City Council Meeting   2/18/2025

Is there a motion to approve or amend the agenda?

So moved.

Okay, please cast your votes.

Motion passes.

This meeting will be divided into three sections.

First, a work session to hear and discuss presentations that do not require a council vote.

Good evening and thank you for the opportunity for us to speak and provide an update on the map to health, community health needs assessment.

My name is Ryan McKay.

I'm the director of the Blue Ridge Health District.

I will spend very little time talking to you as I want to give Jen Fleischer as much opportunity to speak.

She's the expert on this process.

She's been in it since 2022.

But I will say that historically the Blue Ridge Health District has been doing this process since 2009, working with

Centera and UVA Health to really identify health problems throughout our district, including the City of Charlottesville, but really with the intent of identifying upstream solutions and systems to address root causes of health problems.

Over the years, we've identified concerns around tobacco use, pregnancy outcomes, infant mortality as it relates to sleep,

and while many of our partners provide direct services to the community, internally we have really taken the lead on a few key things.

We use this to hire a tobacco cessation specialist who worked with community partners, schools and other organizations to implement new policies and education around smoking.

We've hired a maternal child health coordinator in the past to really convene an improving pregnancy outcome workgroup, which has since transferred to another organization, but with the intent of bringing awareness around disparities in health outcomes for mothers in our communities.

And then really using the data to identify issues around infant mortalities that relates to sleep.

and so from that work in previous years we identified the need for a safe sleep program where not only did we provide education to new parents about safe sleep practices but we were also able to secure funding through our own dollars to provide low-income individuals with free cribs through that same process and so what we've seen over time is that the map to health process

mobilizing for action through partnership and planning and partnerships is that we can really identify root causes, really develop systems and structures to put in place where we are seeing a value on our investments in these really on the ground activities and programs, either through hiring the staff with the Blue Rotel District, partnering with other organizations, or really implementing upstream programs and initiatives that really address the root causes.

We are in the midst of yet another round.

It's a three-year process and Jen will really explain the nuts and bolts of this in detail, but I just wanted to provide you with some sort of historical context of how long we've been doing this and I hope Jen would say this too.

We are truly one of the leaders in the state within the Virginia Department of Health in this process.

We are much more involved as a catalyst and as a leader, and I will say up front that a lot of this in the last few years is all the result of Jen's hard work.

So with that, I'll turn it over to our child ship program officer, Jen Fleischer, to give you the nuts and bolts in a true update on where we are with our current process.

Thank you, Ryan.

Thank you, counselors for having us.

My role at Blue Ridge Health District, as Ryan mentioned, is to facilitate and initiate this three-year, it happens every three-year, but it's an 18-month process every three years in partnership with Centera, Martha Jefferson Hospital, and UVA Health.

And so on other committees that I sit on that some of you attend, you've heard me present some of the nuts and bolts, but just to give you a high-level overview,

It's all nonprofit hospitals are required to do a community health needs assessment known as a CHINNA.

We call it locally a CHA, a community health assessment.

That requirements from the IRS in order to sustain their nonprofit status.

So though Centera is the only non-profit hospital we have in our district, we have partnered with them, as Ryan said, since 2009 with UVA Health because it's the right thing to do.

It allows us to see these community strengths and needs and get the decision making that's data-driven and address root causes of health inequities.

So in the 18 months, we will plan and leverage resources and make implementation initiatives that will be put on the ground by community partners and the three health systems

once that report is published.

So where the CHA is the assessment part, the CHIP is the Community Health Improvement Plan.

Because three-year cycles are pretty short, there's always an overlap with your CHIP happening, your implementation plan, your improvement plan, and your assessment beginning again.

And that's part of the design of a map.

So there's other frameworks to conduct a CHINA or a CHA, but we use this mobilizing for action through planning and partnerships model, and that's one we've been

in Playsons 2009.

So in 2022, that was our last jaw.

And we looked at data from local and regional sources.

We had 85 agencies connect with us on work groups.

Mayor Wade was with us for some of that work.

We did a photo voice project with UVA Health.

It's a qualitative analysis using photography and

We published that report in September of 2022.

That report had a focus on health disparities, health equity, the social determinants of health and racism and discrimination, looking at healthy eating and active living, mental health including substance use,

Health Equity and Access and then Healthy Connections.

So what that drilled down to in 2022 was we were going to work in the policy targets of transportation, the healthcare workforce, digital access and skills, and mental and behavioral health.

Now, what does a health department have to do with transportation?

We obviously are not cat.

We love CAT, but we act as the liaison between community partners to make inroads and transportation that ultimately affect the health of our patients and other community members that we see come through the health district doors.

This applies as well to Centera and UVA, and that's how they get involved in these policy targets.

So for example, on the city level,

through RTP and through other objectives, CAT has been most involved with the CHIP as has RTP, sorry, as has TJPDC.

So these were some of our bullet point goals and objectives for the 2022 CHIP, which will complete at the end of 2025.

So the PATH program that some of you know about from

T.J.

PDC and a goal to get UTS, John and Kat to share a GPS app were some of the objectives that we continue to work on with them through multiple channels.

It's pretty slow as you know.

Transportation isn't the fastest moving mechanism of change, but we're involved and that's new for us to kind of be at the table at that at that kind of decision-making level as a voice speaking for health and some of the community partners that we support.

and at any point, holler at me to stop and answer questions.

So there's other initiatives on this list that you can see that apply to those other policy areas.

We continue to work on those.

And again, that work cycle will end in 2025.

Some that directly relate to us at Blue Ridge are the establishment of the Community Health Worker Collaborative and Network.

And we also work very closely with UVA Telemedicine to work on device distribution and telehealth hub in Southern Albemarle.

so other community partners also convene that work.

That overlaps with some ongoing path program, bus field trips that we've worked on, walkability audits with some of this group and other community partners.

and then the Trail of Blazer program that's working out of the city.

We connect with a lot and the Loop DeVille project.

So we are again not necessarily, these are not services.

We don't build trails, but we are helping to advocate and support with kind of sweat equity to move the needle in some of these areas again with that goal of improving health

because we heard from that in the 2022 CHA.

This round we're doing it a little bit differently.

MAP Health has gone to MAP 2.0 and so what's different about that is there's a lot more community voice and there's a steering committee helping Centera, Blue Ridge and UVA Health to make decisions.

So we have convened, our steering committee has right now actually 15 organizations on it representing kind of a broad swath as you see in the graphic.

from housing to Louisa County Parks and Rec to, you know, folks who offer food pantries and food banks.

So it really runs the gamut in order to hear from the folks who are supporting the community members that we are trying to work with and elevate during this process.

And again, as Ryan said, find those upstream causes.

What's also different this year is we did a lot more surveys and a lot more data capture

at the front end of this process.

So we will publish this report in September.

It will be kind of completed for us by the summer and go to press, but you'll see that report in September.

And that will be the result of a lot of surveys and data that we captured through 2024.

Right now, that steering committee is working on its priorities and what those look like for this CHA and upcoming CHIP.

So the other new thing we did this year was to really get locality granularly focused.

So we looked at five census tracts and one in Charlottesville, because again, we're serving the whole district.

The census tract in Charlottesville is the Fifeville neighborhood that most triggered the area deprivation index.

Yeah, exactly.

So that's what I wanted to show you.

On this little graphic you see in front of you, the red is worse, right?

And that's your most disadvantaged census block.

So FIFIL is one of the ones in the city, is our reddest one in the city, let's say that.

And the indicators it's looking at for the ADI, education, employment, do you have a car?

Is there a phone at the house?

Is there crowding?

Is there plumbing?

They take all of these indicators by the block and then give this ranking.

We are currently not working in the map to health in Fifeville because UVA Health is very well situated there and has asked to kind of take the lead.

They've already been conducting focus groups and running a mobile unit there.

So to avoid engagement fatigue, the map to health process is letting UVA continue that work and then hopefully report back to the core group in the steering committee their findings.

So right now our census tract focused outside of the city with FIFO being covered by UVA.

What we did was 267 individual interviews to ask folks what their biggest health problems were, what their biggest obstacles to being healthy were, and what supports they needed to be healthy.

We've done these in help in correlation with community partners so of those 267 respondents the vast majority are having an income somewhere $45,000 is kind of or less And we've done so we knew that we were kind of reaching the folks who wanted to hear from the folks who most are harmed by health inequities and health disparities and

We did these interviews at 17 different events and locations and I personally have done about 200 of those interviews.

It was amazing connections with community members and in the city in particular just really getting a sense of what does it take to be healthy and not kind of

and not making assumptions about what those answers might make was very informative.

We did four focus groups.

The one you're seeing here was in partnership with the Fountain Fund Charlottesville agency that works with folks in reentry.

The other focus groups were older adults with disabilities and LGBTQ group and a group of Spanish speakers that work in the community through Latino Health Initiative.

So we heard from about 22 folks from there as well.

and then we had an online survey that ran for a few months and we got about 640 responses from that and a stakeholder survey so folks who ran organizations and agencies that worked with us already, what were they hearing from their clients, patients and consumers?

and here's what we've learned.

So the problems in that order, diabetes, blood pressure, mental health, weight problems and health problems, the biggest obstacles access to health care down to lack of exercise, which also pertains to lack of ability for our rural patients to access.

spaces to exercise.

But the, you know, the biggest support needed is money.

So as disappointing as that is, that is really what folks need to be healthy.

And so many of the folks we're talking to also needed community support.

And in this definition, community support is countering a sense of isolation and encouraging a sense of belonging.

So you've definitely heard a lot of stats come out of many agencies right now that are talking about

Oschrin

Coincided to the COVID funding dropping off, which often provided a lot of food support for both banks and community members individually.

And now it's harder again to get healthy food affordably.

That was one of the problems.

One thing to note about obstacles and access to healthcare, access means I can't get there, I can't afford it when I get there, and I can't get an appointment, so there's not even an option for me to get there at all.

So when we're talking about access, it's those three things were at the surface of the conversations we had.

Okay, so from here on in, we're working on this kind of model.

It's called targeted universalism where the steering committee is helping to kind of filter down this graphic you see here to define these priorities.

Right now what you see is kind of our best guess before they make those final decisions.

So we think that from what, you know, this previous slide, oops, that the

Priority areas would be chronic conditions, healthcare access, and social drivers of health.

The concept is that we'll focus on populations experiencing some most inequities and harm, and in doing so, that will rise up all boats for the whole district to improve their, you know, a healthy weight in food access and activity.

the right care at the right time in the right place and have fewer stressful days with mental health issues and the tools they need to be resilient.

So again, this is you're seeing a draft.

This is in the works and the steering committee is working on this language and these priorities now.

And then eventually that report gets published in the fall.

We will help to achieve grants for community partners to do implementable, actionable activities and initiatives that address the

The priorities and the objectives that the steering committee comes up with and finalizes with the core group and

that implementation will start in 26 and then we will track progress in those areas.

We are attempting to create a chip dashboard to allow the community to hold all the community partners and the three core group members accountable for doing the work.

So that's the nuts and bolts.

Are there questions that I can answer now?

Seeming clear.

For this work, so Centera and UVA funded

and

Dr. Tracy Downs and Jackie Martin's Office, the Diversity Office through UVA Health, and they set aside the time to do that.

They also provide internal funding for printing of the report.

And so VDH and Blue Ridge, we use grants through our Population Health Division to support any other kind of, for example, we did a door-to-door randomized survey in Nelson County as part of this process.

We supported that with our staff and our efforts through those population health kind of grant funding.

Am I missing anything in the how it's funded?

Okay.

I take the money.

Is there anything in terms of the work that we're doing here that you feel like we especially need to know about or be conscious of that I See these reports that come out and then clearly reflects a lot of work.

I'm so glad you asked because I did want to kind of leave you with a bit of action item with this which is Yes, certainly the work you're doing in bike and pedestrian infrastructure

deeply aligns with the previous CHIP and we're seeing transit and transportation in general is on people's minds.

But as we start to develop initiatives, implementation plans, and activities, our ask of you would be stay connected to the CHIP for 2025.

Let us report out again at some point, hey, here's what we want to underline that you can really connect with.

Remove obstacles for

community partners and organizations and agencies to receive funding either from the city or other grant partners to do the work in tandem with you and to really amplify the successes of community partners as it goes.

So right now I don't have the underlying thing beyond the transportation and bike ped transit because we haven't quite filtered that down, but I will have that and I'd love for you to stay connected to that because you can have

Which one of us are you thinking?

I think Ashley and Mr. Sanders are two contacts right now.

Yeah, so we can kind of stay in touch that way.

And I'm sorry, Ms.

Who, I,

This is my first time working for City, so I know that Ryan is mostly spoken with Mr. Sanders.

Ashley is tracking everything and wherever we need to pull additional staff in, we've done that.

The latter.

Almost everyone we interviewed had Medicaid, so health insurance was happening.

Almost all of them had gotten back on Medicaid through assistance through the network of partners they work with.

What they didn't have was time to take care of their health.

They didn't have enough money to make the pieces of connections to health happen.

I don't have enough money to take care.

I have a car.

I don't have enough money to take care of the car to get to the appointment.

There was a big reliance on CAT, particularly we spent time interviewing a lot of folks who were unhoused and during the Pockems shelters that were stood up for the holidays.

The bus transit is definitely their way to and from medical appointments, but reaching out beyond that loop, it was much harder to get appointments, to have the time to make those appointments, to have the wraparound services to get to the appointment on time.

and back on time, particularly for older adults and those with mobility issues.

But path is kind of... Path is working on that.

Path became a thing of CHIP 2025.

and others.

Plus we're getting evicted or I need more support.

A lot of the conversations were about food.

I can't afford food anymore.

So we're making ends meet this other way.

And it's just the mental load.

It's too much to manage.

And it's what they can get rid of.

Oh, I don't need to go to that appointment.

Almost no one had a dentist.

I don't need to go to that dentist appointment.

I'm glad you asked that.

One of our projects from 2025 was particularly our on dentists accepting Medicaid.

We knew we had proportionally the right amount of dentists in Charlottesville, but they weren't taking patients.

What good does that do if the proportion is good?

So we worked with DMAS to

to improve the amount and to incentivize more dentists to take Medicaid.

And we didn't get very far on that.

What we found in the doctor side of things are it doesn't seem that the folks I spoke with did not have a problem getting their insurance accepted or they just couldn't get appointment at all.

So it wasn't so much a part of the conversation where

They certainly talked about the gaps in what Medicaid would cover and what they needed for specialty care, particularly in our rural localities, but it didn't come up so much as, I can't get an appointment because they don't take Medicaid.

I don't know that there was a lot of research outside of the providers that they've already seen who were Medicaid accepting providers to find out other options.

There was also lack of

kind of debt brochure where knowledge like there is a free clinic or there is an FQH senior by have you tried those options?

Oh, I don't know what that is.

I'm not sure where that is.

Then finally, did you get feedback on the mental health side about do people have thoughts or issues that frequently came up in terms of

Yeah, definitely.

Certainly for rural localities, it was suffering, particularly for youth in the folks we interviewed.

The question we asked for mental health was how many days in the last 30 days have you suffered from chronic stress, anxiety, depression, or any mental health issue?

Majority of people all 30 days was their answer.

When asked what services they wanted, mental health services was often the answer, which is why you see it in that top five list.

Some people did share with us that they were already working with providers at Region 10 or in groups that were with Region 10, but we didn't really hear any kind of that traditional complaint of quality of care or continuity of care.

Except for

their continued to not be appointments available.

So certainly the appointment piece was the adult side of mental health that we heard, but not like the quality of care because they're just not getting in.

So I'll make that assumption.

I've got a question.

Sure.

You mentioned that part of what you're working on towards the end is a tracking dashboard situation.

Yes, this version 2.0 CHA for this chip, we have heard way too many times that none of us are doing anything.

And you hear this all the time too, because I sit in this council meeting sometimes.

And so everyone complains that we are not doing anything.

and

are, from other health districts out of state we've seen, they carry on dashboards and they have a dashboard and they market that dashboard and they keep all the targets and indicators and timelines updated on that dashboard and really message out, hey y'all this is what we're doing, are you seeing it done?

The other piece that we'd like to implement with that dashboard is return visits to some of the folks we've interviewed.

So though all of these interviews are anonymous,

Some folks we've asked, would you like to be spoken to again in a couple years when we turn these, you know, faucets on of implementation and activities?

And almost everyone has said yes.

So we would ideally get back to folks and say, hey, I'd like to interview you again.

What do you think?

Are you seeing this happen?

Is it easier to catch the bus?

Are you microcadding it up, you know, and get that feedback to follow up and then place that on the dashboard?

Yeah, again, you're right.

Are there any other new things this go around that either you are doing differently or the conditions are different than they were in the past?

Or there's a policy that's new that you're excited about?

I mean, you mentioned by pet infrastructure.

I didn't even pay her to say that.

I know.

Good call.

Okay, context is different this guy around from my last because last was still COVID heavy.

So that really shifted a lot of the work from policy driving.

How can we get policymakers to get involved and make shifts to much peeling back much more to a very granular level.

We hope someone will do

activities in Fifeville for non-native speakers in bike ped.

Like we are helping, the conditions are ripe for that kind of granular focused work and so that is probably a lot to do with the political environment in general and kind of what people have been going through from 2024 to now and watching kind of that political environment

evolve, people want tangible results.

And so we're really, we started there.

So instead of saying, we're just going to work on chronic conditions, anyone can get a grant to do chronic conditions, you're done.

We're really saying, please let it be granular.

So I'd say that's different in that the quality of the terrain was different.

And there seem to be more, this time around, there's much more knowledge of the collective action.

So we've been talking about that, you know, people go to MPH and we all talk about collective action and no one ever really can do it successfully because it takes an MOU and then it takes a grant and blah, blah, blah.

People are working together very well right now and our stakeholders are very much connected.

So for example, we've just stood up a collaboration of Nelson County providers to improve John in Nelson County because we realized on a call, all of us were working on the same thing and right there and then we stood up the group and the next meeting happened and they're moving.

So I'm seeing more

and

Citywide Microcat in, they see trails being built.

Again, it's that tangible result of the engagement.

Well, yeah, it's kind of like the dashboard is, here's evidence of what we've been doing, you know, a trail of bike lane, that's evidence of what we've been doing, but then it helps people get to their appointments.

Exactly.

I think we have a lot to tackle from getting folks from the health systems out back home, particularly rural.

That's a huge problem.

You two have heard me say this before, but at RTP, you know, we have had cases and we're not the only hospital where people are readmitted to the hospital because they didn't get a ride for 24 hours being after discharge.

So they're just sitting in the lobby, not getting their medicine, not getting their care because they can't get a ride.

The Medicaid cab comes, it doesn't take them.

So that's an extreme example, but it's enough to drive me personally to continue this kind of work.

And I think it is what's also propelling a lot of like, okay, yeah, no more.

We cannot tolerate no action.

Just a broad question that I have for virtually everybody who comes in front of us these days.

Well, it's funny you say that because I wanted to include a slide from the community resilience equity estimates for you because it would tell you your

at the census tract level, your life expectancy.

That is not life anymore.

So I can't pull that data because it has the word equity in it.

So it was such an amazing dashboard.

So fortunately, UVA has really stepped up and is giving us sharing data with us, which is helpful.

But I'm most worried not only that we are losing access to data, we're losing access to people.

We are CDC supported with

you know, interns and other workers that have public health priorities and they are now being furloughed and pulled from our ranks.

So I'm worried that we'll be stripped down to a level where we can't actually do the broad, that I can't deliver.

I'm a project manager, I need deliverables, I gotta deliver.

So if we can't deliver as health systems because we're cobbled, because we're connected to agencies that

aren't going to let us vaccinate anymore or, you know, big moves.

Whatever the trend of not letting us do is, I worry that our community partners will also feel that pulling back and that we just won't be able to do that work.

Charlottesville is a tiny town.

We all rely on donors and private funding to do a lot of this work.

But if it's really crunch time and we're all asking the same people for those funds, the gap can't be swapped out.

Well, not necessarily specific to map to health, specific to the district as a whole.

We are funded in part by 44 or 45 federal grants that work on things from HIV services to STI testing, WIC.

And while we don't feel WIC is something that we would lose funding for,

There's always that potential that other grants would be impacted.

You mentioned that GEN is funded through a grant, which means it's not funded year to year on our local budget.

And so a lot of that funding can come from federal dollars and federal grants that we in turn use for programming.

people delivering services and so I think the mindset right now is thinking through what would be the worst case scenarios, what are the grants that we get, how do those fund mandated services, how do those fund services that we've identified our need in our community

and then what's sort of the return on investment that we would be missing if those federal dollars weren't available anymore.

And so that's something we're looking at internally.

But then it goes to the people like Jen said.

Where are we getting our information from?

Where are we getting guidance from through the state at the CDC level or FDA or USDA depending on where they are in the federal government?

These are all things that we're concerned with and then how does that in turn impact delivery to those that need it, the end user, the community members who don't currently have access even though we have those funds now or who are seeking access for other services that aren't provided.

Certainly an important question, something we're looking at, and I think it's very critical, because as we're identifying what we need to focus on as far as the map, there's also these sort of areas that we need to address in terms of how do we meet these?

Listen, thank you all very much.

We really appreciate you coming out tonight.

Anything else to feel like we need to know?

Can I say one quick thing?

Of course.

This is a point that I brought up in, I think, I'm pretty sure it was RTP, sometimes RTP and MPO blur in my head, but I'm pretty sure it was RTP.

And it ended up getting pretty easily misunderstood, so I want to try and say it clearly.

This is not a knock on the county for disclaimer there.

A lot of the problems, when Jen made a presentation to

A lot of the struggles that people who lived out in rural areas had about getting to medical appointments or the isolation that you were describing especially for young people

A lot

Dr.

She's going to speak to us about the opioid abatement plan.

Hello, Ashley.

Hello.

So today I have the privilege to speak to you all about the program for the Charlottesville City Opioid Abatement Funding.

We're going to go through just a really brief history, just to level set everyone.

I'm going to talk a little bit about the funding availability that we have, projects that have already gone through, and ones that have been proposed.

All right.

So also, I do want to make sure everyone knows these slides will be posted on the social equity website.

So they are a little wordy only so that if individuals from the public just happen on to them, they don't have to watch this to be able to get the context.

Absolutely.

So of course we're talking about a public health emergency that began really in the 1990s.

Everyone knows about OxyContin and the wonders that it provided, but also the detriment that occurred.

We also have seen an influx of less expensive opioid alternatives.

Most recently you'll hear a lot of discussion of the drug fentanyl.

What occurred really is that individuals were given these drugs most often if it was a prescription pill for reasons that were absolutely legitimate at first.

They tore an ACL, they were a blue collar worker that had an injury, and they became addicted to that particular prescription.

When the prescription ran out, many individuals went to the illicit drug market to achieve the same results as best they could.

This took a toll on communities, on cities, on states.

And what we saw were states actually rising up and saying, Dear Pharmaceutical Company, you knew exactly what you were doing.

We are now suffering because we need to provide access to opportunities, to health and welfare, to our communities.

So we're going to sue you.

Virginia did just that.

So all 133 subdivisions in the Commonwealth of Virginia agreed to sign on to one suit and that does include us here in the city of Charlottesville.

So the results of that legal action culminated in 2021 and 2022 with settlements from several large pharmaceutical companies as well as pharmacies.

You see their names there, some you probably know, some you maybe don't.

So I wanted to ground us in just a little bit of data.

I will tell people if you happen to be a data wonk at the back end of this presentation that will be published is a little more data, some from our good friends at BDH, some from our friends at the fire department, but I left the wonky stuff to the back.

So here in the Commonwealth, there's been, in 2023 alone, 2,796 deaths due to drug overdoses.

In 79% of those deaths, fentanyl was involved, fentanyl analogs or the drug tramadol.

There were over 20,000 emergency department visits due to drug overdoses in that same year.

and over 30,000 of those incidents that were substance use related required EMS which means here as local government that is most often either a volunteer organization or our own city or county organization if you have EMS of course here in the city of Charlottesville we do have our own EMS service in addition to cars.

So because of that, VDH and some other individuals did a really great work on determining the cost of this crisis.

So in Virginia alone, the opioid crisis has cost upwards of $5 billion.

And in the city of Charlottesville, each community member's per capita cost is over $600.

So each and every one of us is supporting this crisis, which is another reason why, again, that lawsuit was so appropriate.

So local data.

I would like to publicly thank Lucas Lyons, who's one of our team members here at the Charlottesville Fire Department for helping to supply this data on a monthly basis.

And what I wanted to show you all is a little bit of the trends here in our community.

So in 2022, there were on average 6.6, let's round up to seven overdose incidents.

An overdose incident is the fact that someone has overdosed on a drug

and they call 911 to receive assistance.

So do know that our overdoses may be higher than this.

If an individual had a drug, if they had Narcan on them, they may have given it to a friend or perhaps depending on where they were at and how they were feeling to themselves and never called 911.

In addition, oftentimes someone may overdose, not know it, possibly survive and it might actually have caused a death.

But again in 2022 we saw a spike in patients in August in 2023 notice our average went up to about eight And there you'll see in that graphic a lot of spikes in various months with a high of 13 patients in January and 15 in July and then in 2024 we actually had a reduction in overdose incidents to six and

There were sharp declines as you can see in March and then in October and December.

However, we still had some spikes.

An overdose incident occurs.

It can depend.

Most often they are going to, even if they have successfully treated the individual on scene, they will take them to the emergency department just to ensure there's nothing else going on.

But also, there are some drugs where, for example, the Narcan dose will support alleviating an opioid, but there are some

Drugs that act as an opioid we call one of them Trank, but Narcan will not resolve Trank.

It will resolve if they have fentanyl in their system for example, but you still need to be taken to the emergency department for any other drug or substance.

So by the numbers, for gender, here in the City of Charlottesville overwhelmingly are individuals who are experiencing overdoses, identify as male with 70% of all overdosed patients in Charlottesville, identifying as male from all years looked at.

So 2022 to 2024.

So this is not deduplicated data.

So it is possible that an individual overdoses more than once within a calendar year.

So what this looks at is it just gives me an overall dashboard and a lot of that kind of more generic is to protect the patient data.

So what I see that little chart is exactly what what I get.

Now that is something I absolutely can explore to the best of our abilities to see about that information.

but generally all of the data I've been able to receive is is de-identified data and often it is not de-duplicated because that's very difficult to do.

So by race, what we're seeing is that there's a prevalence of these medical incidents in residents who happen to identify as white.

But you'll notice that there's an increase in usage of by African Americans starting really in 2023, you see a spike and then another spike in 2024.

And we can equate that to the rise of fentanyl availability and usage in the population across the nation, including Charlottesville.

This usage may have started on accident.

Many other illicit drugs they were finding were being cut with fentanyl, thus then creating an additional demand for it.

But also with the price of fentanyl, some individuals may have simply moved to that particular illicit substance at the time.

But I did want to work to explain a little bit of that pretty sharp spike that just happens to come in 2023.

and then by age.

What you're going to see over the chart if you pay attention to the grain, it gets darker, the higher the percentage is individuals are aging with their opioid use disorder.

In 2022, while we did see a small percentage of incidents from age

10 to 19 and 70 to 79.

Most prevalent are 20 to 29 and 40 to 49.

If you look at the next year, there's a 10% increase in age 30 to 39.

Again, these individuals are aging with their substance use disorder.

And then in 2024, you see again that 70 to 79 age group peak.

One of the things that I will say colloquially that I received some information from our anchor team, specifically Pamela Coburn, who's a very valued member of our team, one of our mental health professionals, is they are seeing that there is a lot of difficulty for an individual to get into any recovery opportunities.

And so when we think about that age, when we think about people aging, it also, it could be, number one, that an individual's not ready to move into potential recovery, but it also could be that they've been ready multiple times and simply cannot get access to such treatment and care.

All right, what everyone loves to talk about, money.

So there are several streams of funding in the opioid ecosystem.

Specifically, for us as an independent city, there are three funding streams that we will talk about a lot.

Direct distribution, that comes straight from what we call the distributors.

So, McKessons, the Johnson & Johnson's, it comes straight from them to us.

Independent opioid abatement funds and gold standard opioid abatement funds.

I've got slides for those, so don't worry, I will talk about them in just a second.

Additionally, there are city and county partnership funds that requires working with other localities and each locality can choose to add funds from their independent stream or not.

And those projects have to be approved by the opioid abatement authority in the state to receive funding.

So this slide just simply shows the breakdown of the funding coming into the Commonwealth.

You'll see that 15% of funding for the opioid abatement authority can go to cities like us.

And you'll see also that 30% of the funding is distributed straight to us.

That's again, that direct distribution.

Funding is also available for state agencies through the authority and there's some unrestricted funding they may use for other purposes yet to be determined.

So again, that direct distribution comes straight to the city, straight to Miss Gale and our finance department who helps me out a lot with this work.

And the city's projected distribution funding in all years.

So that's 2022 to 2042 is over a million dollars.

What's important for me to share about this is that that money ebbs and flows.

There are certain distributors that front loaded their funding.

They said, let's get it all out in the first five or 10 years.

There are others that are giving funding throughout the entire time.

So it is not an even amount of money that we're going to get every year, but it does change a little bit.

Roughly on average 50,000 a year.

And I do have, as I said, I tried to be a little less wonky.

I do have a graph that shows the projected amount we'll get every year.

So individual distributions.

Remember I showed that graph that shows that the opioid abatement authority in the state is getting in funding and some of it they are holding for cities and counties that are not directly distributed to them, that 15%.

That's made up of both individual and gold distributions.

so the individual distribution it's our money but we have to apply for it and if you don't apply for it they after five years they will sweep it somewhere else that funding is guaranteed so long as the project works on appropriate abatement but there are some restrictions only cities and counties can apply for that funding there is an amount earmarked for Charlottesville

And while they're not competitive, they are awarded one year at a time, so every year I'll have to reapply.

So again, in all years, we're looking at about $365,000 is what will be available to the City of Charlottesville 2022 through 2042.

And then the final bucket of money for cities and counties is the gold standard funding.

That required us to say we will use this funding in the way that it's intended, which is for opioid use disorder, abatement, and remediation.

We have said that.

That makes us eligible for an extra percentage of funding.

You'll see that in all years again, that's about $91,000 in some change.

Yep, every year I get to send in a renewal application.

Okay.

All right, so again, I've talked about what's allowed.

What's allowed?

You can spend money to treat opioid use disorder, which you also will see in documents as just OUD.

You can spend money to prevent opioid use disorder, and you can spend money to abate or remediate opioid use disorder.

That's it.

That's the only thing this funding is intended to go to.

What can't you spend it on?

I can't supplant.

So even if we had already been working with our good friends at the health department on a fantastic program, I can't use any of this money to now cover that program.

If they add a new element, I can.

But if the same program can't do that, I can't use untested methods.

In those application processes, they're going to look to see and they actually ask when you give them the data.

that the projects are evidence-based or evidence-informed.

So someone can have a fantastic idea, but if I can't find a good journal article on it, I can't apply it to the opioid abatement authority to use the money.

So there is actually guidance now as to which can and can't spend on law enforcement.

And you'll see across other states that maybe have different requirements from their state that, yes, people have absolutely used them to purchase vehicles, for example, for the police department.

In the Commonwealth of Virginia, they have set up standards through the state where that most likely is not an allowable use.

I say most likely because it depends on why we're asking.

I can make a phone call.

But we're really looking to spend this money to remediate and prevent opioid use disorder or looking at education as well.

So it is very hard to use that money in this state for other purposes, but that's a pretty famous usage that somewhere I believe in West Virginia got a lot of press, not the kind they wanted about.

So in brief.

20 years of the program in full.

We have about $1.5 million of funds total projected to come to this community.

We've expended 45,000 of it at this point.

We are part of two cooperative grants and we have three grants in review.

So the approved projects

We, along with our partners in Albemarle, Fluvana, Green and Louisa, worked with Region 10 for expansion of the Crisis Response Assessment Center.

They call it a C-TAC.

The C-TAC is where an individual who is in crisis but is willing to voluntarily go to receive an evaluation can go and comfortably receive that mental health evaluation in a place that's not an emergency department.

For that particular program, the City of Charlottesville has not pledged any of its own money, and the funding to do this work came straight from that cooperative bucket that I showed you from the OAA.

We also participated in with the same partners in expanding the Blue Ridge Center community outreach work.

So that's working in community outreach, working to connect individuals of services who have or at risk of developing opioid use disorder.

Again, that funding is from the state.

From the state.

So that's why Virginia OAA funding, it's from the state only.

We have not given any funding for this program, but there was that bucket in the chart.

Let me see if I can go back to it just because it's a little easier.

There we go.

There's that 35% that is city and county partnerships out of the opioid abatement percentage.

That's what we're applying for when we talk about a cooperative grant.

Now, you can put some of your own money in.

Right.

But that's not that 600 and whatever 1000.

That's not made up of our contribution from the 1.053 million.

Correct.

And the 1.53 is on the pie chart.

I'll go back if I remember to hit the right button.

Yes.

Yes, I like that one better, a light strawberry.

So that's where that funding comes from.

So this might be later in your presentation, the $45,000 that we've already spent.

Yep, I'm getting to it.

It's the next slide after I make it back.

Okay, thanks.

I'm just trying to figure out how it works.

Yep.

Nope.

And that's why I wrote much more on the slides.

If you have to go back, you've got a lot more context.

Thank you.

Of course.

Trying to switch slowly so that I don't.

All right.

So we've talked about two out of three cooperative grants.

Here's the third.

The third cooperative grant works with partners in Albemarle, Fluvana, Madison, Nelson, and Orange to expand the specialty docket, which is our drug court.

For this one, we are giving our support as the fiscal agent for this project.

So we receive the money, we help OAR distribute the money, we work as their fiscal agent for drug court already, so we were able to take on these expanded duties.

We did not provide any funding from the city for this because the expansion really is going to support our counties, but we wanted to play in the sandbox.

So we did volunteer as being the fiscal agent in this project.

Some of the counties did give their own individual money or direct money.

their choice to do so.

But for us here, we are serving as the fiscal agent and we still have not expended any of our money.

And again, because it's really expanding into our surrounding counties, our drug court is doing really, really well.

We're very proud of it.

and finally, sorry about that little squishiness, but here's the 45.

Council approved in February of 2024 to distribute funding to the Charlottesville Fire Department for their naloxone vending machines.

It is a requirement because it is still considered a prescription drug that they had a method of being able to account for any of the Narcan that they were taking out as well as be able to report on the supply.

And so Council approved us using some of our direct distribution for that work.

So right now, this is all we've spent is that $45,073.

However, as I noted, we do have some applications that are in review right now that I'm very excited to talk about.

So one of the applications that we have submitted in partnership with our friends in Albemarle and Nelson County and the regional jail is to do a pilot where for 18 months we're going to try and introduce sublocade, which is a 30-day injectable form of buprenorphine.

Sorry, still some.

And what that does is our hope is that it will allow that vulnerable population of those who are justice involved to be able to have some steadiness during their incarceration period because unlike a daily buprenorphine, it lasts 30 days.

In addition, there also is a high possibility of that individual being released with several days, if not weeks, of treatment under their belt.

So they're not leaving immediately either A, wondering how to find treatment for their substance use disorder, opioid use disorder, or B, potentially relapsing into using because it is difficult to find that treatment.

This application does suggest that we use three funding sources, direct, individual, and gold.

It will last three years.

Yes, this is actually a very successful model that we've seen.

ACRJ has recently just dipped their toes into providing opioid use disorder treatment through oral buprenorphine, but they have never before had a really formal

Program, so they're very excited to have it.

And one of the things that really helps us have that is the ability now of the jail to have not contracted nursing staff that may rotate, but having in-house nursing staff and mental health professionals to be able to not only provide this medication and this opportunity, but to be able to monitor the individuals who are receiving this treatment in a really

Good way.

I'm really excited to see how this turns out for our particular community members and the potential, again, success that they can have upon re-entering as our neighbors and friends here in the community with this bit of sobriety given that I mentioned earlier.

It's very hard for people to find treatment.

And then another project that we are proposing right now, it is actually in review, is an embedded mental health clinician at our Emergency Communication Center.

Again, working with partners in Albemarle County because it is the Charlottesville University of Albemarle County, ECC.

We have proposed again another pilot to see what it will be like to have a mental health trained individual be able to take calls as they come in so that there is a potential that we would not have to dispatch a law enforcement officer if the individual can have enough counsel maybe to feel like they could

report to the emergency department or a family member or friend can take them there again having that ability.

We also are hoping to reduce some emergency room visits.

We're modeling this after Durham, North Carolina's HEARTS program, their co-responder program that also includes peer response and this emergency communication clinician.

For the City of Charlotte School we are seeking to pay for that using again a combination of direct individual and gold funding and our partner in Albemarle County is also asking for not only OAA funding but they received a BJA grant that will help provide some of the funding for this pilot.

And then the third application is citywide Narcan access.

If you go out to our AEDs right now, there's no Narcan dose.

We're going to fix that.

So using again a combination of direct individual and gold funding, we will look to make sure that all 65 blood-borne pathogens boxes, which coincide with our AEDs, will have four doses of nasal spray naloxone in them, as well as we'll be providing doses to front-facing locations in key city properties.

and providing revive training for those individuals thanks to another one of our members of our anchor team, Mr. Norman Neese, who can lead those trainings and actually I can too.

So we're very excited about that.

If any of you all, once we're able, would like to get revived trained, it's super easy and we'd love to train you as well, but we're collaborating with risk management on this.

Some potential future projects, both UVA and Region 10 have funding for what we call harm reduction vending machines.

Those are vending machines where there may be Narcan or other doses.

I do want to give a shout out to Council Member Snook for presenting me with these machines.

They are finally coming, hopefully, to fruition in the community.

Richmond just launched three themselves, so we are looking forward to both partnering with those agencies as well as making a determination if we also maybe need to add to that availability.

Knowing that Richmond was able to launch three with opioid fund dollars gives me a lot of confidence.

If we'd like to use some of our OAA funding for that, we'll be able to.

Also working with Pamela Coburn and Anchor, we've looked at the issue again of treatment.

They have some incredibly sad stories of individuals who they responded to their crisis.

The individual really wanted to get into treatment and something happened.

They couldn't get there.

The treatment facility couldn't take them that day.

And so they see a need for a navigator.

If you think about going into recovery, even if you've just had surgery,

It'd be really hard to do a lot of complex paperwork sometimes.

For example, things you maybe aren't familiar with, but that's what we expect individuals to do who need to go to recovery.

Fill out all this paperwork, show up on these days, have all this availability.

They maybe don't have that bandwidth.

So I'm working with Pamela to talk over the possibility of maybe a pilot for a substance use opioid use disorder treatment navigator in our community to see if that would give additional support to people who are seeking opportunities for treatment.

and then also working with Tamika Braveheart at UVA on a concept that she shared.

She happens to speak Spanish and was at one of our local food trucks and people knew what she did at UVA.

And they said, hey, do you happen to have Narcan?

We would love to have a dose of Narcan to be able to save someone if they needed.

And so we're wondering, are there more businesses like that that are willing to be helpers that maybe would like to be Narcan trained and would like to be able to educate their communities

and have those doses more place-based.

So Tamika and I are talking a little bit about how maybe we can make that happen and that certainly would be something we could use opioid dollars for.

So that's it.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

As I said, the next slide behind this is really wonky data, but it will be available for your heart's desire.

I don't have any questions.

Thank you, Ashlyn.

I already fucked you with a bunch of questions.

So, let me ask you the same question I asked the other folks.

For us, I think the first thing to note is that the opioid abatement funding is protected.

It is coming from those for-profit distributors.

The one that is in flux is Purdue as they have filed for bankruptcy.

So that's the worst thing that could happen with those funding, but none of it is federal funding.

So that's a positive.

However,

Our partners may be federal funded for the ECC grant.

That is federal funding that our friends at Albemarle County pulled down.

And so those are all concerns, especially when we think about access to care and treatment.

We not only need access to, of course, opioid use disorder treatment,

But general medical care, as Jen was talking about, many times it's a toothache or another ache or pain that may drive someone to a point of looking at an illegal substance to resolve some of those issues.

But if we can get them into quality health care,

Maybe we can head off some of that before it starts.

Thank you.

So when I was coming in, you were talking about a term I hadn't heard before.

Yes.

It is a animal tranquilizer.

And we know that someone may be using it because it causes necrosis of the skin.

So it will eat away near the injection site.

From a public health perspective,

We still would encourage individuals if they believe a person is overdosing on anything that could be an opioid and they have access to Narcan to give that dose.

Narcan, if I gave you a dose or myself a dose right now, we will still be standing and talking to each other, even though neither one of us needs it, which is one of the beautiful parts of that particular drug.

If someone who is providing supportive care notices that there's a little bit of necrosis on the skin, we tell you all the time to please still call 911 even if you give a dose of Narcan.

But in that case, the Narcan will not be effective.

And I have not necessarily heard of any changes in that formula.

that would make that effective.

There's sort of always something new, but begging a glance to my friends.

And it's usually used to cut fentanyl, correct?

It depends.

Something else, wow.

Say for me this is an opportunity for the for council and public to be briefed on the fact that we are receiving these funds from the state and that we then operationalize them by putting them out on the street.

to intervene where possible.

Just let me know, and I will make sure that we can set a good time.

Maybe I'll look in the future to see where maybe you don't have a closed session or a shorter closed session.

It's not a long training.

and we'll be able to get you that training.

That is what I love to see.

Dose of Narcan in the bag.

I love both of those things because really that's one of the beautiful things about Narcan is any one of us can help save a life and again it's not you know if you give

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you all for coming as well.

Thank you.

pursuant to Section 2.2-3712 of the Virginia Code.

I move that the City Council close this open meeting and convene in a closed session as authorized by the Virginia Freedom of Information Act as follows.

Under Virginia Code Section 2.2-3711A1 for discussion and consideration of prospective candidates,

to be interviewed or considered for the following boards and commissions.

Okay, can we vote?

Okay, we're in closed session.

Okay, can we vote on that?

Okay, motion passes.

As we enter the moment of silence, I would like to note the passing of a couple of people.

One is the former Mayor and Plain and Director for Charlottesville, Mr. Saturinja Huja.

got to first know Mr. Hooger as his student in 1988 and then we became friends and mentor and just will miss him dearly.

As I got on council I would go visit him frequently and

Let him know what was going on council and he was still educating me, just instrumental in so much in the city from the downtown mall to the Dawgwood housing and I learned today he had a lot to do with the River View Trail and I think that

as I talked to other people like Mr. Williams and he would mention things.

Well, Mr. Houdre did this and Mr. Eugene Williams.

So it's a lot that he did.

And I think that we realize so much that is the impact that he had.

And others might want to say a few words up here about it.

I also want to note the passing of one of our house residents.

I think he was known as Joe.

by the transit station, and I know that staff and community partners did a lot to try to reach out to him over the years, and he passed, I think yesterday, a couple of days ago.

So let me give others an opportunity to speak, and then we'll have a moment of silence.

You know, I noted a Facebook post that seems to have gotten a wide circulation.

The Hoosier was in many ways the architect of the downtown mall.

He was one of the big pushers behind it for many years, and he understood something that people who have started pedestrian malls in other parts of the world haven't always understood, which is

that you don't just start it and forget about it.

You've got to keep working on it and you've got to keep building on it.

For example, when it started out as just a four block mall and he was pushing to have it lengthened and he pushed to have what we now know as the Omni Hotel built and then to encourage the city to

to help bail it out when it was going through some financial troubles.

He was instrumental in getting the pavilion built.

Trees were an important thing for him on the mall and all the way around the city.

We got our first tree ordinance under Hoosiers leadership.

I remember when I was on the Planning Commission, one of the things

We would do every year our Planning Commission retreat was he would present us with every year a new thought exercise of some sort.

And one year the thought exercise was imagine that the University of Virginia packed up and moved to Culpeper.

What would Charlottesville be like then?

And I have to say, honestly, I had never thought about that possibility, but it triggered a lot of good thinking.

One of his other thoughts was to encourage us to make use of the Rivanna River.

as something other than just, hey, you've got to get across it to get into the city from the east.

So it was just a lot of things that he did that were always full of ideas.

And sometimes you had to say, well, not so fast, but there was usually some real wisdom behind them all.

So, Lloyd, you know, I use that analogy a lot, you know, what if you, when I'm talking to neighborhood groups, if you pick up Charlottesville, move it to Corp Pepper, I use that a lot.

I now realize kind of where he may have used it in a planning class many years ago.

So, I didn't know where that was implanted in my mind.

So, I don't know, Brian, if y'all wanted to say anything, y'all may not have.

known Mr. Hooger as close as Lloyd and I did.

So we're going to have a moment of silence for ourselves, maybe Mr. Hooger and Joe.

Thank you all so much.

Announcements?

Are there any announcements that we have?

Yeah, I would move to make appointments to boards and commissions.

To the Charlottesville Economic Development Authority, Gareth Gaston and Quinton Harrell.

To the Human Rights Commission, Mary Ann Doyle and L.D.

Perry.

To the Police Civilian Oversight Board, Alzea Alvarez, Kyle Dobson, Jeffrey Frazier, W. Andrew Fry, and Shanandoah Titus.

To the Tree Commission, Eric Bretter, Hannah Brown, and Meredith Keppel.

And I would just note for the Tree Commission,

Okay, can we vote?

Okay, motion passes five to zero.

I just had a couple announcements.

Sam, over the last couple of weeks I continued to get

e-mails and calls about the postal service.

And I know that's not really in our court, but I think some many residents is just really frustrated that it's not enough just reaching out.

And I know that we have reached out to Senators Warner and Kane, and I know they're doing a lot.

I just want to make sure we're, you know, assure them that we're doing all we can at our level to

to express our concern of the Postal Service.

So we hear you, we understand that it's not a deal.

We didn't get our insurance for our cars, so we just reached out to our agent.

But you kind of get used to those notices coming through the mail.

I just want to give a little reminder for those folks who won the e-bike grant from the city to come by City Hall to meet with our bike ped coordinator Tommy to pick up your vouchers.

Is someone here from the center at Belvedere?

So we have a proclamation for them.

We have already delivered it to them.

They're celebrating their 65th year, have a very rich history, and they're in a new building, and they're just doing great things in the community.

They had the big program last Friday where the Board of Supervisors chair, and actually wasn't the chair, it was Ann Malik who had a lot to do with them over the years and I'm presenting that they had a big program.

Yes, I also have a proclamation.

for National Invasive Species Awareness Week.

Whereas invasive species threaten Charlottesville's tree canopy, which is essential for neighborhood health, safety, and resilience against climate change by providing shade, reducing the heat island effect, and sequestering carbon.

And whereas invasive species disrupt ecosystems by displacing native plants and animals, alternating natural processes,

and posing a significant threat to biodiversity and whereas invasive species impose substantial economic burdens costing the U.S.

$120 billion annually in prevention, control and damages to agriculture, fisheries, forests and infrastructure while also impeding transportation, water systems, energy production and outdoor recreation and whereas the spread of invasive species is accelerating due to human development and disruption making control efforts increasingly challenging.

Is someone here with that?

Oh, great.

If someone here wants to take a picture, you have that opportunity.

I would.

Hi.

Thank you all so much for recognizing the importance of controlling invasive species.

My name is Ruth Stornetta, and this is Joanne Daly.

And we represent some of the many member organizations of the Charlottesville Invasive Plant Partnership that is sort of hosting this week and putting on

several different events, and I just wanted to highlight two of those events.

I'm leading an invasive awareness walk in Penn Park on Tuesday the 25th, meeting at 1.30 by where the golf carts are stored at the dead end of the Park Road, where I will point out some of the invasive species that are present in our park and I'm sure in all of our neighborhoods as well.

There will also be a wrap-up event at City Space on Friday the 28th from 4.30 to 6.30 with all our partner organizations including the Master Gardeners, the Tree Stewards, Blue Ridge Prism, the Master Naturalist, et cetera, et cetera, tabling for information and we'll have some refreshments and everyone is welcome.

Thank you.

Okay.

On the 25th, the Invasive Species Awareness Walk at Penn Park will meet at 1.30 in the afternoon by where the golf carts are stored at the dead-end circle of the park drive into Penn Park.

And that will be approximately two hours.

It's about a two-mile round trip walk.

Thank you.

I'd like to add that we're going to be doing an invasive management work day at Greenleaf Park.

And when is that?

That will be on Saturday, but if we're not taking new volunteers for that one, we've got some great students helping us.

Did you know there was a lorex society?

Pardon?

Did y'all want a picture for your?

So we're at the opportunity for Community Matters and we have three pre-registered speakers and leave an opportunity for 13 additional speakers at this time.

Good evening, Councillors.

Good evening.

Jeff Levine, 600 West Main Street.

I'm pausing because I wrote down this nice speech.

I think I'm actually going to go rogue and just go off book and just talk to you.

And I was thinking about who you might actually be interested in this conversation.

I was at a meeting yesterday, literally yesterday with a local nonprofit housing organization.

discussing the project I'd like to do at 200 West Main Street, which proposed to have over 200 apartments and the affordable housing that goes with it.

And we were discussing how we could possibly collaborate and take a part of the building and leverage their resources to have even more affordable housing than minimally required.

And we got to the part of the conversation where we talked about what are next steps and what to do.

And I said, well, no one could tell me what I can build on this site.

and of course he looked at me quizzically as maybe people online in the audience are going, what are you talking about?

We adopted a zoning ordinance a year ago and it tells you what to build.

But I explained and I pointed out to you there's a part of the code that gives the BAR zoning review rights.

It's a safeguard I guess and it allows them to drastically change massing.

It can cut down height, it can require step backs and basically determine whether a project can go forward or not.

As a developer, the task I undertook in the better part of the last year informally and most formally in the last four months since November, is spend time in BAR hearings discussing what those conditions would be as far as step backs and height to see what that would be so I could get approval.

It seems to be going well and I was hoping to get approval tomorrow night, but after spending a lot of time with Jeff Werner and

Kudos to him and Kate and Kelly and everybody trying to figure out how to execute and implement this code.

There is no way for the BAR to stamp approval of these are the conditions we require.

concerning.

So I'm here asking for your help, please, to be able to put a stake in the ground as to what this envelope can be.

And it's, it's important for me to say envelope, because it's just the mass of none of the circumvents, zoning review, design review, city engineering review, engineering review or anything else.

It's just how to go forward under this.

And my suggestion is that the BAR make a recommendation to city council as

These are the conditions we're requiring under that clause, height, step backs, and city council adopted.

And let it be known.

It's interesting, tomorrow night I'm also looking for a demolition COA for the same project.

And I believe, and you can get that, I believe that's fundamentally founded on, well, a developer's not going to go through a year plus process to find out that the building that's there cannot be demolished.

So the BAR gives you a COA that you can demolish the building.

Similarly, a developer can't go on a year-plus process and find out that at the end the building can be cut down dramatically in height.

So I ask you please take action and urgency is critical here because we're at an inflection point of this project.

Thank you so much.

We're discussing it, you know, as counsel now.

Thank you so much for your time.

We're willing to work in the city.

My name is Deanna McDonnell, founder of R& Heartwork, Health Education, Coaching and Consulting.

Since 2023, I have partnered with the Fightfield Neighborhood Association to follow up on the Cherry Avenue small area plan that sought to address food justice and specifically access to affordable healthy foods and to address the proffer that winter properties made for rezoning

related to a grocery store at 501 Cherry Avenue.

On behalf of the citizens of Charlottesville who made their voices heard in line with the Fightfield Neighborhood Association who recently documented that the food co-op is the strongest fit for their community, the Charlottesville Food Co-op Steering Committee that is made up of five-fill residents, 10th and Page residents, and other residents with deep roots in Charlottesville and connection to Fightfill, we ask for your support of the

FNA requests for monetary support and that you specifically earmark any designated funds and possibly from the surplus for the Charlottesville Food Co-op to ensure that area residents finally have a grocery store that serves their needs, their health, and their future.

I would also like to ask that the Charlottesville Food Co-op be placed on the agenda, possibly for the March 4th or March 17th City Council meetings and ask

that the present committee members and co-op supporters here, please stand and be acknowledged in your support.

Today, Carmelita Wood, president of the Fifeville Neighborhood Association and co-treasurer for the Charlottesville Community Co-op shared with you that I am here to share the results of the six month community engagement, Cherry Avenue Grocery Community and stakeholder engagement initiative that wrapped up in December.

We learned in that process that there was a bit of misinformation surrounding the grocery store.

The community at large thought that the grocery store was a done deal and that Woodard Properties was going to donate it to the community in exchange for their benefits and profit from the partnership and the housing development.

They were very surprised to learn that approximately $4 million is needed to purchase the space in Woodard

to actually build a grocery store.

However, during our buy back the block developer forum in September 2024 and at other meetings, Woodard stated that they could lease the space for a grocery store.

Over 500 community members from Byfield, the sister neighborhoods and communities at large responded to our engagement and the message was loud and clear.

A grocery store

that is community owned food co-op or led by an owner or operator with deep local neighborhood roots is the desire.

I wish to also reinforce that this is not just about food access.

It's about economic self determination and a historically black neighborhood that has faced generations of disinvestment and displacement.

The Fifeville population is still over 50% black.

Moreover, another important fact that the Equity Center at UVA recently published is that Charlottesville at large, 47% of black families do not earn enough to meet their basic needs compared to 18% of their white counterparts.

The economic reality contributes to higher rates of diet related illness like diabetes, hypertension, and poor mental health.

We are aware of the good foods entity that has expressed interest.

We know that that model is natural health foods and does not afford does not bring affordability to the community.

Thank you, Ms.

Okay, thank you so much.

We have received several emails on that issue and I know that city manager and their staff that they are looking into that.

I wasn't aware of the request for meeting will be in touch with.

Would you be the contact for that?

Okay.

Good evening.

My name is Paula and I've lived in Charlottesville for the past eight years and I'm here tonight as a steering committee member for the proposed community owned food co-op at 501 Cherry Avenue.

This project isn't just about opening a grocery store, it's about restoring power and stability to a neighborhood that has long lacked access to fresh affordable food.

Fifield and surrounding neighborhoods have faced decades of food insecurity due to systemic barriers causing residents to rely on convenience stores and distant supermarkets for basic groceries.

The recent closing of REITs market has further heightened the urgency for a sustainable, community-driven solution.

Over the past few months, I've been in conversations with community members through the BiBuck the Block events that I've seen

a strong, passionate movement.

People aren't just asking for change, they're ready to build it themselves.

Our organizing team includes individuals with experience in food justice, public service, cooperative development, community health, economic empowerment, entrepreneurship, and so much more.

This is not just about five field issue, it's a Charlottesville issue.

A strong community owned regional

Grocery Store benefits the entire city by strengthening the local economy, supporting regional farmers and producers, and ensuring that fresh, affordable food is accessible to more people.

When one neighborhood lacks access to healthy food, it affects public health, workforce, productivity, and the overall well-being of our city.

A successful co-op will keep money circulating locally

creating jobs, stable jobs and provide an economic anchor that serves all of Charlottesville.

We don't have to look far to see that this model works.

Food co-ops in Harrisonburg and Fredericksburg have thrived proving that this approach is financially viable and community sustainable.

Online cooperative corporate change which extract wealth from communities, decisions are made with the well-being of local residents in mind, not corporate profit margins.

keeping money local, creating jobs, and ensuring fresh, affordable foods stay accessible.

For this vision to become a reality, we need the city's partnership.

We need real financial and structural support to ensure that this co-op is built for long-term success.

We're asking for $1.5 million to be invested in the food co-op.

This isn't just about food, it's about economic empowerment, public health, and making sure that the neighborhood, like Fifeville, are not left behind in the city's growth.

We're prepared to put in the work, the community is engaged, the momentum is here, and the time to act is now.

I urge you to stand with us, invest in this cooperative,

and help us bring food justice to Charlottesville.

Thank you so much.

We now have the opportunity for 13 additional speakers.

Anyone from the audience?

First of all, can you hear me with my mask on?

because I can't take it off.

Mr. Mayor and Councillors, City Manager, good evening.

I'm Colette Hall.

I'm at 101 Robertson Lane in the City.

Heard on the news that we wanted to talk about the budget because there was going to be something on the consent agenda voted.

So I thought I'd better get down here.

I heard on the news that there was a $22 million surplus.

And I think the taxpayers think, regardless of what the council says or the city manager, the taxpayers do think that this amount is way, way, way too much.

Now the city manager said, and this is a paraphrase, that

When a department makes up its budget, they, you know, it's an educated guess.

And so at the end of a fiscal year, if there's a few million dollars left over, that's not surprising.

But $22 million is really egregious and outrageous.

Last year it was voted on to have a 2 cent increase in the tax rate up to 98 cents for $100.

Well, I am asking you and I'm sure the rest of the taxpayers who live in the city would probably agree with me or most of them not to increase the tax rate this year, especially with a surplus of $22 million, which I understand most of you want to put that in the CIP budget.

So I got my and also last year the assessments rose

and also last year, I believe you, you increase the taxes on what entertainment, food, lodging, that sort of thing.

I don't know.

I don't have money to go to those places.

So if you did, then I don't, you know, I think you did.

So I got my assessment and Mr. Mayor, you're right.

My mail came late, so I just got it yesterday because I'm not getting mail anymore, even though I live in the downtown area.

from 1923 to 24, my assessment went up 16.35%.

16.35%.

Those of us who can live in Charlottesville will also become homeless or will have to move out.

I lived in Charlottesville now.

I'm in my 36th year and I just I don't know how we can keep affording that.

I had another issue.

I don't have time, but the main issue I have brought to your attention.

Hello, good evening.

It's nice to see all of you.

I'm Susan Cruz.

I'm the executive director of the Community Climate Collaborative, or C3, also a 26 year Charlottesville resident.

And I'm here tonight to just sort of acknowledge two great things that the city has done.

One in particular, I wanted to thank Mayor Wade for signing onto a letter to Congress, to the US Congress, asking for protection

for all the clean energy tax credits that have been made available.

Right now we know a lot of crazy stuff is happening in the federal government and there's a lot of programs that were promised and committed to localities, states, communities that are being cut.

And so I just personally want to say thank you.

There were only two mayors in the entire state of Virginia who signed on to that letter and Mayor Wade was one, the other was Mayor Avula and Richmond.

C3 is really proud to work in both of those cities.

So I wanted to say thank you for that.

And in support of that effort to really accelerate clean energy adoption in our community, the city's sustainability team led by Christopher Riddavold and Emily Irvine and Deputy City Manager Ashley Marshall.

have helped us launch the Energy Resource Hub for the community.

And I want to make people aware that that is now available.

You can go to energyresourcehub.org.

And it is one of a kind database in our community that will give you local, state, utility, and federal tax incentives and rebates for clean energy adoption.

There's really nothing like it anywhere.

And not only that, but the city is supporting

Leap, the local energy alliance program in C3 and directly assisting local Charlottesville businesses and households in reducing their energy costs.

And this is just a really fabulous resource for the community.

when so much is going wrong at the federal level.

It is nice to see our local community stepping up and leading the way.

So thank you all.

And yeah, check out energyresourcehub.org.

It's a beautiful website.

It's a great resource.

And we're having a launch party on March 11th at Carver Rec Center for the entire community.

And you can get in person assistance with rebates if you're a business or

resident of Charlottesville and Elmoral County.

Elmoral County is also supporting the initiative.

Great.

Thank you so much.

Yes.

Other speakers?

Anyone?

There'll be opportunity at the end.

Hello, Mayor and City Councilors.

My name is Lisa Drain.

I live in the Locust Grove neighborhood.

I'm just coming to support

What my colleagues Deanna and Paola have said, I'm on the steering committee for the newly formed food co-op and we're asking for 1.5 million from the city from your surplus to support this initiative.

We have a steering committee of about 25 people, multi-generational, multi-racial and multi-talented

and we hope that you'll consider this as a model for addressing food access issues, especially in areas that are known as low income, low access neighborhoods.

And we think that a co-op which is owned by, run by and democratically governed by members of the community would be a great asset to have.

Good evening everyone.

Good evening.

I'm also standing for the food court, but I want to take it to another level on one end of Cherry Avenue.

of the

We have to do something for them to learn.

And this would be a good opportunity where the schools could use this co-op.

It would be a field trip within the community that the teachers could build and use their lesson plans on.

So this is not just a co-op for the neighborhood, but it's something for our children.

It's a seed.

And I'm asking you all to water that seed this evening.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Good evening.

Oh, okay, it's on.

Zionna Bryant, Charlottesville resident, two things.

So I want to definitely amplify and elevate the request for the funding for the co-op.

Ms.

McDonald and her team has done a lot of

community engagement.

And they've had a lot of different forums and small meetings and big meetings.

And I think that they've really captured a wide range of opinions and people who align with and who support their projects.

So please fund it.

Additionally, fund our schools.

I think that I was at the budget workshop last week.

And I think that the request is clear.

The schools need more funding.

Mr. Wade, you were on the school board.

You understand the need for funding.

You understand that our buildings are outdated.

You also understand that we have a school bus driver shortage.

So there are a lot of things that need to be funded in the schools.

And with this surplus, I really hope that you consider giving more funding to our schools.

It was mentioned earlier that we need to plant seeds and we need to invest in the education of young people in our community because they are the future, but they're also the now.

So fund our schools and fund the co-op.

Thank you so much.

Anyone else would like to speak right now?

Okay, we have another opportunity at the end of the meeting.

Right now, I'm closing.

Are you just playing with your pencil?

Okay.

Consent Agenda, Number 3, Minutes, December 19, 2024 Joint Council School Board Work Session, January 30, FY26 Budget Work Session, February 3, Regular Meeting, February 10, Joint Council School Board Meeting, February 11, Special Meeting.

4.

Resolution of appropriation to amend the FY25 budget $27,851,605.84 Second reading 5.

Citywide Bicycle Infrastructure Program, a resolution creating the e-bike grant program fund and appropriating $150,000 in existing funds from the Bicycle Infrastructure Capital Fund and Climate Action Fund, second reading

6.

Safe Routes to School Program Resolution Appropriating $229,803 for Safe Routes to School Program Non-Infrastructure Grants Second Reading 7.

Resolution to Approve Reimbursement of $285,861.38 for Buford Charlottesville Middle School Project One of Two Readings 8.

Is there a motion?

Yes.

Item seven, resolution to approve reimbursement of $285,861.

It was.

They were, they were some last minute requests for the Buford renovation that the schools requested.

It was not part of the project budget, but they had the funds and so they

appropriation of the surplus.

I know we've held off on specific allocations in part because of so much uncertainty at a federal level.

I'll say that at this moment I'm not rushing to bring a recommendation.

I was preparing, planning to talk a little bit more in the city manager's report about I am referring to it as Fed watch because of what is happening in DC with the various things that are being proposed.

We need to do some internal homework and that is underway, trying to identify what are our federal resources that are within our current budget

that are a part of our proposed budget that I'll be bringing to you on the 4th of March with the ability for us to anticipate should any of those things get interrupted what will be the plan for addressing that.

Some of it will be a matter of we can offset through what we may have so the surplus becomes a source for possibilities to do some of that.

It may lead to cutting programs.

It could ultimately require reduction in force.

that is not a statement that I want repeated in a way that people get alarmed because we know nothing at this time.

So nothing is being proposed.

But I think what I'm stating is there's urgency around the fact that there's uncertainty happening at this moment.

So I'm not rushing to bring any planned use of the surplus yet.

We are as of yesterday, I would say

finalizing the proposed budget for you.

So now I shift into preparing the message to you on the 4th of March to make sure that I can explain to you and the public what the FY26 budget looks like.

And I'm being very deliberate and a bit conservative in how I propose that to you.

There are some things that are urgent, things that we will bring to you shortly.

So we were speculating when we came up with $25 million to $30 million and I had our grants manager begin some work with the team and we have clearly identified $15 million that is in this budget this year and that is money that would spill into the next year so that is concerning that amount of money.

We never know what part of that is going to go.

We have an additional $3 million of ARC funds that were carried over into this year that are deployed for this year, this calendar year.

And if any of that were interrupted, that means activities would not happen.

So I'm trying to anticipate some of those and hoping that we have the ability to smooth some of that out should it happen.

and then we will continue to look to see if that number climbs.

But $15 million right now have clearly identified federal funds.

I know that number is not high enough because there's state money that we recognize as state that is federal and its origination.

Okay.

Second.

We're now in the City Managers Report.

So I'll finish that.

And then I'm going to turn it over to Chrissy and Kevin who are going to speak to you to not appear tone deaf.

I hear you.

in regards to the request for support of the co-op.

No commitments, as I tend to do from this seat.

I will reach out and have a further conversation.

I am engaged in the conversation twofold on Cherry Avenue.

As many of you know, the Lowbury Shelter is a big hot topic.

I tend to find myself in controversial discussions and the co-op and grocery store concept, whatever it ends up being, is of interest.

We are working on that internally, have been a part of conversations, plan to continue to support more public conversation about the option on the grocery store and the option

as it relates to the shelter.

So both of those I would love to bring forward with the recommendation.

There are ways that we can support the grocery store that won't necessarily exclusively require cash, and that's part of what I'm considering as well, so that might actually expand how we can participate.

And I meet with the Economic Development Director tomorrow morning to begin those conversations.

So I will reach out to Ms.

McDonald in a range of conversations so that I am aware of everything that I might need to know about the co-op side of things as well.

And that's what I'm going to say, and then I'm going to turn it over.

We have a quarterly financial report.

Good evening, Council.

Remy, can you pull up the report, please?

That's one, but the quarterly report first.

Thanks.

So we're here tonight to present the second quarterly report.

These are for results through December 31st.

As we talk about this, and as we've talked about the surplus tonight from some of the comments,

The one thing that we are looking at here in particular are the revenues.

And as of December 31st, approximately 45, 46% of that revenue for this fiscal year has been collected.

Excuse me, our largest tax revenues as you know are real estate and personal property tax.

Excuse me.

The general reassessment just came out in January, which indicated an overall residential value that increased about 8.6% with commercial values increasing about 6.48%.

So overall, real estate assessments were up over

at 7.74.

So one thing I want to point out to you, and we'll go to the chart next, is that this quarterly report looks very different than the quarterly reports that we've been showing you for the last two years.

In particular, you'll see that this revenue report is showing a slight revenue surplus of just over $2.4 million, or 1.13%.

of the budget.

Last year in comparison to this time, we were talking to you about a revenue surplus of $9.4 million or just a little over 4%.

You'll notice in this chart that as we've talked about, the real estate and the personal property tax revenues are up, but you will see some negatives here, which is an unusual thing.

We have not seen this for quite a while.

Both the lodging and meals tax, despite tax increases in 25, are

both trending down.

In addition our sales tax is weakening or excuse me is below our budget projection and and then there's a slight decrease to the cigarette tax as well.

So those decreases are actually driving what we have sort of been talking about is what I'm going to call the return to quote

Normal after COVID.

A lot of the increases that we've been talking about during this time, we do feel like we're based on a COVID recovery.

They were unusual.

They were hard to project.

because they were largely determined by human behavior.

But what we think we are seeing now is something that's a little bit more of a modest increase from year to year, and we do not anticipate revenue surpluses like we've seen.

So last year of the $22 million surplus, a little over $14 million of that was revenue surpluses, which as this chart would indicate, we are not

projecting that this year.

So with that, expenditures seem to be tracking fairly close to budget.

We're about 58% spent at about halfway during the year.

We are still continuing to monitor vacancy savings, which was a very large contributor to also the surplus last year.

We're also going to be talking to you about some very different things we're doing to address that in the 26 budget as well.

and so with that, I'll stop.

I don't know if you had anything you wanted to add or if you all had any questions before I turn it over to Mr. Roddy.

Okay, with that, I'll turn it over to Kevin Roddy.

All right, good evening.

Thank you for having me.

Always a pleasure to be before you.

I was asked to give a little bit of economic commentary, and I wanted to start out by saying I'm not an economist.

So a very, very difficult job to be one.

But what I'm hopeful of helping you all with is just giving a little perspectives on the news out there.

And there's certainly, obviously, a lot of news.

Sam said it best, uncertainty is the word of the time that we're in.

When we look at the overall themes out there, it's just a really difficult time to project where the economy is going to go with the new policies, the changes to trade, regulation, fiscal spending.

It's really hard to project the direction in the various

and I

of COVID, really unusual times for everyone.

When we looked nationally, I looked at a recent report done by Weldon Cooper projecting this and what they're seeing is what they're projecting is that the gross domestic product

is going to

Certainly, the potential for the reduction in the federal workforce, they echo in there just to be careful on how that's going to directly impact Virginia.

When we look at Virginia, we're in a little bit better position than the rest of the nation.

The expectation is that GDP will

track that of the nation at a growth rate of 2.4%.

Inflation will be a little bit less, which is favorable, but job growth in Virginia will also slow.

Hopefully, and the projection is that the unemployment rate will be lower than the national average, but there will still be pockets out there.

In terms of how this can potentially impact municipalities, there's a couple things we're advising our clients to keep a really close eye on.

The first one is the potential government shutdown.

The debt ceiling was reinstated on January 2nd of this year at

at $36.1 trillion.

And when we say trillion, that's 12 zeros behind the 36.

Massive number there.

It hadn't really, people haven't felt that impact yet because the Treasury has been spending cash on hand to get us to this point.

But there's the potential for

government shut down in February of this or in March of this year in the next month or two.

And if they're in action taken to either suspend or raise the debt ceiling from where it is, the potential does exist of

and

It's going to be a political battle and so hopefully we don't get to that point.

Currently 13% of the U.S.

budget is spent on debt service payments, interest payments, 13% of our overall budget.

So this is a massive

Michael Payne

are all

The Congress is looking at to potential close the reconciliation gap between the 2017 Tax Cuts Act actually expires at the end of this year and so decisions have to be made on that.

The President wants the tax rates to

stay where they are, but they have to come to some sort of agreement to close the gap on that.

So that would be very troubling for municipalities all across the U.S.

Instead of us being able to issue taxis-empt rates, it would raise our interest rates about a third of, you know, one and a half times currently where we are.

currently.

So that's something that we're closely watching.

Other areas, the pending tariffs on such things as steel, could that raise our cost of construction and get embedded in our CIP?

Certainly something we want to look at, the continued inflationary pressures on your budgets as we're working through that.

And as you've heard a couple times tonight,

The increasing property values and, you know, putting the pressure on citizens.

So there's a lot out there that is currently being faced.

In terms of our annual issuance, this is an interest rate chart of last year.

You can see it bounced around.

Last summer we did a bond sale in August.

We timed the market well at that point.

We got a cost of borrowing at about 3.15%.

Since then, interest rates have gone up a little bit, but the forecast is for

Currently, hopefully the Federal Reserve and the overall interest rate environment will improve slightly through the year.

We're expecting another bond sale this summer, so we're hoping for lower interest rates when that comes along.

But if I can leave you with one thing, just continue to carefully monitor your budget, be cautious.

I know we had a

a large surplus.

These are difficult to, budgets are done so far in advance.

It's difficult to plan there, but all expectations are that it's going to be a much more, you know, slope growth than we've seen in the past.

That's a great question.

It's just, you know, I think all, you know, as a local government all you can do is watch and react and, you know, try to, the timing is difficult because the new administration, all this is coming out at the same time you're trying to

So I'm curious is

How is Charlottesville position with other cities you may work with?

You don't have to name the cities.

City.

If they eliminated tax exemption for municipalities, that applies to hospitals, universities, UVA gets the bar at tax exempt interest rates, state government, that would

You know, instead of the chart I showed you earlier of last summer, we borrowed at 3.15%.

We would be more just under 5%.

So that's real interest dollars that it would impact you.

You know, it's getting a lot of push.

The Congress is aware of this.

The GFOA, the government finance officers are making

of people aware that it's just basically passing the cost down to the localities.

Right, but just in general, is Charlottesville pretty much in the same boat as others?

I mean, we may be a little bit better because we have a little surplus, but it's not anything unique as far as you see what's going on.

I would say yes.

I would say you all are in a very similar position.

The report that Chrissy gave, people are seeing that same things.

You know, and trying to really digest it, like it feels like, you know, everything is still going strong.

Why is sales tax off significantly?

Why is transient occupancy?

Why are meals?

What behaviors are changing?

And so

Brian or Lloyd, do you have anything?

No, I appreciate it.

That was very insightful.

Thank you.

Michael, do you have anything else?

No, thank you.

Thank you for your assistance.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Sam?

I could say a lot, but I'm not.

That was a sobering presentation.

I hope it landed the way it should because it means we have serious work ahead as the world changes.

And that's what's happening.

So, was that kind of the combination of your city manager report and quarterly update?

I just want to make sure.

It's a public hearing for an ordinance for a temporary area of easement for the verb.

In Charlottesville, it's a PUD at 409 Stadium.

Road.

Yeah, great.

Follow that.

City Council, Mayor, you'll be holding a public hearing tonight for a temporary aerial easement for construction of the VIRV, which is PUD at Stadium Emmett in JPA.

This is a five year, up to five year temporary easement to allow construction.

This is the location of the site.

I think we're all familiar with.

And then there's a corresponding plat that goes with the D that shows the location of the three cranes.

These, again, are temporary.

This is a large building, 12 stories.

And so the cranes are needed to construct the building and they will swing over public right of way.

And so that is the reason for the temporary aerial easement.

Again, you're going to hold a public hearing, so you'll need to gavel into a public hearing, hear from the public.

You'll can close your public hearing, and this is an ordinance, so you can either take no action, move it to consent for your next meeting.

You could waive that, as you've done in the past, with certain ordinances, and take action tonight.

With that, I can answer any questions.

Yes, thank you.

No, just over city right of way, so not over any private

residents.

Anything where the crane would impact aerial areas, they would need permission from you.

If they went over a private property, they'd need permission from the private property.

Same with UVA.

I'm just curious whether there is some sort of standard

for folks doing cranes like that.

I don't have a no hunter with the construction crews online.

Is it likely that

This is not so much for that as it'd be just lifting material, kind of like a counterweight within the construction site, but needing to swing it over the right of way.

As far as I'm aware, there's no plans to shut right of way.

for unloading trucks.

Correct.

Mainly, yeah, mainly for the ballast as they're moving materials within the site.

Any other questions or comments?

If not,

from counselors that open up the public hearing.

You may have answered the question already.

Could you put the plaque back on again that has the picture of where the cranes are going to swing around?

Because we live right there, right?

Montabella Circle.

It even has our name on it.

So yeah, I'm Ellen Contini-Morafa from 225 Montabella.

So the question that we have is, so if the cranes are going to be carrying building material and heavy stuff, when they swing across the roads, the roads are going to be closed off during those periods or exactly

Yeah, so if you can finish all your questions and comments and what take it is.

The other question is just about the hours of operation, but we're guessing that they will be within the hours that the construction is already going on.

So we'll see if there's other comments.

And Matthew, kind of, if you could kind of summarize when you come back up, that would be great.

Anyone else would like to speak on this matter?

OK, Matthew, if you can respond.

Matt, did you say that the construction manager or someone is online?

Yes, guys, I'm here.

Awesome.

I can address the loads over the public right of way.

That will not happen.

We do have stadium road close that connection between stadium and Emmett.

We're going to do most of our loading there, as in picking loads off of trucks and things of that nature.

But other than that, when it comes to swinging loads, loads will be swung over our property, as in the property that the development is happening on.

And who was that again?

My name is Hunter Klein.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments on this before we take action?

First of all, are there any other public comments before I close the public hearing?

Okay, I'm going to close the public hearing.

I'm inclined to support this.

I just feel like I have to ask the question.

Are there any safety concerns?

There's not any real safety concerns.

We've done this in the past.

McIntyre is a good example.

I feel standard.

OK.

I did.

I did.

Sorry.

Second.

Sorry, I didn't mean to say what I said.

No, I think being on the next agenda would be fine.

So it would be on the consent agenda at the next meeting.

I don't think it would seem like it would be supportive of that.

In the written report, this... I would just, like I always like to add for the community, this is the Land Use and Environmental Planning Committee, which is the only body for coordination between Albemarle County, the University of Virginia,

and Charlottesville City Government.

And for the activity from the summer through December, we've received a less than one page report which contains no meeting minutes for any of the meetings.

These are meetings that we as elected officials are not allowed to attend nor are the media.

And that is the entirety of the coordination between the University of Virginia and our local governments.

With no other business, they have a motion for adjournment.

So moved.

Second.

Second, can we vote?