City Council Meeting   9/3/2024

Good afternoon, everyone.

I call the Charlottesville September 3, 2024 City Council meeting to order.

Ms.

Councillor Oschrin.

Here.

Moved for approval of the agenda.

Motion passes.

The meeting will be divided into three separate sections.

This is the first one where we will hear and discuss presentations that don't require a

Ms.

I think we... Is it loaded?

I'll just start with a few remarks.

Council, thank you for having me.

I'm Jelaine Schmidt, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia and until June, the Director of the Memory Project at the UVA Karsh Institute of Democracy.

I wish to thank Council and also the public for their patience as we compile this research and also our research team at the Memory Project.

For the past three years, the memory projects research team comprised of doctoral students in history have been working at the Baltimore County Courthouse and the archives uncovering records that pertain to the sale of enslaved people.

The timelines for this, here we go.

Yeah, second slide, thank you.

So the process of the Blue Ribbon Commission on race memorials in public spaces began in 2016 at your direction.

I see that, of course, there's been a lot of turnover since then.

But there was a six month process during 2016 in which the question of public memory with respect to race were considered in a series of meetings.

Next slide, please.

Accounts of the historical record emerged, particularly about sales of enslaved people in our court square area, which for a century or so earlier in our town's history was the centerpiece of our community.

Of note was the 1829 sale of enslaved people from Thomas Jefferson's estate and noted here in

even in subsequent decades, including in the 20th century, was record of the number of slaves that were sold there with some very unflattering comparisons between humans and horses, I should say.

Next slide, please.

at the conclusion of the six-month period, the Blue Ribbon Commission made its final report to City Council to your predecessors.

There was general consensus among the public, notwithstanding the debate about statues, which attracted the most attention, but there was consensus that there should be more memorializing and markers pertaining to

Salesman Slave People in Court Square.

What was of note was that the majority of the local population for most of the 19th century here was enslaved and the Blue Ribbon Commission noted to your predecessors that this was something that was a priority.

Next slide, please.

With that, and I'll skip playing an excerpt, but we actually have a recorded interview with

a formerly enslaved person from Charlottesville, Mr. Fountain Hughes who recounts among these other accounts that we found the sales of enslaved people at Court Square.

Next slide please.

Yeah, thank you.

In subsequent years from 2019 forward, there have been numerous public vigils that have been held by descendants at these sites around Court Square in which priorities been given to actually saying their names.

And of course, some of these names have been uncovered by my team's research, which I've entered into the record.

It's about a 200-page report.

These here are descendants that are gathered that are reading firsthand accounts from enslaved folks that were sold there or were about to be sold at Court Square.

Next slide, please.

There's been an insistence on the part of the community with just kind of volunteer flowers appearing and other ad hoc observances that have occurred.

I understand that there is a local grocery store which weekly donates flowers which are then placed there in a sort of unofficial marking of the space.

and it seems that it's kind of an insistence by the public to have better public history.

Your predecessors on council

referred the case of these salesman enslaved people to the Historic Resources Committee of the City in order to conduct more research on this.

And so the HRC, which I'm a appointed member, began conducting

Community Engagement with Descendants of Enslaved Communities here and had a series of these during the pandemic, during the quarantine even, so we had to move to Zoom during that year.

And also held other events such as this one at the public library to consider the history of enslaved people and what other communities are doing to memorialize this.

Next slide, please.

And so then as I took over the leadership of the memory project at UVA in 2021, I took this charge from the historic resources committee, you know, kind of I wear two hats both for the city with the historic resources committee as well as that UVA in my capacity as a researcher there and as leadership of a research team.

And so my team,

took up doing this research at the courthouse and this is where we started having meetings and presenting the works in progress.

to the next slide.

We began having public events, presenting this to, first of all, to descendants along the way, to the Central Virginia Historical Resources, to the Albemarle-Charlesville Historical Society, various fora at UVA, and of course the Historic Resources Committee of the City as well.

So I've presented to you here the conclusion of the report.

and I, you know, thank the public and thank Council for their interest in this and I know that this is, it's a research project.

We did this because in that community engagement process with Descendants, Descendants said what was important was to have names and stories.

They wanted to

and here is one of our periodic presentations of the research in the courthouse itself with descendants gathered around with the research team.

Presenting this now, as it's an opportune time we have going on right now, we have the parks renovation going on, as well as the courthouse square renovations that are going on.

So this is an opportune moment, you know, as we're deciding what to do in our public spaces to consider memorializing

salesman slave people in Court Square.

Why Court Square?

Because it's our seat of justice and it was as my team found out and is presented in the research you can read.

The court was intimately involved in adjudicating these sales and recording the deeds and property taxes because humans were counted as property.

And so this is our seat of justice and it's something that, it's a place that we are reconsidering how to mark the public landscape.

So it seems that this is an opportunity and I hope that

You know, the folks that are involved, you know, with Parks Department as well as the consultants and the people that are involved with the court square renovations will take into consideration this.

You know, one of the things that I've often pointed out is that we have presently more physical markers

of 19th century horses.

Plack there with over 100 words, then we do for 19th century humans who were being sold there.

So it seemed that this would be an opportunity in speaking with descendants about and also with members of the broader public during the Blue Ribbon Commission process about what was wanted.

People articulated that they wanted something that broke the physical plane that wasn't just a plaque underfoot or even just a plaque that was raised, but something that

was a human scale that represented the humanity of folks whose stories had otherwise been overlooked.

Thank you so much.

Go ahead.

Yeah, I really appreciate this.

Where would we actually find the report?

Is it online?

It should have been sent to you.

It was sent.

There was a couple of pages in the packet.

OK.

This is the full report is this.

OK.

I can also add it online to the council agenda page as an attachment.

and

Democratic representation in public spaces.

And that includes the physical objects that are there.

Of course, we went through a long process of removing some that did not comport with our professed values about multiracial democracy.

So this is not the same project.

It is an additional one.

But it is something that is, you know, swords into plowshares and, you know, memorial possible, memorial to enslaved, to sales of enslaved people.

So the park master plan that's happening, hopefully we'll find some way to incorporate

Some of this.

My understanding is that the consultants report is due to council by the end of September.

For the consultants?

No.

All right, so there's still time.

Yeah.

Which is good because I was at an event, a public event at the Jefferson School last week, and there were some members of the audience.

It was an event for about the Fifebill neighborhood, and some members of the audience expressed surprise that there was a park process going on.

They were unaware, you know, so anyway, it's

tricky to kind of catch, you know, with the public engagement to get the folks, you know, involved to, you know, to get that kind of feedback.

Well, they were doctoral students in history.

And so for them, this was a significant part of their training as scholars to be delving into what can be very arcane public records.

And they're, of course, written in cursive, in that 19th century cursive, and include words that are unfamiliar.

This 200-page report even includes a gloss rate at the back, because some of the terms are just so unfamiliar to us.

But these were public records.

Yeah, I guess the big question for me is around implementation of what this all may mean.

As I understand it, and correct me if I'm wrong, the parks planning process will more likely kind of come to us with recommendations that might identify within the parks like this would be a place for future public art, but not so much getting involved with designing or deciding what that might be.

So I'm just curious what

Right, and which is a good concern, there were some members of the public that were, you know, a bit nervous when it seemed that the time was fallow for so long, but actually it was that this team was, you know, trying to do such an amount of research in three years and the pandemic, but we're on it.

I want to, you know, assure people, but in terms of going forward,

You know, I don't know, you know, what kind of process the consultants are going to recommend, you know, for the parks, but I imagine, you know, kind of more public engagement.

And, you know, I know that that's something that the Swords and the Plowshares Project has also

recommended and that we did here on this project.

So what it looks like, I'm not sure.

I mean, you'll see in the, in the, referring this to the, to the agenda on the calendar item that there's the, there's not a budget allocation that is, that is listed.

I assume that that can come later, but we wanted to, you know, put this steps, you know, to kind of lay the groundwork, you know, for further discussion going forward.

So I hope that council will, as we gather more information from the process about the parks and about the courts renovation, we'll consider this as part of a package for looking at public art.

And I can just really mention that this community was unusual for a southern town of its size in the 20th century for having such monumental scale commissioned original artwork.

I'm referring to the Confederate monuments minus the

soldier one, which was a mass produced thing.

But the other, you know, than the two, you know, Lewis and Clark and George Rogers Clark, very unusual.

And indeed, as the tourism industry ramped up here in the early 20th century with the building of the hotel, with the purchase of Monticello and more people coming in, Charlottesville was on the map as a place, a sophisticated place, that appreciated public art, you know.

We have now, you know, by

The accounts of some folks, you know, kind of denuded the landscape of this because we've decided this does not fit the types of representations that were there don't fit with our values now.

But we have another chance to get on the map again.

to really think big about ourselves.

It's already starting with the Memorial to Enslave Laborers over there at UVA, which is one accolades by top art and architecture and landscape organizations.

Right.

Because yeah, I think my

My concern, and it sounds like what you've said, is it was very clear, you know, the results of these processes where people didn't just want, you know, parks that look like any park or place in the country where you have maybe, you know, a small plaque that's standing up this time, but you have pieces of public art that create identifiable places that people can't miss and engage with and are telling a tune narrative

Well, and that's part of what this report is back to kind of, you know,

It's the memory, as it were, and reporting back to the original body.

It was your predecessors who lobbed the ball into our court, as it were, the Historic Resources Committee.

Definitely, yeah, and I agree.

I think the timing is just critical for Court Square Park, Market Square Park, all these, right, and thinking about how all these places fit together as part of, you know, a narrative and public spaces in our community.

So thank you for the report and all the work.

Thank you for echoing that sentiment.

Thank you for all of the work that went into this for you and all of your research partners and students.

Looking through old things is difficult, especially if there is that emotional connection.

and I also don't want this to fall by the wayside to use your words there for what happens next.

How in contact are you all with the Parks Department directly or is this something that has to go through us?

That's maybe a more procedural question for

I guess give me more context as to what you're looking for.

Okay, so I guess if and when there is a presentation where the parks department says here are some spaces that would be good for public art, what's the engagement process for picking what goes where, how involved are we in that?

Is it something we

I'll try to answer the question.

Again, as I mentioned in the beginning when we started the process, there are a lot of interest groups which is great and we've been working with Dr. Douglas in the beginning.

The more information we can get

What we do is we'll take it to our consultant to add it into our master plan.

So when they do reviews, they can review it through a lens of different interest groups.

And hopefully there's now just hot off the presses a publication of a final report for the Swords into Plowshares project as well.

Thank you.

So I just had a couple of comments.

From what I heard, you said that the people wanted names and stories with that.

And it's funny that you mentioned that because last Friday I met with some residents of Rose Hill and Cultivate Charlottesville.

We were talking about putting a garden in there.

and some of the elders in Rose Hill, these old African Americans, they talked about the history and what that is going to look like.

So I think this is a, and I've heard that before, that it's a desire of stories needing and wanting to be told as we get many new residents here and even the new persons because I've been here 37 years but I'm not

I'm still from, you know, from another place.

And I didn't know the history, you know, this particular meeting.

They were talking about the barn at, you know, at Washington Park and how the history of the barn, and I've been here for a long time, I hadn't heard, and I just was enthralled to hear all about the barn and, you know, things that took care.

I said I have to say is that, you know, it's important to tell these stories, you know, and to hear and to

to get it from the people that, not many of this had first hand experience, but people that can speak to it.

There is a kind of a specific section in there.

I believe it's in this page 157 and following.

There are some very kind of more fleshed out stories that are there.

And we have some others too, such as that of Fountain Hughes or Mrs. Maria Stewart and others, Mrs. Rebecca McGinnis.

We have several like that.

And I can imagine, as you know, I lead these civil rights tours during the summer and we go to lots of sites of memory and there are some wonderful examples of how to

and

As a descendant said, you know, we want stories, you know, stories are humanizing, stories are relatable, and as we've seen, you know, we can have an intersection of stories with public art.

Yeah, so what I'll offer is just a little more procedural context, I guess, just to kind of frame out for the public benefit as well, but also just for counsel to appreciate the consultants that have been retained for the master planning process will not design what goes in our parks.

That's not their job.

They will not design markers.

They will not design these various things.

What we've asked them to do specifically with four parks within our network, our system, is to spend extra time

looking at them through conversation with the public.

So that's Toncelor Washington, Court Square and Market Street.

The intention is that there could be individualized moments offered to the public to speak more in depth as to what we like here or what do we not want to be considered here so that these individual parks

Retain

look for what are the various thoughts, the ideas that we could hear from anybody in the community that was willing to engage.

And we're not done.

It hasn't stopped.

We'll continue to do that.

What I would say is this work done by this student group and any other materials that we can get our hands on all gets provided to the consultants because that's part of their scan.

That's part of what they've heard from this community overall.

And what we can anticipate is that they're going to say, Market Street Park, you're going to be very careful of what you choose to do there.

You're going to be very intentional about what you think about doing there.

You might want to consider doing this, this, and this, but that's not telling us what to do.

It's just making an observation based on the feedback that they receive.

When it comes to how we place public art across this community, one thing that we have discovered is we don't have a policy.

Mr. Freese is already working on that effort right now because I told him I wanted one to make sure that we have one in place so that we can at least provide parameters to anyone that would like us to consider any piece that might go into a park.

And the goal is really to be more helpful to those groups so that they know what things we're going to be looking for in doing that work.

But the designing of structures, monuments and all that is not going to be for the consultant to do.

You might choose to hire a specific consultant to do something like that that would be in your purview You might engage your historic resources committee to task them with speaking about things that you might want to be considered and bring those recommendations back His job is to manage these spaces.

So what we do inside those spaces then becomes his responsibility So just want to make sure that we're separating

and understanding where the decision-making process lies, the consultants will not dictate what goes in any one of these parks at all.

They're only going to set more of a frame.

You have this much space.

These trees are historic and you're not going to take them down, so it's going to limit choices.

You might want to do something with your sidewalks or what have you.

That's to what degree it'll go and then it'll give a community context as to what was expressed, as to how you might want to program that space.

I can assure you that.

Mr. Anthony, have you actually heard anything directly from Dr. Douglas with the swords and the plow chairs?

I met with her last Tuesday and they're trying to summarize and finalize their, I guess their report or feedback or recommendations and it sounds like it wasn't going to be quite done by the time you had asked for that input to be submitted.

Absolutely.

Not recently.

Thank you.

We talked about it, but not recently.

Yeah, she reached out to me as well.

No, that's helpful in terms of process and just with second what the mayor said earlier in terms of I Think it'll just be so so important to have it rooted in local history local stories local people and Even if it's unintentional a process that kind of sanitizes it into again something that could be

Thank you.

Thank you so much, and please, this is great information, so thank you.

I'd like to introduce Paul.

He will be giving the presentation just to kind of put it all in context.

When we got the consultant on board, we presented our timeline.

and today is discussing the hard work that Parks and Rec and the consultants have been doing and kind of giving you the end results of the downtown mall tree study.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Hello, members of council.

Mr. Mayor, appreciate being here today as we'll go over the tree management plan for the downtown mall and

look at just from an agenda.

We're going to keep this to 20 minutes.

I'm going to go very quickly over a lot of items.

Scheduled project scope, some historical context to the downtown mall, as well as just phase one and later phase recommendations.

So our team, Wolf Josie Landscape Architects, Paul Josie and Peter Russell, the project manager, we worked really

A lot of tree plans at the University of Virginia, University of North Carolina, Duke, a few other of those places, then also Smithsonian.

So we've done a lot of tree and soil work around the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast.

And we also had Keith Pitchford from 40 years experience in agriculture and tree care, as well as Lining Grade for civil engineering in Downey and Scott.

We worked with the city management team with Rion and Steven and Rob Mathis and looking at with them as well as

two different committees that were based of city staff as well, and one with community advisory committees.

And so what those were consisted of is members of the various city group staff groups from Public Works, Parks and Rec, Fire Department, et cetera, and also from more of an advisory committee with members of Council and University of Virginia, Architecture School, Historic Resources, BAR, and other groups.

and this is the timeline of the project where you can see we met with you in January of this year and this is almost a year's worth of work being consolidated today.

Well we had a number of meetings with those staff groups as well as those community advisory groups throughout the process and just sort of bringing them along as we went through these different from data gathering to site analysis to the recommendations to this today which is our sort of final recommendations for this project.

So you've seen, some of you have seen this image before.

This is of the extent of the mall development over time.

So 1976 was the original mall work that was completed by Lawrence Halpern and Associates.

1980 was a phase two.

Then came the Omni.

And then you had other sort of smaller projects throughout, including the 2009 re-bricking of the entire downtown mall.

And then, most recently, the city at the Code Building.

So we looked at all these areas and then we wanted to look at the history of this again.

This is really critical to see what was the design intent of the mall.

And the reason is that the mall is actually a pretty incredible design asset to the city of Charlottesville, designed by Lawrence Halpern's office, who really specialized in community engagement during the 1960s and 70s.

and had a large-scale community engagement process in this as well as thinking about the design and so he's worked all over the country and this is one of the only, it's on the downtown register of national places, obviously the downtown mall, but he also, it's his only place still existing in Virginia, is a really great asset

to the city and to the state.

They have 132 malls that were built in the 50s to the 70s.

Only 43 exist and Charlottesville is the longest at eight blocks long and really a notable downtown mall.

And there's a few reasons for this.

Just from a design standpoint, there was a layout of the bosques that we'll look at and how the tree bosques or groves were placed, the vegetation itself, and how they were in those groups of trees, the paving, how it differentiated with these longer bricks that was different than the vertical bricks of the architecture, the fountains that were throughout the mall design, and then the small scale, human scale furnishing.

So this is just a diagram that shows

How the groves are laid out in groups of three, five, seven, generally along the mall.

And these are placed not in a single straight line.

I think this is really one of the successes of the downtown mall, that the groves are shifted back and forth.

And it made people have to bump into each other.

If you think about designing it as a dance routine that you don't have a two-way street, you really are bumping into each other in a sort of a constantly changing, evolving block at each block.

Also, what was, as you can see in this diagram here as we get into the recommendations, that dashed line where you're already starting to see these missing trees in the downtown mall.

This is kind of showing the health of the current trees.

And so we look at these recommendations.

The first one is just what are the phase one trees that need replacement that are really in poor shape are already missing?

We're looking at the grates at the base of the trees.

We'll also look at the side streets.

We'll also look at some of the fencing and how you view the trees of the cafe spaces and then tree maintenance and BMP recommendations.

Starting this off, this is just looking at the

The overall you can see from the top left, the Omni Hotel and then working down to the next diagram all the way to Ting Pavilion and you can see central place in the bottom left of your screen there with that little blue square is so just orienting you and we started to look at these trees again over about 70% of the trees are willow oaks those are the trees a predominant tree in the center of the downtown mall as well as some other trees species throughout

And when we started to look at the health of the trees, over 60% of the trees are in good to excellent health.

And that is okay.

Those trees are great.

But when we start to think about what about the other 40% of those trees, we can see that 12%, 15 trees have already been removed.

There's another 6.5% that are proposed to be removed as a result of this report.

And there's a number of trees that are in fair to poor shape.

And those trees will decline faster.

then the good degrade trees.

And so what we'll start to see, you know, again, this is the current trees at 88% of our canopy, but then we start to see proposed removals today.

Really, it's 82%.

So now we're at one-fifth of our canopy, roughly.

And then if you look out five to ten years, we're projecting that you're looking at up to 25% of your trees being removed due to health.

And then when you look at 10 to 15 years out, if nothing happens,

We're approaching 45% of our canopy being lost.

And so there's a lot more pink X's on this diagram here.

If we do nothing for the downtown Maltries, they're at their high water mark now and they are in decline.

So if nothing is done, this is what we're trying to prevent from happening with this report and recommendations.

Phase one is looking at just replacements.

There's two areas that are really clear, poor health trees.

There's a seven tree boss.

There's too many trees.

They just all compete with each other.

That is in front of the Jefferson Theater.

Those trees are in very poor shape.

There's also, at central place, most of those trees are already dead.

And those were actually replaced in 2009 as another pass.

And it turns out Maple is a terrible tree for that location.

So this is a kind of a low hanging fruit.

This area really has a look, not only is there a derelict unfinished hotel, but like it has a pass through space quality to it where you want to get through it as fast as possible.

There's no shade, there's no refuge.

It is a forgotten space on the downtown mall and it is at the center of the mall and where it's really meant to be.

and the heart of it.

So with no shade and no trees, it really doesn't have a destination.

So this is kind of an easy phase one of looking at these areas.

You already have, you know, the bank is moving out or has moved out and then you have, you know, a derelict hotel and you have other businesses that have moved out in this area because of lack and neglect.

And so this is a great phase one to start with new trees.

The reason we don't replace one tree at a time is because it's critical to grow trees together all at once.

They will grow up that you'll see clearly underneath those canopies and they'll have the experience of a single boss.

But the canopies are high enough that you'll be able to see clearly from a safety standpoint.

If you grow those trees one at a time, they struggle to grow in their own shade.

So the trees will just stunted and then they'll actually block views, those new trees, and they won't grow over time.

So it's critical that we don't just take out one tree and put a new one in because it really just won't grow.

There's two approaches from a cost standpoint on how you can replace these trees.

One is just remove the grate, you actually blow out the soil and you cut out as much of that tree and stump and base as possible, crane that out, put in new soil, new grates and new trees.

This process is

relatively quick.

You keep the existing soils, which are somewhat compacted underneath those existing slab.

And when you say compacted, trees really thrive in a forest-like condition with soils that are uncompacted.

As you compact them, there's less air space for roots to grow into, as well as water and air to exchange in trees to grow.

So trees live shorter lives when they grow in compacted soils.

So this replicates the current condition here.

Michael,

next approach which would be an entire block replacement of soils where you take each grove out and you replace the entire volume of soil and you have a suspended slab that keeps an uncompacted soil beneath for these trees to have a much longer lifespan in them.

If you're 50 to 60 year trees and then you're looking at you know

90 plus, it really depends on the tree species, but you can get a lot more life out of them.

The next point here is the paver grates.

You can see the design, the original design, was that there was a structural grate hidden underneath the paving and then bricks right up in the tree.

So as you're walking through this space, it's almost like you're walking through a forest, but the pavement is right there.

So it really meant to have this sort of clean break with the tree.

When they started to rebrick it, they actually expanded that structural frame because it's starting to girdle the trees in 2009.

As we looked at them in this project, you can see now it's time to that structural grates are actually girdling those trees again.

When I say girdle, it's strangling them.

So these trees will significantly decline if nothing is done with these sort of strangling structural frames.

So there we looked at all the locations.

There's over 44% of trees that have great damage from that strangling.

In the re-breaking 2009, it was re-done.

Now those trees have grown again.

Now they're like, oh, too much.

Too little.

And so this is just, we have details on how you do cut those and expand those in our design package.

You can also do road barriers at the same time in these areas, common use out there.

You can also move the lights that are in conflict with the trees, shifting those to the side so there's some other updates you can do while you're doing this work.

Another approach is to return to the brick, just a brick and tree, getting rid of the metal grate, which is actually quite intensive from a cutting standpoint.

You have two people to lift it.

You have to actually move it away from the tree or else you'll burn the trunk because of the process of cutting.

So this is a way that you can just go back to brick.

And there's only a few areas you can do this because you would only do it to an entire grove.

You wouldn't do it to.

Brian Pinkston, Juandiego Wade

We also looked at the side streets of how you can update those with improvements.

And then we looked at a few really detailed conditions throughout the mall, such as where there's canopy crowding at the entrance of the mall, near the omni, where you could thin out some of the trees that are competing with each other for the health of the grove.

If you don't do anything to the trees, if you don't cut the grates, then yes.

But it's, I think what's nice about the bricking is that it'll actually, the tree will expand and push the foam away and it'll, and so it actually can grow into it better.

Meanwhile, the grates have to be physically cut.

They can't be expanded naturally.

So there is a slightly better advantage.

But if both are maintained well, they have the same value and impact to the tree.

Thank you.

Did you have a question?

There's a lot in here.

Sorry, thank you.

So when we look at, this is another condition of the freedom of mall trees.

There's a hidden grate in here.

And you can start to see this heaving of the bricks around here.

There's an accessibility issue.

So there's just actually adventitious roots getting under the bricks over the grate.

So there's just a way to actually remove that hidden grate, trim some of those roots.

So we have details for improving these areas as well in our report.

Also at the end of the Ting Pavilion, there's canopy crowding conflicts with the pavers as well.

Just simple ways of adding mulch to these areas that they can't grow grass anyway.

We've talked to the staff at Ting and they, because there's so much density of people in these areas, they want to be under the shade of the trees that the grass won't grow anyway.

And so mulch actually keeps moisture in the soil, which will enable really healthier trees to hold moisture and nutrients.

That's one approach.

There's also a thinning of two trees really to help enable the betterment of the grove as well as two new trees are proposing really to help provide shade on that lawn from the west for concert goers and such.

And Friday is after five.

When we look at the historic design intent, this really is focused on the trees, but there are two things that were sort of tied together, is the view of how you see the trees, and we'll talk about those in the fountains that happened to overlay with theirs, so they kind of overlap in this discussion.

But when you think about how you see the trees as the design intent, they are meant to be, you know, that you can walk next to them, you know, touch their trunks, experience them.

And then you see the cafe zones, which are very different than the design intent, but they are integral to the success of the downtown mall.

We're not proposing drastic changes to the cafe zones, but just how you potentially maybe have some recommendations for what they look like.

So things such as potted plants that start to enclose the...

Brian,

Four areas.

We just happened to focus around the fountains just because of the way the fire lanes work out.

We noticed that there were seven vendors that took up roughly 30% of all of the cafe areas and then three of those took up over almost 17%.

So three vendors have a disproportionately large amount of cafe space.

Well, there's no way to change this unless there's a roll over of, you know, this is a policy change from the city.

These are just recommendations for how you could do that.

And these are, you can start with the top left, where you're looking at in front of Bezu and grit Christians, where you could just open up that area to see the actual fountain itself, but see the trunks of the trees and walk through those groves.

at Central Place.

You can just, you know, reveal those trees so they're not hidden behind the fountains without really impacting much in the way of cafes areas.

Fountain C is looking in front of the paramount and how you, as you're walking, you know, that main corridor, you want to see the trees first in that experience and not see them wrapped and fencing in cafe spaces.

So,

These are just strategies of ways that you could adjust the cafe fencing to reveal the trees, but also to reveal, you know, this is just showing how we sort of just changed that dynamic and getting rid of the extra large trees.

But this is for a later study and recommendation for how the cafe fences could be changed or standardized.

This is just another bonus, not just seeing the trees, but seeing the fountains.

I mean, they really were intended to be public elements for kids to engage with, approach, and to enliven the experience of the mall as you're walking.

You hear the sound of the water throughout, so it doesn't have a stagnant feeling as you're walking along the mall.

These are really critical design components.

And so, how do you reveal these?

And you can reveal both the trees and the fountains at the same time.

These are just simple ways to resolve the accessibility concerns around them with just grates that will be porous that you could then approach the fountain.

You could do this at the central place as well, having detectable nosing strips at the stairs so that these are no longer concerns with accessibility.

It's actually a slight raise and it actually has a gritty surface to it.

So someone who is blind or visually impaired could then know it's coming as opposed to there's no railings around it currently or anything else.

Great.

We also have a very large report, a conclusive plan for maintenance of the trees.

But the majority of the maintenance is not to prune trees.

No excessive pruning.

These are mature trees.

They do not need excessive pruning.

So some of the really cabling, structural pruning, these are all in a much larger report.

database that's given to Parks and Rec and how to manage these over time.

There's also a larger report like specific like take this, don't take that limb out for all these trees.

So it's a very comprehensive maintenance plan for these trees.

When we think about zoning impacts, the trees are successful right now because they have access to light.

The building heights are not very tall.

We don't make strong recommendations, but we want you to consider if you're making zoning changes of how trees will grow in a canyon effect.

They will struggle to grow in full shade.

Trees really need that light.

So as you have a, you can see here, what is allowable plus allowable plus bonus.

That would be growing in a canyon-like effect.

The trees would not grow as long and as healthy and really change the light and the experience of the downtown mall.

Can you go back to that last slide for a second?

Yes.

So this is under that canyon drawn you have on the left would be if every single building on the mall was developed that height.

Right.

If there's a new building going in, this... Right, so there could be a new building going in, but not every single building is going to be.

If there's a large block, say, of one big building, like the Code Building, had that building been constructed, you know, with a single wall on one edge, that would have changed how the light gets to the tree.

So it's really just pointing out the concern with zoning and trees and the mall and the building heights particularly.

Correct.

But if you were to give only one tenant, okay, you can build a tall building, but you can't build a tall building.

This is an example of just how the light does work well and get to those trees, just as a diagram.

Long-term recommendations, this is just looking at the tree selection and the phasing.

Right now, the willow oak and the red maple with the design trees is a yellow fall color and a red fall color is a strong contrast.

If you have only two types of trees, you're putting them at risk.

So when we think about redesigning these trees and think about new species, we want to think about drought tolerance, climate change resilience,

Michael Payne,

of, you know, American Elm, the sort of Jefferson variety, the Tula Poplar, the Swamp White Oak, and then the Willow as well.

And then the Bald Cypress has that offset red fall color in the center.

So this is that change, the design, but really not trying to change the Halpern vision.

and then when we look at the phasing, the long-term phasing, the current tree health is most critical.

We want to keep the current trees as healthy and as long as possible.

We do not want to take out any trees that we do not recommend taking out.

Health is number one.

A stepped approach is number two and then the location obviously and how it affects.

We wouldn't want to take out three blocks in a row, for example.

So this is just looking at that four year phasing over 20 years And I'll just break these down.

We again looked at the health by grove of these trees Phase one we already talked about really at the center where the trees are already mostly dead or in very poor shape Phase two would then happen so after that sort of phase one was installed And you start to look at the trees that are at least healthy in the next round and phase three and phase four and

these trees by year 20.

So the ideal goal is that phase one happens within the next five years it's finished so that you're starting to budget for it now getting design drawings and such for it and you can also see the goal of this is that as phase one starts to grow up you know when phase three is done we have really dominant we have existing shade in that phase one tree so that you're never having a condition on the mall where you have no shade

You wouldn't take out all the trees at once, so this is really staggering those trees to really develop their shade over time so that, you know, by the time this is complete we have really a more complete feeling along the mall.

There's a few other just conditions you could do to celebrate, you know, that changing of a block.

You could have sort of art temporary art installations and such as you sort of have smaller trees that sort of celebrates that block and that brings life and engagement to that block.

and so again this is a diagram from the beginning that talks about this is what the current condition is of the mall and we've seen the trees that are being lost and we know that there is a projection of these trees to continue to decline and so nothing is done so this is hopefully that future of the downtown mall and linking to those trees and with that questions.

So I'm going to start with Michael.

Yeah, I would say, as others already said, I appreciate the level of detail in the report.

I think it's easy to kind of take for granted the downtown mall as a historic resource.

And certainly in terms of the amount of people who visit it, it's our most engaged with historical resource.

And I think it is a historic resource in terms of not just the history and architectural design, but

Michael Payne

doing, even if the cost is higher, doing what we need to have new trees have the longest lifespan possible.

Obviously, at least to me, seems like the more sensible path as well as it seems like bricking them, if that doesn't have an impact on the health of the trees, seems like a good approach to go.

I also strongly agree in terms of changing how people engage with the fountains.

I don't know what the best approach ultimately may be, but currently it just seems clearly not optimal and I think it almost looks like they're under construction or just like should not be approached in any way and kind of has the feel of hostile architecture and I hope we can figure out how to not have that be the permanent way the fountains are engaged with.

And yeah, I was, you know, I feel like the trees in a lot of ways are critical to the success of the downtown mall, because people wouldn't probably want to be there as long, especially on a hot day without the shade.

So I was interested, you know, when it's phased in, obviously maximizing the phasing, the amount of

You could have art installations that offer a little bit of shade.

You're never going to get the cooling of a tree.

It releases water vapor and all these things are really cool at the temperature down, but you could have some light shade in installations.

The proposed trees are larger caliper trees that would go in and ideally provide some shade right away.

and

Well, I think we all know revising their guidelines will be important, but particularly in the context of the downtown mall with there's now a greater allowed height by right, which is obviously in many ways a positive thing in terms of fulfilling the vision of mixed use site where people can also live.

But that also comes with a lot of very specific considerations.

And I don't know, I just generally don't know if the BAR is in a place where they feel like they can engage with specificity.

on these new questions, and I think there's an opportunity maybe to clarify and strengthen it because I think this is a historic resource with a lot of competing, historic resource, public space, also commercial and residential district.

I think preserving it will require a lot of specificity and detail and I just hope the BAR can engage with that and I don't think that has to come at the cost of allowing people to live there but I think it will only be preserved with a lot of intentionality and I wonder if the BAR is in a place where they feel

They have all the tools necessary to do that.

So that's just a question it raised to me, which I guess is outside your purview.

And then the last thing, every time we see a presentation, I always wonder about, you know, the downtown wall kind of being an unfinished vision.

We've got that large surface parking lot right next to it, what would expanding it in a very creative, you know, big picture way look there.

Yeah, I like a lot of what Michael just said, especially about the expanding them all part.

What makes it successful is, you know, having people be there and having it be an enjoyable place for people and then what's great about

The trees, like you said, it's different than a structure providing shade as there's the evaporative cooling and the water moisture and all of that.

The pleasant sound of leaves rustling and all the things that make us enjoy nature.

One of the things that I want to consider on a larger scale beyond just expanding them all, I think that's a good conversation for us to have at some point.

is something that we've brought up here and there, but not in a dedicated way, which is removing the car crossings, which then is a lot of space that's in full sun, that the trade-off is not between trees and somewhere for people to live, but trees and cars, and that to me is a much, much easier choice to make, because, you know,

Every person that lives downtown is a person who doesn't buy a house from a clear cut development in the county saving those trees So that's the kind of the broader scale that I'm I'm I'm thinking of when we look at this So that's That's where I would want to both find both more space for trees But also more space for cafes and cafe seating and expand those which again the more people that are downtown the more seats you're going to need to have

for them to eat and drink and hang out and have that third space.

With that kind of question that I had about, you mentioned the vendors and the cafe space that they have.

Okay.

I mean, it just happens to be the larger, you know, the ones that have the most amount of room often are concealing the center of the grove and the actual experience of the fountains.

So they happen to just, you know,

The exact barriers for folks to use in the cafes is not a hill that I'm really going to fight too hard on.

But I did really like the look of the brick to the trunk versus the grate.

It's incredible.

It's great.

Yeah.

It's really thoughtful when they planned it where you'd be able to kind of walk up

to the trees like you and nature.

Yeah, that's nice.

And then my I am going to bring up a question I had earlier, which is the suggestion for doing the block replacement with the suspended slab slab.

So that's not what's currently there.

Yeah.

And willow oaks are very tolerant of tough urban conditions and they were able, like we have really good soils here that have some ability to hold sort of that pore space in the soil.

Well, there is a thick eight to ten inch concrete slab underneath all the bricks.

So none of those, you know, we wouldn't get any heating of that.

So we would replicate that.

It's just a

Cool.

And then it was also just a point, again, not outside of your scope, but nice to see in some of the pictures you were showing the way I remember them all as a kid with seeding and, you know, running up to the fountains and trying to prevent our dogs from drinking out of them and like, you know, having that accessibility nice, but especially the seeding.

If you look at where the original public seating was, it was around fountains and places that parents could sit and watch the kids play and feel comfortable watching their kids.

That is now barricaded in the middle of the cafe zones.

And then the other areas are the fire lanes.

Thanks.

Brian?

So I'm curious about the graph or the chart that you show about the effect of height on shade on the mall and

There are certainly trees that grow better than others in full shade.

Willow Oaks are not one of those trees.

So that would not be recommended in a full shade scenario.

But there are some other trees that

I don't know if it's any of the trees we've suggested, but it limits it.

Just, you know, those trees will have less resources.

You know, they will grow differently than the current trees do.

If we had a building that was going up that was going to now block the sun from, let's say, some willow oaks that we're currently doing just fine,

I don't think I could give you a number exactly of how long it would take.

Is it a year two or five or ten?

It'd be five or ten.

Trees just slowly, they'll just keep working, you know, start to see limb drop, you know, start to see thinning.

Like, you know, if you do see major construction and back to a tree, it's not day one, it's always like,

That's all, thank you.

So, there was a lot of my questions and comments have been answered by others, but I did want to kind of dive a little bit deeper in what Natalie was talking about.

Yes, so the policy as it stands today, the cafe spaces are smaller than they were when they were originally created, but you can't create a smaller cafe space until you have a turnover in ownership.

So our leases are annual leases, but the way the system is set up is somebody has a larger cafe space until there's a turnover in the ownership of that lease holder.

We can't shrink the size of the cafe space.

And I'd like to say for the record, I'm not out here saying we should shrink cafe spaces.

So past decisions have been made to shrink what is the allowed sizes, but the larger ones stay in place until there's a turnover in ownership.

So that's why

Yeah, as the policy is currently written, yeah.

So we've recently had one of the larger ones has had to change in ownership and they are going to be shrinking.

But as it's currently set up, what happens is there's a shrink in and now you have two cafe spaces where there was once one.

and one of the things we need to change if we were looking to do something along those lines is not have that automatically split into two but instead just shrink down to one.

Yeah, and I think what I had in mind is not necessarily maybe a change in configuration because maybe they can have the same size but it's different configuration so that the public can get closer to the fountains and the trees and things like that.

So that's kind of what I had in mind.

So I would like at some point to

see that as we are doing a park master plan, looking at these trees and talking about what the original intent of the downtown mall was for.

And I think we can do it all.

And it's fun how all these things come in together because it would have been good to have some of this before we had done the zoning rewrite.

One of the things, sorry.

I think we might be saying the same thing, go ahead.

Probably not.

The cafe seating with heaters.

Yeah.

Go ahead.

Obviously the heaters

damaged the trees, and we've seen that.

As I understand it, heaters aren't allowed, but maybe I'm wrong in that.

But they certainly seem to be utilized in the winter months, even if they aren't allowed.

But how does that change to a distance?

Now it has to be 10 feet away from the trees.

After our last presentation, there was a policy written that has to say 10 foot away from the trees.

And how is it enforced?

It's not that we don't have enforcement.

Today NDS is doing the enforcement.

So we have staff that occasionally walk up and down the mall and look for these issues as well as sign issues and various other things.

There's a whole body of rules that govern the use of the cafe spaces that we enforce.

And we sent a reminder letter out some time ago telling everybody about the new policy for the heaters.

But we also work closely with parks.

So I'll add that it's interesting that the job description for this job doesn't have weaving it all together because that tends to be what I spent a great deal of my time trying to figure out.

The downtown mall committee heard a lot of this and other things.

There are many, many things that James and I have talked about needing to figure out how to prioritize.

as he referenced policy.

There are certain things that we're going to need to bring back to council for you all to weigh in on, make some decisions on.

It will be using some of your capital because not everything is going to be viewed as positive and non-controversial.

We understand that as well.

But part of the challenges for us is

We're doing certain things.

We're not doing all the things all the time.

And our best way process matters.

And that is one of my favorite words, as you all know.

So we're looking at trying to weave these different things together.

And it's just interesting how some of the issues that we are spending time on, they all kind of interconnect.

I mean, Rion is he's leading the team that

maintains the mall on a daily basis while James's team has to do some enforcement here and there.

There is no centralized party that would simply be a governor of the mall.

And when they see something out of compliance, could actually speak to it right then in there and or report it.

That speaks to part of the challenge that I see.

And we have not historically brought forth the best singular process to kind of weed out the problems.

And that's what we're getting to.

So I think you're going to see more of that as we work through this.

But we thank our team here for helping us understand about the trees because I heard a lot about the trees and that they're vulnerable and needing special attention.

And each day that goes by in their current state, we're probably only making it worse with the heaters and the various things that we're doing with

what conditions have been allowed to persist until now.

So we've got to start doing some things and that's going to cost money.

The point that I wanted to reemphasize too was by claiming the side streets as more mall space.

That is also more space that the cafes could go to that gets the central mall.

a little more flexibility to have, you know, public seating and public space.

And like we had that commenter recently come and say like, there's nowhere for her to sit to take a break.

And so, you know, she has to go home or, you know, water fountains or public bathrooms in the side streets.

Other questions or comments?

This is really good information.

I got a lot of tidbits down.

going to use it as I'm talking to individuals about the city.

So thank you so much.

Thank you.

We have a motion for a city council closed session pursuant to section 2.2 dash 37 12 with a Virginia code and move that this city council closed this open meeting and convene in the closed session is authorized by the Virginia Freedom of Information Act as follows.

Second.

Okay, can we vote?

We're now in closed session.

We're returning 6.30.

Thank you.

I call the Charlottesville City Council meeting to order.

Yes, sir.

Is there a second?

Second.

Can we vote?

Thank you.

We have a moment of silence.

Thank you.

I would like to recap a press release that the city schools put out about the renaming of to the schools and the reopening of KTEC along with the celebration times and days for when that's going to

happened.

So the first thing that we want to note is on September 8th, that is the Charlottesville 12 day, which was a previous proclamation by the city celebrating the 12 students who first integrated city schools.

And then on September 9th at 10 a.m., we will celebrate the name change from Venable to Trailblazer Elementary School.

on Wednesday, September 25th at 8.30 a.m.

We'll celebrate the renaming of Clark to Summit Elementary School.

And then on Saturday, September 28th from 10 to 1, there will be an open house at KTAC celebrating the Center's 50th anniversary.

Again, this was a press release from the city schools, so you'll be able to find that on the website if you want to double check those

Yeah, school's busy, got a lot going on.

Sorry, just real quick, just a reminder that the deadline to apply for the Charlottesville Homeowner Assistance Program, or CHAP, is this Friday, September 6th, to provide real estate tax relief for qualified City of Charlottesville homeowners.

So we have several recognitions and proclamations.

So I'm going to come down there to honor the boys' varsity tennis team and soccer team and track.

So I'll start off with the tennis team.

So can you please come up?

Is there someone who wants to say anything for you?

I would love to, yeah.

First off, thank you for the recognition for this wonderful team.

Like you said, it's been a long time for tennis to win a state championship and it was so much fun to watch this group come together, compete in tennis and really form bonds that are going to last a lifetime.

It's funny, I can't keep them off the tennis court over there, Charlottesville High School.

They are there Monday through Sunday playing as much as they can, but they are a wonderful group of young men that, led by Coach Neal here, has done a wonderful job, and it's just been a pleasure to watch them grow.

Last year, I was kind of surprised when the State Championship with

I think five of the top six players were all underclassmen of their freshman or sophomores.

So I know they have big goals for this year as well, but I want to continue to tell them enjoy the process, enjoy the journey.

Don't worry about the titles.

Think more about how do we get better?

How do we continue to grow these bonds that you guys are making and enjoy it?

We will now have the boys varsity soccer team.

Well, first off, again, thank you for the recognition for this wonderful team.

Obviously, we're missing a few of the players tonight.

It is club soccer season, so, you know, they don't want state championships by accident.

They are, unfortunately, they all

All in practice tonight, but we definitely were able to get the coaches out here.

Coach Braun has been a player at Charlottesville, won a state championship there at Charlottesville High School.

And now this is his second as a coach.

So he has been part of the three state championships that we have at Charlottesville High School.

and Coach Manning has been around as a teacher in Charlottesville High School and you watch them pour themselves into these players and these kids and it's a wonderful thing to see.

If you haven't been to one of our Charlottesville High School soccer games, it is a true

This is in recognition for the 23-24 state championship in recognition of the 1600 meters class 8 meet.

You won.

So, not only did Elena win the 1600 in the outdoor, but also in the indoor season.

She was also the state championship.

She is a two-time state champion last year.

Her remarkable time of 449-12 in the outdoor championship, she won by more than nine seconds over the

The second in that race, so not only is she winning, she is dominating.

And she is only a junior this year.

That's right, that's right.

So we have a proclamation for the International Day of Democracy September the 15th, 2024, whereas the United Nations observed the 15th of September as the International Day of Democracy with the purpose of promoting the principles of democracy and commemorating the day in a manner that contributes to the raising public awareness of universal human rights and whereas political and public participation rights are crucial

to the advancement of all human rights and essential for the democratic governance, rule of law, social inclusion, economic development, and the empowerment of individuals and groups to eliminate discrimination and marginalization.

Peaceful, assembly, and association freedom of opinion and expression.

and access to information and education.

Therefore, it be a proclaim that City of Charlottesville Council recognizes and celebrates the 15th of September 2024 as International Day of Democracy to remind us of and exhort the continual protection of the governing principles by which the freely expressed will be the principles in exercise and

We made a coalition to preserve and protect democracy.

We thank the city very much for what you are doing.

And at this time in our history, I think it's very important that we stand up and talk about democracy.

And we believe that we have to preserve and protect it.

We've taken it for granted for many years.

And now it's time to talk about it, about democracy, and that's what we're doing.

We're having an event on Saturday the 14th

Market Street Park, and we have a great lineup of speakers, Senator Creedides, Delegate Toscano, Delegate Carlson, and others will be speaking and you'll be hearing music.

And we're here there to promote and celebrate democracy.

We've heard a lot of negativity about it for many years.

Well, now's the time to turn around and promote it.

So that's what we're doing.

And this is going to continue probably for several years.

I believe this is the second one you all have awarded.

Our last proclamation is for the continued friendship, respect, and solidarity with our sister city, Bezosong, and also the 80-year anniversary of the deliberation of the city.

And I'd just like to add that I'm going to visit them actually starting tomorrow and while I'm there to talk and meet with individuals about it.

Sister City Agreement and to commemorate the 80 year of the liberation of the city by the United States.

Also we had an opportunity to look at what they're doing with transit, the youth programs that they have there, the various planning things that they have there, their incredible environmental and sustainability programs that they have and also the

The partnership that they have with PVCC and their language center.

So looking forward to going to represent the city, will be busy and I'll learn a lot and have a lot to bring back.

But this proclamation states that whereas

On September 8, 2024 marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Bezosong, France by the Combined Forces and the United States Third Infantry Division and whereas the French and American residents of Bezosong and Charlottesville have continued to combine to combine forces and enthusiastically

Colltivated solid, durable, and enjoyable ties over the years and whereas these ties have been cemented in the proclamation of friendship signed on September the 8th, 2004.

followed by establishment of a formal sister-city relationship in October of 2006.

Whereas our lives have been significantly enhanced by the cultural, educational, and economic

Exchanges between the residents of Bezosong and Charlottesville, now therefore be resolved that the City of Charlottesville City Council sends warm greetings to our sister city, citizens on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Bezosong and be it further resolved that as we celebrate and expand our common pursuits of friendship,

Good evening.

My name is Edward Herring.

I am the Chairman of the Charlottesville Sister City Commission.

And Besson Song, which is one of our most successful relationships, is only one of five cities that we work with.

We began two years ago a relationship with a city called Waiwaiji Mango in Guatemala.

And they came to visit us last year.

We have a very old relationship with the city of Poggio in Italy and we'll be starting some sort of exchanges between them to announce students in Poggio in the coming year.

We expect to have a delegation from Poggio come in July of next year.

and then we have our ongoing work with Winneville and Ghana, working with the Winneville Ghana Foundation, where there are usually twice annual trips from Charlottesville to Ghana.

And then we have one more city called Plevin in Bulgaria.

We had not been very active with Plevin, but Plevin has requested to rebuild our relationship and so we're beginning to do that.

I encourage everyone to seek out information around the Charlottesville Sister City Commission.

We have a website, we have a Facebook page where we post pictures.

Certainly the picture from tonight will go on the Facebook page.

And we encourage you to participate in the events when you hear that we have visitors coming.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate all your work.

And safe travels to you, sir.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Bon voyage.

Thank you.

I won't cross an international incident.

We're now at the time

for Community Matters.

There are eight pre-registered speakers, leaving eight slots for additional speakers from the community.

Each speaker will have up to three minutes to speak, and we'll now have our first speaker.

And Sally, you can come up, you can, you know, wait until our students leave, but you're first.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

My name is Sally Hudson.

I live on River Road.

I served Charlottesville in the Virginia House of Delegates for four years and authored the ranked choice voting statute that you are considering implementing today.

I want to thank all of you for the careful attention that you have paid to this question.

And I know that because the measure has been moved from your consent agenda to your action items for the evening that we expect a robust discussion.

And I wanted to use my time to frame that discussion in some of the recent history that led us to today.

In 2020, when I drafted that bill, we intentionally left some of the implementation details

to the State Board of Elections so that those details could be drafted by the Commonwealth's top election law experts in an open public process that included partners in election law from across the country.

In 2021, the State Board conducted that process and comments were submitted by some of the top election leaders in the United States, including academics at top law schools,

The Campaign Legal Center, the National Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center, and local electoral board members like our own Jim Nicks.

Those regulations were then refreshed in 2023 after Arlington held Virginia's first successful local ranked choice primary.

That same spring, our local Democratic Party decided to formally pass a resolution requesting your permission to follow in Arlington's footsteps.

but they learned at that time that Charlottesville wasn't quite ready for ranked choice voting because we get our election systems from a different vendor and so our registrar had some work to do to prepare for that step.

But six months ago our registrar and our bipartisan local electoral board came to these chambers and presented to all of you that those technical questions had been resolved and that they could conduct a ranked choice voting election with your permission.

Then two weeks ago

The registrar came back and affirmed again that there are no technical barriers to adopting ranked choice voting in Charlottesville and that doing so would align with city council's strategic vision in part because it encourages diversity in democracy and civility in our politics, which I know is something that all of us support.

That measure received your unanimous support two weeks ago and is also supported by some of the top election rights organizations in Virginia, including the League of Women Voters, Veterans for All Voters,

our own local indivisible chapter and Vote Virginia which used to do work as One Virginia 2021 when I had the proud opportunity to join them in ending partisan gerrymandering in Virginia.

I say all of this to say that a lot of people have done a lot of careful work over the last four years to get us where we are today.

To use the popular parlance of our time, this ordinance did not just fall out of a coconut tree.

We exist in the context of all that came before us and in Charlottesville that context goes back centuries.

Good evening.

I'm Jim Fleischer.

I live in the Belmont neighborhood on Elliott Avenue.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you tonight about ranked choice voting.

I noticed the topic was no longer on the consent agenda and I understand there were ongoing deliberations.

I want to express my appreciation for the thoughtful approach you're taking on this topic.

I understand that council has historically paid outside consultants to offer additional advice and coordinate lengthy review processes in these instances.

However, in this case, I believe we already have the expert guidance we need.

Our city registrar, whom we trust and have already paid in tax dollars, has given a clear recommendation in support of ranked choice voting and consultation with our bipartisan electorate board.

In her member to council, she wrote, the electoral board and registrar of the city of Charlottesville have studied the potential benefits of ranked choice voting, including review of the successful conduct of a ranked choice voting election in June 2023 for the nomination of the members of the Arlington Virginians Board of Supervisors and determined that there are no technical barriers to conducting the 2025 Charlottesville City Council primary using the same ranked choice voting process.

She went on to say,

This change aligns with the City Council's vision, strategic plan, and commitment to encourage civility and politics, more diverse candidates for office, and broader participation in elections.

The Registrar and Electoral Board first presented their assessment to Council in the public back in February.

In the six months since, Council raised no public concerns about the information they presented.

We elected you to make informed decisions, and I believe you have the right people

and information in place to help you do so.

If additional input is needed, I suggest seeking it directly from our residents.

Although there may be a small expense to create a public input form or similar online, it would allow city residents to share their thoughts and experiences with Reagan choice voting, similar to what Arlington did.

This approach would provide valuable community insights without the need for a more costly process that is likely to produce the same general outcome.

Thank you.

My name is Alex McGee and I've lived in Central Virginia for about 30 years.

And I've been a homeowner in Belmont for 11 years living on Alta Vista Avenue.

And I thank you for giving your time and energy as public servants.

The first topic that I want to address tonight is to encourage you to support ranked choice voting.

Not only is it a more effective and representative method, but the very active implementing it here in Charlottesville will be an educational model for other locations and state elections.

The second topic that I'd like to talk about is tender, but I think wise.

And that is to anticipate that there may be violence after the election in November.

The reason that that is wise to anticipate is so that we can be coordinated instead of chaotic

so that we can be responsive instead of reactive.

History shows that when people are trying to defend democracy but they do it in a splintered manner that they are much less successful.

Some of us in Charlottesville have begun conversations with each other about how local organizations can be collaborative ahead of time

and understand why strategies in case we need to do peaceful nonviolent action or in case we need to take actions to support government officials whose job is to implement democratic structures.

Therefore, I am asking you to use your role as city counselors to anticipate what may be wise.

If you are invited to attend trainings in nonviolent strategic action,

please say yes.

If you are asked to attend meetings of local leaders to be collaborative and thoughtful ahead of time, please say yes.

If you hear of other local leaders who are trying to collaborate ahead of time, please help us do so.

Charlottesville is rich with many creative people and sometimes, unfortunately, they don't consult with each other.

We can be more wise.

And I'm just going to look at my notes and see if there's anything else I wanted to say.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

McGee.

That's the way that was meant.

Thank you so much for having me and thanks for your service on City Council.

As a Navy veteran and Naval Academy graduate who swore to defend the Constitution, I'm deeply inspired by your commitment to strengthening our local democracy.

By adopting ranked choice voting, you're ushering in a new era of voter empowerment.

This system opens up our elections, giving every eligible voter the freedom to truly express their preferences without fears of wasting their vote.

It's a powerful affirmation of trust in the wisdom of our citizens.

RCV ensures that our elected officials will have the backing of a true majority that fosters a stronger connection between the government and the governed, creating a more representative and responsive democracy.

It's a step towards a united community where every voice is heard and valued.

With this decision, you're nurturing an environment of vibrant electoral engagement.

RCB encourages candidates to reach out to a broader spectrum of voters, promoting more civil campaigns and substantive policy discussions.

This enriches our political discourse and strengthens the fabric of our community.

This move represents a bold commitment to fairness, to expanding voter choice, and to reinforcing the foundations of our local democracy.

It's a system that not only reflects but amplifies the will of the people, encouraging collaboration and consensus building in governance.

As someone who served our nation, I'm filled with pride to see our city taking this momentous step to honor and fortify our democratic principles.

How beautiful it is that we can bring our CV into Charlottesville in anticipation of Democracy Day.

Your decision truly puts voters first and sets an expiring example for communities across the nation.

Thank you for your leadership and vision of bringing it to our city and this decision will serve our community well for generations to come.

Thank you, Mr. Cohen.

Thank you again for your service to the country, sir.

Evening, everyone.

My name is Josh Thronberg.

I am a Charlottesville resident, live in the Fry Spring neighborhood.

But I'm here tonight because I am the co-chair of the Charlottesville Democratic Committee.

The Seville Dems have been talking about RCV for the last couple of years.

And on our January 9, 2023 meeting, we had significant discussion, at the end of which member Dave Chapman brought forward a motion seconded by member Meredith Richards that quote said,

The Charlottesville Democratic Committee recommends the adoption of ranked choice voting in all city council primary and general elections.

The result of the vote was not close.

87% of the Charlottesville Democratic Committee voted to recommend that ranked choice voting be used in all city council elections.

Thank you, Mayor Wade.

Counselors, thanks for your service here as well.

I know we've already had many speakers speak eloquently about many, and they've raised many fine points about the value of ranked choice voting.

So rather than reiterate those, I'll just try to add two complementary points.

First of which is that one thing that comes up here in the discussion of Charlottesville is the single transferable vote.

I've spoken to you before.

You might remember I'm a machine learning engineer.

So I'm a data guy, so I thought I could say a few words about the single transferable vote.

When we do our public events, everybody likes to come and you see the single winner and it's a cookie runoff and the eighth

Eight year olds are the tie breaking votes and it's very cute, it's off the charts.

But why would we even bother with anything but the single winner?

Well, there must be a reason that there'll be election geeks and the numbers of people like this.

And in fact, it is by design.

If you remember that this single transferable vote is used only for multi-seat elections for legislatures and council.

And we've all seen legislatures that have been worked by the abuse of the electoral process.

Every 10 years are gerrymandered by the party in power, putting their fingers on the scale and distorting elections.

Well, from the mathematical point of view, single transferable vote is the opposite of gerrymandering.

Single transferable vote aims for the gold standard of representative democracy, proportional representation.

That's where all citizens feel like they have a voice.

And we go some of the way here with our at-large seat model, where you get different voices.

It's hard to card people up with those type of shenanigans, but we're only halfway there.

Because of the way we count, there's still an implicit blockade.

You might have a large minority group.

You could have 45% of the voters get shut out of any representation on council in a multi-seat council.

So a single transferable vote gives representation of these large minority groups.

It gives them a voice, but no more voice than they deserve.

It's impossible for small groups to take more power than they actually represent.

And this is the closest that we could get to the proportional representation gold standard.

So that puts trust and legitimacy in the government.

Zooming out, I also just wanted to say again that we're part of the fabric of the bigger picture here.

There could hardly be a year that ranked choice voting could help people more when you look at the types of candidates that are coming out of the primaries and the dissatisfaction with two major candidates.

But there's a lot of people that feel like the systems is rigged, and I was one of those people.

My enthusiasm for ranked choice voting was supercharged by Dr. Cameron Webb when he was running.

And he gave me a book.

I'll just point out two points there.

that in the politics industry book, they say that the donors and primary voters have all the power in our current system.

And the second is that in the US, the laboratory of democracies in the states, and in our state, thanks to Sally Hudson and others, that front line comes right through this room right here.

And I'm asking you to help join the cause to change the country one state at a time, one municipality at a time.

So closing our CV is one of the few things that we can actually do that makes a difference.

the single transferable load is the opposite of gerrymandering and RCV is right on principle, it's right in practice and I hope you'll make a choice to endorse it.

Hello.

My name is Kevin Cox.

I live at 311 Fairway Avenue in the city.

The city has a stated goal of decreasing commuter traffic by 50% by 2030.

So you better get started building the crosswalks.

But that's not what's happening.

The crosswalks are not getting built.

Instead, they're getting removed.

I'd like to talk about three particular locations where crosswalks recently have been removed and where the reinstallation may never occur or it will be years down the line.

The first one is at the intersection of Barracks Road and Hessian Road, that's near the Meadowbrook Shopping Center.

At that marked crosswalk before the road was paved, there is a bus stop.

The road was recently repaved and the marked crosswalk was not replaced.

There is no intention of replacing that marked crosswalk until the sidewalk on the north side of Bergs Road is paved, which is years away.

It's right now.

That project is in the right-of-way acquisition phase, so it's going to be a long time before that sidewalk is built.

Yet right now, people use that crosswalk every day to get from the neighborhood to shopping to the bus stop.

They use it.

The staff has claimed that this is an ADA issue.

They're wrong.

It's not.

We've sent you both, all of you, the relevant sections of the law.

The ADA does not prohibit the installation of a marked crosswalk.

There was a marked crosswalk there.

It was put there sometime between 2008 and 2012.

Why was it ADA compliant then and why was it put in?

Why did the city staff see a need for that crosswalk?

I would like to see, and I'm asking you,

for a copy of the engineering study that was used to justify the placement of that crosswalk at Hessian Road and Barracks Road.

And Mr. Sanders, I would like an estimate of the cost first.

The second intersection, second third, are at Little High and 10th Street and also at 9th and Market.

Crosswalks, curb ramps have all been removed.

And there was no plan to reinstall them until the public started.

Pollering about it.

The one at 10th and Little High should never have been done like it was improperly set up.

Plans were approved by the staff.

It was constructed.

It should have been done by Faulkner Construction.

Their plans were approved.

Now the fix is going to have to be paid for from somewhere else, from taxpayers money.

The same is true

of the Crosswalk on the north side of the intersection at 9th and Market.

That was removed as part of the Belmont Bridge Plans.

It should never have been removed.

Now it's going to be reinstalled in a few years.

So what are people supposed to do in a few years?

The hike from the neighborhoods to get to the shopping center is very long without that marked crosswalk.

Thank you, Kevin.

Thank you for your concern for the pedestrians.

Hey, how y'all doing this evening?

Good Andrew Shelton, lifelong city resident, lived just down Old Lynchboro Road and I'm here to ask y'all to vote in favor of ranked choice voting.

I am unaffiliated with any of the groups in this room representing it, but was very excited to see, you know, a year or two ago that that was something that was being seriously considered.

I had first encountered the very concept of it maybe 20 years ago when I was lucky enough to take a college seminar that discussed different voting methods and it really struck me at the time how unrepresentative and difficult just our typical voting system is when it comes to getting a broader cross-section of the population that's able to meaningfully participate in politics.

and so I was a little disappointed to see that it had been moved off the consent agenda because that suggests to me that there's some discussion amongst y'all and I appreciate that but would also very much like to reiterate what Sally first discussed in terms of the number of eyes that had been on this throughout the entire process, the number of

very intelligent legal minds that have poured over this and had the opportunity to figure out any hurdles that might be easy to spot looking at it after the fact a couple years down the line.

And so I would like to ask y'all to please trust the work that those folks did and not attempt to second guess little things here and there at this point in the process.

There's a lot of momentum to it.

I think it's something the city is very interested in.

and I hope that we can get it done.

Thank you, Mr. Shelton.

That concludes out the eight pre-register speak.

We have an opportunity for eight speakers to speak.

So anyone like to speak, please raise your hand.

and I'm a citizen of Charlottesville and also a member of the People's Coalition.

I'm here to speak about the homelessness in this town.

And I was reading a paper or either online about it's another place the Cavalier Cross is getting ready to close.

It bothers me.

There's one thing we should never have is homelessness.

People without food and clothing.

But it's happening.

Now I want to know how in the world are people coming into our city and buying a property, taking affordable housing away from people that don't make much money in this town.

And this is something that I know.

I worked here, retired here.

And by then, it wasn't much been made, but I made it and I raised three kids.

And then some people are not homeless just because.

circumstances happen to people.

And believe me, it could happen to any one of us in this room.

Today or tomorrow, we could become homeless.

So now that they're going to close down 144 units, that's a four of them for some people, depends on where they're working, how much money they make.

To make it luxury?

How much is luxury?

1200?

1800?

Like the dairy?

That raised our taxes in my neighborhood and I'm gonna hold on.

So while people come in here and are being allowed to do this to people, this is a lot of people with raised here born here, some of them just coming here.

What is happening?

Somebody's gotta have a heart.

Michael, I love you.

You do have a heart, I know that.

But he can't do it by himself.

It takes a whole group to change things.

because we shouldn't have all, now all these people coming in here in Charlottesville with money, when they see all these homeless people laying out like down on them, like others seeing somebody was hanging out some clothes down here in just today, tonight.

That's not how I see it should look.

This is a rich place, I mean, Elmore County, Charlottesville, people have money here, I don't, but hey,

I'm

and it breaks my heart.

I've been trying to help another couple since last week, tried to find a house and two children on the bar.

Last time, I was a baby and she called me her grandmother.

They come to me.

I can't do it so much.

It takes this whole group to make it better for people.

I'm so sad.

Thank you.

Who else would like to speak?

This thing is going to come apart.

Good evening, Didi Smith, and I'm actually here tonight as the chair of the Historic Resources Committee.

In case you haven't gotten enough history yet, I know at your four o'clock meeting you heard two great pieces that included history

but I am here to formally present you with the Charlottesville, the new historic Charlottesville walking tour.

I'm pretty sure you all have already gotten a copy but I did want the public to know as well.

This is brand new and it was a long time coming because we started shortly before COVID and you know what happens.

But we hope and our goal was that this

this brochure will tell the much fuller story of Charlottesville's history, which is a very, very long, long history.

And we're proud as a committee at what outreach we were able to do over all of these years.

Everything from representatives of the Monica Nation to people with lived experience, as well as the committees of the city, including

the bike pad committee and just really trying to find a really diverse group of folks to read it, to read the drafts.

We got a great input and it really did change the brochure a lot.

We also have quite an impressive bit of experience and expertise on this committee itself.

Anyway, it all went into this brochure and while it was primarily the work of the volunteer committee, historic resources committee,

We could not have done it without staff.

Thank you to Jeff Werner and the various assistants that have been here over the course of doing this brochure who have been invaluable.

It covers four distinct geographic areas, Court Square, Downtown Mall, Market Square in Vinegar Hill.

And I hope that you'll, I hope everybody will get a chance to see it.

It is online as well.

and give us feedback.

We did do a limited run of it so that we could get feedback and we do encourage also that people who take it and use it will read the short narratives that come with each of the geographic areas because that will definitely enhance your walking tour.

And we, what do I want to say?

whatever we really hope that you enjoy it.

The hard copy, the hard copy.

The hard copies are distributed throughout City Hall.

They're at the regional library.

That historical society has quite a nice batch of them.

We have distributed, it is a limited run, but we're distributed to local hotels and some of the stores that have asked for them.

Okay.

Thank you so much, Jean.

Thank you.

You all have worked on that.

We have an opportunity for six more speakers.

Hi, good evening.

I live down the street on the market.

I spoke last time at the last meeting about ranked choice voting.

And a few points I have are one is why I got interested in ranked choice voting.

I was a civics teacher at the time and was working on the anti-jerrymandering legislation.

It was so nice to go to the polls and talk to people about the anti-jerrymandering legislation because it was nonpartisan.

Everybody wanted to talk to me.

Like they were interested.

I wasn't evil.

I wasn't good.

I was just like there for the voters.

And I think ranked choice voting is the same thing.

It is something for the voters.

It's nonpartisan.

but all political parties have gone in support of it.

I also think, like I talked about at the last meeting, doing this, using ranked choice voting with my fifth and sixth graders and there were never complaints.

Like typically in any fifth and sixth grade classroom, you're going to have complaints whenever you, even if you do like a simple vote.

But the kids saw how the process worked and they felt that they were heard, which I think is really important.

and I think to get started with ranked choice voting, I would start with kids.

I would start in the schools and they're going to be like some of the biggest advocates.

It makes sense to them.

And I also think it could be an opportunity to bust one of the things where adults baffle kids.

Like there are many things that adults do that kids find baffling.

And when we do ranked choice voting and study different voting systems, the kids would always ask

Why don't we do this?

This makes sense.

And so I think Charlottesville could set a precedent for making sense and making sure voters are really heard and their votes count.

Thank you.

Good evening.

My name is Liza Vance and thank you Mayor Wade and City Council for your commitment to Charlottesville.

I recently moved to the downtown mall, so I live above the mall and after four years at UVA and a couple years in my 20s here, I've never seen Charlottesville like this and I got back and my heart is also aching because of what used to be Robert E. Lee Park is now taken over by

there's people's belongings, there's people living there, there's grocery carts full of plastic bags and other things and a week ago on Sunday morning I walked out and Water Street had trash lined up, there were trash bags on Water Street on a Sunday morning there were people, I've noticed there's people living underneath store above the other stores and then they're living where they can have shelter

And it's very, very disturbing to me for our human dignity, for our cleanliness.

If we care about our city and we care and we put cleanliness and we face this homelessness thing, which I know is a problem across the country.

But this is a wonderful town.

Charlottesville is an excellent city.

It's a beautiful Virginia Mountain town and full of highly intelligent and creative and thoughtful people.

And I'm wondering, as a citizen,

Is there any middle ground where concerned citizens can come together?

Citizens who aren't involved in politics?

Is there a way that citizens can work together, form a committee, where people who do care, who live here, could help do something?

Because it matters deeply to me, especially living on the downtown mall.

And it shows the visitors here that we care about cleanliness.

We care about our town.

We care about people.

We don't want people to be living in the streets, on the mall.

and I also noticed when I lived here in my 20s, there was a construction on a hotel.

It's still in construction.

That was maybe 15 years ago.

There's a hotel.

Some building is above them all.

Is that a building?

Is there any space downtown that can be purchased or raise funds?

Can we build a shelter for them?

I mean, I know nothing about politics and I know nothing about this, but I live here and I care about this place and I would love to be able to come together with concerned citizens and with

People on the City Council, or whoever, whatever we can do, it seems to be a big problem, and I know it's a crisis across the country, but I appreciate you all's time, what you do for the city.

People have told me, I went to the police station, I said to the officer, he said, if people don't complain, then we don't worry about it.

He said, if you want to speak with City Council, then speak with them.

If there's any way that we can do anything, I'd like to help pick up trash around the mall because it's everywhere.

There's trash during everywhere.

Let's figure out how to make this city beautiful because it's awesome.

And we got to value it and keep it clean.

and Kit these people home to live in.

Thank you so much and thank you and Miss Beard for bringing this to attention.

We do get a lot of emails and comments on this.

I usually don't respond because we have a busy agenda, but I just want to let you know and others in the community that we are working on a solution

and we're in delicate discussions now and hopefully in the near future we'll be able to let the public know how they can help, how they can just, you know, help us with this effort.

So I was just very quickly, I know there's been a lot of work internally among staff looking at

Actions we can take to help the problem in terms of a permanent year-round shelter, permanent supportive housing.

Is there a ballpark timeline for when that may be presented to the public?

Kind of some of the solutions we're exploring?

I'll give that in my report.

We have an opportunity for four more speakers.

Anyone else like to speak?

Hello, Council.

My name is Mo Vandesampel.

I live on Cabell Avenue.

For what it's worth, I say that we just ratchet the property taxes on that hotel up by like 50k a year until they do something with it.

No, I wanted to talk briefly about the transferability aspect of the single transferable vote scheme that you're considering today.

There were some concerns raised in the last meeting about whether it's fair that the excess votes of a winning candidate are transferred to the voter's second choices.

And I want to be clear, I did polysci in my undergrad, I do a lot of political economy now.

That is an absolutely necessary part of RCV in multi-member elections, especially in the context of Charlottesville.

If you imagine a race where we're electing two council members and there are three people running, let's just say two Democrats and one Republican, let's imagine nearly every Democrat in town prefers the first Dem to the second.

Maybe that guy's a carpet bagger or something, who knows.

So the votes come in and the first Democrat gets 80%, the second gets 5%, and the Republican gets 15%.

If you don't let the excess votes from the first Democrat transfer onto that second one, you're going to get a 50-50 split in representation, even though this was an 85% landslide victory for Democrats as a whole.

In a head-to-head race, the carpet bagger in this scenario would have won, but because the first dem player spoiler, we would get an overall less representative outcome.

Now, obviously I know that what's in front of you today is only for the primaries, but the basic problem still remains the same.

The whole appeal of ranked choice voting is that it removes this exact spoiler effect that I've described above, and the only way that you can preserve that when electing multiple candidates at once is to have this transferability.

You don't need it when you're electing one seat, but if you're doing multiple, removing transferability basically loses all of the point of RCV.

You basically just got a more expensive version of first pass the post at that point.

So transferring votes does not mean that some people's votes get counted twice.

It means that no one's votes get wasted.

Thank you so much.

Would anyone else like to speak?

We have opportunity for three more speakers.

Okay, we will now go to the consent, there will be opportunity at the end of the meeting if anyone would like to speak.

We will now go to the consent agenda, Ms.

Consent Agenda, Number 3, Minutes, July 15, Regular Meeting, August 5, Regular Meeting, August 19, Regular Meeting, August 26 and 27, Special Meetings.

For Resolution to Appropriate Virginia Juvenile Community Crime Control Act Grant,

452,704 dollars, second reading, five resolution for CDBG and home investment partnership programs.

A is a resolution for program year 2023 to 2024 consolidated annual performance and evaluation report or CAPER for the community development block grant and home investment partnerships programs.

B is a resolution to establish council priorities for program year 2025 to 2026.

Number six, an ordinance to repeal city code section 18-24 B and 18-25 F pursuant to the Ragged Mountain Reservoir settlement agreement.

Second reading seven resolution appropriating funds from the 2024 energy efficiency and conservation block grant.

$76,840, one of two readings, eight resolution for state pass-through funding for the tonsiler league, $250,000, one of two readings, nine resolution to appropriate fiscal year 2025 fire programs, aid to locality funding for the fire fund, $238,581, one of two readings,

Tan, Resolution to Appropriate Funds from the Department of Housing and Community Development, Virginia Homeless Solutions Program Grant, $470,805, one of two readings.

Thank you.

Second.

Second.

OK.

Can we vote, please?

We now have the City Manager's Report.

Yes, sir.

Deputy City Manager Ratliff is online.

Thank you very much, Mr. Sanders.

And to the city council, the city of Charlottesville along with the county of Albemarle continues to be in negotiations with the SPCA after the SPCA terminated the existing contract in March of this year.

That termination takes effect on March of 2025.

There have been four or five negotiating sessions between the SPCA, the city and the county.

mainly designed around trying to understand kind of what the comprehensive needs are of the SPCA as well as allowing the city and the county to kind of better understand their operations what services are providing that the city and the county are legally required to provide to our municipalities as well as the other good work that the SPCA is doing kind of beyond that which by the way there is a lot it's a complex negotiation there's a lot that goes into it but we're

Thank you for your time.

to kind of learn what the city and the county's potential contributions will be in 2025, whereas the city and the county run on a July 1 fiscal year budget.

So, you know, we'll be making our first budget presentation to the city council in April.

Thank you.

Just a couple other items I wanted to share that at the end of August, the Ravenna Water and Sewer Authority Board meeting, there was an annual reservoir update and a series of updates on matters that are important to us as a larger community.

August is Water Quality Awareness Month.

and as residents in the Charlottesville area probably have heard there's been some challenges in other communities.

We are not that community.

We haven't had those issues and just wanted to share that as an update on water quality and safety is the top priority for the city of Charlottesville.

and our partners.

Also just wanted to share there's been some interest in a land bank for the City of Charlottesville.

I met with the Housing Advisory Committee also in August doing some work in reviewing a proposed ordinance that they have brought forward at the request of council and myself.

So we're right now taking that through a legal review and the intention would be to bring that forward for how to allow council some time to think about

establishing a land bank as an additional affordable housing tool.

And the last thing that I'll share is in regards to the issue of homelessness, continue to focus time and attention on that particular item, that particular issue.

It is complicated.

There is no single solution.

If there was one, I would have bought it by now, but it doesn't exist.

It's very complicated.

There are a number of issues that compound what we see individuals facing in our community, and we continue to work to try to address those.

I have an internal working group.

I've had external community conversations ongoing for the past few months.

We are actively working with the Salvation Army and other partners, hopefully to establish the first time a permanent year-round low barrier shelter.

We are near the possibilities

The parties who would have to run said facility to be able to do that.

It is not within anyone's scope at this current time.

So I have expressed a council in my conversations with them that is going to be a very costly initiative.

It will require a significant annual investment for us to be able to support those individuals who are outside struggling.

to give them the ability to have at least that first rung available to them.

But a shelter is not the solution all by itself.

It is just a rung on a ladder and there is a lot of rungs on that ladder.

There is more work that still needs to be done.

We're engaging with nonprofit providers that are doing the work and I'll be honest and say nonprofit providers that are receiving funds today are hearing things differently from us.

We're asking how well are you doing the job that we ask you to do with the money that we gave you.

and if it comes to having to make different recommendations I will make those recommendations.

We also are looking at establishing new relationships with additional partners.

and we just want to make sure that we see this as a comprehensive approach.

It requires that.

No community has figured it out.

Again, if there was a playbook, I would have bought it by now.

It is really a local issue because it requires you to look at what is your landscape, how have you been doing the work, what more can you do, what are your interests and what are you willing to pay for to be perfectly honest.

So I recently had a first round of conversation with council

I think I gave you 15 different items on a list of things that we could consider doing and they vary from inexpensive to extremely expensive.

We're going to have another follow-up conversation on that.

I'm working to get some details to finalize that.

It'll probably be presented to the public in the form of a work session.

So that's what I am considering right now to try to figure that out.

But the goal would be to continue to focus attention on what it is that we as a community can do.

City government can't do it all.

So we're going to need a number of partners to join us in that work.

Thank you so much.

Is this a couple months out?

Okay.

I'll just say from the initial conversations that we've had, I think it's promising.

So I want to commend you and your staff for all the work that you all are doing.

And I would just add, I mean I think I know it seems like government can be not very responsive and by nature things take time when there's an immediate need that exists, but I think it's absolutely been probably the top priority for

Deputy City Manager Ashley Marshall and City Manager Sam Sanders as well as all other city staff to really think and evaluate what are the things the city can actually do and I can't speak for them but it's probably nearly every day that you all are thinking about the issue in a serious way but

You know, it doesn't happen overnight.

But I mean, just today, on the consent agenda, there's an item for about $500,000, which was a grant staff pursued for homeless programs.

Staff recently about a little less than a million dollars for Premier Circle to provide permanent supportive housing for homeless individuals on an earlier schedule was approved then.

So it is something that I think everyone sincerely cares about and is working on.

But unfortunately, you know, it doesn't happen overnight, even though the immediate needs continue to exist.

We're now in action items and the first action item is the ordinance for ranked choice voting.

Staff, we got a report and presentation at a previous meeting and it's been a lot of

e-mails and discussion and meetings and things over the past two weeks, in particular the last five days over the Labor Day weekend, a lot of discussion and things.

And so I want to thank my colleagues and Taylor and staff for just accommodating all the different questions and discussion.

Nothing was done with more than two of us, but it's a lot of discussion.

So I don't think we have a presentation.

I think there's stuff for us to discuss and now that you have some Okay, so I think it's up for us to to discuss it so I'll start down here with you Michael.

I mean not

Not really.

I mean, I feel like this is something we've discussed for a long time.

I feel like we're kind of at a point where we just decide to do we do it or not do it.

I think it's new.

I think a lot of people who've raised, you know, concerns I think have done so in good faith and there's a lot of questions about how implementation may look.

I think Arlington has showed that it can be done.

I think

I'm prepared to support moving forward with it.

To me, the big question is how do we ensure we've provided enough allocation and support for the voter education element of it?

Because I think it's a solvable problem, but my biggest concern is

You know, as much as possible getting the number of voters who enter the booth and under vote because they weren't aware of what the new system was and didn't rank every candidate, getting that number as small as possible.

And for us, if we evaluate implementation, looking at are there voter precincts where under voting was higher than others?

and using that to really target outreach to voters because I think that's my biggest concern, which I think is a solvable one, is just ensuring there's not disparities in undervoting with a new ranked choice voting in terms of people who just didn't rank every candidate they could have.

That said, I mean, I think it's been discussed, you know, for a long time at this point.

I think, to me, the biggest goal would be if we can do it successfully locally, that, you know, perhaps it builds awareness to start to do it in House of Delegates campaigns or statewide, like in Alaska or Maine, because I think that's where we would start to really see the biggest difference, which I think we've seen a significant change in who was elected in Maine and Alaska because of the system.

and I think we could see a similar thing happen in Virginia.

So that's where I am, but I do acknowledge, you know, I think people who have concerns about it, I think it's still in good faith because anytime you're making a change to the way an election works, I mean, it's a big deal.

It's a very big deal.

But I think Arlington shows that it can be done as long as we are really committed to doing the education and outreach and I think it'll have a positive effect

I'm also prepared to vote yes on this ordinance tonight, echoing a lot of the same things Michael just said, but also knowing that for this to be a seed for a larger movement, Charlottesville is a really good place for it.

We have, yes, we have an education campaign that we have to get ready for and implement so that we try and reach as many voters as possible, but Charlottesville is already a very engaged electorate.

that a lot of them have been, a lot of, you all have been writing in to support this as well.

So we already know that you're included in Payne Attention, but there's a lot of people that we still have to reach who might not be aware of what's going on right now.

But we'll be hopefully excited by it once they do know what's going on.

Because it is going to hopefully, you know, change

Charlottesville is also a good seat for it because we have a strong democratic party.

So the primaries and the elections are hopefully and most likely going to be less controversial already than some other places.

We are a less divisive community in that context.

So it gives us space and time to work out

Kinks, and to make sure that we do get everybody on board.

But as it expands and grows into the larger electorate, we'll be able to see the changes that ranked choice voting supporters and proponents talk about, where the campaigns are less aggressive and more policy based or more conscientious and friendly.

and hopefully better quality candidates and better quality policy comes out of that.

Brian.

I'll go.

If this vote were only about ranked choice voting, I would have no qualms about voting yes, but it's not.

It's about ranked choice voting and

single transferable voting, which is the mechanism by which the rank choice process takes effect in a multi-member district.

I had a long talk just yesterday, in fact, with Sally Hudson.

And one of the questions that she asked me that I kept sort of coming back to is, well, compare it to the present situation.

How would this be better or worse than the present situation?

And the example that someone gave a little while ago

actually crystallized for me exactly what my concern is.

The example that he gave was supposing you had three people who were contesting for, I guess, for one seat or for two seats and one person gets 85% of the first place votes and another person gets 15% of the second place votes, the first place votes and the person who's sort of the running mate of the guy who gets the 85% gets only second place votes and that under

What he was suggesting was that under our current system, the 85% person and the 15% person would be elected.

That's actually not true because when everybody casts two votes, which is what happens right now, everybody casts two votes if you had somebody like that

the person who would be the second choice would in fact get elected as the second choice.

Let's take it a slightly different version to bring it into the reality of what is, would be next year.

If we had three candidates for two spots and one person got 65% of the vote of the first place votes and the other person got 35% of the first place votes and the person in the middle was everybody's second choice

in a place where people are voting for two candidates, that person would win.

But in the single transferable vote scheme, that person would not win.

And you can look at it.

I've done a little bit of the math and it gets kind of hairy to try to figure out after a while.

There's a reason why they have computers to do it.

But the point is that the current situation would lead

to two people with substantial majority support.

And under the other scenario, you could get elected simply because you had 33.34% of the first place votes.

And nobody else wanted you as the second place vote.

You would still get elected.

And that's the key difference, I think, between single transferable voting and its instant runoff voting.

As I've said before, I have back in 2011

When I was the rules chair of the Charlottesville Democratic Party, we wrote a set of rules for what I would now recognize to be called a sequential instant runoff system.

And basically what that meant was that we got one person elected and that we didn't try to reapportion their excess votes because everybody had gotten a second vote or a third vote.

It was actually a three-seat race.

And we went through the process very neatly.

I actually found the spreadsheet that I had constructed at the time and you can see how it goes from one vote to the next vote to the next tabulation and finally to the point where we get the last candidate chosen.

I don't know if Ms.

Smith is still here, but she will remember that she won that by about 38 votes or something on the final round of counting.

And it worked pretty well as this sequential instant runoff system.

If I had time, I was going to go back and look at it and see if I could figure out how that would have worked under the single transferable vote.

I just didn't have time before today's meeting.

The point being that you could, under single transferable voting, with everybody getting elected, basically the first two people to get to 33.3% plus one.

are elected.

And so you could have two people in theory nominated on the first round who don't share anything with each other.

They don't like each other.

They don't get along with each other.

And it's simply not true.

It's not accurate to say that under those circumstances that single transferable voting as a form of ranked choice voting

is going to lead to greater civility, whether it's going to lead to greater moderation or it's going to lead to anything that causes anybody to do anything other than just guard their base.

We see in national politics right now what happens when politicians guard their bases.

It's not pretty.

It's not something that I think we need to encourage.

It's going to get worse in 2027 if we do this, because at that point you can get elected with 25.1% of the first place votes.

And you could have all three people elected with 25.1% of the first place votes.

The issue that I don't think, when I've tried to explain all of this to people over the last few weeks, I don't know that I've found a single person who understands that the practical effect of this

is that if you vote for the first person to get elected and your second transferable vote, which is only a fraction of a vote, you only get one and a fraction votes.

You don't get two votes.

And so you have relatively little influence on who the second choice is.

The other thing, and they also continue to believe, one of the speakers tonight made mention of that in particular, where he talked about

He wanted to make sure that the candidates who won would reflect the true majority of the vote and that's simply not true under single transferable voting.

So the problem that I have with all of this is that although I completely agree with the notion of ranked choice voting and would be really, I think, quite pleased to do it under a sequential instant runoff voting system,

I know that most folks that I've talked to don't understand how single transferable voting will actually work.

in terms of what that allocation looks like.

Frankly, for me it comes down to do I vote for rank choice voting knowing that the single transferable vote method that comes with it is not at all what I think is a very good idea.

or do we stick with the current system?

And the one thing that I really, really, really come back to is I don't think that it is appropriate for us to be asking for the views and the responses of folks in the electorate who may not understand exactly how the system is working.

They may understand to be working

or to be planned to work exactly the opposite as it would in fact work.

I had suggested that we take some time, that we have a work session perhaps devoted specifically to that so that people aren't just hearing from me and other counselors or that we're not just hearing from people who are the professional advocates for ranked choice voting but there are a number of people out there

who might be able to shed some light on some of these issues and people can then make a more informed choice.

I'm not sure anybody else up here wants to do that.

Yeah, so I've spent a lot of time over the last couple days.

I guess maybe this is a poor analogy, but it's sort of like when you're planning to get married, you're thinking to get married, you're ready to get married, and then it's time to get married, and you're like, well, I'm going to think about this hard for one more weekend, or one more week.

And one of the things for me, frankly, that's been awkward about all this is that I do intend to run next year.

I haven't made that decision finally, but at this

at this point that's my current plan, my wife and I still have to negotiate that, but that has been something that has made this a bit more awkward for me.

A few things that I will say

We have been talking about this ever since I came on council.

And because I really prized consensus, I sort of felt like there was a consensus about RCV.

I had always thought what was being presented was the STV version of it with the cookie videos and the giraffe videos and all the other cute videos.

So from my perspective, I do think that's at least what I had understood we were talking about.

and because I felt there was consensus across.

We've had, you know, seniors here, Ms.

McGill and Ms.

Perrier were here.

We've had a number of folks coming in and out, I guess.

And so I've

I've always said, well, this seems like this is consensus.

I think that's good.

And I was a member of the Democratic Party and supported that.

The thing that I got hung up over

and I think I'm there okay now this distinction between certification and approval.

I've decided to quit worrying about it because it seems like I'm confident that you know the various folks that have been involved that Miss Hudson for example referenced earlier and that when

Michelle has mentioned as well that this process has been approved, that it's robust, I'm confident that the data that comes out of this will be accurate.

So that took me a little bit of time to work through and I appreciate those who are patient enough to help me think through that.

I will admit, like most things, particularly as someone who studied a little philosophy in my life, that there are value judgments built into this, like there isn't any sort of choice of this kind.

And I think, Councillor Snook, you've been able to point those out.

I think that they are the sorts of things that reasonable people of goodwill can disagree about.

For me, I don't really have super strong feelings about them.

I mean, I can see both sides of those things and I

Yeah, but the one piece of that that has caused me, again, over the last few days, giving me a little bit of a pause was, I think, consent is important, you know, getting the electorate to know what we're putting, even though we've got the authority to do this, to make sure they're comfortable with us doing it.

And as I've thought about that, I will reflect it from my perspective.

I mean, Warren walks every street in the city, so he knows everybody, but I don't.

And it's difficult for me sometimes to tell, well, what does the electorate really want about any given topic?

I think the only thing that I really felt confident that I knew what the electorate was, it was 50-50, was the zoning ordinance.

because it was so much that came out of that.

So in this case, I've been thinking, well, do we do an advisory referendum or do we do some sort of public hearings?

And I feel like for those sort of good ideas in theory, we've been talking about this for a long time and it's created an expectation that we're going to do it.

And I also feel like that, thanks to the advocacy of Ms.

Hudson and

The coalition that has surrounded her work in the past and in the present, I do feel like that there is a strong coalition of folks who are aware enough about this, and this is a high information electorate here,

Michael Payne

And then, you know, what this has been framed as is an experiment.

Maybe that's too radical of a word, but it's something that we've got.

It's in the law that we can do.

We sort of know what we're going to do.

We're going to try it for the next primary.

And we're doing it for a primary with a Democratic Party.

I said, yeah, we're in favor of this.

So I think we're going to have to see what happens and iterate.

You maybe we come through this and we say this was terrible and we decide not to do it or maybe we say it's great But I think as everyone has pointed out I think what I would suggest is that we vote on this we say we're gonna do it and then we go ahead and plan on having a

A robust set of meetings where we explain to people, right?

This is what we're going to do in addition to the actual outreach.

So I plan to vote for it.

It's taken me a while to sort of get my brain around it.

I don't dismiss your concerns, Lloyd.

I think, as always, you're very thoughtful.

Thank you, and I appreciate all of my colleagues on council.

with their comments on this.

I have also been tossing and turning on this since we last discussed it.

Unlike Brian, I have not made a decision whether I'm going to run a nod.

I have to have that discussion with the Mrs. and myself before I even start to ponder.

But I haven't made the decision, so I didn't look through this with the lens on how is it going to impact me if I'm going to run in the next June, in less than a year really.

I looked at it like, you know, because, you know, I get a sense of a lot of the input and things we get have been from a population that doesn't, that looks like, that doesn't look like me, and I'm concerned about I want to know how it's going to impact the community, particularly of little wealth and of color.

What is it going to look like?

And that's why I was concerned about

two things primarily and that was the public input kind of process and what that would look like and the approval and certification and you know one of those conversations I had this weekend was with Lloyd and he kind of helped me work through the

I'm okay with that at this point now.

The other part was the public input process and we got a lot of emails this weekend actually today over the last week.

And I understand how that works.

Many of them said the same thing and I understand that that can generate a lot of support for it.

And I think that I will support this.

But I would like to work with supporters of this so that we can work with

the council and staff to get a wide range of public input process, that same type of energy and effort to reach out beyond those who are in your current network because this is something that we're going to have to work with those individuals that may not really understand it.

We need that kind of professional effort to

to help us reach those individuals.

And I think it's going to be essential.

And so that being said, I will support this.

Do we have to vote for this separate from the two separate actions?

If there's no other discussion, can we vote?

There's also a resolution to appropriate resources to help with the

I move the resolution to appropriate $26,460 for ranked choice voting Second Very good discussion, if not, can we vote?

The next item on agenda is the ordinance for the city code to extend public safety supplement retirement benefits to EMS only employees enrolled in the defined benefit plan.

This is the first of two reading.

We have

Scott Carpenter.

Oh, hey.

Good evening.

I'm your deputy chief of operations for the fire department, Scott Carpenter.

And really what's before you is a completion of the work that started in 2015 when the department took on EMS transports.

Much like a lot of other departments and agencies across the country, we've been struggling a little bit with retention, which has kind of brought this to light.

And, excuse me, recruitment and retention, which has brought this to light.

To come to work for the fire department, you've got to be an EMT and you've got to be a firefighter.

Since we took on EMS transports, we did not provide any input or any conduit for an individual to come work for the fire department that was just really passionate for providing EMS service.

Yeah, I remember this coming to the, good evening, I remember this coming to the retirement commission.

Correct.

Cost at this point that we expect?

Yeah, at this time, while we don't know the total economic gain or loss from this, because we're still in negotiations with the Union over what this is going to apply in terms of budgeting and salary and benefits, we're not asking for any new FTEs, so this is really converting

So there's no increase as Scott just mentioned.

There's no increase financial impact because this is using the current allocation to the fire department.

What it's allowing him to do is to shift personnel around

and use existing dollars to do so and give the opportunity for someone to just be EMS versus both, which we do consider as an equity initiative.

It allows someone to continue to stay employed with the fire department that may not necessarily want to run into a burning building, but they help somebody outside the building.

So I don't know.

I just simplified your whole job.

That's not exactly what I was doing.

But again, it was just to point out that this is about allowing people to stay with us.

To jump on what Mr. Sanders is also saying, I think that it also provides us some different conduits to recruit and retain.

One of those examples was with EMT program at KTEC.

Any other questions?

I'm happy to do that or just move to consent agenda.

Yeah, okay, so if there's no issues then we'll put on the consent agenda for the September 16th meeting.

Thank you so much.

The next item on the agenda is the resolution to approve the seventh amended agreement between Charlottesville Supplemental Rental Assistant Program.

Before You is a resolution supported by staff to approve the Seventh Amendment to the grant agreement with the Charlottesville Redevelopment Housing Authority for the administration of the Charlottesville Supplemental Rental Assistance Program, CISRAP for short.

It's a local voucher program created by the city.

It was first initiated in our fiscal year 2017-2018 and it has been operational for about several years.

providing rental assistance to extremely low income and low income households in the city, specifically targeting those households earning less than 60% of the area median income as determined by HUD.

The program has consistently supported an average of 70 households per year, providing critical housing security, particularly for those at

or below 30% of the AMI which aligns with the affordable housing plans, funding targeting commitment.

And just to highlight a few more performance highlights and not to steal CRHA's thunder, hopefully they are online with us to present any further details.

but this program has had steady growth with an increase from about 67 participants to 75 participants in fiscal year 23.

So we've added on average plus eight households a year.

that continues to prioritize vulnerable populations with a minimum of 15 subsidies dedicated to homeless households or persons experiencing homelessness and up to about 40 subsidies for participants in local self-sufficiency programs.

CISRAP has also supported households transitioning from self-sufficiency with notable increase in this program year over year.

With regards to budget details,

City has already allocated $900,000.

This was part of the CIPM budget approval for this fiscal year.

So this is funding that's already allocated approved.

This resolution would be allowing us to budget to draw down that amount to fund the next fiscal year for this iteration of the amendment.

While this amendment does not include or introduce any programmatic changes, staff has been in discussion and collaborating with CRHA with regards to looking at future considerations.

For example, CISRAP was originally designed for a two-year cycle.

So with that said, CRHA has indicated or is exploring strategies for transition plans for households that have been on the voucher for longer than two years.

Additionally, CRJ is exploring various enhancements to meet the needs of participants, including leveraging new data tools and improving communications and reporting.

And if CRJ is online, I can hand it over to them to answer any further details about their presentation that's attached in your packet.

No.

No, no, no.

Oh, he's here.

Okay.

All right.

Yes.

We have we have two staff members.

It's me and another staff member.

All right.

Good evening, council.

My name is John Sales.

I'm the executive director of the housing authority.

Happy to be with you this evening.

Also have Zoe Perakou.

She is the HCB director, and she also runs and administers the CISRA program.

Good evening, everybody.

My name is Zoe Perakul and I will be presenting on the Charlottesville rental assistance program.

Just a little background.

On June 19, 2017, the city approved the creation of the CSRAP program.

and the grant agreement was executed in 2018 and the first voucher was issued in April 2018.

So I'll be looking through the data and the demographic and the program effectiveness from 2018 to 2024.

Next slide, please.

Um, so some of our referrals, resources, um, sources are from, started with the H-C-H-C-R-H-A waitlist program.

We've also received referrals from the social services, PVCC, the coalition for homelessness, and recently we've also gotten agencies asking to be referral agencies such as the Home to Hope Organization, the Blue Ridge Area Coalition for Homelessness, and the Department of Human Services as well.

Next slide.

So here is the data about the AMI.

As you can see, in 2021 we had 54 participants who came into the program, between the zero and 30% of the AMI.

59 for the 2022 fiscal year and 65 for the 2023.

a total of 75 in the 2023 fiscal year.

Next slide.

So participants, this is the data for where the participants reside

typically when participants are referred to the program we encourage them to look in the city first before exploring housing in the county and as you can see here in fiscal year 2021 it was 37 in the city and 37 in the fiscal year of 2022 and 39 in 2023 and in the county there were 30

and other participants who lived in the county in 2021.

For fiscal year 2022 there were 32 and for fiscal year 2023 there were 36.

Next slide please.

So recertification, the purpose of recertification is to ensure that participants continue to meet eligibility requirements and their subsidy amounts are accurately calculated based on the income.

Family compositions or other relevant factors.

This process typically occurs annually but can happen frequently if there are significant changes in the household composition.

The recertification is to help maintain the integrity of the program and ensure that limited resources are allocated appropriately to those in need of assistance.

So our highest months of recertifications are November, and the steady months are February, April, June, and September.

And the low months are usually March and August.

Next slide.

So for participants to be eligible for this program, they have to be either

experiencing homelessness or working with a self-sufficiency program.

So we identify the individuals who are experiencing homelessness and the resources that are there.

We partner with those agencies that are helping them with finding resources and then they refer them to a program and we put them in the intake process.

Next slide.

So our top resources referral sources were HCB in the year 2021, which we got 120 referrals from the Department of Social Services.

We got around 63 to 73 referrals.

And for PVCC, we got 17 to 20 participants referral annually.

Next slide.

So the program has increased since we started.

And in the year 2021, we had a total of 67 participants.

fiscal year 22, we had 63, 69 participants, which is a 3% increase.

In 2023, the increase went to 8.7%.

And in the fiscal year 2024, we had a slight decrease because of

participants graduating from the program successfully, or participants who had moved out of the jurisdiction, or participants who had program violations.

Next slide.

So, like I mentioned earlier, in order to be eligible for the CISRA program, participants have to be working with

a self-sufficiency program or experience homelessness.

So the participants who have been working with this self-sufficiency program, we have seen a success in their participation in the program, enabling them to find jobs and resources that they're able to encourage them to get away from housing assistance.

Next slide, please.

As Anton mentioned earlier, we have been discussing about the eligibility period.

So one of our goals is to ensure that, to build up a stronger relationship with the partners that refer participants to a program in order to encourage them to become more self-sufficient.

So we are looking at some participant end dates which as was mentioned earlier that we had agreed upon two years and so working closely with this referral agency

and finding other resources that this participant need to become self-sufficient and ultimately transition out of housing assistance will enable us to graduate more participants successfully and therefore create room for other participants to also get assistance with this program.

Next slide.

So one of the things that we want to introduce is our reporting system.

So Yardee is a popular software system used by public housing agencies in managing various aspects of the program.

For example, landlord and tenant management, where Yardee tracks tenants and landlord information, including lease agreements, housing inspections, and compliance documents.

It also looks at income calculations and subsidy where Yardee automatically calculates rent portions, tenant income and subsidy amounts ensuring accurate and timely payments.

also in terms of compliance, Yardee helps in streamlining that process and also Yardee is a great digital document storage where we can have all our documents, records, record keeping organized and accessible for any auditing or reporting.

Overall, Yardee simplifies the administration of the program, enabling us to operate efficiently and maintain compliance with the program.

So CISRAP has shown consistent growth in the fiscal year for 2019 to 2024 with increasing participant numbers, diverse referral sources and improving self-sufficiency rates.

The program demonstrates its effectiveness in supporting community members and we will be focusing on strengthening partnership with top referral sources in addressing those needs.

will now not like to open this up to any questions from the city council.

I will say the the drop in numbers are due to referral referrals and in the changing in staff at some of the agencies and so against one mentioned earlier we're going to be meeting to talk about how we better communicate

and increased the number of referral agencies because there are a lot of homeless agencies that are working in this field that would like to be able to referral clients but we have a limited referral basis based upon the agencies that are identified in the agreement and so we do need to work on that and we need to understand what each agency's criteria is for participating in the programs because there's nothing worse

then referring someone to an agency and then them going to the agency and that agency not being able to help because they don't meet all the criteria to be in their program.

And so CRHA has the agency that's administering the program.

Thank you.

I've got one question, and maybe I'm just confused about something.

I noticed you said that roughly, or the slide showed that roughly half of the participants are county residents, and I'm wondering how county residents fit into this picture.

They didn't start off as county residents.

They started off as city residents but couldn't find housing in the city.

So they ended up moving to the county.

But everyone starts off in the city.

And we have a requirement for them to search in the city.

as they can't go any further than Albemarle County, that it's the only jurisdiction that it's also approved.

Unlike the voucher program where folks can go further than Albemarle County, we have some that are in green, we have some that are in Nelson County.