City Council Budget Work Session - Capital Improvement Program   3/28/2024

Thank you.

And I think at this point I turn over to you, Sam.

Hamill.

If you have other questions that you would like to talk about with this.

How is that factoring into this particular discussion?

And so we feel that that contributes to the sustainability goals.

Perhaps, yes.

But that's half a million dollars of the subsidy of the million dollars that's currently being subsidized.

It would just be the trash collection that does require the sticker that's on the table.

If that's what you choose to discuss, yes.

Is that

So I think what we're suggesting is that we can do that work and then bring that information back to you at a time when you can make a decision and feel like you know everything you need to know.

And I just saw that Crystal had written in the chat.

If we continue to raise the fees so that we are not no longer attractive than people and people transition to a private hauler, they would not be eligible for the free curbside recycling.

And then I'll say philosophically as well, I guess it seems reasonable to me to view garbage collection as kind of a core service that government subsidy is kind of acceptable to be part of that.

That's not something the city would know, but they still have their recycling bin.

Can you allow her to speak for me?

Can you hear me?

Yes.

So it's just, I think the point is that's an example of something we'd have to do a little bit more analysis on to understand the implications.

Just the cost of printing stickers?

And so you can see the cost per gallon is slightly lower if you're buying an annual decal.

So you're still pondering?

Bringing that up slightly just doesn't seem like a huge ask.

I'm trying to figure out what you're getting at.

I mean, I understand Natalie's point as well, but I don't think that, yeah, I'm okay with waiting, but I do think it's something we should get some clarity on.

A million dollars that we can spend on sidewalks.

I appreciate that

I'm not sure that that's a trade off that many voters would understand.

So by having the time, just a little time to just be able to figure it out, I think we we feel like we can do a good job of bringing you what you need to then make what you think is the best decision.

It's worth having just a conversation and a check like what's the status of this and how are we doing and having that fuller conversation and seeing if we are

That could be a subject matter.

Was there anything that you all had on your mind that we might have missed or before we start on CFE?

Here comes Mr. Engel, who's going to shed a lot of light on this for us.

It's the cheapest parking in town, and that is recommended to be raised to $2 an hour, which will make it equivalent to most others, but still cheaper than

The point that keeps coming back to me about parking rates

A $5 increase on a monthly rate doesn't concern me terribly, but if we were to look at it in some broader way, it ought to be in a much more comprehensive manner than just one line on one page in the budget.

Are we having a discussion about parking policies?

Part of that would be a brief discussion on our upcoming parking state, which is looking citywide on-street parking.

So then, and that includes information about the citywide on-street parking program.

I think there's work to be

Finances as well as some indication of what the operating impacts are so I just wanted to take a minute that I find that the online book is a whole lot easier to navigate than the PDF and I just want to make sure that wasn't getting lost because like I said these project pages are not part of the book it was too many pages to print so we just provided the summary.

Thanks, I didn't know all that was there.

So let's navigate back to the PowerPoint.

That's the only other additional thing that came to mind.

Chris, do you want to speak about it?

It's part of the gas rates that we establish each year that are paid by all customers of the gas utility regardless of where they might actually reside.

So for the folks who have emailed us saying that it's a potential revenue source base, would it, trying to understand?

A potential new revenue source, is that what you're

Would that basically just be increasing rates?

So the pilot numbers that you see within there include all customers, especially for gas, be they city, county, UVA.

But I guess their argument would be, would adjusting the formula increase revenue, increase the amount of money coming into the pilot?

It would, but it would be paid by all customers, including city customers.

Right, so it ends up being like just a de facto rate increase?

So arbitrarily, just picking a number would probably run afoul of that concept.

Is that formula updated on an annual basis or when's the last time?

Revenues of the gas utility minus the cost of gas and so that number changes every year So you know if I just off the top of my head if I had to guess it's probably on about three or four percent each of the last couple of years So there is a there's an increase as we go along over time even though the the calculate the formula itself is the same

That being driven by just market changes?

It's a different formula, but it's the same concept based around the revenue being generated by each of those utilities.

That's helpful.

I'll be happy to look forward to having that conversation with you again.

What happens to the well called retained earnings for lack of a better way of care?

And again, because each year that can go up and down, that sort of helps even that out over time.

And I guess my question was, and obviously that reflects that fluctuation year to year, my question number one is, is the amount that is in this fund, which is essentially I suspect is essentially years of accumulation of retained earnings at some cost by some losses, obviously, is that amount stable?

So

That would be a different budgetary concern from if it's essentially staying the same.

Thank you.

I think you can go, yeah.

We're at the first CIP.

for the many needed roof repairs that we know are forthcoming on some of the buildings and then funds some other projects as well for schools.

Correct.

And that timing, I'm sorry, that timing is in step with what the county is doing in their CIP as well as they are a joint partner in that project.

Is that the total cost or is it past that five years?

I believe so, yes.

How about then for us?

In the county is just going in like 50-50 split.

And right now the schedule as Chrissy mentioned, that's what we've been able to come to agreement on for what their CIP can handle to match ours.

Is there something in particular that folks have in mind?

I believe it was for a chiller replacement?

Cost of some FF&E for the General District Court, but we may need to revisit that and get a clear answer for you.

Yeah, that's correct.

I'm a little confused on that myself, so I'll have to check into that tomorrow.

Is that going to accumulate if we don't spend it?

They're also seeking several grant opportunities for which these could be used as grant matches.

The expectation is that we will ramp up the activity of being able to deploy those funds every year, hence the recurring balance.

Thank you.

That's all I've got on this page.

So you'll be able to see it after budget adoption, the work plan for the upcoming year would then coincide with some of the particular efforts.

We're seeing how that goes and then we're reassessing for the last couple of roofs.

I don't think there are actually school roof solar projects that have been

It's our intention to have the dollar amounts of outright owned projects landed so that you all have awareness of that sooner rather than later and then look at ways to either bring the funding in or revisit what the request would be in future years.

Mike, did you want to add something?

Sorry.

Thank you.

Again, I think the intent here is if there are grant opportunities to still try to seek those, but at least for now we do have a plan funding source to replace those.

What is that school one?

So also we are seeing very large increases and also very large two to three year market delays on the availability for fire trucks in particular.

So you would place an order and it could be three years before we get it?

What happened to that?

So there was no need to leave it in the CIP.

I thought I remembered something tickling my mind there.

And again, that will be something that they are working through a cyclical process to keep those

We'll get that for you.

any burning questions you want to talk about on this day?

Michael Payne

And then I'll let you tell Chrissy what she's got to do to the CIP to make you happy.

Yeah, let me go to questions.

that is not currently funded or is there already sources of revenue to complete that?

No, that's not currently funded.

Is that expected to be $750,000 a year time six?

Right now we have it set up as ranging between $600,000 and a million dollars per year and it kind of ramps up over time.

Is that something that's resolved as part of being in a good place?

How many projects total?

It's about 30.

And they range in different scales as well.

And many of these have probably been designated as high priority in some study or another for at least 10 years.

Yeah.

Is it like combining all of these different lists together?

It drew projects from all these different plans where sidewalk projects were identified.

I think we've diagnosed a lot of that stuff and now we figured out how not to do some of those things.

And so the funding for that is not shown here yet?

Today, that request that Ben is sitting back there anxiously waiting to see what you all are going to do is not funded.

with the caveat that I'm thrilled about this big project.

I've been trying really hard.

I mean, if we're already strapped for cash with what we have, if we're already trying to raise taxes, if we're already committing to funding other projects that some of us might not agree with in the future, where's that?

That's the balance of it.

What are we trading?

So there's $500,000 over five years now, so for us the question is $4 million of funding to complete the backlog, kind of, and those would all be bondable or would it be cash?

Depends on the project.

That's the reason why the funding source knowing how much money we actually have is important because that's another crack at this whole process that bending is spend some time with public work staff as well to figure out.

there's there are multiple sort of pots of money for sidewalks but I would say those are probably the two there's also some for ADA upgrades of project sidewalks does that multi-modal improvements 500,000 count as well that one that's a specific project yeah that's a specific project what I can't see I don't have glasses what is the new sidewalk total because that's really the 998 that

So that $9.98 is what you could subtract from the $4 million request.

Some of it's dedicated to VDOT revenue sharing projects.

So that means we have $500,000 of that that is considered to be available.

Monday night or in the next meeting as an agenda item.

But then there's the one million in sidewalk repair?

That's for ongoing maintenance and repair work to existing sidewalks.

Could that be applied to the ADA improvements since that is

So then we'll probably need additional funds to be able to bring some of those to completion.

So we need about 3.5 billion.

I would say Ben would want me to say 3.7 so we don't lose anything that we really need.

So we could take a million from traffic signal replacement?

Then you're risking traffic signal failure.

Does that mean falling?

So it would not be viewed as something that you simply pull from because we're planning a schedule of replacements as we anticipate failures to likely begin to occur.

Michael Payne

and that too will become a future celebration moment for me when I can tell you that yes we are getting those things done that have been sitting for so long so it's we're pulling on everything that we possibly can in trying to reset so that we can actually deliver and I know many of our signals today don't have the capacity to do sinking right so that's part of that that is part of the project 185 in here for the

traffic signal coordination.

So there's upgrades and then coordination aspects because not everything is ready to fail or approaching failure, but we still want to add the technology to what we are going to have for a minute.

Can we retitle that?

Yes, 1.25 million.

That's to help identify it.

I can tell you the most frequent complaint I've gotten about street, the need for street milling is from bicycle riders.

And then is there any other funds, any other savings accounts that we get to pull from like the parking garage or anything like that?

The answer's not no, but it may be worth investigating, but it's at your discretion.

We're just going to move it around to actually make it make sure that it gets to where it needs to go.

So, everything is worth looking at, but it's not always a one-to-one trade-off.

What that annual payment is in terms of the impact on our budget?

It's just, I would say a good ballpark easy number is about a million dollars a year for ten million.

I think that's just important for us to kind of frame them.

And we have a slide about that too.

I wanted to see if he wanted to share something specific for you.

So I hope that's helpful to understand the budget line items.

I'm not even sure we necessarily need to look at pulling from the CIP contingency fund or an existing fund or something like that.

and what I have said to our planning commissioners who have been very interested in seeing that number go up from 100,000 a year, I don't know what the number is yet and we're still kind of there not knowing what the number is for each individual year but I feel like I'm prepared to accept whatever recommendation you want to make in increasing it over the next few years and we'll be talking about this again next year and after making adjustments.

Well, why don't you just say 250,500,750 in a million or something like that, some sort of distribution over the next

So I guess what I'll do is put Ben on the spot for a quick second and just have him come to the mic and tell us if... What's the total Delta we're talking about?

I'm sorry.

But if you had to look at just FY25, would that take care of tier one or would we be in tier two?

We'd be starting some design work on some Tier 2 projects and be doing design and construction on some Tier 1 projects in that first year.

That's why I don't like this particular moment of I don't have the clarity that I strive for in asking you to put something into the CIP.

Ben, do you have an idea of how much would be useful in FY25?

And right now we've got $200,000 and $500,000 on the books.

You have $500,000 that has accumulated plus $100,000, that'll come.

So are you staying like what we have or what do you think we need?

Based on what we laid out for that first year of projects in the draft sidewalk priority list, it looks like about $600,000 in needs for the first year.

That's what we have.

Because if that week would be helpful to land on specific numbers, I feel like that'll be better than us just trying to throw something out.

It wouldn't for the out years.

The questions that would come up while we're going after grants may make it easier for us to find other funding sources down the road.

The work is planned by how much money you make available.

Well, it seems like we're good for year one and a little bit.

I like it.

And on that note, can you talk about the money that's not been spent that we have for the 7th Street parking garage?

I don't think there's any current plant, any further plans for those dollars and that's probably an account we can liquidate.

How much didn't that I don't have that paid up?

1.2.

So that would just come off the books and that would be additional bonding capacity that you would have to allocate to something else.

Not cash.

Okay.

Has this been, are we paying for this amount at all right now?

So the answer is no.

So we just would close that out, but that frees up space if we need to bond any of these projects.

It gives you that capacity.

So a lot of this is just kind of speculation.

But I didn't want to fight this.

Ben and his team is fully funded.

It's a placeholder, but it knows that we're serious about it.

Zeroes raise eyebrows.

And I'm more interested in just programming it into the CIP rather than pulling from the Contingency Fund or another source.

Tomorrow I'm wanting to look forward to it.

We have.

So as we, I'm sorry, go ahead.

I just want to go back to this page, if not specifically about sidewalks,

Okay.

How many buses is that?

Um, there, I think it's two or 4% match.

I think it's two.

Is it two?

Okay.

Then when we've got $100,000 allocated for bicycle infrastructure, what is the infrastructure?

There was an associated plan with that at one point.

What's that actually being spent on?

We're also going to be looking at a West Main Restriping Program later in the year, and we'd want to use those funds for that as well.

That's all I've got.

Do you have enough for those projects?

And this seems like it would be sufficient for both of those projects at this point.

Thank you.

Thanks, Ben.

So where does the rest of that money come from and can we talk a little bit about that?

But at this moment, it's planning out the project with the details that we now have.

And if that day were to come, what would your suggestion for finding those $2 million be?

that we would say we would add it to the next bond sale so that we could get it moving because there was the expectation through the work that was done by council at that time was to coordinate the delivery of the sidewalk within close proximity to the units coming online that was going to add the traffic to that footprint, to that area.

They're frustrated that it seems like the building is going to happen before the sidewalk is going to go in.

Can't proceed without our building the sidewalk.

Delay housing.

That is not what actually happened.

It's one way in, one way out street.

Would it be safe to say this is a tier three type of project?

Yeah, it's a tier three, but it's not even on that.

Not included in that.

It's in its own world.

And does that include things like speed tables as well or rubber the rubbery ones?

Steven, you want to answer some of that?

Can y'all hear me, Ari?

Yes.

Laterally you can put speed humps.

There are a lot of other options, though, for us to explore, as Stephen was saying, and speed tables are something that I have not heard an aversion to, that fire personnel are more comfortable with that, because it's not an abrupt

So that's something we have to keep in mind as well.

Absolutely, I think our transportation team would be quick to remind us, but thank you.

I know.

Sure.

So there's some planning work that needs to be done.

apparatus or whatever every day that will then complain, you know, to the planning department or to us to remove it if we don't get input to let them know what it's going to look like and what to expect and even to go to other neighborhoods or places to see what it's like.

He did mention he has more to share on that actual lawsuit that was filed just so you know,

Thank you.

I believe that was a new item that was put into the budget last year.

and there was some misunderstanding that that amount might have been cut and I did speak to individuals who had shared that but that 75,000 is a continuation that is not a reduction.

Any questions on anything here?

So does that suggest that we actually have a plan?

And I would imagine that we're going to be able to find a few more as he starts that work.

I'm sure Monticello will have all kinds of things going on and we would really want to have as much done as we could have done before about May 31st of 2026 would seem to me.

And if we needed to come back next year to ask for a more significant allocation for the downtown mall like what we're proposing in 25, we will have that available as well.

I assume it's not on this list, but is there anything that we've got moving forward to say, okay, let's think about, if not for this year, maybe next year or the year after that, any issues there?

But when to see if he was there.

Staff is working really

That's all.

And then it would just have to, of course, fall in line with everything else we try to do.

You remind me of the schedule for that master plan effort?

Go ahead.

Good.

You know, obviously that's the case for a lot of other things as well.

It's also something you could follow up on.

It is your sense that the amount of funding is

sufficient in order to follow through on what you've prioritized or is there still like a gap there?

We would like to request funds and in that physical year that we had adopted those funds we'd like to take those projects to construction so that we don't find ourselves in a situation where the birds are coming in way above asking price.

Because it just seems like a big thing that, I don't know, at least to me, it seems like maybe we could ramp up and systemize.

I think that's going to help us in a big way because we should get a variety of feedback from across the city.

How many damaged ones are we talking about?

Brian, do you have any sense or is Steve on?

But to get to your point, we are taking you down

I just wasn't sure how far that 100,000 no audit was going.

The MACA and Park Street projects were in last year and then 501 Cherry was added for this year.

Is that anything that there's clarity on?

Is that really the pleasure?

Could you please restate what the, I'm sorry.

But to me, it just kind of seems almost like shuffling the money around.

It's just a different approach to using the funds.

So if it's not something, if it's something that's funded in the out years and you want to move it forward, that's just another budget decision for the general fund as you think about that, or the contingency fund or some other cash source.

Right, and I'm not interested in shifting around the win allocations, the timeline of any of the allocations.

So I would say that's the basis for why the ask is being made.

You know, approval, I want to know project by project and if you have one tonight, Michael, we can kind of quickly talk about it and be prepared.

And it was specifically, I believe, for the MACA project.

To purchase the property.

Correct.

That was the request that I received.

Correct.

No change in the amount.

I don't have any issue with that.

I'm fine with that as well.

Do you need a formal vote or something?

I think you get three votes.

We're good.

I think that would still be subject to MOU.

We would bring you the agreement at that time.

Two would be even nicer.

We'll pass that on.

Whatever we do, just make sure West Haven rises and so on.

We'll pass it on.

A park has a long complicated history.

Got it.

Any questions there?

Just FYI.

Happy to hear that.

We'll reconsider any additions.

Thank you.

that leaves us with an unallocated balance of about 15.6 million that part of that we've talked about using for one time all of these dollars very important these are one-time uses and so that's why it's well suited for the CIP the bond rating agencies love the fact that that's additional cash that we're paying for projects

and this is 10 to 12 million dollars of this is what I have targeted for the one-time use for the actuarial expenses related to collective bargaining and our other pay modernization efforts depending on, of course, passage of the budget.

So of the 19 million that live in this account right now, 12 are being spent in this, 10 to 12 being spent in this budget?

I don't want you to lose sight of those because any choice to do something with that now means that it would not be available for that purpose.

Do we expect to get the $1.5 million for the water leak appropriation reimbursed from insurance?

Okay, that's the intent.

But is it reasonable to think that maybe a million out of that would come back to us?

I don't have a status.

That would be a question for us.

We don't.

Do we have a timeline on what that's going to be fixed?

that's what we're targeting because we I'm sorry before we go back so and remember that we added we went ahead and accelerated the planned project and and the first floor city hall so hopefully there was no additional surprises because we were already planning to undo some things and redo them anyway so things are kind of running together for me at this point I'm sorry but so the

But then you're also taking it out of the CIP contingency?

You remember me saying that?

Thank you.

So that's basically what this is reflective of the addition of that $15.8 million was tied to that statement I made.

And as a policy, as a practice, money does not get spent out of this account without coming back to council for approval.

and said, forget about it.

I'm not going to do that often.

It has been allocated to help fund this proposed budget.

Now, not all of it.

The surplus amount went to the CIP contingency.

That's going to sit here.

But as a consequence of this budget and collective bargaining and the class and comp study, we will be coming back to you to fund a payment to the actuary that will support those increased salaries.

So the point is that that money has been put to use, will be, yes.

Anticipated use, yes.

Has been scheduled for use.

Most of it, most of it, absolutely, yes.

Any other questions on the contingency?

Yeah, forget about it.

So when you factor in, whether you add cash funded projects, the cash needs for that, if you factor in cash needs for the debt service fund, you could potentially have between those two things, two to four million dollars of cash that would need to come from the general fund in any given year to pay the CIP.

What are you saying?

As long as we plan for it and think about it, then

You're fine, but it's expensive.

So don't be shocked by the sticker shock when we come to you with a budget that says your debt service transfer from the general fund is $2 to $4 million increase in one budget.

Yes.

except the 2026 is $16 million less than 2025.

I'm sorry.

The general fund expenditure budget, third column, fourth column.

You're right.

And all of the numbers below that are consequently low as well.

So what that means is your ratio would come down, but the debt service would not change.

So the general fund transfer, that'd be one, two, three, five column over, what is that number a function of?

And so the it is that is a number that we are in control of and we reevaluate each budget year.

and do we change, I mean, first of all, is there a formula that we're using to derive that number?