Planning Commission Work Session   11/26/2024

Good evening.

He's in a random closet, obviously, looking at the background.

There is Betsy.

All righty, I think we have a quorum and I think we can go ahead and begin

There are a couple of these bills that we need to deal with first.

And the reason you're not here today is because you're visiting family for Thanksgiving.

Your participation remotely is approved.

And the second thing is we need to go into a private session.

So Mr. D'Oronzio, would you read us into that?

Oops, sorry.

Close session.

Yes, sir.

Pursuant to Code of Virginia, Section 2.2-3712, I move that the city planning commission close this open meeting and convene a closed meeting for the following purposes.

One, pursuant to Code of Virginia, Section 2.2-3711A8 for consultation with the city attorney regarding legal matters requiring the provision of legal advice related to the Freedom of Information Act.

Two, pursuant to Code of Virginia, Section 2.

2.23711A7 for consultation with the city attorney pertaining to actual litigation where consultation or briefing and open meeting would adversely affect the litigating posture of the Planning Commission, specifically White v. Charlottesville.

Is there a second?

Second.

All in favor?

Any objections?

Any abstentions?

We will.

You've got a yes from Ms.

Roettger, Mr. Yoder, Mr. D'Oronzio, Mr. Solla-Yates, Mr. Joy, and me.

Well, whatever.

Ms.

Cresci, we are going to move, are we not?

This is Rory online Rory there I can't see his pretty face Oh, there you go, good How'd you go?

Absolutely

I move that this planning commission certify by a recorded vote that, to the best of each planning commissioner's knowledge, only public business matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard, discussed, or considered in the closed meetings.

Rettger, Yoder, D'Oronzio, Solla-Yates, Mitchell, and Joy, hanging out with us.

Right, we are back and ready for to begin our work session.

Ms.

just wanted to let everyone know that we we're not going to be taking verbal public comment this evening.

We have the opportunity for folks that they would like if they're in the room and would like to write down we have pen and paper for that.

Or else you can send an email to me creasy m C R E A S by m at Charlottesville.gov.

And I will distribute that to the commissioners.

But this is an opportunity for the presentation for C I P

as well as discussion with the commission.

And so that information, if we have any public comments, will be shared.

A couple of parts.

About a month ago, maybe two months ago, we met with Ms.

Creasy and walked

through the things that we thought would be important for the capital improvement program.

We gave them a list of five or six things.

And one of the things that Ms.

Hamill is going to do is walk us through their reaction and the actions that they've taken to address that list of items that we thought were very important.

The other point I want to make is

We, over the years, we've learned that we don't really try to micromanage the budget.

We don't try to move exact dollar amounts around.

We just make recommendations about additional programs that we want to make sure get attention, or programs that we think should be deleted so that other programs can

can get attention.

So let's try that tonight and definitely not when we review this in January.

Let's not try to micromanage the work that staff has done, but let's attempt to focus on the high-level CIP items that we want addressed.

Ms.

Thank you so much.

Good evening, Planning Commission.

Got a presentation.

Next slide, please.

So we're going to go through a couple things.

Some of this will be a review for some of you.

Some of it will be new.

Just quickly kind of an overview of what a CIP improvement program is.

We'll look at the draft of the plan that we currently are is under review and then we'll go through the responses from your memo to the city manager from your meeting on back in September.

And then we'll talk about what's next and then we'll have time for comments and questions.

I will say we did get some questions from some of the commissioners this afternoon.

If some of those are kind of quick answers, we'll try to answer some of those tonight.

If there are ones that are a little bit more involved, we will provide you with written responses well ahead of the public hearing.

And we'll send those to the entire commission.

So with that, if next slide, please.

So what is Capital Project?

It basically is a project that serves an essential public purpose, has a useful life of at least five years.

It is usually non-recurring, non-operational, and it's usually an expensive thing, something that is $50,000 or more.

Again, these are general guidelines.

Will you find things that don't meet all of these criteria in our CIP?

Yes.

But there's a reason for those, and we'll talk about some of those later as we get through the details.

Next slide.

So a capital budget is a multi-year plan.

We do one for five years.

It forecasts the spending of both the revenues that will pay for that spending, as well as the projects that we intend to undertake over the next five years.

It should build on the priorities of the comprehensive plan.

And it also is intended to address repairs and maintenance of our existing infrastructure.

So not just the bright new shiny stuff, but

Taking care of the things we already have in place as well.

Next slide.

When you compare the difference between an operating and a capital budget, an operating budget generally for us, our operating budget is for a year.

So that runs from July to June.

At the end of that time, we start over with a new budget, and it usually covers day-to-day expenses.

And as opposed to a capital budget, which, as I've noted, ours is a five-year plan.

Those projects run for longer than a year, and they usually entail very large investments.

Next slide.

So why do a five-year plan?

Essentially, the five-year plan is intended to provide a framework to ensure that our capital expenditures align with community input and expectations, the priorities of council.

It's supposed to align with our ability to pay for those projects, as well as it is a way to plan for cooperation for regional projects.

such as the library and some of the other things that we have done jointly with Albemarle County and UVA as well.

Next.

So the timeline for our CIP plan, departments began submitting submissions in September.

We have been reviewing those and got to the point where we are now with a proposed five-year draft.

November, December, which is where we are now.

We bring this before you tonight to have a work session on that information.

And then in December, we will be having a public hearing at which time the planning commission will then again make recommendations to the city manager.

which in March the city manager will incorporate that feedback into the budget that he will ultimately propose to council that will be presented with the operating budget at that time.

And then in April council will take all of that and formally adopt the CIP and the operating budget for FY26.

Next slide.

So there are some things that we look at when we are evaluating projects.

You know, is there a legal mandate involved with that particular project?

Is there a possible health and safety issue?

Is there, does the particular project comply with the city council management strategic work plan?

And then the comprehensive plan, does the project meet the goals of the comprehensive plan?

And that's where you all come in, you help us look at that.

One of the things that we did beginning, I think it was last year, if not the year before, we started tying each project to a chapter and our goal and chapter of the COMP plan.

And so if you look at our online budget book for each of the details of the projects, you will see those aligned with where we think they fit in there.

Next slide, please.

We also look to see if the project is furthering our climate action goals and commitments.

We look to see if the project is preserving city infrastructure, the things that we already exist.

And then we look at the impact on the operational finances of that project.

So what are the impacts once the project is complete?

And then also, what is our ability?

Is there an ability to generate revenue for that project or for the expenses of the project?

Next slide, please.

Some of the things that get special consideration is if the project ties to other existing proposed projects.

Is there a demonstrated public support for the project?

Is there a possibility to leverage outside funding?

Will the project be done in partnership with one or more organizations?

Are we upholding our regional partnerships?

And then lastly, does the project increase the level of service that we're able to provide?

Next slide.

So that's kind of the why and what of a CIP plan.

I had just a question about the 23rd bond issue.

It's historically lower than the others.

Yeah, so in this five-year plan, we basically are marching out projects.

You'll see the prior, the years 26 through 29, they have some large commitments that we've already made, i.e.

Walker for the Pre-K Center.

There's some other bigger projects.

The fifth year is usually, quite honestly, it's the farthest year out.

It's the one we know the least about.

And so it's our best guess right now, and it typically is smaller.

So it is what we know at this time.

So moving on, if there are no other questions about the process.

So this is a slide for the revenues of this plan.

This is how we afford to pay the plan, pay for the plan that we set forth.

In each case, the revenues that are available should match the total expenses that we plan to spend.

We fund the CIP with

Cash from the general fund.

We have a policy that says at least 3% of our general fund budget will go to the CIP as pay go or cash to pay for projects.

We have some partnership from the city schools in which they provide some money for some of their projects.

We have used CIP contingency in a few of the years.

Here you'll see we had part of our surplus policy is that that goes to the CIP contingency to be used for additional cash in the CIP.

We're actually planning to use some of that in 27 and 29.

So, fair point.

Couple things.

In some of the past years, they also received cares and federal funds that they passed on to the city.

And so some of that, there's also a gain sharing agreement.

So when the city provides local funding to the schools, if they close out a year in which they have not spent all those funds, some of that comes back to the city.

They're able to keep part.

We get part.

We've allocated that back to the CIP.

And then they also got some other grants that helped with some HVAC projects and things.

So it's basically grants and leftover funds that they didn't spend.

Annie.

So we've got $133 million, roughly, that we're saying, and we know this number's wrong.

We know it's notional on the bonding.

Can you give a sense of where our current, what our current debt looks like for these?

Yeah, so I can give you some more specific details.

Generally, when we talk about our debt, we talk about two things.

One is debt capacity.

One is the annual debt service.

You may recall if you've been following the Planning Commission or been on the Planning Commission for a while, when we first started talking about the Buford project, we started saying, hey, you know, if you try to do a $50 million project, we're going to be out of debt capacity.

We have since our revenues have grown, our capacity to bond things has grown with that.

And so as a result, our policy is that we will have an outstanding debt target of 9% with no more than 10%.

Right now our projections are even with this plan where we're in the seven little bit over seven percent range Part of that is a function because we have had assessment increases our revenues have done really well And so as our general fund has grown nine percent or ten percent of that general fund has grown so our capacity has grown and

The problem with that is that's great but you have to pay for it and so affordability of the debt has really become the issue

With the current plans that we've had, our current debt service within the next five years is basically planned to double.

And so we are moving from a debt service payment that's somewhere around 12 million to about 24 million.

And so part of that, we've hedged with a fund balance.

We've been building up a fund balance in the debt service fund that we're buying down to try to level off that contribution from the general fund.

But we now are in a situation where

We need to put more money in from the general fund to pay the debt.

So while we have plenty of capacity, we still have to worry about paying that off.

So, you know, for an example, we just sold bonds for the Buford School this year.

It was about $51 million.

Interest rates have gone up, and this year we were about five basis points higher than the year before.

Our AAA bond rating helps us tremendously to keep our rates low.

We did very well in our sale.

We thought we were going to be a little higher than we were, but it was not that dramatically different.

It's whatever your crystal ball tells you.

We're basically projecting about three and a half percent we were for this year, which was pretty close.

Thanks, sir.

Next slide, please.

So that was actually a good segue.

One of the things, as I talked about, is because we are AAA bond rated, we do have the ability to get really good financing rates.

We are one of 87 cities nationwide that maintain the double AAA from both Moody's and S&P.

And there are only 10 cities in the state of Virginia that have this distinction.

So we are fortunate in that manner.

Next slide.

So what is a bond rating exactly?

You know, a bond rating is an individual, excuse me, an independent review of the city's creditworthiness and the ability to pay off our debt.

They actually come in, they come through our finances, they come through our economic factors, they sometimes come to tours.

S&P since 64.

And it helps

It helps attract economic development prospects.

And we go to market every year.

So we are talking to the rating agencies on an annual basis.

Next slide, please.

So here is a five-year summary of what this plan looks like.

We're basically planning to spend just a little under $186 million.

Of that, we're planning to bond about $131 million.

Just under $51 million will be cash from the general fund.

This year, the top three priorities in terms of just total budget where the spending will happen, education comes in first, affordable housing comes in second, and transportation and access comes in third.

And again, that's just based on the total expenses that are planned for this five-year plan.

Next slide, please.

So what we'll do is we'll take a little deep dive into each of the categories for spending.

If there is no highlight, that means that this is exactly how it was laid out in the five-year plan last year.

So you'll see many numbers that aren't affected at all.

That means they did not change.

In this case, the school HVAC number, you will see this in this slide and also on the next slide.

Staff did request about a half a million dollar increase in both this category and four facilities.

Some of that is being driven by cost of replacement of those units and those parts.

for that.

We are still working through that plan.

So I would say this is not a done deal yet.

We're still in review.

This is also a conversation with schools.

And so this is we're still working on that.

But you'll see that also here, the preschool, the pre-K, Walker pre-K program.

Again, this was something we added to the budget last year.

Starts in 27, and the final dollars are appropriated in 28.

We also started, three years ago, I think, putting in funding for roof replacements as sort of a replacement program that we had not previously done.

And so you'll see that there are several, I will note that there have been some school name changes.

And we do need to update those in this slide, but also in our financial system.

So we will, we're working on that.

And then to one of your points, the small cap

Capital Improvement of $200,000 a year.

That is money that actually the schools contribute to the city for those repairs.

I just had a question.

The ones that, the line items that have zero funds allocated, they were under consideration?

Why are they still showing up?

First, oversight on my part, to be honest.

But basically, they were projects that were in the plan last year that were funded.

And they just don't have funds in this year.

So for example, the school reconfiguration, all that project is well underway, but there's no new dollars in this five-year plan.

It's been fully funded.

And then the next one is that summit for the window replacement that those funds were put in for this current fiscal year.

And there's no new dollars.

It was fully funded.

Next slide, please.

So facilities, capital projects, again, the HVAC line, we're still working on that.

No other real changes here.

We'll note that this is part of, you'll see the climate action line drops in here at a million dollars a year through 29.

That was part of our five year commitment in terms of planning for implementation of initiatives throughout our climate action plan.

I have a question.

The lump sum facilities capital projects, it seems to go up every year.

I'm guessing into inflation.

Am I right about that?

That is it.

Yes, thank you.

Oh, Rory.

Pardon me?

Oh, someone, Roy's got his hand.

You're good.

Just a quick question on that last slide.

So I see there's the school's HVAC repair and the city facility HVAC placement.

Great question.

I would say that is just kind of a nomenclature inconsistency on our part.

That account is used for both repair and replacement in both facilities and schools.

So these accounts cover both.

They act in the very same manner.

Thanks.

Actually, still on here.

The climate action initiatives had a question from my colleagues on the school board about solar PV on school roofs as we're doing the roof replacement.

My understanding was that this would go towards that.

But I'm hearing conflicting information.

So we have dollar we have had for a long time dollars in the CIP related to solar and whatever that may look like it had built up a balance because it was budgeted at small amounts a year for the purpose of building up a balance.

A year or so ago, we dropped that down to $75,000 a year.

I think there's a couple hundred thousand in that account now that we are actually deploying on some of those funds for the bypass fire station.

and maybe some for KTEC.

Ms.

Ritter-Volt is on, I think, can give you more specific.

But this Climate Action Initiative was a new account and they are working through her office, through the Office of Environmental Sustainability, has a work plan for those dollars.

And so the answer is could some of these be used for solar?

Maybe.

That hasn't been decided.

But we do have a source that we're working with outside of those dollars right now.

Does that answer your question?

I think so.

Pardon me.

That was the last number they had gotten through their work.

That's the same number that we're working with with the county.

I guess I'll jump in with a couple of environmental related questions since we're on the topic.

For the PV program, since it's going to zero, should we expect that future PV installations will be through power purchase agreements?

So I can answer that very superficially, and then I believe Ms.

Ritterwald is on as well.

We are exploring all of those options.

at the moment.

We are working through, we have put on RFP for PPA.

We are working, waiting for that proposal.

We'll be working through that with our financial advisor and our bond council.

And then I will defer to Ms.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay, great.

Thank you for asking the question.

Prissy is correct.

We are exploring power purchase agreements, particularly for the two largest roofs.

Charlottesville High School and the Middle School are the two largest roofs in the municipal portfolio, which each are multi-million dollar projects.

And so, yes, we are

We actually have requested a proposal for a power purchase agreement through a cooperative contract.

And so that's exciting to get on, to get moving.

And just to clarify as well, the city solar program, as Chrissy mentioned, had a balance and we are using some of the climate initiative funds to support that in order to get solar on KTEC.

Great.

And I guess while I have you, four HVAC replacements, have we been doing like for like replacements, like just replacing gas furnaces with new gas furnaces?

Also a good question.

Anything else on this slide?

Okay, moving on.

Public safety.

So here you have green highlights.

The method to that madness is there are some changes in these line items from last year's five-year plan.

They're not necessarily new.

It's just the amounts changed.

On the fire and EMS apparatus, mostly those are timing changes.

The supply chain is such that those are taking anywhere from 30.

36 to 40 plus months to build but you have to get in line with orders as well and so some of that has adjusted the timing but also the cost a little bit.

Oddly down a little bit on the fire apparatus and then on the

Let's see, that's mobile data terminals for police.

Part of that is just suggesting for cost.

So that was previously budgeted.

I think it was 75,000 a year.

That's meant to be an annual replacement.

And because of cost, that had to be bumped up a little bit to actually keep us on target so that we're not replacing all how many ever we have all at once, but on a cyclical cycle.

Next slide, please.

Transportation and access.

Again, the green highlights here are note changes.

One of the big changes you'll note is new sidewalks.

There is a significant increase here.

This is based on all of the reports and great work that Mr. Chambers has reported to you all and Council.

It's based on the priority sidewalk list.

In addition, the sidewalk repairs, some of that funding from year to year has been increased in the out years and the small area plans was adjusted as well as the milling and paving.

Some of those amounts were adjusted up in the later years there.

And then I got to look at that.

I can't read that far.

It's too small for my old eyes.

I apologize.

Let's see.

The one big notable addition here is the ADA transition plan.

That is the first time you'll see that in the CIP.

This is a number that we know is going to be an expensive endeavor.

This is

What we think we can afford at this time and we'll be coming forward with more details of that as we progress through that plan.

Traffic signal infrastructure, we have moved some of those amounts out, some of those project dollars.

I think that was one of the questions we got today.

Some of the project expenses have been delayed due to supply issues, which we think are getting corrected and we we are adjusting the funding request accordingly in the CIP.

And

I think that's, I don't know why, I don't recall why we changed the neighborhood transportation.

That might have been at 50.

I'd have to, actually I've got it here.

Let me just go check.

It was what?

Oh, thank you.

Yes.

I just had a question about the ADA transition plan.

Just some clarity.

Good evening, planning commissioners and public.

The ADA transition plan item really is meant to be the city prioritizing a true demonstration of our commitment to ADA.

This has been a challenged subject for us for quite some time.

This is meant to actually coincide with the delivery of a new transition plan.

We have a plan that's dated 2013.

We'll get a new plan and then we will begin immediate implementation.

The thought behind this is that we're expecting a huge number associated with that plan.

And when it identifies all the different things that need to be dealt with, them total is a very, very significant number.

This is a $2 million commitment per year for the next five years.

We know that this is a beginning.

This is a drop in the bucket to be perfectly honest with what we're expecting those numbers to come back at.

The intent and as I've described it to council is

We're doing what we consider to be demonstrated best effort so that if ever we are visited by those in more powerful seats and they tend to leave you with settlement agreements, we will hopefully avoid one if we can demonstrate that we put forth our best effort and we show a commitment, an annual commitment.

So that's the reason for putting a number here, but we know that that number is going to change.

We've already gotten a series of recommendations from the team that's doing the final work that needs to be done.

We're going to use that to break down amongst the team members who will do what of those things that would use this $2 million allocation.

And it is why I'm suggesting that in future years we'll be going up because as we start to do that work, we'll find that we probably don't have enough money to do all the things that we really need to prioritize for right now.

Also on this, thank you.

All right.

Yeah, we're going to revisit those two.

One of the hopes that I have is before and we haven't talked about it as a budget team yet, but one of the things that we need to do is add clarity to

Some of Council's actions and Prior City Manager actions was to set up three separate accounts that had an ADA focus.

Now that we're adding a fourth line item, we've had conversation about do we need to keep all of those?

Could we consolidate or do we just rename them for what they really are for?

I think there's a combination of what the result will be.

So I would say when you see the proposed budget for me, it'll be corrected.

So also on this slide, we have all our transportation items, right?

I said it a question earlier today, but we have this new concept of urgent transportation improvements after a woman's death on Elliott Avenue.

There's certainly other locations in the city that are quite dangerous.

And I know that BPAC is working on identifying them for future similar rapid improvements, and then hopefully later hardening.

Do we have a line item to fund those things?

That is actually still in progress.

That was a commitment that I made to Council as a part of a presentation that I made to them October of last month.

What I gave staff as direction, been specifically, was to put together a list of those urgent items, and he's working with the various public committees as well.

I am working to identify what amount of money is available.

We have a few sources that we can consider pulling that from, but I haven't set a target yet because I'm actually preferring to get the list back and then determine if we have enough to cover what portion of that list.

But I'll say that we know that there'll be at least half a million dollars that'll be available.

Chrissy hates it when I talk numbers.

I just want y'all to know that when I'm spending money before she said, yeah, that's okay.

But I can tell you that I know that we have at least that much for what's available right now.

There is a projected surplus.

Parks and Recreation.

So we have one new item here is the downtown mall tree management plan.

Again, this will entail future dollars that will appear in the CIP.

This is to get us started.

You will also notice that between the invasive species and the several tree accounts, we've basically just taken some of that money and realigned it at the request of Parks and Rec to more accurately reflect how they need to spend those dollars.

Next slide, please.

Technology infrastructure, couple things here, the public access, our studio that we have, some of that comes, some of those fees, $40,000 a year come through your Comcast bill, essentially.

and that has to be used for the public access studio.

The citywide IT technology infrastructure, this is an amount that we use to help supplement for things that come up during the year that are maybe not planned.

Some of those things we've used that for as we help to supplement some of our procurement software.

You may remember last year in the CIP there was an item for the system upgrade for the circuit court That was in here We've used it to replace some cameras.

So it really is meant to kind of help us supplement for things that aren't budgeted and then finally the voting equipment is due to be replaced and so we this account we were funding and

to build up to have enough funds in 27 for when those are due to be replaced.

Next slide.

Fortable Housing.

Again, nothing new here except Carlton Mobile Home Park.

This is green, not yellow, because this is actually an action that council already approved.

But it is new to the CIP this year.

And one thing I forgot to mention on the revenue slide is that this

is a cash funded endeavor and so if you were to compare the cash contribution from the general fund in last year's plan versus this year you will see that there is a million plus dollar increase in that and that is a direct result of this project.

I think I pinged you about this on email.

I sent an email to Alex, but he's on vacation for some reason.

Very strange.

about the possibility.

So there's been no request of the city for any of that.

We don't have any information.

I think I don't know if anyone else wants to add an answer to that.

I think it would be like any of these other endeavors.

If there were a alternative or an option that would come up and come forth to the city, we could certainly look and examine that.

One of the things I will say is that we have been able to do a lot of a lot or multiple

Over the last couple of years, because we've had federal one-time money, we've had year-end surpluses, the federal money is drying up, and we won't have those one-time sources.

Anybody else want to add anything?

All right, so on the CISRAP, that number has not changed in seven years.

It did, or eight years, I don't know, since we started it.

Is that 900 straight up CRIJs asked?

So with regards to the $900,000, the current iteration is still at $900,000, which renews the agreement which occurs annually sometime around September each year.

We will be evaluating whether to, if CRHA is not at capacity, there's a contemplation of what else we could do with that.

But that won't get introduced until about that time.

So it's really just in there still as a placeholder for that amount.

Great.

And then I assume these redevelopments, phase four redevelopment, that's essentially notional at that distance, since we haven't even, you know, we haven't even... It's just what's been allocated today.

Yeah, we haven't even put down our construction cone yet there.

Okay.

And then what else was I...

Yeah, and then there's a one-time, or is this the public housing redevelopment that's our, is that the last in a string?

Gotcha.

Gotcha.

Yep, so I guess, following up on Phil's questions, timing-wise for the West Haven redevelopment and even for 501 Cherry, it seems like 501 Cherry is a little bit further along than West Haven, to my knowledge, but 501 Cherry did not get live tech funded this year.

So should we expect that to be pushed out a year?

Because we'll have to reapply.

And similarly for West Haven, I don't know that they're applying for a live tech this coming year, or that they haven't planned yet.

Have they specifically asked for this in this coming year, other than later?

That's fond of us.

So, good question, Rory.

With regards to Washaven, we haven't received any information regarding new requests.

So that request is as is for right now.

And I can speak to 501 Terry.

They are

So this is to accomplish things within that white space of time.

Yeah.

That is a bridge we are cognizant of.

I can't speak to it now.

I will let you know that in terms of a contingency, PHA has indicated that they're going to also pursue the new housing credit, the state housing credit program.

So that should cover some of the gap.

Thanks.

Yeah, so the no bondable for housing is really not representative of our capacity or anything other than the complications of tax exempt debt and these projects.

The state code, and I might get these legal references wrong, but it's either the state code or the city code.

I think it's state code.

Gives the city the authority to

provide money to the housing authority in which we could bond projects for that.

It does not give us the authority to bond projects for a nonprofit.

We can do whatever we want.

I mean, there's no there's nothing that keeps us from making any kind of arrangement that council approves.

It's just we have to weave through the IRS regulations to determine how we pay for it.

So one of the things that, you know, you've noticed is that the large bulk of our affordable housing projects are cash funded because they're they are through nonprofits.

But there's nothing that would preclude us

from doing that that I'm aware of.

There might be some legal thing in the weeds.

But you know, if council approved it, we could do it.

We'd have to work through the financing piece at that time because every detail matters.

And so it's hard to make a blanket statement about whether we could bond it or not.

Any other questions on this slide?

All right, next slide please.

So one of the things we did, we kicked off the budget season with Council City Manager myself on September 16th.

And following up with that, you all on your September 24th work session, I believe Ms.

Creasy kicked off the CIP with you as well.

And you all drafted a memo to the City Manager for some areas that you would like to provide

So what we're gonna, this is the list here.

The next few slides, we're gonna take each one of these and tell you how we think we've addressed it in the draft.

So I won't read them here, but if we go to the next slide.

So the first one was multimodal transportation to provide additional funding for multimodal transportation, walking, biking, transit, etc.

Sidewalk funding needs to be restored and increased.

So one of the things that we just talked about is that for this plan, an additional $4.2 million has been added for the construction of new sidewalks and that were detailed on the sidewalks priority list, which now exists.

We also have $2 million a year for a total of $10 million that has been added to help remediate ADA barriers.

In addition, the city made a large increased investment of over $1.8 million last year or for this year's 25 budget to CAT and we will continue to do that through this budget process as well.

Next slide, please.

So the second item that you was presented was that you wanted funding for community infrastructure to allow for the implementation of the COP plan.

This includes utilities and transportation.

So as I mentioned, each project in the five-year plan has been linked to the relevant chapters and goals of the

strategic plan but I'm sorry my brain is warped that should say comp plan for FY26 the current draft includes 6.8 million in projects related to transportation across and throughout the entire city

And then additionally, the projects related to city-owned utilities are not part of this CIP.

They're actually enterprise funds.

And so those projects are funded through the utility rates and in those each separate fund.

And they come to council as part of the rate setting process in May.

Next slide.

Second, there was a request for adequate funding to complete the smart scale projects currently funded.

The city manager with VDOT district engineer has confirmed a series of changes to the current program, VDOT program.

that entailed revising scopes of two projects redistributing previous awarded funds for a series of projects in the current portfolio and that will help with the significant budget gaps for those programs.

That memo and that presentation is going to Council for consideration at the next Council meeting on December 2nd.

The Commonwealth Transportation Board will consider the request at its meeting in January, making it possible for all those previous grant awards to the city to remain for use within the current portfolio, ensuring no additional project loss.

and Council will consider the reallocation of those funds resulting from the CTB's action in January or February.

So once we get that notice from VDOT, we'll be coming back to Council to actually move those dollars around.

Next.

There was a request to provide for human capital needed to accomplish funded projects.

As you recall, from

At least two times I am standing up at this podium.

There was an assessment of staffing needs that was done and completed in 2024, which resulted in four additional project manager positions, which all have been filled.

The city completed a reorg within the public works department that included the addition of a deputy director, the addition of a project manager specializing in right of way acquisition.

All project manager teams were merged into a single facilities development team, which provides project management specialization of all construction projects, regardless of the department that are built by the city.

So this is, I guess, on the previous item.

And this item sounds like we now have adequate staff to manage our portfolio.

On the previous item, we then canceled a bunch of projects for a budget shortfall.

And I understood previously lack of staffing.

So if the problem was just the budget shortfall, was there any consideration given to backfilling that budget shortfall?

So that we could keep at least one of those two projects that were canceled.

And additionally, my understanding from the presentation given a month or so ago is that the total amount of those two projects is approximately $50 million.

And the shortfall was approximately $17 million, I believe.

How do we square those two things?

Right, thanks, Rory.

So as you know, there are two projects.

The shortfall was $17 million.

And yes, we discussed the notion of whether the city would take on that cost and ultimately made the determination that we would rather transfer funds within the VDOT portfolio program and not bring an additional $17 million request into the CIP.

Now, only one of those projects could be cancelled and transfer the funds.

The other project, we could not cancel that project and transfer those funds.

The decision on the on the second project, the Ridge Fifth and etc.

project was that that project also had a significant shortfall.

We could not transfer funds into it.

And also there were concerns

as to whether the design of that project matched up with what we wanted to do today, the approach that we would take today on that project and with limited ability to make alterations to that project and maintain the state funding, we ultimately made the decision that we had to cancel that as well.

Could you elaborate on why only one of the two projects could have funds transferred?

My understanding is that both projects came from the district grant pool and not the high priority pool.

The Ridge Street project had a combination of funds.

Brennan is

Reminding me of that.

Was it thought that some percentage of the funds would be transferable, but not all?

What was it?

Like 30 million?

More than 30 million?

Look, at this point, what I'm going to offer you, Rory, is that if you have further questions on it, we're happy to dig into it further.

All right, thanks.

I guess I would propose perhaps that large budget decisions like that could be made within the budget cycle and within the process that we have for establishing our budget priorities in the future.

I appreciate that comment as well.

On this whole program and on everything we're doing here within the CIP, we certainly look and work to do that within the budget cycle and within processes where we can take decisions in front of council and other entities and all of that.

Downtown mall initiatives, fund the downtown mall initiatives, the tree study, infrastructure, etc.

So this plan includes three projects related to the downtown mall.

One is the infrastructure account, which has been in there for a while.

That is basically a budget that is offset by the cafe permit fees.

for the Restaurants on the Mall.

The Downtown Mall Active Life Cycle Tree Management Account is funded at $100k a year to help take care of pruning and general maintenance of the trees on the mall.

And then the new this year is the Downtown Mall Tree Management Plan, which currently is funded at about $315,000.

Again, that's to get us started.

I have a question on this one.

I don't know.

Do we like the chains?

Are we thinking about changing it?

I believe so the downtown mall tree management plan includes recommendations for the fountain and in the phase one, which this is kind of the first down payment on phase one, includes some recommendations about making alterations not to the fountains to themselves, but how they operate within the space overall.

Any other questions?

Next slide, please.

Feedback number six, affordable housing and homelessness needs to continue the commitment to affordable housing and support homelessness needs.

This FY26 part of the CIP includes $12.7 million in funding for affordable housing projects.

with just under 52 million that's included in the five-year plan.

Again, these are just CIP dollars.

This does not include the tax assistance programs and other things that are also funded in the operational budget.

In addition, the city manager has been leading discussions with council and on community interventions, which will include some homelessness and other potential uses of ARP.

So that is why that is not showing up in the CFP right now.

Sorry, I have one on this one.

I got a question from the public about concerns about LGBTQ accessibility to a no barrier shelter operated by Salvation Army.

That is a fantastic question.

One of the things that I've been pleasantly surprised with coming from another community where I did non-profit work and unhoused community members and those who are housing insecure is that this Salvation Army has always had space even in their high barrier shelter

specifically for our LGBTQIA neighbors who may, for example, be transitioning so they can have a private, comfortable space.

I do know that's unusual for a Salvation Army.

I'm going to admit that Salvation armies across the nation maybe are not all that progressive.

They are not all that compassionate and caring, but I can tell you, with our friends at Pacham being willing to work with them at the warm room, that alone gave me comfort coming into this community, but having conversations with our lead in the Human Rights Commission, having conversations with Major Mark

We understand that individuals need safe, comfortable places to have shelter.

Individuals who also maybe don't share the same faith tradition as the Salvation Army.

So that's certainly going to be something that we are very keen to participate in, very focused in on, and especially with this city that finally got a 100% rating from our municipal equity index.

I'm not going to let that number slip away.

I worked really hard for that.

That is a fantastic question for our community members to be concerned with, but please know as we go into this conversation as the city, as the city's LGBTQIA liaison, it's extraordinarily important that we consider not only that, but also individuals who are differently abled.

And I'll just add that part of the ongoing conversation because I've been deep in the conversation.

The discussions with the Salvation Army has been looking for what are you doing in other places as well.

So part of what they have agreed to do is to make sure that we get access to what are the variations on what they do in the way of service so that we can ensure that we get the best version possible.

So that'll be something that I'll continue to look for.

The next slide is mine.

So this is where I was supposed to speak.

I wasn't supposed to speak earlier is what Chrissy told me.

But I'm going to walk you through next steps.

But what I wanted to do just in kicking off the comments that I share with you is that I

started a short series with counsel at the last council meeting that I've labeled budget briefs and what I'm doing in that moment is being responsive to them.

They have asked for more information on the front end of the budget being proposed so that they can understand what to anticipate in the way of a budget presentation so that I don't surprise them with the budget announcement being what it is and then they're wondering different things.

So I created a three-part series.

The first session was on organizational excellence and equity, and I'm pulling straight from their strategic outcome areas in the ways of topics.

On Tuesday night, on Monday night, I don't know what I said Tuesday.

On Monday night, I'll be talking about housing and infrastructure.

And then the third meeting on December 16 is going to be on public safety and transportation.

Not that any of the other strategic outcome areas are not important, but those are big ticket areas, things that are moving very fast as homelessness falls into that equity space.

And they're going to be high dollar topics.

The goal is to make sure that I can provide counsel some deep opportunity to see what it's looking like to try to fit all these things into the budget.

So I say all of that to frame your discussion that you're going to have in just a minute.

That, as Chrissy mentioned, when you look at the CIP and make the recommendation that this be added and that be added at a higher amount, we're at a place that we're needing to offset that.

So for whatever else we want to add in, we need to take something away.

Whatever we want to increase, we may have to reduce.

I'm not saying that to you to stop you from offering any of those.

I'm just pointing out to you that as it stands right now, we do not have a balanced budget.

It is way too early to have one, but we don't have one.

I wish one day that we could actually have a budget balanced budget by December 1.

That'd be great.

This city being a place that punches above its weight class, as I often refer to, is why we won't.

So that means that decisions have to be made.

And sometimes there are difficult decisions that have to be made, but I was told that I'm hired to do that.

So that's what I'm going to do because I'm required to bring a balanced budget.

So on the 10th of December, you'll have the public hearing giving the public a chance to react to what they have learned tonight and what you talk about and then what they will also be able to bring forward on the 10th.

I will be making

I will have a budget forum on the 12th of December, so that's the public's opportunity to come in and talk with me and team about budget priorities.

It's a chance for me to be able to hear from them.

We'll frame that conversation a little bit about what we're seeing in the way of budget drivers for this upcoming session.

They can appreciate that and understand that, but then they'll be left to the room to ask questions about what they just heard and other things that they might be thinking about.

But as you are forming your recommendations and the public hearing is a part of that, it's to give me insight as to what are all the expectations is how I'll refer to them.

I'm here to help do my best to meet as many of them as possible, but reminding you that I won't hit all of them.

I know that because the budget is not infinite.

It will just not go everywhere.

But that proposed CIP becomes a part of the presentation and I will be presenting the, well, Chrissy and I will be presenting the proposed budget March 5th in next year.

So that's where we're headed.

So when do we make our recommendation?

Yeah, I think we consider it an open conversation at this point that we're going to be capturing whatever you talk about if you decide to talk more tonight.

I've been taking notes.

I don't know if you noticed that, but I always write down what people say.

So I'm taking notes.

We'll be looking for additional things that you might say this evening.

The public hearing, we will be capturing that information and all of it becomes a test for us to go back in and say, okay, do we have that?

Do we have a beat on that in this CIP?

Are we seeing that in our budget in a different way?

Is it on the ARP list that people just don't know about yet so that at least we can feel responsive to it?

Or is there a decision that needs to be made and that decision is either mine or council's decision?

So we're framing all these different information points for how we process that to take it forward.

And you're welcome to, as you have already started, to send us emails and let us know what else you'd like us to consider.

A written, is that it?

Yes.

Got it.

So you will have a formal communication to me.

Cool.

And I do read it.

I just forgot about it just now.

Thanks.

Not yet.

So thank you.

That's basically the end of our presentation.

This slide here will just give you a couple resources.

Our budget explorer tool will allow you to look at the current CIP.

So one of the things when we're working through this process is we're always looking from today forward, but we have a lot of stuff already on the books and in the works.

The budget explorer will let you look at the project, the status of those projects in terms of budget and expenses.

The online budget book gives you a summary of the C.I.P.

that we presented tonight.

It also has a page for each project with a little more in-depth detail that you're welcome to view.

Of course, the comp plan, you all are very familiar with that.

That is also linked to that.

And then just in general as a reminder on our city budget web page, after every work session, we do have all of the presentations posted.

Any public notices that we post, you'll find there.

So any information related to the budget development process, we try to keep our webpage up to date and you should be able to find information.

Right now, the only thing that's there basically is the CAP budget book, but also a schedule of all the public meetings for the 26 budget development process that will take us from now through April of next year.

Right, so in an attempt to lend a little discipline to the feedback we're going to give you, why don't we just walk around the dais and we'll begin with Rory and then we'll go to Betsy and then around.

I have no feedback at this point.

OK.

I don't see anything that should be moved based on not digging down and getting into the weeds, because it seems all very reasonable.

I really appreciate all the affordable housing, homelessness, money being spent there.

But as you're saying, it's hard to say, dig down and say, oh, this should move to this.

It seems like it's pretty well thought through.

And maybe that's it.

I'll add one more thing.

Again, this just came in through email stuff.

The Cultivate Charlottesville sent some disturbing email about how they're falling down on there.

They may have to close down, which again, I know it's not even in this process or idea, but it might be something to look into.

I don't know if that would be under parks and rec, but it would be really great to be able to

help them out if necessary, given their help in the CRHA and other neighborhoods.

And if they're going to be helping with the Washington Park Garden, that is not in here.

I'm just going to mention it.

I know that it takes a while to kind of tee all of these things up.

I don't have any comments on specific line items in the CIP at this point, but maybe I'll just make a brief philosophical comment.

And that is, I think it's really good when the city and when public works has the capacity, the internal staff capacity to complete quick build projects.

We saw this on Elliott Avenue and in other places.

And I've seen city crews building sidewalks.

It's great.

I think members of the public see that the city is

is getting something done that positively affects their lives.

I like what I see in the transportation and access budget lines.

I hope that some of that can be spent on quick build projects

So that's my comment.

Since the city manager has laid out the rules of play for moving money around and at this point I wouldn't want to make any specific recommendations because I'm not prepared to I've got plenty of things I think we should add money to but I want to

I have to be careful about what I would recommend axing.

I've had education on the brain, maybe it's because my little one started at Trailblazers.

Yeah, it's been great.

The big ideas I have right now, the school lump sum account is not indexed to inflation, so it's diminishingly useful.

I don't think it's an emergency yet, but it will become an increasing problem.

The school priority projects, I love them, they're beautiful, they're currently unformatted for the out years, I think 29 and 30, and school solar is a priority.

So anything we can do, if we do need to pull some of that money away, if it can make school solar happen faster, I think that may be a wise decision.

As a non-voting member representing University of Virginia, I just wanted to say thank you to letting me be a part of this process and I just appreciate the transparency and I'll be happy to report back some of the items that were discussed tonight and share some of the draft CIP with colleagues.

As a resident of Charlottesville, I can just speak personally and I'm appreciative of sort of

The attentiveness to the comments that were made, I think previously when we discussed the CIP, and I think what was presented tonight was a market improvement over, I think, what was shown previously.

So I just, again, I think that reactivity was nice to see, again, coming from a residence perspective.

So, nothing significant to add, but I do want to congratulate you, Ms.

Hamel, every year this gets better and better.

And again, we're just at the beginning, but again, way to thank you for the way you've organized this and made it readable and loved the way you've organized the website and the links and those things.

Well, one thing that does worry me a little bit is a little bit of heart is, in fact, a heart bullet.

It looms large.

And I just want us to be certain that we're thinking about that because we don't want to revisit the mobile home crisis that we faced a few months back.

So just please start thinking about it and begin

began developing a plan of action.

Because there are 200 people that live there who I believe he's left.

But there are 20 people there who are having the rent subsidized.

And no idea what the owners are going to do with that when the affordability window shuts down next year, I believe.

It's 2026.

So I would ask you to begin thinking about hearthwood.

We have an economic development fund for strategic initiatives, which is helpful because things come and we are ready.

We could do something like that with housing.

Right.

Well, I'll toss a couple things in.

First, I feel like many years I say the same things.

I'm glad to see this year that there's finally a plan to both fund and build new sidewalks.

So I appreciate you all putting that in there.

Though I would say that if we had been funding it at our 2018 level of $500,000 a year,

We would have had that fund built up and would not have to be significantly increasing it now to execute on these

I was a big advocate of our $10 million affordable housing pledge.

And if we have significantly exceeded that pledge and in the CIP are continuing to, but I am concerned that particularly for some of these out year projects, we are committing funds before having a pro forma or a funding model from these organizations and in some cases,

Not even a concept plan of what to do from these organizations.

For example, Kindlewood Phase 4 does not even have a plan.

And I can't say that in FY29, Kindlewood Phase 4, some plan that we have not seen to date, will be a higher priority

then say a hardwood acquisition or another affordable housing thing.

And I would really like the city to create a proper process for evaluating these large funding requests.

Additionally, I just did the math on those smart scale projects.

It looks like Cherry and Ridge, the two smart scale projects from the district grant fund were 14.84 million together.

So about 2 million, 2.2 million short,

of that $17 million funding gap.

To me it's disappointing that we were canceling an additional $20 million project if the alternative might have been putting a mere $2.2 million of bondable funds into our CIP.

Again, happened outside of the budget cycle.

I understand that it's going to council now, though it's not clear to me what that means given that the request to cancel them has already been made to VDOT and whether this council discussion upcoming has any potential effect on that outcome.

But I do think that we have made a commitment to the city to commit to better transportation to accommodate the increased density, which will come with increased tax revenue that we have that we have planned for as part of our comprehensive plan and our zoning code.

Can I respond to something that Rory said?

For the affordable housing piece, I was on the CRHJ board for some years and I know it

We have to be fair

Which is why I'm not that worried about the the pro forma and the plans yet I know West Haven's got some conceptual plans started And Kindlewood has past plans that need to be updated So I think for now I'm I'm fine with all that.

I just feel like you know setting it up

Yeah, I think, in part, I share some of Rory's concerns, but it's tempered by, as you pointed out, look, the project is coming.

We know it's coming.

And if it isn't coming, and it falls by the wayside, well, we do a CIP every year.

So we can sort of make those adjustments as we go.

The idea that we have

sort of enough housing, we discussed this at our last work session, sort of a housing money plan to sort of

Figure out if we're going to be making very large capital investments and things and making sure that they're not siloed.

I think that there's something that needs to be done about that.

I do not have any concept of how to make that work.

I mean, it's beyond just sort of expanding the CAF's remit, I think.

I'm not sure what that process looks like.

I'm just sort of, I guess, whining about it.

Did you get what you needed?

Yes?

Well, I'd just like to point out that, as we adjourn, that today is the 235th anniversary of the first official Thanksgiving, as ordered by George Washington on November 26th, 1789, and also on November 26th, 1863, it became an annual holiday under Mr. Lincoln, but we are ahead of the curve.