City Council Meeting   4/15/2024

2024 City Council meeting for Charlottesville, Virginia is now in session.

I am the Vice Mayor, Brian Pinkston.

I'm here for behalf of Mayor Juan Diego Wade, who had a death in the family.

So that's why he's not with us tonight.

So if you would keep his family in your thoughts, that would be most appreciated.

Councillor Oschrin.

Here.

Councillor Payne.

Here.

Here.

May I have a motion to approve or amend the agenda?

So moved.

Okay.

All right.

If you'd please pass your vote, please cast your vote.

Motion passes.

As usual, this meeting will be divided into three sections.

The first will be a work session to hear and discuss presentations that do not require a council vote.

Second, we'll have a recess and tonight there's no planned closed meeting.

and then third, the City Council Business Meeting will commence at 6.30.

Good afternoon, City Council.

My name's Ben Chambers.

I'm the Transportation Planning Manager for the City.

I'm under Neighborhood Development Services.

I came to you about a year ago with the Transportation Planning Update, and we have some new updates for you.

Without further ado, I'll jump into it.

I've got about 35 to 40 slides, so quite a bit of information to go through.

If I'm going too fast or you have a question, please feel free to stop me.

But before we jump into things, I want to just sort of set the context of where we are with transportation planning.

First, I want to point us to our city's transportation goals and then give some context for what that actually means when it comes to transportation planning.

These goals should be familiar.

On the left are the headliners from our comprehensive plans chapter on transportation.

On the right are some goals from a couple other plans.

The climate action plan, which is looking for a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and elimination by 2050.

and then the move, Safely Blue Ridge, Safe Streets and Roads for All, action plan that TJPDC is developing.

Several weeks ago, you adopted city targets for that plan looking to eliminate traffic deaths by 2045 and reduce serious injuries related to traffic by 50% by 2045.

So if you look at these two sides of the slide,

The right side is saying what we're aiming to get done, and the left side is kind of telling you what we're planning to do to get there.

So to give it some context, we are in a region that's growing.

I think we're all pretty aware of that.

We have anticipated population and employment growth in the region.

With our new zoning code ordinance, we're looking to have more of that growth happen within the city's boundaries.

And what that's going to mean is that transportation planning decision making at every scale is going to have to make some assumptions about how they're going to interact with the transportation network.

That's going to mean more trips overall.

More people, more jobs mean more people are going back and forth between those things and going to those things to spend money and to have fun with their friends.

Trips are a good thing.

But to make sure that we can facilitate those trips, we have to look at what our comprehensive plan goals set out and that's providing a lot more choices for how we make those trips.

What that looks like is

First of all, we've got to be efficient with space.

There's a lot of competing needs for land in the city and there's competing needs within city-owned right-of-way.

We've got bikes, we've got pedestrians, we've got cars, we've got transit, all the modes, all looking to use the same space.

We also want to double up so that

Different modes can be used for different trip needs.

So when we're looking at making an improvement to our sidewalk network or our transit network, we're looking at could this serve kids trying to get to school?

Or could this serve people getting to the grocery store?

Or could it do both?

We're looking to get as much synergy for those trip needs as possible so that there are lots of options going forward no matter what your need is.

We also need to look at the safety needs of each mode.

Some of them are conflicting.

Some of them are big vehicles.

Some of them are just people walking along the side of the road.

So we need to think about what safety looks like for each of those modes and plan for that in a way that doesn't dismiss the other modes that are involved in that corridor.

So when we're talking about making an improvement for bikes and pedestrians, that means not

creating a network that's going to be super congested and backing up everywhere throughout the city when it comes to cars and transit.

Vice versa, we also, when we're looking at making improvements for transit in automobiles, we don't want to make streets that are unable to be crossed.

So we need to make sure that we're accounting for all of the safety needs that are involved in our transportation network no matter what the mode is.

Because we are now looking at a wider net of safety choices and transportation choices, we've got to work with more partners to make that happen.

That means working regionally, that means working with our partners in the county and at UVA.

Brian Pinkston

Transportation planning has a history dating back decades and it's kind of gone along an engineering path.

We built a lot of roads and now we're sort of turning the corner and figuring out what other modes do we need to start considering and are there other tactics that we need to approach in order to get those things done.

So when it comes to what is the city concretely actually working on to get these things done,

It looks a lot like what our agenda is today.

So we're looking at sidewalks.

We're looking at bike infrastructure.

We're looking at what we do with scooters and e-bikes.

We're looking at quick build improvements and improvements that get kids to school safely.

We're looking at transit and we're also looking at regional cooperation.

If we have time, there's lots of other things we can talk about.

I've got a couple slides towards the back.

They're just sort of a lightning round of a dozen things that we might want to cover if we can get there.

We've got plenty to cover in these six to start with.

So I'll start with sidewalks.

I've been here since November 2022 and since then we've completed a few sidewalk projects.

There were a couple that were sort of already in the works.

When I came on board, Rose Hill Drive had a section that was completed

Harris Street had a section that was completed.

We've had two new segments that were both identified as a priority and completed in my time here.

That's the East High Street in front of AT&T building segment and Elliott Avenue right there at the corner of Cherry Avenue.

And so sort of the issue that we've been running into is

We don't really know how to build a sidewalk at this point.

Do we know what our priorities are?

Do we know that we have staff that can actually carry that out?

Who on staff is actually going to carry that out?

So these were some questions that we had to work through over the past year.

We do have a path forward for answering those questions and we have a pretty good idea of where we want to put sidewalks and who's going to carry out that work.

So our draft sidewalk priorities was the first issue that we tried to solve with sidewalks.

And that was trying to solve the issue of we had a lot of priorities.

We had a lot of priorities on several different lists.

We had some small area plans that had some priorities for sidewalks, and they were sort of scattered.

If you needed to build a sidewalk, you could say this is a priority.

It would have come from a plan somewhere and it couldn't have been disputed.

We wanted to make sure that we had a unified list for the priorities.

So we worked with the Office of Intermodal Planning and Investment.

That's a part of VDOT.

It's underneath the Secretary of Transportation for the state.

And they worked with us to pull together our plans like the Bike Ped Master Plan, the Streets of the Work Plan, some of our small area plans.

into this quantitative assessment where sidewalks may need to go.

We finished that quantitative assessment last summer.

We put it on pause because the ADA transition plan was starting to kick up and we wanted to see if there was an opportunity for us to combine efforts there.

Once we realized that those two efforts were kind of moving in different tracks, we decided to pick it back up this winter so we could finish out this sidewalk prioritization.

So this is sort of the way that they got prioritized.

On the left is the quantitative assessment.

So that's OIPI helping us to look at suitability of the sidewalk, where there's sidewalk demand, where there's safety issues, and where there's connectivity issues.

Once we looked at that sidewalk quantitative assessment, we looked at the top 50 scoring projects and did a qualitative assessment looking at are these distributed in an equitable fashion.

Is this going to conflict with any existing work, like our paving schedule?

Are these things physically feasible?

Is this a project that we identified 10 years ago and now things have changed and it's not physically feasible to put that project on the ground?

And if it is feasible, what's sort of the time scale for when we think we could get funding, do design, and actually get construction done?

We're also currently looking for public feedback on the sidewalk list.

That will go into that fourth corner there.

These assessments sort of turn out a list of priorities and based on that list of priorities we looked at it and said you know some of these are harder to do than others so we separated that priority list into tiers and I will give you a little description of that so this is

where you can look at the sidewalk priority list.

It's on our website right now.

You can also reach it through the biking and walking page on the city's website.

So all of these projects are broken out into the three tiers.

There's also some committed projects shown here.

And the biggest question I've gotten to date on this is what is the deal with the tiers?

So I will give you some explanation on that.

So tiers does not mean the priority of the city.

All of these projects that we've identified are priorities that the city is going to move forward with.

The tiers are giving us some expectations of how much work we think we're going to have to do to do that.

Tier one is sort of smaller projects.

They might not even be a full city block.

They may just be a couple houses.

There are places where we don't think there's going to be as many right-of-way impacts, utility impacts, stormwater impacts, tree impacts, things that we think we could get done pretty easily.

Tier 2 is places where maybe it's a full city block, maybe it's a couple blocks, maybe there's some issues that we've already identified with stormwater or trees or there's some issues with right-of-way, things that we know that we're going to have to do some planning work to identify solutions to.

Tier 3 is the big stuff.

Tier 3 is the stuff where we either know that we're going to have to pull in another partner because it's either on their property or it connects into the next county over or we need to work with VDOT in order to get funding to do something like that.

It's going to require coordination for us to do this planning.

There are costs associated with each of these different tiers.

For tier one, we are showing costs associated with design survey, that sort of first phase of things, and costs for construction.

Because we have a pretty good idea of how much we think it's going to cost it.

Design it and build it.

For Tier 2, we have a pretty good idea of what we need to look at planning-wise to do the design work, but we are not sure what the outcomes of that design work is going to be, so we don't have costs associated with that because we still need to decide what the construction costs are.

Tier 3, we don't have design costs, we don't have construction costs.

What I will tell you about Tier 3 is those are the kinds of projects that I would be planning.

Tier 1 and Tier 2 would be more our bike head coordinator or our safe routes to school coordinator being involved.

When you say we don't have costs for that, you just mean we have not estimated exactly, right?

It's not that they're free.

Correct.

Thanks So in terms of costs, I sort of broke down that we do have costs for tier one and we have some design costs for tier two and

Between those two over the next six years, we're looking at approximately $4.5 million worth of needs for investment in sidewalks that will pay for about a mile of constructed sidewalk and give us another three and a half miles that would be designed.

does not fund the construction of that three and a half miles, and it does not fund the design or construction of any tier three projects.

Those are anticipated to be at a much larger scale that will need state, federal, and private help with.

Another question you may have is, you know, we've been saying for years, the city's capacity for carrying out these projects is constrained.

That's what's holding up our work.

We've made some progress on that.

Part of that is working with VDOT.

We've had a back load of VDOT projects that are locally administered projects.

We've been working through that with VDOT to get those projects back on track.

You'll be having a work session specifically about VDOT projects on May 6th.

We'll talk more about that then.

But the larger gist of it is some of the responsibilities between Public Works and NDS have been reshuffled.

Previously, sidewalk projects and some of our larger streetscape projects were taken cradle to grave by a project manager from Public Works that includes selecting a project to begin with and sitting at the meetings with the regional NPO and with planning bodies and carrying that all the way through to construction

and, you know, signing off on the last construction documents.

That seems like a lot for one person to handle, so we've split out some of that work.

The more construction heavy project management side of things is staying with public works.

The more planning heavy side of things like going out and doing the design work, getting cost estimates, going after grant pursuits.

that's coming over to NDS and we're going to be working in tandem with Public Works to make sure that these projects proceed through all the phases from project selection all the way to construction.

Another big thing that is helping us with this is we've hired a right-of-way agent in Public Works.

A lot of our current VDOT projects are in a right-of-way phase so we needed a little extra help beyond what our project managers can handle on their own.

We've got somebody who's very experienced with this work and has already

you know, shown us a great deal of things that we could be doing a lot better.

Beyond what our current workload is, is kind of a blank slate beyond what our current VDOT projects are.

We don't have any projects in the hopper with VDOT, beyond the ones that are already funded.

So looking out past that horizon, there's more opportunities to do work on sidewalks with local funding.

Mike Infrastructure Super exciting because we've been wanting to get to this point for a long time

So bike infrastructure is a little easier to handle because we've actually done quite a bit of the work that was identified in the bike pet master plan.

Most of it was bike lanes, not protected bike lanes and sharrows.

A lot of those have been implemented.

What hasn't been implemented is our protected, separated bike facilities.

One of those facilities was identified for Fifth Street.

Over the past five, ten years, we've looked at Fifth Street multiple times, come up with multiple alternatives that looked at building a protected bike lane.

The last alternative we looked at included a lane for transit and for emergency vehicles.

When we looked at those alternatives previously, there were some traffic impacts that were backing up traffic in the morning model all the way back to 64 and it kind of was like, this is too problematic for us to implement.

We're going to be looking at a new alternative that will not have as many impacts on taking away as many lanes as we are proposing in the last alternative.

The best part about this is that VDOT is doing the work for us.

They have offered generously to let us use the remainder of their road diet budget for the year, which is about $130,000 and give us access to their consultant who is doing road diet work for them in Harrisonburg to carry out this work.

So we jumped on this opportunity and said, yes, let's try to figure out this corridor first, especially because you're giving us free money.

The next corridor we want to look at is the West Main Streetscape.

The previous version of the project was canceled because we wanted to use funds elsewhere, but there wasn't a lower cost alternative available immediately.

A local resident has come up with a reshipping plan.

He's done some bouncing back ideas back and forth with me and the traffic engineer and we have engaged with a consultant team to basically take this residence

conceptual design and move it into something that we could actually put on the roadway, which is going to take a little bit more engineering work.

And we do have some public outreach built into that scope.

We will be starting that scope.

Once the Fifth Street one is moving forward, we've seen progress.

We're not being held up on the design of that.

Then we'll get the West Main started so that they're not going at the same time and competing for attention.

There are some other bike issues around town that we've been dealing with over the past year or so since we've had our new bike and pedestrian coordinator on.

One of them is bike parking.

It's somewhat inconsistent across our community.

There have been efforts in recent years to expand that through our free racks to businesses program so a business can send in a form to NDS and say, hey, I'd like a bike rack out in front of my business, please.

That's sort of resulted in some one-off parking improvements across the city.

Since I've been here, we actually have not installed any bike racks in front of businesses.

All the businesses we've had reach out either we haven't had space on the sidewalk nearby to put a bike rack.

There were already bike racks existing that the business didn't know about.

or there were opportunities for putting a much larger bike rack somewhere nearby that would have served multiple businesses.

So in order to stop doing the sort of whack-a-mole of getting receipts from each business, our bike pod coordinator created a bike parking inventory.

He worked with UVA.

Their bike parking is also included in this inventory.

You can see all the bike parking across the city on a Google map on the city's biking and walking page right now.

After doing that inventory, we did identify some spots around downtown that were in severe need.

And some of that was from outreach from businesses who had said, hey, we need a bike rack nearby, but we definitely can't have space in front of our business for it.

Where can we put these?

Putting together our first order of new bike racks and installation of new bike racks this month and you should start seeing those deployed later this spring.

You can still reach out to us if you're a business and would like a bike rack.

We'd love to talk to you about other bike rack locations that we could help you with.

The other programming issue that we had with bike infrastructure in the city was

Bike to Work Day, Bike to Work Week, Bike to School Week, Bike Month, whatever we were calling it, whatever year we were doing it.

Hasn't been very consistent and during the pandemic got even less consistent.

Last year we tried to have a big push using local community advocates.

They really stepped up and said we'd like to make sure that this event is something that is

Well attended throughout the community.

So they started programming out a bike month, a lot of events over the last May.

Now we have a bike ped coordinator and there's county staff as well that is interested in stepping up and we've sort of taken on all of the things that the advocates were working on last year.

tried to make them even bigger this year.

So this year the new things that we're adding are events at Fridays after five.

There are five Fridays in May.

Each of those is going to be sponsored by a local bike advocacy group.

They'll be pouring the beers and doing the security lines and they'll also be running a new thing that we're offering called bike valet.

So if you

Ride your bike to Five Fridays after five.

Don't bring a lock.

Just drop it off with the bike valet.

They'll watch it for a couple hours until you get back.

Give them your ticket and you can take off.

It's very easy.

It's been used in a lot of other communities for large festival kind of events.

So we're hoping to get a foothold with that during Fridays after five, during bike month and hopefully expand that throughout the year.

We're also going to have swag stations throughout the city, throughout the whole month.

There's a bike family day at Dicks Park that will be returning.

Apparently this was a historical event that we've done for many years in the past.

This is more aimed at getting kids interested in biking.

We're also going to have some e-bike demos and lots of different opportunities for bike rides.

There are road rides, there are mountain bikes, there are rides for kids and for families.

If you're looking to go on a bike ride, there's probably something on our calendar.

Here we go.

So scooters.

VO is still our only scooter e-bike operator.

We call them dockless mobility permit holders.

The rules that we use to govern our dockless mobility program were revised last year, shortly after my last update here.

And those were to respond to issues that we had and to issues that VO had.

And our biggest issue was, and it still is, parking of the scooters.

Vio had some issues with they wanted to have a slightly larger fleet.

They wanted to be able to make a little bit more revenue than what they were making.

But our main concern was how are we making sure that these scooters aren't blocking people from walking by getting to the things that they need to get to.

These should be things that improve access for our community and not distract from it.

So, let's talk about performance of VO first before we jump into the issues.

Last year we had over 300,000 rides that covers almost 450,000 miles.

Part of collecting information last year, VO did a survey of all of its users here locally.

36% of those users said that they don't have a car.

When you look at how many of those users are students, that's not all that surprising.

About 65% are identifying as students.

Nearly 40% have been able to decrease their car use in general.

On average, they said about 20% of their trips are replacing a car trip.

So when we look at how does that translate to the overall number of trips, we're nearly removing 60,000 car trips in 2023 by having the scooters on our street.

That's another 85,000 vehicular miles that we're taking off of the roads using scooters.

Part of what we revised with the regulations was allowing VO to find their users when they're not parking properly.

Anyone can report one of these scooters.

You can do it through the MyCVIL app, you can do it through the VO app, you can do it through their helpline, or you can email them at hello at VO ride.

Last year, they received about 700 reports of improper parking.

About half of those, they were able to attribute that to the rider who was last on the scooter or e-bike and minister of violation or fine to them.

So far this year, they've already reviewed 300 reports.

Not many of them are myseville reports, actually.

Most of the reports are coming from city staff or from UVA staff.

Only about 60 of them were coming from myseville.

And we found that part of the problem is myseville is going to city staff who then have to route it to VO.

So there's a lag there.

The faster way to get a response out of VO is to send them an email at hello at vorent.com or to give them a call or to use their app.

Those are going directly to VO and I think some of our users who have been reporting this have realized that that gets them a faster response.

We do have a note on Montesevo now that says, hey, if this is outside of City Hall hours, you should probably just contact VO directly using either their phone number

or the email address.

Like I said, the majority of these reports are from city and UVA staff.

UVA has someone who is dedicated on grounds to running around and chasing down scooters and mopeds and improperly parked bikes.

We don't have someone in the city who's full time dedicated to that.

Our bike ped coordinator is quite a runner and he happens to be out most mornings very early.

So he's been filing quite a few of these in the past couple months.

and you'll see a picture of one here in a minute.

So our scooter parking has gotten better with the fines to some degree, but we all know that it isn't fixed yet.

VO has implemented fines.

They've added safety training and parking training during your sign up.

You have to watch videos and take quizzes.

They've also introduced a slow speed mode for new users.

They found that that makes users actually pay attention in most of their

crashes and incidents happen for new users not people who have been on it two or three times so for new users they're slowing them down so they get used to it being safe on the scooter.

We've also been deploying hub locations both in the city and on UVA.

These are signed on UVA grounds off of grounds they are painted on the ground you'll see some of these orange blocks around town.

There's also virtual ones that show up in the app if you

go to park near a virtual one, it'll say, hey, there's a place around the corner that's a much better place for you to park that's already been identified.

Gotcha.

What we have found is

when our bike peg coordinator goes out in his morning runs, he's finding these scooters in the same places, whether they are next to a forced hub on UVA grounds or a suggested hub on West Main Street.

This is one of those suggested hubs on West Main Street.

This was taken this morning.

Clearly they knew to get over to this hub location.

I don't know if this was the user

deciding to park on the sidewalk for some reason because maybe there was a truck there or if a delivery guy came by and moved them himself.

We're not sure, but we know that no matter what we do, they keep ending up like this.

And so what we actually need is not necessarily a hub or a app or a fine.

We need staff to go out there and move these vehicles.

Ideally, it wouldn't be city staff.

We don't have somebody who's dedicated to do that.

Ideally, it would be VO showing up before the crack of dawn and moving these things.

We have heard some pushback from VO saying we're having staff issues just like y'all it's difficult to get staff hired up and get them to come in when we're saying you got to be out there at six in the morning.

We are not thrilled with that response because we're out there at six in the morning.

Our bike pedic coordinator is out there as a UBA staff so we'd like to put a little bit more pressure on them to

Yes, so I've seen the red squares around town, and I know what they are, but they're a red square that says dockless mobility hub.

You know that language is a little technocrat.

The reason that it gets into that technical language is that's what our program is called.

It's the Dockless Mobility Program.

We are trying to make that less confusing by working with VO so that they are identifying these as shown in the app.

I mean, and even like instead of words there, there's a silhouette of a bike, there's a silhouette of a scooter that gets the message across.

I think Douglas Mobility Hub, someone might think, oh, I don't know if this counts and like not use it.

And then I think it's a problem if delivery trucks can occupy that space.

Yeah, and that is something that we're looking at.

basically demo projects that we're just testing to see if they work.

So far they've had mixed results and it's because of things like maybe we do need to put in some ballards to block this off so that we don't run into that delivery issue.

All right, so what else are we doing to deal with this?

So some of you may have heard that written into our dockless mobility regulations is a $100 fine that we can put onto VO if they have not moved a scooter when city staff asks for it.

We have not levied that fine yet.

That was added to the regulations a year ago.

We basically get in VO a year to figure out this parking issue.

We've been giving them some grace starting June 1st.

We're cutting off the grace and when my bike peg coordinator's out there at six in the morning,

He's going to be coming back around at 7 in the morning and see if those scooters are still there.

And if they are, VO is going to have to start paying about $100 fine.

We didn't want to have to go down this path, but we feel like we're going to have to put a little bit of financial pressure on VO in order to make sure they shift their staff to a time when they can actually manage the scooters and get them out of the way for our computers walking in to work in the morning.

We're going to continue expanding our hub network.

That's both going to be the orange paint squares and the virtual hubs.

For now, those would be outside of UVA grounds.

They would be suggested locations.

That's what we've gone with to date.

There's been a little bit of back and forth about whether that's the most effective.

Honestly, we see issues with both forest and with suggested hub parking locations So for now we would probably just stick with suggested And the last thing that we're going to do is spend some of that revenue that VO has been sending us We get 15 cents for every ride that happens in the city.

So about $50,000 a year

Partly we're going to spend that on bike infrastructure, bike parking, separated bike lanes, all these things that we were talking about a couple slides ago.

We're also looking to work with the Office of Sustainability to set up an e-bike subsidy pilot program.

We're in very early discussions about how that's going to function.

Sure.

So right now, VO has the ability to find its users.

We don't find the users directly.

They don't love the idea.

Do we have any sense of what their financial model is?

I mean, if there's $100, how many of those kinds of fines are they likely to be able to absorb before they sit there and say, we're not going to bother with Charlottesville anymore?

I haven't gotten an answer on that from them yet, and I'm going to keep plugging away on that.

On the one hand, I want them to be given the incentive to do what they need to do.

as such an

If we keep paying you $120,000 a year, we're going to go broke and not be able to do this.

And we said, okay, we can cut these rates back a little bit and we are down to now about $50,000.

One other VO question is, I think this was about a year ago, I got reached out to by a CRA staff member who said VO had reached out to them, informing them that they were planning to, in the geo location of West Haven, make it so you couldn't activate bikes or scooters.

I don't think that moved forward.

They should inform us about that.

They are not required to, but we stay on top of what their zones look like.

And that specific example with West Haven, they did start to put that forward and we got to them very quickly and said that is not how that's going to function here in the city.

We've run into that in a couple other locations where there have been some issues with wanting to make sure that these scooters didn't end up in certain parking lots for apartment complexes.

And some of where they've drawn the lines have broken where you can actually travel.

And we've been working with them to make sure that those are fixed as well.

Those are less of an equity issue in our eyes than the targeting specific areas and trying to block them off.

We do work very closely to be able to make sure that that doesn't happen.

Anything else?

All right, this is a little more fun.

It's safe for us to school in quick builds.

So during the pandemic, our pupil transportation system had a dramatic drop in number of drivers and that pushed city schools to say, hey, we need more kids walking and biking to school.

We need to expand our parent responsibility zones so that we're not providing as much school bus service.

Our Safe Routes to School program existed before the pandemic, but before the pandemic it was more of a educational program.

It was going into the schools and teaching kids how to ride bikes.

When this shift happened, it now became an infrastructure program.

and the infrastructure was mainly what we call Quick Builds, paint, plastic, reflectors.

These are quick things that we can put down in areas that we've identified as safety issues.

We've been doing this the past few years using CARES Act funding and still are drawing down some of that CARES Act funding.

In the 2022-2023 school year, we deployed about 80 quick build projects throughout the city, mostly in elementary school walk zones.

In 2023-2024, at last summer, we identified another 110 locations where we wanted to put quick build improvements.

and another 45 projects that are in areas that we have already put a quick build improvement, but now we want to turn it into a concrete thing, whether that means putting in curb ramps or adding little small bits of sidewalk here or there or turning a bump out into a concrete bump out instead of just paint and some plastic posts sticking up.

We currently have all those quick build projects in the queue of public service.

So as they go through their workload, those projects are worked into it.

They'll be able to put those out throughout the spring.

Concrete projects, those we are timing so that they will start going on the ground in the summer.

We prioritize them in order from 1 to 45 that are mostly prioritized based on how close they are to a school.

So if the project closer to a school, more kids are going to come across it and would benefit from

having a safer improvement there.

Anything we don't get done this summer goes on to next year's school lists and we'll be looking for funding to carry out those projects over the summer.

The other element is we're not just looking at city schools for quick builds now.

Our CIP includes a line item that's called neighborhood transportation improvements and that's

Largely going to be quick build projects.

We did not have a process for coming up with what those projects were, however.

The process basically was devolving into people who were advocates in the community just giving me emails with cool ideas that they had.

That was going to get a little bit unwieldy.

We also have a bike ped advisory committee who for the past year and a half has been mostly showing up and receiving information on things that we're trying to do in the city.

And they were getting a little antsy of, hey, we've got all of these cool ideas and we're an advisory committee

When do we get to start giving you advice?

We have all these ideas on what we think are just easy fixes.

I don't know why the city wouldn't go ahead and just do these.

And so those two issues combined, I said I need advice and I need it to come from a single voice.

So we have started working with BPAC to be the clearinghouse for coming up with ideas for quick builds and receiving ideas for quick builds.

We're working with a subcommittee that's dedicated towards quick builds to build knowledge of what the city standards are.

We don't want them coming up with like

Crazy ideas that they found in some other country.

We want stuff that we know is going to work on the ground here.

Things that have already worked on the ground here are ideal and making sure that we are spreading those one-off improvements that we've tried here or there, making sure that we're spreading them where successful across the community.

and I do want to mention that BPAC is an open resident led committee.

Anybody's welcome to join.

I think if you show up twice, you are officially a part of the committee and can vote on things.

But we need a lot of voices to help us make sure that we are distributing these easy fixes to everybody in the community.

I encourage anyone who is listening, please join us on the first Thursday of the month.

Alright, we're going to move on to transit.

So, CAT is currently working on its transit strategic plan.

This is a document that's required by the state.

It lays out a blueprint for what transit is going to do with state funding over the next decade.

We are forecasting future funding requests coming up with a constrained plan that says state, this is how we expect to spend state and federal money going forward.

It's flexible, it's not binding.

If there's something that we decide a year or two from now that we need to change, we can do that.

This is a point in time though when we

say, going forward, this is what we're expecting unless we say otherwise.

Having that flexibility is an important note.

We have a lot of other transit planning things going on in the region.

I'll touch on one of those in a bit.

But there are a lot of other factors behind CATS operation that also needs to be flexible.

We've dealt with things like driver shortages, parts shortages, bus shortages, and we will have to be nimble to deal with any issues that come up in the future.

This is actually a fairly new requirement.

Previously, CAD did a transit development plan, and that was the name of the document.

I believe that was 2018, 2019, somewhere in there.

So it's been a little over five years, but in that five years the state has stepped forward and said, okay, for some of the larger transit agencies, not the smaller guys that are out in the rural areas, but some of the larger urban transit agencies, we want you to not just do a transit development plan, but we want you to actually do some strategic thinking and come up with goals and objectives and show us how your performance is aligning with those and how you're going to change your performance in order to better align with them.

That wasn't baked into the last version of the requirement, and this is a little bit more of a narrative that actually tells you why and how CAT is going to be doing things.

So it's broken out into five discrete chapters.

We are currently working through the draft version of the last chapter, which is

thrilling.

The first chapter is sort of existing conditions.

What does our system look like?

The second chapter is how is that system performing today?

Chapter three looks at that and the goals and they were identified in chapter one and says, okay, well, was that mean we need to change?

And then chapter four is how do we change it?

How many bus drivers do we need?

How many buses do we need?

What's the replacement schedule for that look like?

Chapter five wraps it up in a bow and says, this is how much it's going to cost.

We are currently finishing Chapter 5 and we'll be packaging all of these chapters into a draft to release towards the end of the month.

So I'll give you some details on what you're going to see coming out, especially with the Chapter 3 improvements that were identified.

We're not baking these improvements from scratch.

We are taking these improvements that we're recommending in the plan from the adopted plan in 2021 that was called the System Optimization Plan.

And then we're also taking some elements from the 2022 Regional Transit Vision Plan, which looked at two different alternatives, a constrained future that

was much less costly and then a unconstrained future that sort of included every idea that we could possibly think of for improving transit.

And I don't know if you'll get through this, but something I still get a little confused on is how does this interact with the system optimization plan?

And is there another system optimization plan underway right now?

So the system optimization plan was basically looking at the last document.

transit development plan from 2018-2019 and saying, well, we're not doing that because the pandemic has hit.

How do we get us back out of the pandemic?

What this current version does is takes that plan and incorporates it because we actually have not implemented anything from the 2021 system optimization plan.

So that first short-term

and

When we did public outreach towards the end of last summer, we got some public feedback on some improvements that we should consider for this plan.

And to just conceptualize in my mind, so simplified, is kind of with implementing the system optimization plan, basically return us roughly to pre-pandemic service and frequencies with some adjustments.

Yeah, that's largely right.

So this first

short term one to four years.

This is mostly system optimization work.

It gets us 30% more service hours than what we have today, but that gets us closer to what we were doing before the pandemic, maybe a little bit more.

Mostly what this is doing is not

putting in new services but realigning old services so that they function better.

There are some extensions here and there that provide some new connections but largely it's about making sure the system functions more properly and more reliably.

So this first short term within the first four years is mostly

existing areas that are served, adding more services to places where we have the highest ridership potential.

It also includes keeping the micro-cat services that Allmoral County is paying for.

In total, this takes us up 30% higher than what we're doing today in terms of workload for cat.

In the midterm, we're doing sort of the last couple parts of the system optimization plan that need to be updated.

Some of that is improving weekday frequencies or weekend frequencies.

Some of that is reintroducing Sunday services.

When you look at the map, it doesn't look like we're adding a lot of footprint, but what we're adding is a lot more pine wind services available.

And that is to the tune of 70% more service than what we're seeing today within the next eight years.

and then for the last time frame, the long term, this is taking all of our weekday services to 30 minutes or better.

This is improving weekday frequencies and having Sunday service on most of our routes and that Sunday service, matching the span and frequencies of what we have on Saturday for a lot of those routes.

What we're looking at is more than doubling the size of our system over the next 10 years with this plan.

were looking at about 110% larger than what we have today, which is lower than what we had pre-pandemic, but we would be much larger than what we were after this 10-year improvement.

Along with some of those projects or some of those improvements, we also have some more programmatic things like improvements to bus stops, expanded hours of operation at the Downtown Transit Center,

having the discussion of how we continue fare-free service, looking at opportunities for transfers at intermodal places like parking rides, improving on-time performance, coordinating with UVA, the county, jaunt, looking at expanding microtransit services both in the county and potentially in the city, and adding in improvements that

We haven't explicitly said here, but we know we're in the transit vision plan that we need to start thinking about things like high capacity transit on 29.

Sorry, one more question.

With MicroCat,

Does it seem like we're on an optimistic trajectory where DPRT may fund that extending into Charlottesville city limits?

Or would we have to take that on on our own?

My understanding, Garling could correct me if I'm wrong here, but my understanding is that the version that's in the county right now is a demonstration project that's run by the state or that's partly funded by the state.

We would

Oh, I'm sorry.

Yes, great news.

So we we have had Garland Williams, Director of Shardsbury Transit.

So we've had substantive conversations with the state about how do we potentially

get more funding to make it more of a regional project.

Okay.

Thank you.

For the bus stop bill, we're still waiting for that to get signed.

So the bus stop bill doesn't actually affect us in the city.

So what you're referring to is there's a bill that changes how VDOT has

basically permit authority over their right of way when it comes to bus shelters.

That has been an issue for our friends out in the county for quite a while.

That's not an issue for us in the city because we own our own right of way.

We're cheering it on and saying we hope it happens, but it's not much of an issue for us.

And frankly, it's more of a

Bureaucratic Fix.

Right now, they're able to do that out in the county using a letter that VDOT comes up with every year to give them authority to do their own work.

Got it.

Okay.

I thought it would apply to all bus stops, not just VDOTs.

That helps.

So financially in this plan there are a few things that we have to take into account.

The recommendations that are in here have to be financially constrained so that sort of nixes some of the things that were in the regional transit vision plans on constrained model.

What do you mean to be financially constrained?

See, that's a very good question.

So it means that DRPT agrees that we are doing things in a financially constrained way.

So in our case, they are actually giving us a little bit of wiggle room with that last five years because they know that we are working with entities throughout the region to come up with a regional transit authority, which I'll talk about in a couple of slides here, which could potentially change how much funding we have available.

Within the first five years they're looking at, is this within the realm of reasonableness that this much more additional local money would be raised?

So are they basically saying that they want any new

No.

What they're saying is you have to come to us with a budget that takes into account your federal funding, your state funding, your local funding, any funding you get from fares or advertising revenue.

And whatever the revenues look like, the expenses should look similar in scale.

That's all they're saying when they mean by that constraint.

Good.

Thank you.

A lot of the improvements that we're looking at aren't, as I said, really changing the footprint, but our frequency improvements, their span of service improvements, they're adding a lot of service to the road and that is a lot of increase in operational funding that we'll have to figure out how to take care of over the next decade.

Right now, the local funding contributions from jurisdictions is based on service hours.

So when we give service to Albemarle County, they're paying based on the number of service hours.

That's something we'll also need to talk about.

That's something that Albemarle is interested in talking about.

They've done a study recently as well that pointed that out, that that's a conversation we need to have going forward.

Cat is anticipating that we're going to need increased funding support, especially beyond 2026 to maintain existing service and implement some of these recommendations.

And the reason that we highlight 2026 as kind of the year when we start thinking about having budget issues is our funding for our fair free service came from DRPT.

Originally, that fair free service funding that we got from DRPT runs out in 2025.

We also have some CARES Act funding that was helpful to get us through the pandemic.

We still have a little bit of that and we'll run out of that after 2025 as well.

So looking in 2026 and beyond, we're going to have to start looking for

The fiscal 2026 or calendar 2026?

Okay.

In fare free just ballpark.

Are you talking like two, three hundred thousand a year or is that like a million a year?

It's like half a million I think.

Half a million, yeah.

I think they have 400 to 500,000 a year somewhere in there.

It makes up a very small percentage of CAT's overall revenues.

It's something like 6% of the revenues historically.

That's not a very good fare box ratio.

And then you get into the issue of we don't have fare boxes on the buses right now.

We'd have to put them back and figure out how to operate them all over again.

Yes, that's fair as well.

So to complete, to get our state funding that we'll need going forward, we have to complete and submit this plan by the end of this fiscal year, so June.

I think we are targeting June 3rd.

for coming back to council for adoption.

But before then, we will be having a stakeholder workshop towards the end of the month where we'll be rolling out the draft TSP to stakeholders that we engaged with last year when we started this project.

In May, we'll be publishing the draft TSP and asking for a public comment.

By the end of that month, we'll have a final document for us to bring to you in June so that we can submit by the end of June.

And if you have any questions on that, I will jump right into the regional transit authority, a potential source of funding going forward, especially in the out years.

So this idea of having a regional transit authority is not a new idea.

It's not a new conversation.

It's been around for a few decades now.

In 2009, the state legislature granted the city and the county the ability to form a regional transit authority.

They did not give us the ability to collect taxes from that transit authority.

They basically said, put your heads together.

You guys can do planning oversight.

You can potentially do service delivery through this thing, but don't try to raise funding through it yet.

We don't think your region is quite ready for that.

So as sort of an intermediate step in 2017, TJPDC

started a regional transit coordination study, which was sort of looking at, okay, we have this power.

It was granted by the legislature.

What do we do with it?

And part of that, the recommendations from that were, let's stand up an organization in the meantime called the Regional Transit Partnership.

That'll help us work on transit studies and study transit governance more.

The RTP has since published the Regional Transit Vision Plan, which we discussed a little bit in the previous slides, and

At the beginning of this year, they adopted their regional transit governance study, which is sort of leading us to the next steps of how do we get to a regional transit authority.

And here are the recommendations from that study.

The number one recommendation was go ahead and enact the legislation that we already have.

This will take the city and Albemarle County passing resolutions establishing CARTA.

In the meantime, we should not lose sight of the fact that we have rural counties around us that could also be benefiting from transit access into our urban areas.

So we should continue working with them.

We'll be developing a legislative request package so that we can start generating revenue and we don't want to leave them out as we're considering how that revenue is generated and how we're going to expend that revenue.

We don't want to take anything off the table when it comes to potential cooperation regionally in transit.

That also means understanding what the rural needs are for transit a little bit better.

John is currently working on a study that is tackling this and I believe the RTP is going to be looking forward to that study being completed.

So we'll have sort of an idea of what the rural counties are interested in both through our engagement with them and also through

studying transit in those rural counties, which I don't think has been done to date.

We're also looking at UVA as a partner on this.

The way that the legislation reads, the localities can all be voting members on a regional transit authority.

UVA cannot, just as an institution, they're not allowed to be a voting member, but we still want them to be at the table.

They're a very important destination.

They're a very important employer.

They operate their own transit system.

We don't want to duplicate efforts there.

Their transit system serves fairly different needs than what Kat does and what John does, but there are some opportunities for us to provide better transit to UVA and for UVA to have better transit within its grounds.

Is it known kind of like what

Yeah, so I'll actually tell you on this slide.

So the work that we've been working on since the RTP basically adopted

their regional transit governance study is sort of laying down the framework of what that initial RTA would look like.

So that includes putting together bylaws, coming up with a work plan and sort of determining what sort of staff is going to be necessary to do that work plan and coming up with an interim budget for that work plan and staffing needs.

There are staff from the city, from the county, and from TJ PDC that is meeting on a regular basis to work through this.

I believe it was in February when RTP said, we'd like you to come back in 90 days with bylaws.

So we're looking at early summer to come back to RTP with bylaws and potentially a work plan 90 to 100 days somewhere in there.

And then we would be looking to return to council in the fall or late summer

to come forward with a resolution to set up CARTA.

So that gives us the summer to sort of work through some of the details of the initial setup and come to you in the fall or late summer.

Part of the work plan is tackling that issue.

There are several issues that we're going to need to tackle at the RTA.

Part of it is how do we get to the next step, which is raising revenue.

That's sort of an open question.

There was a lot of time dedicated in the regional transit governance study looking at potential revenue sources.

And instead of recommending one, they want us to set up the authority first and then have that discussion as part of the work plan for that.

We also want to look at are there regional improvements that

The RTA should be pursuing more aggressively than perhaps the transit agencies are currently looking at.

So that flexibility in CATS-TSP and their ability to change their plan may need to be responsive to what the RTA's work plan is deciding.

So there's some actual physical improvement stuff that we'll be talking about through RTA, but there's also some bureaucracy, budget, organizational things that we'll need to talk through as part of the work plan.

So I've gotten through all of the big notes and now we'll jump into the lighting round.

It kind of jumps all over the place.

There's lots to cover.

First thing I wanted to highlight was our community walks program.

This is something we started this year.

The picture on the right here is our bike pad coordinator, Tommy Sophranic, leading one of our community walks.

I believe this was in the Fry Spring neighborhood last month.

We had one yesterday in the Rose Hill neighborhood.

They're typically about two, two and a half, three miles worth of walking around in neighborhoods.

We stop at locations throughout the neighborhood, ask people for stories who are involved in the neighborhood.

It's been a really pleasant way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

So going forward, I invite you all please come join us.

It's a really nice time.

We are

jumping on to the next subject, parking permit policy review as part of the zoning ordinance.

There was a discussion about what does happen with our on street parking now that we don't have minimum parking requirements and we're adding a lot more density.

You know, we've already got some issues with the way that permits are working in the city.

Maybe we should go back and look at all of that and make sure it works right.

We currently have a consultant selected.

We finalized the scope.

We are moving forward with procurement and we'll be working on that this summer.

Next up, VDOT Pipeline projects.

These are planning projects that VDOT is doing.

They basically identify locations using their statewide transportation plan and say, hey, we can jump in here and do some planning work.

get some projects ready for smart scale funding in the next round.

So right now in our region, we have two VDOT pipeline projects underway.

One is at Barracks Road.

They have developed a pre-application for smart scale for that.

It includes a shared use path from Emmett Street to Georgetown Road, a roundabout at Georgetown Road to Barracks, and then two roundabouts at the off-ramps at 250.

Barrick's Road is, sorry, VDOT is moving forward with refining some design elements with that.

They're hoping to push this forward as a smart scale application, but it's really going to be a matter of looking at how those design elements come together and whether the MPO wants to go ahead and

push that forward as an MPO application for SmartScale.

At the same time, VDOT is working on a pipeline project on Ivy Road.

That is sort of behind in the timeline right now and is not going to probably make it in time to be a SmartScale application this time.

They are looking at a pretty long area of Ivy and Old Ivy Road and there are a lot of different intersections that they're trying to

deal with, I think the presentation I saw for it had 85 slides in it of all of the various alternatives that they were looking at along Ivy Road and Old Ivy Road.

They will be looking at refining some of those options so that when we go out to the public and say, give us your feedback that they don't have to look at an 85 slide PowerPoint.

So there'll be a refined set of options presented to the public next month and sort of public survey as well.

Well, we're talking about smart scale projects and so on.

Yeah, that's one of our current streetscape projects.

I believe that is currently in the right of way phase.

Thank you.

Yep.

Sorry, before you do that, a quick question.

The end of Rugby Avenue where it

merges back onto 250 or it goes around in park.

What's the latest with that?

Sure.

Yeah, we're kind of in the catch all around.

So that project, we had it in procurement.

There was an issue with the procurement.

We had to repackage it as being put out for procurement.

You'll also get a full VDOT portfolio update in your next meeting.

Thank you.

Okay, great.

Briefly, what is that project going to be?

I know there was a certain point there was talk of doing a shared use path and then maybe reverting back to what it was before and maybe spending a little more time thinking about it.

So it is a shared use path along the

Michael Payne

across both sides of that median will be reopening the northbound lane, but those lanes will be shrunk a little bit.

We won't have as much roadway surface as we have today, partly because we're making some space to fit in that shared use path, but we will have traffic in both directions going under the bridge like it used to with a little bit of extra space that we can use for a shared use path.

Okay, thanks.

and there will be more details on that next month.

So move safely Blue Ridge Safety Action Plan.

This is the plan that you all adopted the safety targets for a few weeks back.

Currently TJ PDC and their consultant team are working with communications and public engagement directors in the region.

Just a reminder, this is a regional safety action plan.

It includes us, the county and all of the outlying rural counties.

So there are a lot of different needs that need to be addressed here when it comes to public outreach and communications.

I'm not going to be using the exact same strategies for each community because we're going to be giving different types of feedback on different types of issues in each of our communities.

So looking forward to getting more information on when that's going to happen and hopefully we'll have that in the next month or so.

Belmont Bridge.

Functionally, we're looking at that being completed in May, but there's still a little bit more work that needs to be done, including spraying on some finishing coatings on the bridge.

Those coatings need to be warm overnight to dry, so they'll be happening over the summer.

We're looking at total completion sometime June or July this summer.

Stribbling Avenue Sidewalk.

There was a public meeting held at the end of last month to look at some conceptual alternatives.

Public works is taking the feedback from that public meeting and moving forward into the next phase of design to take care of some of the safety concerns that were identified by the folks who showed up for our public meeting and for folks who have provided survey responses online.

And lastly, I will finish with bus shelters.

These are always exciting to hear that they're going in.

We are finishing design on the bus shelter at Belmont Park.

There's currently one there.

It's not in a great place.

It's not very accessible and we want to move it to a better location in the park.

This is sort of been our guinea pig of going through the design process within city government to make sure that we know who needs to be contacted about what parts of this project.

Now that we've worked through this one, we're moving on to the next five.

So the next five locations are Midway Manor, JPA and Maury, JPA and Shamrock, Hydraulic and Emmett and Riverside Avenue.

Our consultants will be moving forward with all five of those and we're hoping to get construction started on one, if not all of those

Well, I know everybody shares this, but this is just a ton of great information, and I hope the community is able to see that these things take time, especially when the city has been in a rebuilding posture in the past several years.

staff every day has been working extremely hard on these things, and it's really starting to pay off.

So I just hope the community is able to see that.

Just a couple questions.

At one point, you'd mentioned the right-of-way acquisition.

I might have to phone a friend on that one.

We're an old city, so we've run into lots of right-of-way issues just because our right-of-way has been historically constrained.

Good evening, Stephen Hicks, Public Works Director.

So a lot of the projects that we're working within the city is going to require some right away or even utility relocations.

In general, we've been successful in acquiring property or working with the property owners.

However, there will be some situations where we will have to go to council for you all to condemn some of the property.

And the condemnation process is we follow the VDOT and federal guidelines.

The city manager will be getting up with you all on some of the processes that we will have to be condemning.

There will be some.

and he will help you as well as I will possibly be part of that conversation, the process that it takes.

So in general, once we decide to move forward because the property owner is not willing to negotiate anymore, we send letters notifying them

that we will proceed with condemning their property unless they work with us on the offer.

They have a minimum of 30 days to to review it in a maximum of 45 days to get back with us.

And then immediately after that, because of the federal requirements, the clock starts.

Yeah, that's helpful.

And also in the time I've been on council and observed council, I've never seen council take that action.

But my personal opinion is it should be an absolute last resort.

I will add that it has been, it's definitely been a contributing factor to why projects have not moved.

As we've been on this ride looking at the VDOT portfolio, it's one of those things that kept coming up over and over as we were determining why projects were stuck.

Many of them were stuck in that right away phase.

And VDOT repeatedly said to us,

What's wrong?

It takes you all forever to get through this phase, but once you get going on construction, you're good.

So we've been trying to really get to the bottom of figuring out exactly what's been contributing to that and looking for efficiency improvements.

And when these case-by-case situations come to us, is this something where, I mean, condemning is

Scary word.

Well, you can only condemn property on what's needed to build the road, sidewalks, or any multiple.

So just the part we need.

And utilities, correct.

It'll just be based on the needs.

But Councilman, sometimes the homeowners will object, saying, if you take that much of my property, you may as well take the whole damn thing.

Especially commercial properties.

Also, there are damages on top of condemnation, which means you're going to damage my revenue for my business because of closing off the entrance or impact.

It would be a closed session.

First, we'd have to go through it of which properties that will be.

And yes, once you will authorize him to condemn the property and negotiate to not condemn it because even condemnation processes once you start

Then, even through the construction, once we condemn it, we'll be constructing the road while we're in condensation process.

The property owners start really seeing the impact and they're like, well, it's not really that bad.

And it authorized the city manager to say, okay, well, we'll give you some, I'm not going to tell everything what we're willing to do at this point, but

allows us the flexibility to work through the combination process and work out a deal until it's finalized.

So the city manager, we will brief you all each parcel of what the impacts are, what they're asking for, what we counter and what we're willing to do.

But it will for us to move the projects through right away, which we have about eight projects.

And again,

We'll give you update on the 6th of May 6th.

Okay, yeah.

another question you've mentioned protected bike lanes.

Sure.

Obviously that is not the standard in Charlottesville or very many of any Virginia localities.

I still don't fully understand like what kind of things are necessary to change to make

Is it it's it's not really a V dot issue.

It's making choices about how we lay out our own streets.

So we've in the past had a different solution for West Main.

That previous solution didn't have protected bike lanes in it.

We are now looking at a solution that does and it's using low cost materials to do so.

So that's sort of that is sort of the shift in changing shift in thinking that has happened.

over the past five years or so.

And the final question is, all this said, fully recognizing, I realize we've got to walk before we can run.

And these are much more long-term, kind of more dream ideas.

But some of the conversations in the community that have kind of been in the background for a while, or 50th year anniversary of the downtown mall, pedestrianized a road, controversial, probably ended up being the most successful planning decision the city has made in its modern history.

What would it look like even if it's just very small at first identifying anywhere else that could be pedestrianized?

We don't currently have a process in place that allows us to go that route.

What we'll need in place first is to have those relationships with partners to carry it out.

So if there are places that are near the county,

We'll need to talk to the county if it's near UVA, which I suspect there are a lot of places that have heavy pedestrian needs over near UVA.

We want to work with them as a partner.

We have several projects in our tier three sidewalk lists that are those sorts of projects that we think we can form those relationships and start having those conversations as we work through.

The nuts and bolts easy stuff before we get to the big controversial stuff.

And I fully understand that, but even if it happens long term, somehow it has to start even just as a seed of an idea, even if it's just side streets, something very, very small at first.

And then connected to that, and the answer may be the same, is Richmond has done some depaving projects where they've taken large asphalt parking lots and converted them into green parks, in some case, with some developments on the perimeter, thinking specifically of the extremely large city-owned asphalt parking lot off the downtown mall.

It's not currently connected to this work.

Where it could actually be most appropriate at this point would be within the Parks Master Plan.

That's all I have.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I've got a couple questions.

First, I like to hear that coming from Michael about

doing something with that lot and also pedestrianizing more streets.

And that could even start with like, you know, second Sundays on, you know, blank street becomes an open street kind of like piloted that way.

I know that initially when there was a pilot program for scooters and bikes, there was also lime and bird.

I'm just, I wasn't around when these decisions were made.

I don't know all the specifics.

My understanding is one of the scooter companies was asked not to return and one of them said, hey, we're not then interested.

VO just ended up being the last one that was interested in and was working with city staff.

So we were like, yeah, keep applying.

Other companies are welcome to apply.

The issue that they may run into is that on UVA grounds, BO has an exclusive contract.

As long as they hold a permit in the city, they have an exclusive contract on grounds.

So that might be an issue for a new company coming into our market.

I was really pleased to see the stats on

via with the number of rides and the number of miles used and especially the ones that were replacing vehicular miles.

Again, I just, I think a picture of a bike or a scooter would help with those faces.

And then I'm thrilled that the e-bike subsidy program is in discussions.

I know it's been successful in other states and cities with the allocations for those getting snapped up quickly in Colorado and DC.

Yeah, and that speed at which they're being snapped up in other cities, that's one of the considerations that we have to account for.

We don't want to make it necessarily a mad dash scramble for everybody trying to get these funds.

We want to make sure everyone has some sort of equitable access to being able to get these funds.

Sure.

So yeah, I'm excited to see how that shapes up.

Yeah, other mostly just excited to hear about all these updates.

Great.

So they have a... So we are going to be presenting the CAT Transit Strategic Plan information to the RTP at this next RTP meeting.

Okay.

Like this is the 25th.

I mean, this is really... The slides?

Yeah.

Yeah, we'll make sure those get posted.

Maybe at the next MPO or RTP, you could just at least tell people, hey, we had this update to council, and this is where you can find that information.

and I hope as well that with the blurbs that we're doing, like city news or whatever, I hope that this will be something that ends up on that because I think it, as others have said, this is really the crystallization of 18 months worth of work and the disciplined approach that our city manager advocates, this is the fruit.

All right, thank you very much.

You'll see a little bit more in my update.

Awesome.

No.

Okay, so given that we are in recess until 6.30.

Good evening.

Welcome to the main part of our meeting tonight.

I'm the Vice Mayor Pinkston.

I'm standing in tonight for a Mayor Wade who's out due to a death in the family.

We'll begin the meeting tonight with a moment of silence, please.

Can I come bearing a prop?

May is Bike Month in Charlottesville.

Bike Month is a collaborative effort including the city and county staff, area nonprofits, local businesses, and volunteers to celebrate the joys and benefits of bike riding.

This year events will include group rides, e-bike test rides, and a bike valet at Fridays after five.

Save the Dates for Bike Walk and Roll to School Day on May 8th and Bike to Work Week, which is May 13th through 17th.

Check out the Bike Month website to learn more about fun events or to volunteer at bikemonthseavill.org.

Thank you very much.

Two announcements.

The first is that the deadline for the My Helpless Contest is April 19th.

The My Helpless Contest is a contest in where

Students in K-12 write in 150 words or less why it's important to help others because unless five things they are done or can do to help someone there will be four winners chosen from grades K-2, 3-5, 6-8 and 9-12 each will receive $100 cash prizes all letters can be mailed or dropped off at Jones Heating and Air at 633 Rose Hill Drive and again the deadline is April 19th this Friday

Yes, I've been asked to announce that the Charlottesville Youth Council is taking new applications, be new members for I guess for the next school year.

I might start immediately.

I'm not quite sure a deadline to apply is May 3rd in any event.

I guess it would have to be for next school year, you apply by May 3rd and we would pick them on our May 20th meeting and then you would be up for the next school year.

This is a group of up to 14 members, Charlottesville residents 13 to 17 years old who would represent Buford or CHS or Lugo McGuinness and also there are some spots reserved for folks who are going to private schools and or who are homeschooled.

to serve as advisors to the City Council by advocating for youth-related issues in our community must be available to meet monthly and the meetings at this point, let's see, it says third Wednesday at 6 p.m.

during the school year and if you want more information and if you want to apply

They gave me this fancy little poster here with a very hard to remember URL.

The easiest thing to do if you're interested is just put Charlottesville Youth Council into your search engine and it will pop right up.

The first entry that will show up is there.

So if you would like to be or have a kid who would like to be involved with the Charlottesville Youth Council, sign up.

No, I'm ready.

This is a proclamation for National Public Safety Telecommunications Week and the 40th anniversary of the CUA Emergency Communication Center.

Whereas in an emergency, community members depend on public safety telecommunicators and access to 911 as their primary means to request help from fire and rescue, law enforcement, animal control, and emergency mental health responders.

And whereas when an emergency occurs, the proper response of field responders is critical to the protection of life and preservation of property.

And public safety telecommunicators are the first, first responders.

The single vital link between field responders and persons seeking immediate relief during emergency.

and whereas the Charlottesville UVA Albemarle County Emergency Communication Center was founded in 1984 as a partnership between the City of Charlottesville, the University of Virginia and Albemarle County and whereas public safety telecommunicators of the CUA ECC process approximately 250,000 calls per year from persons who call, text or video call the Emergency Communication Center.

and ensure the safety of field responder personnel by monitoring their activities and providing them crucial information, thereby significantly contributing to crime reduction, fire suppression, and patient treatment.

And whereas each day public safety telecommunicators provide life-saving treatment instructions, compassion, understanding, and professionalism during the performance of their jobs.

Now therefore be it resolved that we, the Charlottesville City Council, acknowledge and commemorate the second week of April 2024 as National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week, in honor of the telecommunicators and those whose role provides support for them, whose diligence and professionalism keep our communities safe and healthy.

Come on up.

Mr. Vice Mayor, if I may, I just want to say it's a privilege to serve.

Thank you.

It's a privilege to serve as your Executive Director of the Regional Emergency Communication Center.

I'm also the immediate past President of Virginia's chapter of Association of Public Safety Communications Officials.

On behalf of both organizations, I want to say thank you for recognizing the efforts of our 9-1-1 telecommunicators.

I'm thankful for the over 60 coworkers that we had at the ECC, including our public safety comms officers, and all that support them.

We often think about our 911 telecommunicators working behind the scenes or under the headset, as we say, but they truly are the first responders.

They provide life-saving instructions over the phone and comfort others until help can arrive.

So I'm thankful for the acknowledgement today, joined with me to receive this proclamation of representatives from the ECC.

So with your permission, Mr. Vice Mayor, I've asked for them to stand and be recognized.

So with that, thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor.

I'd also mention that we're going to have a community open house this week on Thursday, April 18th from 4 to 7 p.m.

And the community is welcome to join us for some hot dogs and hamburgers and whatnot.

Excellent.

So what's that?

Where will that be again?

That'll be at the ECC, located over on Ivy Street.

Thank you.

April 30th, 2024 is Adopt a Shelter Pet Day.

Whereas more than 6 million pets end up homeless each year in the United States and whereas in our community the Charlottesville SPCA facilitated the adoption of over 2,650 pets in 2023.

and whereas animal rescue employees, volunteers and the community work tirelessly to help homeless pets and whereas the Charlottesville Albemarle community helps support homeless pets through care, love and donations of time, supplies and funds and whereas pets often make life better by giving people love, companionship and comfort, getting us outside for exercise and helping us build social connections

and data shows that 84% of pet owners feel their pet improves their mental health and whereas our community recognizes the benefits of pets and is collaborating to reach our lowest rate ever for pet homelessness, now therefore the Charlottesville City Council recognizes April 30th, 2024 as Adopt a Shelter Pet Day and call upon our community to observe this day with support, compassion and consideration to adopt a shelter pet if it is right for you, your family and the pet.

Thank you very much.

Is there anyone from SPCA here tonight?

Okay, we'll make sure they get this in the mail.

All right.

So we're going to move now to the next section, which is community matters.

So there are five preregistered speakers leaving 11 slots for additional speakers on community matters.

If one of the first eight speakers is absent, a person on the wait list will take their speaking slot.

That's not an issue tonight.

Each speaker will have up to three minutes to speak.

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

Our first registered speaker is Ashley Cleves.

Are you able to come?

Great.

Come on out.

Thank you.

Good evening, City Council.

My name is Ashley Cleves, and I'm a passionate first year sustainability student at the University of Virginia.

I'm here to speak with you today about the recycling and accessibility in Charlottesville and why accessibility is so important for the community moving forward.

I applaud the Council's commitments to economic equity, environmental justice, and a more accessible Charlottesville.

However, me and my group members have proposed improvements to the current system.

These improvements aim for more equitable waste collection practices for our residents.

I urge you to promptly consider and implement our proposals to help achieve a goal of living in a green city.

Approximately 56% of Albemarle County residents say that while, say they view the county's allocation and quality of recycling services as fair or poor.

Meanwhile, 59% of residents say that recycling services are somewhat very inconvenient to access.

Residents in apartment complexes are being increasingly neglected the right to equal access to waste management programs.

In Charlottesville, 47.89% of people live in apartment complexes

and senior citizens comprised 12.5 of the Charlottesville population, many of whom live in apartments.

While collecting data on the recycling issues in Charlottesville, I came upon Melissa Elliott, a recently retired woman who has experience with inadequate recycling practices in Charlottesville.

She had sent three previous emails to the City Council and the one response she received included barriers to change the current system, which were unaccepting to new change.

Melissa highlighted how, in quote, some of us are too old, unable to do the lifting and carrying, some too busy, end quote.

City Council replied that the recycling truck is too large for her neighborhood and she now urges for a smaller truck.

She additionally wishes that she could be on the same smart motivating system as other city dwellers in which she pays for landfill trash

but saves money by recycling and her last wish is that her and other neighbors have a way to get their food waste to City compost and that the compost machine be easier to use through accessibility metrics.

It's very important for everyone in the community to be able to have equal access to recycling resources, so fostering greater accessibility to senior citizens is important, fostering greater equity in the entirety of Charlottesville.

Our recommendations for promoting better recycling practices fall into four categories.

Reduce cost recycling for Charlottesville residents, requiring all apartment complexes and multi-unit homes provide recycling services to residents.

Reallocation of tax services and introducing a recycling incentive program.

and by implementing each of our proposals, we will be able to contribute to Charlottesville's 2025 vision of a green city and my group member, Dave, will explain our proposal in further detail.

Thank you.

Okay, go ahead.

Hello, I'm Dave Carroll.

I'm also a UVA student working with Ashley in another group.

And I'm just going to talk about the four points we created.

So the first point we wanted to talk about was reduced recycling costs.

And according to the US Census Bureau, nearly a quarter of Charlottesville residents live in poverty.

And we believe a free or reduced cost recycling service will be able to mitigate the economic disparities and help increase recycling rates in Charlottesville.

and I want to point out what Richmond does.

And in Richmond, for the elderly, those with disabilities and families that make less than $60,000 per year, they're exempt from waste and recycling fees.

And in 2021, Richmond's recycling rate was actually at 58% while the rest of Virginia's was at 43%.

And so implementing a system similar to that, I feel would improve the recycling in Charlottesville.

and onto our second point for the Apartment Recycling Services.

As you know, many multi-unit apartment complexes aren't covered by the City Waste Collection and these complexes are then reliant upon private collectors, but as Ashley said, private collectors aren't always.

willing to provide recycling services to some apartment complexes like Melissa's.

And then here we want to look towards Alexandria, where all apartment complexes and multifamily homes are required to have recycling services.

And we see in 2016, Alexandria's recycling rate was actually at 49% while the rest of Virginia's was at 44%.

and then as Charlottesville grows, you're going to need those new recycling services for the new buildings, but also the current ones to reach green goals.

The next point we have was for taxes.

And so all Charlottesville residents pay taxes, but not all of them are receiving the same services like Melissa.

So she's paying tax but not seeing any recycling services.

And in a 2020 Charlottesville survey,

74.8% of the participants actually scored tax ill equations towards protection and management of land to support native plants and wildlife, as important and very important.

And that shows that Charlottesville residents do really care about the environment and sustainability.

So we kind of urge the local government to allocate more resources towards the waste reduction and environmental protection through either that free reduced recycling services or having private companies

Provide the services and if not, maybe the city can provide services to those apartment complexes.

And then finally, we'll have recycling incentive programs.

And this is our least fleshed out idea, but there's a lot of things we can do.

When we talked to Melissa, she mentioned how she composts.

But since they don't have composting service, everyone in her car complex, they actually put their scraps in the fridge or freezer to let it sit there.

Then one person will collect it, then take it to the recycling or McIntyre or whatever.

And then so possibly maybe if you turn in compost, you get

Hi.

Good evening everyone.

My name is Katie Lopez-Gadoi and I am a member of IMPACT.

I live in Charlottesville and I'm here to share a testimony on behalf of one of our community members that was not able to be here with us this evening.

We wanted to share this testimony to emphasize how important the public buses are here in Charlottesville.

We are glad to hear you plan to fund eight more buses.

eight more bus drivers this year but we know that at least eleven are needed to start running to start turning things around and likely more in the next few years and here is our community members testimony she says good evening I want to give my testimony about the use of public transit buses in Charlottesville I am a person who doesn't drive and has to use the bus seven days a week as my family members work and don't always have time to give me a ride

The problem is that since the pandemic, the bus service is very irregular.

Some days there are not enough buses.

For example, instead of three buses, each on Route 5 and 7, there might only be one or two buses.

Because of this, passengers like me arrive later to work or whatever they're going.

I have been greatly affected by the irregularity of the bus schedule.

There have been times that I've arrived late to work because the bus didn't come on time.

There have been times I've had to walk an hour or an hour and a half to get to work.

During the winter the situation is even worse because we have to wait a long time outside.

I've had to sit at the bus stop with elderly people and women with young children

Well, it's very cold outside.

I'm also limited in when I can make doctor's appointments because there are always a chance the bus will arrive late or won't show up at all.

I think like me, there are many other people that are living in the same experience.

There are other problems too, such as the bus not running late enough at night or on Sundays.

No matter what plans are made, things will not improve until we have enough bus drivers.

We need at least 11 new bus drivers in this new year's budget.

Thank you.

Again, my name is Elena Baker.

I'm a licensed clinical social worker here in the state of Virginia.

I do work at the University of Virginia.

I work in the Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences, as well as in our Addiction Research Clinic, which is called CLEAR, the Center for Leading Edge Addiction Research.

My team couldn't be here tonight, but I did want to give a shout out to my two social work students from VCU as they helped me create this presentation.

So I'm here tonight to speak about comprehensive harm reduction.

Harm reduction refers to any strategy that minimizes harm for our community members.

Every day we engage in and see acts of harm reduction, such as when we make sure to put our seatbelts on when we wear a bicycle helmet, or even when you or the local bartender calls a taxi for somebody who has had too much to drink.

According to the CDC, harm reduction when practiced as a larger community-driven initiative effectively reduces the harmful consequences of substance use not only for the people who use drugs, but for community as a whole.

Strategies for harm reduction may come in the form of prevention through education, risk reduction through resource provision, and ultimately health promotion through low barrier access to services.

Through these pathways, we take care of one another, creating and promoting safer communities in the future.

Many of our community agencies and community members, such as On Our Own, Region 10, the Buck Squad, the Hart team of Albemarle County, the Anchor team here in Charlottesville, Charlottesville Harm Reduction, and many more, are already doing really amazing things in our community for harm reduction.

So harm reduction is not merely a good idea.

It has been proven to work in practice.

The first syringe exchange program in the U.S.

was launched in 1988.

Currently, there are now about 450 programs across the country, including about 10 here in the state of Virginia.

They are operated by the Virginia Department of Health or approved by the Virginia Department of Health.

Not all of them are operated by the health departments.

They include offering clean syringes, exchange and disposal for those, naloxone for reversing poisonings, fentanyl testing strips, safe sex equipment, hygiene kits, testing and more.

Comprehensive harm reduction is endorsed by the WHO, the CDC, the U.S.

Department of Health and Human Services, and the Virginia Department of Health, as well as major institution as a core public health strategy for addressing the HIV and opioid epidemics.

I'm going to skip the other stuff.

What UVA Clear is proposing is to start operating a CHR program here in Charlottesville as well as a harm reduction vending machine.

Oh God, I'm out of time.

Sorry, I did want to say we are going to host a couple of town halls here in the future.

Thank you so much.

You get a chance.

Thank you.

Good evening, my name is Kate Renner and I'm a third year electrical engineering student at UVA.

I'd like to talk to you about the future of natural gas use in the city.

Charlottesville is witnessing an expansion in its natural gas infrastructure with the gas division offering new service connections up to 150 feet from the main at no cost to the residential customers.

The city subsidizes these installations with more than 125 free gas line installations awarded annually, totaling around $250,000.

Considering the environmental and economic benefits, reallocating these subsidies towards promoting heat pumps and new home construction could offer a more sustainable alternative despite their higher initial costs.

Everyone knows that fossil fuels have disastrous effects on the environment and roughly one-tenth of total U.S.

emissions come from homes and businesses burning natural gas, oil, or propane onsite to heat their space and their water.

So by continuing to offer natural gas line subsidies, the City of Charlottesville is perpetuating the problem rather than presenting a solution.

The city itself set a goal of 45% reduction in community-wide greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, and the way to accomplish this is not to promote gas line installations.

According to the 2024 Charlottesville Decarbonization Study, the city needs to, and I quote, establish a new fee structure to desensitize new gas connections, as well as fund the expansion of new utilities energy efficiency programs.

Not only are heat pumps a greener alternative, but they eliminate risks associated with gas leaks and carbon monoxide poisoning, ensuring safer living conditions for residents.

They do not produce combustion byproducts indoors, so the indoor air quality is safer and the risk of respiratory issues is reduced significantly.

I understand that gas furnaces are cheaper to install than heat pumps, however heat pumps are highly efficient and can cut electricity use by 50% when compared with electric resistance heating, according to the DOE.

So moving away from fossil fuels reduces the homeowner's costs over the lifetime of the appliances when compared to gas furnaces.

According to Energy Star, the U.S.

government is also already offering up to $2,000 of tax credit for heat pump installations.

So if the city of Charlottesville were to leapfrog off of that, the higher installation costs would be less economically disadvantageous to those who are less fortunate and for whom the gas line subsidies are for.

So if the purpose of the subsidy is truly to serve the community then the city is doing its residents a disservice by presenting natural gas lines as a solution rather than heat pumps.

Thank you very much.

Okay, so that is the last of our pre-registered speakers.

At this point, we'll open it up to folks who'd like to speak.

If you'd like to speak, please raise your hand.

In the back, yes, ma'am?

Either one, yes.

For anybody who wants to speak on the tax rate, that will be a public hearing after this.

Thank you so much for this opportunity.

My name is Myrma Clernon and I've been a long time resident in Charlottesville.

I have a short but powerful statement to deliver to the City Council in a respectful manner.

Over the past decade, largely due to public policies, the population and density of our city and surroundings have escalated dramatically, creating untenable traffic and demands on our city's aging infrastructure.

In addition, recent changes to Charlottesville's zoning ordinance are expected to further increase density levels and vehicular congestion resulting in worsening the livability of Charlottesville.

One of the bold actions the City Council must take now to alleviate or moderate these trends as sustained Charlottesville's livability is to make significant investments in our city's bus system, which is why we are definitely proposing 11 new bus drivers as opposed to eight.

We do appreciate the eight, however.

We implore you to step up, act responsibly for the health, welfare, and sustainability of the city you were elected to govern.

Thank you so much for your time.

My name is Dowding Smith.

I live at 810 Locust Avenue.

And the lady's right.

The bus system needs a lot of improvements and to your recycling people.

My recycling is fine.

I get free stream, mixed stream recycling at my house.

The cost for my garbage is like a hundred bucks a year.

However, people living in large complexes sounds like to me they aren't getting a good deal.

I was going to talk about taxes.

I just want to hang around for the public hearing.

But it did get me down here.

So I'll talk about other taxes.

My property taxes have gone up 50% in the last five years.

They're going to go up 10% more this year, 60%.

So in 10 years, that means my real property taxes will double.

Y'all talk about sustainable housing, affordable housing.

You aren't going to get any important housing if you keep driving up interest rates to these rates.

The only people who are going to be able to afford homes are the very rich and developers.

And so you need to start spending your time and efforts on what is the business of Charlottesville rather than doing things like contributing to private charities.

I support giving our good city employees raises.

Who else would like to speak?

Raise your hand, please.

Okay.

With that, we'll close Community Matters.

So that was our final speaker for Community Matters.

It will be another opportunity for public comment at the end of the meeting.

Ms.

Number two minutes, February 27th, alternative fuels work session.

Number three, a resolution appropriating funding for the Rugby Avenue Bicycle and Pedestrian Trail Project, $130,059.50 second reading for resolution appropriating funding from the Bama Works Grant to community attention foster families $5,000 second reading

5 resolution appropriating funds from the Baton Foundation to the Department of Human Services $40,000 second reading 6 an ordinance amending section 30-53 of the Charlottesville City Code to increase the assessed value threshold at and below which qualifying I'm sorry at or below which qualifying vehicles will receive 100% personal property tax relief

from $1,000 to $1,500.

Second reading.

Seven resolution establishing the 2024 tax year personal property tax relief percentage.

One reading.

Eight resolution for revenue sharing program appropriation of $394,256 and a transfer of $394,256 for multimodal improvements.

FY 21, that's one of two readings.

9.

Resolution appropriating funding for the hydraulic road shared use path study $40,000 one of two readings 10.

Before we do that, I actually do have a question on one of them.

Okay.

On, I think it's number two, the, the rugby av bicycle and pedestrian trail.

It says in the, in the,

It says in the agenda item where there's more details, that there's a VDOT grant, but then it also has fund 426 transfer from, transfer to.

Can you explain fund 426 a little bit and where's this money coming from?

I like the project.

I just want to be clear on the VDOT grant versus Fund 426.

Fund 426 is capital projects.

So all the VDOT projects are actually in the capital projects fund.

They're offset by state, local, federal funds.

So this is kind of like a pass-through?

Okay.

Great.

Thanks.

Great.

All right.

May I have a second?

Second.

Motion passes for zero.

All right, Mr. Sanders, is there a report from the city manager's office?

There we go.

So I'm giving you my third quarter work plan update.

I actually delayed it from the first meeting because you have more visitors and I thought it would be best to get out of their way and allow them to speak to you as quickly as possible.

So I'm going to walk through just a few highlights for this third quarter.

First and foremost for me, I'm very excited about the idea that the gallery is full.

My team is set with the addition of Mr. Freeze as our DCM of operations.

He is no stranger to all of you and most of you, but James has been already hitting the ground running.

In addition, I made an adjustment to the breakdown of the portfolio, moving the community solutions team over to James's portfolio since he works with them a lot already and thought that that would be a good transition.

Some key personnel matters.

Could you go back?

I'm sorry?

Could you go back?

Yep.

There's a lot there.

That is your city at work.

A little over a thousand positions, but I didn't want to say the wrong number because we've been making adjustments.

Some key personnel matters.

As I mentioned, we've hired James.

We've also brought on an assistant director of transit facilities and maintenance and a marketing coordinator in transit and then some other positions that we're looking to fill.

Those are the higher level positions that are very critical to a lot of the conversations.

Some of the things that you heard about earlier in the transportation planning update as well as some of the ongoing challenges that we face in getting things moving in the way that we know that our community is expecting us to turn around.

I just wanted to touch on prioritizing human resource management.

That's one of our big projects right now.

Marion Hardy and her team have been working very hard to do what I've considered and what I've called modernizing human resource management for the city of Charlottesville.

One of the key projects has been a job description project to ensure that every employee will be able to look at a job description for their role.

and therefore understand what their jobs are.

One thing that I added as a priority to the lead team upon taking the job officially in August was that performance evaluations would be an expectation of mine for all employees from here on out every single year.

We have not necessarily hit that mark.

Some departments have been very good at being able to continue to do that in the various stages of transition that we have found ourselves in.

But I value this as one of those things that we must do, provide everyone an opportunity to know where they stand as an employee.

So we're right now working towards bringing that to reality with all employees, being able to know that by the end of this fiscal year that they will have been evaluated in their current role.

We're preparing for collective bargaining.

That won't stop.

There's a lot of work that's gone into it.

There's still a lot of work left for us to do.

We'll continue to make sure that the team is ready to handle how that changes operations with the additional units that'll be coming, but we'll be ready to roll out transit, police and fire July 1 as you have permitted with the ordinance.

And we're concluding class and comp reviews.

That's our process for making sure that all employees are placed appropriately on the new pay scale and ensuring that we are competitive in how we are paying our team and being able to recruit the most talented that we can for the various positions that we have open.

And then we're producing a new training module and rolling out some new supports for the workforce.

You heard about this a little bit earlier in the transportation planning update, and I decided it was time for us to just celebrate a little bit more that we're getting sidewalks done.

When I took this job and had my first meeting with the public back in July, I acknowledged that we care about sidewalks here, and we've fallen down on the job, and there's a lot that needs to be done.

But I thought it was important to just highlight that we're making progress.

Our Public Works team has been working hard, along with the NDS team as well, with Ben at the helm.

been able to figure out how we can get more sidewalks done and just sharing with you that that effort is fully underway.

This is at Johnson Elementary area that has suffered for quite some time with some drainage issues.

We're now prioritizing getting that done and then we

Mr. Hicks was able to go out to the Fry Springs neighborhood and present the work that we're doing with Stribbling and adding sidewalks there.

So there's a community process for being able to speak on the proposed options as well as the comment period for how we prioritize sidewalks that'll be going through the end of this month.

So I think it's important just for the public at large to know and understand that we are looking for input and these opportunities to speak are on the website.

and we do want to have that information mainly because I'll say that as I've been in this seat as the city manager my responsibility and my goal has been to be more matter-of-fact straightforward and honest about where we are.

Haven't been afraid to say that we've fallen down on the job wherever we have and I've always been able to say that we're going to get better and that's what this is all about being able to demonstrate that we're doing things differently and we want to make sure that we can deliver what it is that you expect from us.

We were able to celebrate the electric bus demonstration team from Gillig and Sonny Merriman.

Transit bus and a school bus were on site at CAT April 3rd and 4th.

It was a nice moment to be able to see what it would be like to have those vehicles a part of our fleet.

We're doing that work and continuing to do the work to make sure that we can

integrate that into our inventory, and once we are able to bring an electric bus online here, we will be the first in the Piedmont region.

The Piedmont region is more of a sliver, I guess, following the mountain range on this side of the mountain.

We'd be the first ones to be able to get that done, so we're excited about that opportunity to bring that forward, and we think we will be the first by the time we get the first bus.

And then up next, I mean, we're in this fourth quarter.

Now you've already had your affordable housing update.

Antoine did that at the last meeting, transportation planning.

You got that this earlier this afternoon when Ben was able to speak to you.

Misty is coming up next to share with you the co-responder model that we're rolling out.

Stephen will be with you next month on the VDOT portfolio update.

James is going to come and talk about downtown mall action plan and Ashley is going to come and talk to you about social equity priorities.

Just demonstrating for you all that we're moving.

We're still doing things and we're going to get these things done before this fiscal year is over and then I decided to share with you and where we're going in the first quarter because we're not stopping.

So I just wanted to give you this quick update and just remind everyone that we are in a good place.

But, you know, there's always a lot more that needs to be done.

There's a lot faster that we would like to get things done.

But again, my priority is to remain truthful and be able to tell you when we can do it and when we cannot tell you why we can't do it and when we can get around to doing it.

and just a little housekeeping.

Remy, if you're listening, look at that.

Brilliant.

I just wanted to double check that our slides needed to where they needed to go.

Good.

Thank you very much for the assist.

Good evening, Council.

I'm Misty Grape, the Director of the Department of Human Services, and Sam asked me to give you an overview of

Anchor and what we've sort of conceptualized to this date in our development of a co-responder model.

In case you're curious, Anchor is an acronym and a symbol.

It stands for assisting with navigation, crisis help, and outreach resources.

But it's also intended to evoke what an anchor does for a ship in a stormy sea.

That is a stabilizing force for someone to be stabilized to receive that

what they need to be able to sort of transition onto calmer water.

So that's where the name is, a symbol and an acronym.

And if you can go to the next slide.

It's over here.

Alright, just to give you some background and sort of define a little bit more clearly what a co-responder model is.

So the International Co-responder Association defines a co-response model at its core as the belief that partnering first responders with behavioral health professionals is an effective way to respond to behavioral health crises and other situations involving unmet behavioral health issues.

The first co-responder teams were established in the 1970s and have continued to evolve to include FIRE and EMS as first responders, hybrid teams and peers.

Teams not only received crisis calls, but now also perform follow-up services, case management outreach to unhoused populations.

and resource navigation work.

So that sort of identifies what corresponds looks like.

For several months, about a year now, we've sort of been exploring some potential models to roll out here in Charlottesville.

And we had consulted with some of our external partners, such as Region 10 cars,

Partners for Mental Health, Admiral County Hearts Team, and the Emergency Communication Center.

We also took a look at the hearts model more in-depth since they've been doing this work since July 1 of this year.

So we have met with them to sort of hear more about lessons learned and ideas that they have.

They've been very helpful in sharing some of their lessons learned with this team.

We've also looked at some other localities, including Durham,

and the CAHOOTS model that's been in existence since the late 80s in Eugene, Oregon.

We also reviewed a previous work group that the city had that was led by the formal counsel, Woman Cena McGill.

So we reviewed those recommendations as we started to build out what the infrastructure might look like here in the city.

And I just want to recognize some of our internal planning team, superstars.

We have Sue Moffat, who's the director of the Department of Human or Social Services.

Jenny Jones, who couldn't be here, is the deputy director for that department.

We have Joe Phillips, deputy fire chief, Captain Larry Jones of the CPD and unfortunately officer Tammy Schiff was unable to be here.

Myself and Ashley Marshall, deputy city manager of social equity.

Overall purpose and goals, our purpose statement is the anchor team seeks to respond to behavioral health needs of individuals, including opioid overdoses within the city limits through providing trauma informed and culturally responsive supports.

Some initial goals that we have thought through is connect residents to stabilizing providers for long term supports and prevention services, engage in harm reduction efforts, and prepare the community to implement the Marcus Alert legislation.

We also partnered with the ECC to give us some data about what Albemarle and Charlottesville are seeing as far as behavioral health needs and they identified that in Charlottesville there were 619 behavioral health or substance use calls in the city of Charlottesville.

That's just to give you a scope of what the need is here locally.

So here's our co-responder team.

So we will have two fire department employees that are CIT trained in medics.

We'll have two CIT trained police officers.

We will have one QMHP that is employed by Partners for Mental Health.

We also have one peer support specialist employed by Partners for Mental Health.

And I will serve as sort of the coordinator support, admin support, and serve as the liaison

between the anchor team and the city manager's office.

Another point is that we have decided our hours of operations will be Monday through Friday, 8 a.m.

to 6 p.m.

and that was pulled from ECC data where we looked at the peak times of calls and this is really where it was identified the highest level of need.

So there are some major activities that we have identified.

So the first is collect and analyze data to respond to community needs.

What that will look like is that we will work with CPD and the fire department to pull records of maybe where some of the calls are that needed follow-up and the after hours where we were not able to serve.

engaged in follow up calls.

So for example, if something transpired after the working hours or someone had an opioid dose overdose, and we would want to send the anchor team to be able to provide some emotional support, some guidance on resources to prevent any other needs that might happen in the future crises.

Perform welfare checks.

We'll identify some initial partners that are that could ask

Anchor to do some welfare checks if there is a person of concern and be able to collaborate with first responders to intervene.

So when the call comes in to the 911 call center, they will dispatch a first responder.

That first responder while they're on scene will assess the scene to see if it's a better fit for the anchor and then they'll dispatch anchor from there.

And we will go and do some of these on site activities, which include de-escalation and assessing those individuals experiencing mental health crisis we may

be able to intervene on site and sometimes we may have to offer transport to a crisis assessment center or to the emergency room.

And then, like I said, the follow-up response, we would want to make sure that we're partnering with individuals and their families who have been impacted by the individual experiencing crisis to offer some support

some connection to longer-term resources because we will not be able to provide those case management long-term services, but we will partner with other service providers locally to be able to provide those long-term needs if that's needed for the individual and their family.

And then we have a van.

The fire department has acquired a four-transit van.

for Transit Van that we can be able to go on site to respond to folks.

If it's out in the community, it may be helpful to offer privacy for folks experiencing a mental health emergency.

They may be able to work with the anger team inside that van for confidentiality and privacy.

We would be able to have some equipment and resources like Narcan and things like that on the van.

So those are some of the pieces that we've

sort of figured out with the infrastructure.

I again just want to acknowledge our partners, partners for mental health and the internal planning team for being able to come together and get us to this point and our goal is to launch July 1.

So we're working towards that goal.

We'll be doing some and continue to engage with the community to make them aware that this is anticipated to be rolled out in July 1 and be able to hear feedback.

Thank you so much.

That's an excellent presentation.

I have a couple of questions.

My first question is, Albemarle County is also doing something similar.

Yeah.

So actually, we have Sue Hess here, who's a member of the hearts team in Virginia is also here, who also supports hearts.

And they've provided some consultation to us

about, like I said, lessons learned.

So one of the main differences is that one, we will have more staff that's funded in the FY25 budget.

So there will be, instead of just one fire department employee and one police department employee,

and the partners for mental health and the coordinator that's in the human services department, we will have a six member team that will be able to be more flexible with how often we're able to respond.

We're including a peer support specialist.

And I know that's something that the hearts team actually thought would be of added value.

So when we made a proposal to city manager for a budget for that, we asked to include funding for a peer support specialist.

And that's when we outreached with partners for mental health.

And they said that they would be able to recruit for that position.

So we'll have a QMHP

and a peer support specialist to add to the team.

That is a certification that you, like a qualification that you get from the state.

I don't recall how many hours of service in the field.

It can be they would qualify, yes.

But we're not going to require a licensed professional.

We would like it to be a QMHP.

No questions, but I think this is definitely a milestone event for the city because I can just remember this being talked about in 2020 and coming up again and again and community work sessions, community task force.

So I think this is just something really worth celebrating all the hard work of staff and the partners to finally reach

I just have a quick question.

Forgive me if you kind of went over this already and talking about the background.

So you said it's going to start July 1.

Have there been like small little samples done so far?

OK, thanks.

I wasn't sure if that was like, OK, pull on.

Yes, I think just like the county

Kaki who oversees the hearts team has said it's iterative.

It's a word she really likes to use.

And so it just means that we you learn through experiences.

And like I said, we've had great partners with Sue and others on the team being able to consult with us.

And then we're going to be hopefully going to some national conferences on co responder next year and we'll be able to

maybe visit Durham and do a site visit and do some training and learning from those other localities who are doing the work.

Excellent.

So if I could just, I just want to point out that we do have the Marcus Alert implementation mandate that we are working our way towards 2028 when that must be done.

And I think it's the great first step in that direction.

I was going to try and answer some of the questions that you all just kept moving, but for you, Council Member Snook, a qualified mental health professional most often has a human services degree and there is a requirement of some clinical experience.

As Misty rightly pointed out, that person could have other bone and feet days, but one of the benefits of a qualified mental health professional is that you can also often have people who have lived experience.

It does not require being a licensed nurse, for example, but that may be something that the individual also carries with them if they so choose.

And I think one other question was about some of the potential differences between hearts and anchor while we're working very much to make it similar so that no matter where an individual has a mental health crisis, they can receive that accessible care.

One of the things, thanks to the work

that you all have done and the city manager has done is by putting it in the general fund budget that will allow our team to have latitude to assist anyone in any mental health crisis that can include substance use disorder.

But I do know that the county has utilized some of their opioid fund dollars, which means you have to report on how much work you're doing with specifically opioid use disorder in that abatement.

But we know that there are other substances that individuals may be using to satisfy, so there would be no limitations in that area.

And we also know that individuals may not be using a substance at all, but may very well be having

mental health crisis.

And I did also want to very much thank our deputy chief and our captain from our fire and police departments respectively, because we are also utilizing their data and expertise.

Both our firefighters, often and our police officers here in our community, our crisis intervention team trained, which means that when they do happen to need to go and respond to a mental health crisis,

Both departments place a high priority on that training on how to work with someone that is having crisis.

That also means that they're doing a really great job in collecting data of when those crises occur, what they may look like, and helping us to plan in our community what those things might entail and how we may start to prepare to be a best service to those who are having

those mental health crises as well as their families and very much want to thank our friends at Partners for Mental Health for reminding us that this team can go and provide assistance to a family.

For example, perhaps after someone who has suicidal ideation maybe has an attempt to be able to provide that counsel or perhaps if someone has an overdose at home to be able to provide Narcan and assistance.

So I just wanted to share a little bit of proud moment.

I'm very thankful to be able to work alongside

members of our team who've put so much time and effort in it from Zoom off it discussing how maybe adult protective services could work.

Misty Graves from her experience working with youth.

Thank you for that.

I really appreciate you sharing all that.

It was very helpful.

And again, thank you for all that you all have done.

And this is really important work.

Can I add one little thing?

The easy way for us to have addressed this problem, frankly, would be to not address it until we were required to do so by the state, which is a couple of years down the road.

Okay, I think we can move on to the next item on our agenda, the action items.

The second reading we have Ms.

We made it to the finish line.

We've had a series of work sessions, a series of public hearings.

Tonight is our final public hearing and adoption of the budget.

Before you is a copy of the tax levy ordinance, which discusses the new rates that are included in the budget, as well as the budget ordinance itself.

So the general fund budget is basically the budget where we spent all of our time.

It is the operating budget of the city.

It is where the general fund is the repository for all of the tax revenues.

And so most of our work sessions are centered around the general fund budget.

However, there are about

following the soft top of my head.

I believe about 36 separate funds within the city organization, which are basically like 36 separate businesses, which make up the total city budget.

And those, but all those budgets run from July 1 to June 30.

And those total out to just over a little under a little over $607 million.

But the general fund is we're just at the two, whatever it is now to yeah.

Thank you.

Any other clarifying questions?

Okay, I'm going to open this public hearing.

Speakers will have up to three minutes to speak.

Please come to the lectern and state your name and where you live and ask your question or make your statement.

Okay.

Going once, going twice, going three times.

We will close the public hearing.

Is this for item A or B or both?

The public hearing is for both.

This is just a clarifying question for the overall budget.

So we've reached consensus about adding eight-butts drivers.

Obviously, we've heard about 11.

I just want clarity on how much of the additional revenue from the revised revenue estimates went to those eight drivers just to get a sense of, you know,

What realistically it takes to get from 8 to 11?

It does.

The amount that is going to transit is $601,681.

That is basically the difference if you recall last week in our work session, the chart where we did the math.

that takes into account the new revenue plus the change in the personal property, the 20 cents, and so that amount is what we'll be going to transit.

We actually, instead of designating, we put it as a service capacity increase for transit reserved for drivers, but we put it in that space so that we, instead of just loading FTEs, that it's a more thoughtful and planned out process,

I think that's what it was, I'm sorry, I forgot the number, yes.

So to get there would equate to finding about $200,000 from somewhere else in the budget.

About $230.

to get to the total 11.

Correct.

So I know we're not in a situation to

amend the budget tonight and there's no easy place to find that money.

I would be interested to see how the process evolves.

I think there's a lot that's going to happen in transit in the next year.

You've got a lot going on in transit.

And so I think if we get eight drivers spun up and ready and operational, I would be very, very happy with that.

Yeah, and I would obviously be better.

I just have my doubts about terms of just getting the work done.

I hear you, that's fair.

I just want us to, for ourselves as counselors, kind of earmark it and keep this as a top priority because 11- For like the surplus, you're saying?

Well, not whenever, one time or the other.

But we've just got to get to 11, just to meet pre-pandemic service.

We said coming into this budget cycle, transit was top, it ended up falling out, so we didn't get there.

I know we were at zero additional, now we're at eight.

I don't want to undermine that that is a significant positive change.

Going from zero to eight is big.

But you're talking about for the budget for next year, keeping this top of mind.

Correct.

So I will offer because I believe I'm hearing direction now, which is great.

I love hearing that.

What I'm hearing you say is that you want me to not separate myself from the priority of transportation in preparing for next year's budget.

Got it.

As I mentioned to you at the start of this budget cycle, that was my intention from the very beginning was that transportation was going to be one of the top three.

I think what I'm also recognizing and because of the various conversations that we've had with the larger public

We have to continue to make investments in transportation.

So I can assure you that it will not leave my radar that that will be a part of the packaging that we put together for the FY26 budget.

and there is part of what Chrissy wasn't wanting to say because she was probably waiting for me to say it.

We are going to internally look at are there some other things that we might be able to do that could benefit CAT in that ability for us to add additional drivers.

That's one of the things that we still have as an option.

We have some positions that are

30 hours that have not been filled.

Part of the strategy could be that we might be able to pull some of these dollars to go with that and make that a full-time position.

And then you actually would be able to recruit someone for it because we have not been able to fill these 30-hour positions.

So there's a chance that I might actually be able to come back to you and demonstrate for you that while we didn't add 11 drivers, we had the impact of adding 11 drivers.

Yeah, and whatever it takes to get that ultimate impact.

That's one other question.

I have a vague recollection when we last talked about things 11 days ago that there was a possibility that there might be yet some further revisions on revenue numbers.

Okay.

No new news.

So 11A is the ordinance establishing the annual tax levy for tax year 2024.

This is the second reading.

Okay.

Well, I'm happy to make the motion.

Happy is probably the wrong way to put it.

I will make the motion for the tax levies as set forth in the ordinance that's set out on page 53 that would have a $0.98 tax, $0.98 on every $100

assessed valuation of real property, $4.40 every $100 of the various kinds of personal property, public service, corporation property, $0.98.

Let's see, machinery and tools, $4.40, energy efficient buildings, $0.48.

I have a motion.

Thank you.

I'll just say, counselors have heard this, but I'll say for the community, there's no need for us to re-litigate it, but I'll just say it again because it's what I think.

I do think going into this budget is very likely we need revenue increases.

I'm fine with that.

I understand that.

I do think there's some agreements that at least

Maybe it couldn't happen this year over the years, 1.8 million going to the tourism board when that number was 700,000 a few years ago.

Would it be better for the tourism industry to not increase a meals tax than all that money?

Maybe.

But regardless, we probably still need to increase taxes.

But I think we've pulled the wrong levers looking at the regressive taxes the most.

Meals tax is very regressive.

Lower income families spend more of their income as a percentage on going out.

Whatever we think of the statistic, lower income families eat out more than wealthier families, not fine dining but just eating out.

Likewise, the personal property tax I'm concerned is regressive and was also done in a way that didn't give the community

a significant amount of time to give their feedback.

So I say all that with the concern not only for this year, but going into next year if we're looking at revenue increases again, I think it's going to be a mistake for us to rely on these more regressive revenue sources.

I think the proper way we should have done it is leaning on the real estate tax and expanding that relief program for anybody that impacts

and I'll just end with, I think, if someone has a house worth $500,000 and that tax increase by a cent, their annual tax bill will go up $50.

The change we made to personal property tax, which was not the original larger one, their annual tax bill for a car worth $10,000 will go up $20.

That $500,000 house is, and I don't want to minimize the financial problems that can come with that, but it's also an asset in wealth.

Which of those is more fair?

Okay.

Thank you.

So we have a motion and a second.

I just want to note that, Michael, I think the only thing that has been suggested was an additional penny on the real estate rate, which if we were to look at that to offset against the personal property increase,

It's almost even trade.

That doesn't touch the meals tax.

For better or for worse, most of the additional money we are raising through these tax increases

Frankly, most of it to go to both schools and staff salaries, most of that's going to be coming from the meals tax.

And nobody on this council, as far as I know, has suggested an alternative that would make up for the roughly

It's a $3 million or something that we're expecting to get out of meals tax revenues.

Well, I'll say from the beginning of this process, I favored a larger real estate tax increase and even the three cent advertised, but there was not consensus to advertise more than three cents.

Okay.

I think at one point you had mentioned four cents.

I'm sorry, can you remind me the meals tax rate?

We've already approved, right?

Okay.

And sorry, just final, for any industry representatives who are concerned about the meals tax, which is understandable, I think it's important to join with us in a conversation with UVA.

If they paid me 50% of their tax liability, none of this would be necessary to consider restaurants half pool.

I agree with that.

Okay, so we've had a chance to chat.

Can people please cast their vote?

Okay, so it's three to one.

There's nothing strange in that we're down one number in terms of a number of as long as we've got a quorum in as long as we pass Okay, so now we're on to 11 B ordinance approving a budget in annual appropriation of funding for the city of Charlottesville for the fiscal year ending June 30th second reading of

Is there a motion regarding the FY 25 city budget and annual appropriation that is on page 57 57 of the packet and many pages thereafter and many pages thereafter I would I would move the approval of the budget is set out Thank you.

One thing I have to make a note of, part of buried in here someplace is a cost of living increase for retirees.

And my wife is a retiree after serving as the city attorney's office for eight years, and she gets a pension of about $300 a month.

and this will raise her pension by about five to six bucks a month.

That does not disqualify me from voting, but I am required to state it for the record.

Thank you.

So we have a motion and a second.

Is there any other discussion?

Okay.

So if folks would please cast their vote.

Okay, the motion carries four to zero.

We have a budget.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thanks for all of the team that works on this every year.

This will be my third budget and it really is a remarkable process that you all go through.

Now the real work begins.

Yeah, well, that's true, but there was a lot of work up till now.

And I appreciate your... Getting ready to start on the next one.

I appreciate your flexibility.

I think some creative ideas towards the last minute that you all were willing to countenance and work with us on.

And I personally do feel like this budget gets us moving along with our priorities.

So thank you all.

Okay, so the next item, item 12 is allocating stormwater management for small infill sites funding in the amount of $21,000.

Yes, thank you.

Good evening, Vice Mayor Pinkston, members of council.

Again, my name is James Fries, Deputy City Manager for Operations, but tonight I'm coming to you wearing my old NDS Director hat to talk about stormwater management on small scale infill sites.

So as you all know, one of our objectives with the comprehensive plan in the zoning ordinance was to encourage small scale development on small infill sites.

Michael Payne

is a burden on those projects and challenges their ability to come through the review process.

So what we're proposing is to take $21,000 out of the small area plan fund in the CIP to work with a engineering consultant to come up with a essentially kind of pre-approved stormwater solution.

The idea would be that someone would be able to come in and take

our detailed plans and a calculation run by us show how they're going to put that on a given lot and then they would be able to go to approval.

So we're saving them as the cost of doing their own independent engineering study of their site.

Thank you.

I think the main idea we're looking towards is the idea of a kind of a raised bed, bioretention type structure where particularly roof runoff would be run into that structure.

and the size of it would be determined by the size, by the amount of impervious area on the lot.

Not like a pond, but a cistern?

No, like a bio... A swale?

Yeah, like a swale, yeah.

A planted area.

is the basic idea we're working from.

But ideally, we'll come up with more than one solution.

That was the one that we talked about in concept as one of the options.

I know that there's other cities that use standard plans for architecture.

There's not exactly what we're talking about that I'm aware of.

Hopefully there are some out there that we can borrow from, but I can speak from prior experience in a different community where we were subject to the Chesapeake Bay Act.

We had a standard solution for meeting some of the buffer and storm water requirements there that we had kind of standardized out.

Okay.

Okay.

We're at a point now where if someone would offer a motion for the resolution, they'd be quite grateful.

Thank you.

Okay.

Any further discussion?

Please cast your vote.

Carries four to zero.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you very much.

All right.

Take care.

So the last item is a written report from Ravana authorities, the quarterly report.

It's in the packet.

I know that there's still interest in having them come and present at some point on the Ravana station, the Ravana pumping situation.

I did look in the report and there was some good information there.

We have a Ravana meeting next week, I think.

And I'll remind Bill that we want him to come at some point and give us an update.

Any other questions about?

We're going to be hearing about water rates and so on in the June.