting close to launch that will be housed under the Department of Human Services but facilitated in partnership with the Charlottesville Police Department.

It's called Youth Lead.

Lead stands for Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion.

It aligns with your current strategic

Council strategic priorities, one being education to partnerships and three public safety and of course the overarching commitment to justice, equity, diversity and inclusion.

The purpose of a pre-arrest diversion program and bringing it to Charlottesville is to support youth through accessing program services and activities that build protective factors and provide positive, healthy outlets so youth avoid juvenile justice involvement.

has a background to why we decided to bring this effort and program to our community.

In 2020, there was a team that came from Charlottesville that was included members of our department, Commonwealth's attorney, Charlottesville police department, local judge, Burrito at the time, and the 16th district court service unit.

They received a grant from the A&E KC Foundation to attend a

Program, a training program at the Center for Juvenile Justice Reform at Georgetown University.

It also included two years of technical assistance to do some listening sessions with the community and sort of prioritize several goals that would lead to juvenile justice reform, probation reform.

We, one of those goals, one of the six goals in that Georgetown project with Annie E. Casey

highlighted that we wanted to implement a new and updated diversion policy within the police department.

In August 2023, the city manager appointed an internal work group and highlighted the implementation of a pre-arrest diversion initiative focused on providing wraparound holistic services to youth at risk of court involvement.

And this is currently being supported by the Charlottesville Police Department, Albemarle County Police Department,

City and County Commonwealth's Attorneys and the 16th District Court Service Unit.

We've also had some folks from the UVA Law Clinic do a research project on best practices and other localities that have implemented pre-arrest diversion programs.

We also had a consultation call with Fairfax County who has had a similar program in one in Los Angeles, California.

So basically the benefits that we're hoping to achieve are to acknowledge that if a young person is arrested, they're actually more likely to become arrested again and less likely to graduate high school.

So pre-arrest diversion essentially would take at a step upstream and make sure they're diverted from the court service unit at all.

So it means that it's keeping youth that don't pose a harm to the community

out of the juvenile justice system.

That's essentially the goal.

And instead of funneling them into the juvenile justice system, which can be a sticky system, we want to make sure that we're putting support, services, resources in place so that once they complete our program successfully, they are better equipped with skills and resources and assets so that they may avoid future involvement.

It also frees up resources to focus on more serious and violent offenders.

It can potentially reduce racial disparities in the juvenile justice system.

Essentially youth will remain record free and they're less likely to re-offend in this kind of pre-arrest diversion program than they are in a traditional diversion program.

So how it will work is if a young person has an offense

and has an interaction with the police officer.

And they're already designated and approved by the city attorney's office and the police department, I mean, I'm sorry, the Commonwealth Attorney's Office and the police department.

There's a greed upon set of low level offenses.

If this young person, one of the offenses that they are charged with is on this eligible list and the youth and parent or caregiver agrees

The police officer will refer to our department, the Department of Human Services for an intake and assessment and an offering of community-based services.

At the Department of Human Services, we have a menu of services that we provide, including KIP, Teens Give Service Learning, Mentoring, and Parent Advocacy.

We can offer some of those things in-house.

So that instead of going the traditional route, which is if a youth has an offense, that police officer would take that petition to the court service unit and follow the court path.

So if the if the offense is not on this approved eligible list, and they will have to go the traditional route through the court service unit, or if they've had a prior history of involvement with the juvenile justice system, they would not necessarily be arrest eligible for pre arrest diversion.

So when they are referred to the Department of Human Services, they don't have to touch court, they don't have to touch the intake office,

which again improves their outcomes for future success.

So instead they'll come to our offices.

The youth would be required to complete, they have a choice, either four sessions of teens give service learning which is essentially we provide transportation, we pick young folks up, we take them to a community service site, we provide preparation and reflection after their service.

or if doing community service in a group setting is, you know, that person prefers one-on-one, then we could provide four sessions of free one-on-one mentoring with one of our department staff.

So again, these services would be free, no charge to the youth.

Optional, we have a menu of optional activities that are provided through funding from the city manager's office.

And additionally, the Virginia Juvenile Crime Control Act

for prevention.

And so we would have a menu of services to say, once we start to get to know the child, what are their goals?

What are their interests?

Do they want to go to a sports camp?

We can pay the fee for that.

Do they want a gym membership?

We can pay the fee for that and help them with the enrollment.

What the idea is, we want to have a brief interaction with them to sort of see what their needs are, help meet their needs, provide some pro-social activities and mentorship

so that they never come back into the system ever again.

Like I said, the funding has already contributed through a grant that we received to our department and through both the City Manager's Office and Albemarle County Human Services.

Our agency is able to serve both Albemarle County residents and Charlottesville residents through the grant, and so they've also contributed some additional funds.

So after 90 days, if the youth has completed the required sessions, those brief sessions with our department, then the youth will not be formally charged.

They will never have a record.

They will never have a tracking system number, which is the ideal situation.

So they would have gained some level of support, resources, and additional skills so that they have prevented any future police encounters.

Unsuccessful diversions, if after 90 days that young person was not able to complete the required sessions or they have another charge, then the youth will have to have their referral returned to the court service unit, in which case there still are activities and services, but they would have to go the traditional route.

and I know that's a brief summary.

I do.

You said kind of in the beginning how it differs from a traditional diversion program.

A traditional diversion program our office also facilitates.

But what happens is we're partnered with the court service unit.

So traditional

Diversion has a little bit more teeth to it.

So if a young person has an eligible fence for traditional diversion, they would come to our office.

We would still offer the services and requirements, but it's

they have to complete those things within 90 to 120 days, or it could go to a court and then a judge has the authority to make a decision on what a sentence would be.

If they're successful in that 90 days, then that case gets dropped.

But there would still be a record of their touch in the juvenile justice system.

And they would have to, like there are, there is data to support that just one going to court as a young person, even if you're

like going to support a family member that's in court as a juvenile.

If you're a juvenile, then your chances of court involvement can increase.

You may have mentioned it, but is part of that partnering with a mentor?

Yeah, our mentorship program is, you know, does one-on-one

They meet

You know, are feeling overwhelmed with anger issues and they need some consultation or some teaching on anger management skills.

other questions or comments?

Just that seems like a really great program that you all put together.

I remember last year when we were talking about the city manager trying to stand up various groups that could address the issues that we were facing in the community.

And it takes a long time to pull something like this together.

But I just want to acknowledge that you all have stuck with it.

Thank you.

One of the

Parts that we're proud of is partnering with Alamo County Police Department and Alamo County Commonwealth Attorney's Office so that we can, no matter where a child is in these boundaries that sometimes get blurry, that they would have an equitable access to the services.

And that was really important to us.

And I'm glad that these entities and agencies have signed on.

All right, so

In 17 days it will be one year as city manager.

I'm still here.

But really, I'm here.

I plan to be here.

It's a lot.

I can't use the word fun yet, but I'm working on it.

But nine months ago I came before you and shared with you that I intended to produce a work plan.

That's a document that I choose to use in managing a voluminous amount of work.

and I thought it was important for me to be able to share that with you council as my bosses so that you know what I'm up to but also for the public.

The goal was for the public to be able to see what it is that we're prioritizing in the way of work and since I produced the first version of this and shared it with you all we revised the website so now on my page on the website you can get updates throughout the year and additional things that I've added in addition to another place on the website called the transparency portal for anyone that hasn't checked it out.

If you're looking for

This year, this past fiscal year, FY24, was a challenging year.

It was not the year that one would choose to come into a new job with the volume of work that was laid before them, but the team rallied around me and we got a lot of stuff done, so I wanted to spend a few moments just talking about a few of those things.

We got three collective bargaining contracts done, delivered, effective July 1.

That's a big deal.

Being able to do that all at one time for police, fire, and transit, and we're already working on number four.

We implemented class and comp changes comprehensively.

It was important for me to be able to make sure that we did not leave team members behind in being able to demonstrate that we would do something for everyone while not equitable.

The goal was to do the best that we could to modernize our human resources system.

We've been making a lot of changes, a lot of long overdue changes, I will say, that have led to us getting to a place where we're beginning to feel better about it.

I know that there are people who will say, I'm not there yet.

I understand that and we're working on it, but this was a dramatic shift in the operations for this organization and a costly one.

So we had to make sure that we did it as fairly as we possibly could.

We talked about the zoning ordinance a little bit.

There was a huge undertaking

under leadership of Mr. Freeze towards the end of getting that done and the team working there.

We got that done and now we have a lot of work to do in its implementation.

Just last meeting, we talked about the sidewalk priority list.

I've been talking about sidewalks since I got here three years ago.

Sidewalks are an important priority for us speaking to quality of life and access and we have made sure that we have lived up to the mission and the task that I gave the team was to produce a list make it available and put it on the website and tell people when we're going to get stuff done we're doing that now so I'm very proud of the idea that we've been able to achieve that

Misty and Team were here.

Some of our firefighters are here.

They were a part of this alternative response model program that we were able to announce that we're working on.

Excited about that along with youth pre-arrest diversion that you just heard about.

Delivering on the things that we've identified that we know we need to do

is more comprehensive in nature.

That's what this has been about for me, being able to figure out some of the things that we've talked about, not necessarily acted on, some of the things that we've thought about, but not necessarily committed to, and some of the things that we have tried, but maybe we didn't try wholeheartedly and to see if there was just another bit of energy that we could add behind some things and try to get those things moving forward.

So the fact that they're on the accomplishments list is a big deal.

We secured extension of regional operating agreements with one on tonight's agenda, and we're going to get it right?

Yes.

All right, thank you.

So it's very important for me to be able to demonstrate that we can work with other people.

So we have Elmar County Mutual Aid, UVA Fire Services, and CARS tonight on the agenda.

A highly successful launch of microtransit partnership with Albemarle County.

It was important for us to be able to see what we could do to support their needs and that we can't solve every problem with our current transit system, but they were able to receive some grant funds and ask us to participate.

and bringing additional service to that region.

We were able to do that and now we're excited about where else we might be able to go with that.

Our emergency management coordinator, our first designated emergency management coordinator in the organization, has been able to update all of our emergency management plans.

That is basic and boring government.

Very important, very hard to read stuff, but it was important for us to get those things done so that we can have the confidence that we are ready for all hazards in this community as it relates to the government's response.

and some significantly important property acquisitions, Zero East High, Avon Levy, both of those being high interest conversations.

I'm going to leave it there and we'll keep working on what we do next with each of those.

We filled critical positions.

It was important to make sure that we have the team.

I need the team around me to get the work done because I can't do it all by myself.

And my intent is that I don't need to.

That's what they're for.

So we were able to get two of our deputy city managers seats filled, one to replace me.

Our fire chief is permanent, communications and public engagement director, two assistant police chiefs, the FOIA officer, assistant director and CAT, fleet manager and facilities maintenance manager.

Those are big positions, important positions that play critical roles across this organization and we were able to get all those seats filled within the past 12 months.

We're working on reorganization priorities.

We added a deputy director in public works as a critical position for us to be able to elevate someone who could actually pay a little more attention to some of the nuts and bolts and bringing things together.

So it was important for us to see that we could do that.

Mike was already in the department.

He has been a rock star is what I tend to call him.

And he's been able to answer questions even when most people will probably run away from the answers.

He has been able to stand up and answer those questions.

We added a right away project manager because a lot of our projects have gotten stuck.

We have not been able to overcome the challenge that right away poses.

It's a very difficult situation, but we have someone who loves this stuff and he lives and breathes it on a daily basis.

and we merged our transportation project managers with our facilities development team forming for the first time a project management team so that we can have best practices employed across this team, therefore affecting the entire organization and not where you see one division doing well and another division struggling.

So that was important for me to be able to see that I could support.

And as we've talked about VDOT, you've heard a lot about it.

We're still not done.

There's a lot of, I guess, forensic evaluation and assessment that's being done, but there's good stuff that's happening just the same.

On the agenda tonight is a memorandum of agreement, a right-of-way process.

Both of those are critical to our relationship with VDOT as we reboot this relationship and try to make sure that we can make the kind of progress that we want to make on all the projects that have made it to our portfolio and all the projects that we dream about adding to it.

The Belmont Bridge is done.

We got it done.

All right.

It was something that people have talked about forever in a day.

And while it is just the critical piece of infrastructure, it brought about a lot of conversation and I write over it today and I'm just thankful that it is finished.

We have all three of our parks projects within our VDOT portfolio moving.

We plan to get those done.

The goal is to add more and we will continue to add projects when the portfolio feels right.

We're trying to get backlog done first and then we'll feel good about adding additional projects.

So there have been challenges.

I'm one who is pretty matter of fact.

This council knows me.

I don't shy away from anything.

I can deal with whatever I'm pretty direct and the goal for me is just to tell the truth.

It's a lot.

This job is a lot.

This city wants to do a lot.

It's okay.

We can do it and we have been.

We have some long tenure challenges that lead to a slow progress.

Sometimes we find it difficult to get our projects done.

But changing our approach is a continued priority.

If we can focus on planning well, scoping projects well, we will absolutely execute well.

And that is what I'm really, really committed to helping this team being MBC that we can do on a regular basis.

The cost of things on the long list are very, very costly.

Transportation, homelessness that we have heard about a lot today.

Housing, schools, collective bargaining, ADA improvements, and parks and bike improvements that's going to be talked about later on today.

These are very, very high ticket items.

We've got to balance that.

I say it to these five all the time and they don't like the word discipline, but it's important for me to talk about discipline because somehow we've got to balance all these different things.

But it's important that we don't lose sight of what our challenges are and that we're working to address those.

So what's next?

Homelessness Interventions.

This is a conversation I've been having with council here lately.

I've been reaching out to members of our public who are working in this space, experiencing various things, looking for what are the things that you recommend we consider doing and aligning those with what we are thinking about doing already.

I assure everyone in the city of Charlottesville, we are not ignoring this problem.

This is an ongoing conversation, one that has been going on for quite some time and I'll be honest and say that since October it has been a high priority for me.

We're working on a number of things.

We feel good about where some things are going to go.

There is a delicate nature to it as you all have expressed this evening and we will continue to work on that.

Our police civilian oversight board, there's some recommendations that I'll be bringing forward in regards to how we can support its operations

There's transportation innovation work that council and the public have all spoken to as a priority and I agreed to as a part of concluding this year's budget that we will prioritize transportation in next year's budget So somehow I have to figure out how to deliver that with all the things on this list, but we'll figure that out

Our ADA transition plan, there will be an update to council next month, to council in the public next month.

There are many, many things on that list.

There are many, many obligations that we as a city must be able to address.

And over time, we will get those things done.

So we have to balance what is on that list with the Parks and Breakmaster Plan that comes next year, that focuses on our quality of life and recreation and things that we need across our city.

We'll be looking at how do we balance some of those things with other things.

Collective bargaining continues.

We have three units today.

We have three more coming.

We have to figure out how to make room for all of that.

And the goal will be to ensure that when we're done, we're better for it.

That's what ultimately this is all about.

and then downtown mall improvements.

We launched a committee.

The prior city manager, interim city manager produced a downtown mall committee.

We did work for a year.

We have a lot of things on that list.

The mall celebrates 50 years.

It is important to me that it exists for 50 more years.

I came from places that didn't have them all, didn't have that kind of amenity and it's important for me to see that it is value, respected and is there.

It needs to be there for all of us.

So I would like to figure out some things that we can do as well.

We still have some key staff capacity, but what I did on this page is because I don't want the media to take this and run that, oh, we've got chaos all over again because we have vacancies.

Vacancies are a natural part of evolution for any organization, so it's okay.

The NDS director position is open because we promoted someone.

The DSS director position is open because someone retired after 30 years.

She earned it.

We have vacancies in a couple of other spots.

And that last line, the transit plan, our customer service representatives and additional drivers are all new.

Those are all improvements to the system.

So we will get those taken care of and because that list is a little bit shorter I might be able to get it done before 12 months.

That's my goal.

and I'm here to implement Council's vision and that is to be a place where everyone thrives.

Thank you.

Thank you, Sam.

Thank you.

Been busy.

We're now on to the action items, and the first one is the ordinance to amend Chapter 19.

Jason, we have a lot on the agenda, so you can give us the abbreviated version of your staff report.

The abbreviated part

Good evening.

I'm Jason Vander Room, the city treasurer and a member of the retirement commission.

Um, as you all know, the city administers a defined benefit pension plan.

Uh, usually when somebody retires, they elect to receive a benefit, which is paid monthly to them, uh, for the duration of their life.

Uh, but about 20% of our retirees select what's known as a joint and survivor benefit.

So they may have an eligible beneficiaries such as a spouse or other

Eligible dependent and when they do that we have to do a calculation to determine how much those alternative payment amounts should be.

and they look at those and they determine do I just want the single life and duty payment or do I want to choose one of these that continues on to my spouse, you know, if I were to pre-decease them, for example.

The city code specifically references a mortality table that the commission has to use when they're doing these calculations.

That mortality table is 48 years old.

We would just like you to strike the reference to that mortality table so that we can use a more modern one, but that requires an action by city council to do so.

Yes, sir.

Are you asking if I have further commentary?

I think the word choice of modernizing is really the critical piece.

It's just catching up with time.

So just so everybody will know, my wife gets a small pension from the city after

8 years in the city attorney's office.

However, she did not designate me as a contingent beneficiary.

So she is unaffected by this change.

I just want to clarify.

No, there would be a new table.

So for example, all the other calculations that involve the plan use the table that was last updated in 2021.

So the commission would just work with the actuary and adopt whatever table they recommend that we use.

Okay.

Move it's approval.

All right.

It's been moved.

Second.

Sorry about that.

So I will now open the public hearing for to amend chapter 19 of the city code.

Anyone want to, when the public want to speak on that?

Second.

Second.

Can we vote please?

Thank you.

Motion passes.

The next item on the agenda is ordinance to correct ordinance number 0-21-172.

Good evening, Council.

Chris Engel, Director of Economic Development and a board member of the Charlottesville Albemarle Visitors Bureau.

And that's what brings this item to you tonight.

This is a correction of an oversight that occurred when this amendment

was approved almost two years ago, was noticed and this is a cleanup item to attach the correct amendment with the correct resolution.

So if you have questions, happy to try and answer them but this is scheduled for a public hearing.

I have one very small question which is just procedure-wise.

No, we're amending our ordinance that was approved before theirs.

So theirs was done to their knowledge correctly.

Yes.

In this respect.

In this respect.

If there are no other questions at this point, I will now open up the public hearing to correct ordinance number 0-21-172.

Anyone from the public would like to speak on this particular item.

If not, I will close the public hearing.

I would move approval of the ordinance to correct ordinance 021 172.

Second.

I'll second.

Can we vote please?

The motion passes five to zero.

Thank you.

The next item on agenda is to amend and reenact the city's ordinance enabling EMS services agreement with cars.

Mayor Wade, members of council, Mr. Sanders, Madam Clerk, Mr. Staff, good evening.

The item before you tonight is a request to amend and reenact Chapter 12, the city's code and to introduce the newly updated Emergency Medical Services Agreement between the City of Charlottesville and Charlottesville Alamol Rescue Squad, replacing the amendment from 2017.

The primary reasons for this update include

The city attorney's office noticed the need for a well-defined funding relationship that aligns the current billing laws and practices.

These updates align both agencies with the rules of EMS billing and state and federal, at the state and federal level.

The newly updated amendment offers a matrix that breaks down the funding schedule that we currently have.

And also it includes a term, allowing for periodic reviews and adjustments.

These updates are administrative changes and steps towards enhancing public safety in our city.

The first EMS agreement was created in 2015.

Then in 2017, the city and cars collaborated to establish emergency medical services for the city.

What's Charlottesville Fire Department has designated emergency services response agency.

Therefore, the new agreement has been established allowing cars to continue providing emergency medical service.

as a designated component of the Charlottesville Fire Department.

Although the response model has changed over the years, CFD and CARS continue to provide the citizens with advanced and basic life support.

This aligns with City Council's vision and strategic plan for public safety and the provisions of medical service for the citizens.

I hope you had a chance to review the documents and also the included red line version of the updates.

Tonight, Mr. Sanders, Representative of the Attorney's Office, members of CARS and CFD who have been instrumental in these updates are available to answer any questions regarding the updates to the ordinance and agreements.

The President underscores our commitment to transparency and open communication.

No questions, just to say I know this was a lot of work and time and that I can imagine this was not

I concur.

I'm glad that we're able to use the expertise of the volunteers and the staff over at CARS.

Yeah, one of the very first things when Juan and I came on board were folks from cars, all of this confusion and probably remember this and there was a lot of, I don't know, just

Discontinuity, whatever word you want to use, disconnect, disagreement.

And I'm really happy that you all have taken a while, but have figured out a way to work together well.

And I think it will help everyone to prosper.

Yeah, Brian, I think it was an indication when we got on council there was a lot more than we thought.

If I might follow up on that just a little bit.

I actually had the same visit to cars two years before you did, and I had the same sort of experience.

But I note that since that time, I don't know, we've been through what?

Five city managers and four city attorneys and three fire chiefs.

We finally found a combination that could bring this together.

Okay, we'll put on the consent agenda next week because that's a public hearing for the consent agenda for the next meeting.

Not really, but if second reading is fine.

So we'll just forget I said anything.

Yeah, I appreciate it.

Thank you, sir.