City Council Meeting   4/7/2025

Keena, you ready?

I call the Charlottesville April 7, 2025 City Council meeting to order.

Council Oschrin?

Here.

Yes, I'm sure he may show up.

Very nice to see all of you in person.

I'm usually watching from the virtual world.

I'm here to speak to the public notice for the real property tax hearing that was scheduled for tonight.

On Thursday evening, April 3rd of this year, after 8 p.m., it was brought to the attention of the city attorney's office that there may be a problem with the notice of public hearing related to the real property tax rate.

On Friday morning, the city attorney's office began working with city staff to understand the public notice process that had been undertaken.

By Friday afternoon, the city attorney's office had collaborated with the city clerk, the city manager's office and other city staff and determined that there was indeed a failure to timely post notice of public hearing in a prominent public location at which notices are regularly posted.

Virginia Code Section 58.1-3321C requires that such notice be published in a newspaper of general circulation in the city and that that notice be published in a prominent public location at which notices are regularly posted.

in the building where the governing body conducts its business, i.e.

City Hall in this case.

And that notice must be posted in both places at least seven days prior to a public hearing regarding increases to the real property tax rate.

By Friday, that same Friday afternoon, last Friday, a corrective course of action was in place and that course of action was approved by the city manager.

The corrective course of action is that the real property tax rate public hearing scheduled for tonight will be removed from tonight's agenda.

Anyone who wishes to speak tonight on the issue will still be permitted to do so, so that they are not inconvenienced by having set aside the time to be heard.

But the city will republish the notice of public hearing both in the daily progress and in the publicly prominent place

Second.

Can we vote?

Thank you.

The motion passes 5-0.

Thank you all so much for coordinating to correcting that.

The meeting will be divided into three sections.

The first one will be a work session to hear and discuss presentations that do not require a council vote, followed by a closed session.

Good evening, Councilors and members of the public.

Tonight we're going to be sharing with you the draft presentation.

I have

been I would say a long awaited draft presentation that we hopefully will be able to have ready to be dispersed to the public at large.

But really just to speak to the idea that ADA is important to the city government.

We have not done everything that we needed to do in the past and our goal is to correct that.

And as we are having internal conversations, the focus that has come from me specifically has been that we are trying to achieve a culture of compliance.

and to ensure that we are doing everything in our best effort to get our ADA issues resolved and to make sure that going forward as we build infrastructure and do various things that we're always doing it with the mindset that there are always individuals who may need us to go a step further and our goal will be to ensure that we can do that.

Good afternoon Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council and City Manager.

It's my pleasure to be able to introduce you to our ADA team here in the City of Charlottesville as well as to Precision Infrastructure Management who is our consultant for this work.

We are very excited to get feedback not only from you all but also from members of the community on this draft plan.

As Mr. Sanders stated, it is something that has been a long time in the making.

and while certainly unfortunately barriers were found, I believe that you all will be pleased with the process that our consultant engaged in to find those barriers and then with this team's dedication to ensuring that we move as quickly through remediating those barriers as possible to make sure that this is really and truly a community where everyone thrives.

Hi, everybody.

Before we get started with the presentation, I really want to say my goal as your ADA coordinator is to make sure and I provide you as a city council as well as community with information on our efforts to update the ADA transition plan.

In order to do that, I want to start by providing a bit of groundwork to make sure everyone has access to knowing what the ADA is and why this council is taking such steps to show it matters.

I will go over briefly steps which led us to this plan and I'll hand it over to our consultant and to show you the technical findings that our teams will work on.

Finally, I want to step back and ask for your feedback from the diocese, but also share with the community how they can give feedback before the draft plan before we come before you seeking a firmination with our plan and our plan's results.

Our agenda is we're gonna go a brief of the Americans with Disabilities Act, why does it matter?

Then we'll go through Charlie's presentation, and then we'll go through our next steps, our continuous feedback, incorporating the feedback into our final document.

The ADA, what is the ADA?

You have five titles of the ADA.

You have, one is Title I, which is employment.

That applies to everybody.

It's enforced by the Department of Justice and the EEOC.

You have Title II, which is local government or state government.

This is what we are, we're a local government, Title II, we fall under.

Title III is like your businesses, corporations.

Title IV is telecommunications, which is enforced by the FCC.

And Title V is your miscellaneous provisions.

It's code section 4088.

Title II prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities.

And it applies to all local state governments, subdivisions of state and local government as well.

When it was passed,

It was passed by George Bush in 1991.

It was to make sure there was equal access in government.

So people at that time were being discriminated on the basis of disability.

They weren't being given the opportunity to participate in local government or state government.

They weren't able to participate in local programs, programs offered by recreation.

Your sidewalks had no curb ramps.

They couldn't get over sidewalks.

So people were having trouble.

So the ADA was passed to alleviate those disadvantages.

Administration process.

So we have to have a self-evaluation.

The city did self-evaluation transition plan in 2013.

2013, when we did it, we saw barriers.

We found barriers.

But at that time, the city didn't really act on it.

So we updated our transition plan.

And so we're providing an updated transition plan with barriers so people with disabilities have more access in our government.

And we want that for the city of Charlottesville.

It's a disability.

Disability rights are civil rights.

The ADA is civil rights legislation.

It's very important and it's very broad.

Disabilities come in tons.

There's invisible disabilities.

People have depression, anxiety, fall under, invisible disabilities.

People that are visually impaired, people that are deaf, people that have ADHD all fall under and are protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Transition plan, it's required by federal law.

If you have 50 more employees, you have to do in a transition plan.

It's federal compliance.

Everybody has to have a transition plan.

If you have 50 more, you have to act on your transition plan.

We can't just say, hey, we did a transition plan.

Federal government, here it is.

You have to act on it once it's passed.

That's the key.

We keep doing it, we keep upgrading, and it's a living document.

And as long as we do it and we're acting on what we find are our barriers and correcting barriers, what a barrier is, is something to prevent somebody with a disability from participating in a program.

Sidewalks are considered a program under the ADA.

So if somebody's having trouble navigating sidewalks, we have to correct those issues.

And it's a strategy to make sure we fix barriers.

We prioritize, we correct them, and we keep moving on and making Charlottesville a more accessible city.

Scope, what the transition plan did, we reviewed our sidewalks, our pedestrian routes, our public buildings, our transit facilities, and our parks and recreation that was required by law.

self-evaluation.

Charles will speak more than that.

We came up with something called the maturity model, which we can constantly continue to review all of our programs and services so we can continue to be updated on new laws.

I'm sorry sir, did you say maturity model?

Why does it matter?

Because we want Charlottesville to be a city where everyone can thrive.

Why does it matter?

11.1% per census data, somebody in Charlottesville has a disability.

Older adults, people with temporary injuries benefit as well.

And it promotes equal access.

And that's the big thing.

You want equal access.

And as people get older, typically when you get older, your knees, you have trouble bending, standing.

That falls under the ADA.

You're now a protected person.

And as our population ages, more and more people will get a disability under federal law.

Economic benefits.

It makes us more attractive.

If we're an accessible city, if you're walkable, more people will want to come and more people want to visit.

That helps generate revenue and tax revenue because people will want to come to our city.

It prevents legal action as well.

You don't want to get sued by the Department of Justice, but mainly it boosts our economy.

It aligns with our climate action goals.

If you have a more walkable city, it allows people not to drive as much.

It helps people bike.

It gives people the ability to move around and be more accessible.

We've also upgraded, looks at our bus shelters to make sure they're accessible so people who want to use public transportation have a more accessible route.

Makes safer schools, school routes.

When kids are walking to school you want a safe route for your child.

You don't want sidewalks that are busted up.

You don't want sidewalks that have panels coming up where it can be a trip hazard.

It encourages people with disabilities and youth with disabilities, their independence.

It reinforces our comprehensive plan.

It advances our citywide diversity, equity and inclusion goals, and it supports smart growth and resilient cities initiatives.

Good afternoon, everyone.

Thank you for having us.

As mentioned, my name is Charlie Zold.

I'm a managing partner for Precision Infrastructure Management, and I was the project manager for this project.

So thanks again for having me today.

I'm looking forward to going through the findings from the transition plan to discuss how we can help you implement these in the future.

So who is Precision Infrastructure Management?

We're experts in ADA infrastructure planning.

We typically work for public sector organizations.

Precision Infrastructure Management and our sister companies have worked for municipalities across Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, New York.

We're currently in the process of performing the ADA transition plan for the city of Pittsburgh, Rochester, New York, Wake Forest, North Carolina, and many others across the mid-Atlantic and greater mid-Atlantic region.

We work with cities on both the assessment and the implementation, so not only what do you need to do but also how do you do it, which is a really important step because obviously any city in America is going to find lots of barriers.

It takes a special city to actually address those barriers, so we like to work with a city all the way through the process.

So what did we find for the city of Charlottesville?

So we did a self-assessment for the sidewalks, the facilities, parks, we looked at the website, and we also looked at department policies and programmatic access review.

For the sidewalks, we assessed 167 miles of right-of-way.

We found 48,038 barriers.

For the 42 facilities that we assessed, we found a little under 2,700 barriers.

For the parks, just over 1,000.

and with the digital and department programmatic access, I'll go a little deeper into the findings there.

One thing I always want to note here is that the sheer number of barriers can often seem overwhelming and surprising and I just encourage you to not think of it that way.

It's extremely typical, especially for an older city where infrastructure has been built over many decades.

It's extremely typical to find a fair number of barriers.

The key is

implementing is coming up with a plan to remediate those barriers in a consistent way so that you're moving towards greater accessibility over the years.

A little deeper dive of assessing each part of the self-assessment process.

So for the sidewalk, first we work with obviously the city of Charlottesville, we look at which sidewalks we want to be assessing, there are some private sidewalks, there are some sidewalks that would be under the UVA jurisdiction, some sidewalks that might just be over the city line for instance, trying to determine what is actually your responsibility to assess and to take care of.

At that point we assigned a field technician who was trained in the ADA to physically assess every single square inch of those sidewalks.

So imagine 167 miles, you know, we had a field assessment technician who would walk each one of those miles taking detailed notes, taking detailed information about what he or she was finding on those sidewalks.

What were we looking at?

We were looking at the curb ramps, which is obviously one really important piece of a sidewalk assessment.

We're looking at obstructions in the right of way.

So an obstruction would be something that is preventing someone from traversing the sidewalk.

So a perfect example would be a telephone pole that was put in the center of a sidewalk or a mailbox or something like that.

So you have an otherwise compliant sidewalk.

However, there's this obstruction that's preventing someone from walking correctly through that path.

We also looked at vegetative barriers, for instance, so if you have a tree overgrown, a shrub that's overgrown, again you have a perfectly fine sidewalk there, but there's something preventing someone from accessing that sidewalk appropriately.

Accessible pedestrian signals were assessed at the start of the project.

although then it became evident that City of Charlottesville was in the process of replacing pedestrian signals throughout the city, which is a great step towards greater accessibility.

We also looked at vertical height displacements.

I'll pause here to talk about vertical height displacements because this is your number one barrier class.

Vertical height displacement, also known as a trip hazard, also known as sidewall heaving, everyone has different names for what we're talking about here.

Really what we're talking about is

where two sidewalk panels are no longer flush with one another.

So a tree root might have pushed one up.

The sediment underneath the panel might have settled, causing what's called a trip hazard, which is dangerous not just for people with disabilities, but people without disabilities as well.

Anybody who has walked on sidewalks, you're familiar with these, even if you didn't know what they were called.

Yeah, I didn't know it was called that.

You know, it's a fancy term for a simple thing.

Yeah.

It's something that you stub your toe on.

Yeah.

So the reason I pause here is because a great portion of your barriers that we find are these vertical height displacements.

They're extremely common.

Any sidewalk, even if it was poured in the last few years, it's just the nature of concrete infrastructure with sediment underneath.

So VHDs were an important part of our assessment and again we assessed for those on all 167 miles of sidewalk which is I think important note best practices for ADA transition planning

often only call for the assessment of curb ramps, for instance, or even the assessment of curb ramps within a downtown region.

So I think Charlottesville should be commended for doing a full assessment on a full 167 miles of sidewalk to get a true global view of the barriers that you're dealing with, which will help you come up with a truly comprehensive plan for the future when it comes to remediating these barriers.

So again, 167 miles, a little over 48,000 barriers.

That picture there is just the sidewalk network that we assessed.

So we worked with the city on the front end, we received the sidewalk layer, which is just a map denoting which sidewalks are Charlottesville owned sidewalks.

A little deeper dive into the data now.

So those 48,000 barriers, how are they broken down?

You can see, again, 27,000 barriers are those vertical height displacements.

It's a little over probably about 65% to 70% of those barriers are those vertical height displacements.

The curb ramps, just under 2,900.

We also looked at cross slope issues.

So a cross slope issue is the slope of a sidewalk perpendicular to the direction of travel.

So as you're walking, if the sidewalk is canted towards the street or away from the street, if you're not using a wheelchair, it might be an annoyance, but not necessarily a safety issue.

Exactly, yes.

So we specifically called out, there's crossover issues in general we assessed for, but we also specifically called out issues caused by driveways.

And the reason we do that is

It's not always the same remediation tactic for every single barrier.

So when we're collecting our data, we always like to be thinking about the next step.

How are you going to fix this?

So in certain situations, it might be the city's responsibility to fix it.

In certain situations, it might be the homeowner's responsibility.

It might be the business owner's responsibility.

So we've broken out the data in such a way that you can make that determination after we've collected the data.

Just to go a little bit into the terminology here, what you're looking at.

Crosswalks, self-explanatory, it's exactly what it sounds like.

Curb ramps, again, same there.

Driveway crosswalks we've discussed.

Areas with no curb ramps.

So we assessed for curb ramp compliance using a 16-point assessment, which just means we're looking, are there detectable warning maps, which if you're not familiar, they're often yellow, they have what are called truncated domes.

So do they have those truncated domes there?

Is it the correct width?

Is the running slope of the ramp correct?

So the running slope is the slope of the ramp in the direction of travel.

Is the cross slope correct?

Are the flare slopes on the side of the ramp correct?

Exactly, yeah.

So we call out the curb ramps.

The curb ramps that are noted here are curb ramps that are not compliant.

If there's no sidewalk, there's no responsibility for the city to provide compliant sidewalks.

So not necessarily having a sidewalk isn't necessarily an accessibility gap.

We do call out gaps in footpaths as well, so in that situation, for instance, if our field assessment technician is walking on a sidewalk and it abruptly stops, and then there's a path worn through the grass,

Yeah, exactly.

Doesn't mean you shouldn't consider putting sidewalks in the future but it's not specifically considered an ADA barrier.

Okay, thank you.

Obstructions I've noted before, we broke these out into different categories, not here for this presentation but within the report itself.

Again, ground obstructions, telephone poles, mailboxes, anything that is literally within the ground that is preventing someone from traversing that sidewalk.

Vertical obstructions would be something like a signpost that's not high enough so that

someone's walking and isn't able to see the signpost they might actually injure themselves there and then vegetative as well which is exactly what it sounds like a shrub, a bush, a tree that has grown into the right-of-way that is preventing someone from walking or potentially injuring someone again the reason we do it that way is to help you make decisions on the back end how you're going to remediate some of these issues the cost for remediating moving a telephone pole out of the right-of-way is obviously much higher than

Removing a shrub or sending a letter to a homeowner and asking them to maintain their vegetation more neatly.

And that's actually something I should mention is that there's an additional scoping for this project that we're working on where we're going to do an additional dive into that obstruction data to further segment it out among telephone poles and other types of obstructions.

Again, because there's this wide variance in cost for what it takes to remediate a telephone pole versus what it takes to remediate something like a mailbox.

So we're trying to drill down a little deeper into that data to again provide you more actionable data for future remediation Demolition and replacement

What this means, these are sidewalk panels that are so degraded that they're no longer functional, so significant cracking, spalling, which is when the top of the panel starts to deteriorate, heaving, where it's the sediment underneath is completely gone for the most part and there's a big void underneath.

These are areas where there's no alternative maintenance activity for remediating the barriers.

And I'll talk a little bit more about AMA's alternative maintenance activities in a few slides here.

So demolition replacement panels these are again areas that are completely degraded need to be replaced you just need to put new concrete new sidewalk there for it to be accessible for not just people with disabilities but people without disabilities as well and then looking at sidewalks

Sidewalks that are less than 4 feet, Pro WAG requirements, so let me talk a little bit about Pro WAG, Public Right of Way Accessibility Guidelines.

These are the current best practice guidelines for cities when it comes to ADA accessible sidewalks.

They will soon be adopted by the Department of Justice as enforceable standards.

They have gone through many steps already to be standards.

The DOT, for instance, the federal DOT has adopted it as the standard.

And all this is, is a slight update on the ADA 2010 standards.

So the ADA 2010 standards were not fully designed to be for sidewalks.

They were really more for facilities and parks.

So, how do you get from a parking lot into a facility, for instance?

What's the width of your sidewalk, you know, on that pathway?

The PRO-AG guidelines are specifically designed for sidewalks, so they contemplate things that were not contemplated in the 2010 standards, which will help

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Really, any day now, you could be in a situation where that right-of-way data is no longer actionable.

So, the reason I bring that up is because 2010 standards call for 3-feet sidewalks, whereas Pro-WAG standards call for a minimum of 4-feet sidewalks.

So we noted 313 instances where you have sidewalks that are less than four feet.

I should note that in this case, when I say instance, it's talking about a run of sidewalks.

So not just a single sidewalk panel, we're talking about 50, 100 feet, 200 feet potentially.

Ponding issues, this is where you have water within the right of way, so at the bottom of the curb ramp for instance, very frequently you have an issue where the crown of the street is high so that the water doesn't sit there, and then you have the low point of the curb ramp, and of course

Gravity does what gravity does and the water will settle there.

So this is a significant barrier for somebody in a wheelchair.

If the pond is large enough, they physically can't make it through and at the very least it's an extreme nuisance because as you're wheeling through that pond, your wheels are getting wet, your hands are getting wet and it's not clean water.

It's a serious nuisance and we've noted those where we can.

We noted 23 ponding locations.

There's almost certainly more throughout the city.

The only challenge with collecting ponding locations is that it's somewhat dependent on the weather.

You can look for indications that there's a pond at a certain location, sediment, you know, sand being built up there, leaves during the fall.

However, it's not always 100% clear where there is and is not a pond after a rain event.

So this is just an indication that there is this ponding information.

It's an opportunity to drill down further in future years to determine more of where these locations are.

And the way to do that is sort of low tech.

You wait for a rainstorm and you drive around looking for ponds.

So just some pictures to put this into context.

Top left there, you have a picture showing both vegetation and a missing curb ramp.

Bottom left there, a missing curb ramp at the bottom of that sidewalk.

Middle top, you have both instances of ponding on the right there, but also a driveway cross slope.

It can be a little difficult to see sometimes on the picture, but there's a pretty significant cross slope there towards the road.

At the bottom picture, same situation, both ponding and acroslope issue.

Yes.

Thanks.

Yep.

And at less than four feet, it should be noted that the curb is not included in that measurement.

The curb is independent.

So total cost.

Total cost for remediating these barriers is about $125 million.

It should be noted off the top that this is an estimate.

It could be higher, it could be lower.

Generally what we're looking at is typically what you're paying for services right now, typically what's available on the open market.

and trying to determine generally what's going to cost you over the years.

No one is expecting that you're going to fix this all next year.

That's an important consideration.

I want everyone to maybe take a deep breath, you know, at risk of using a horrible cliché.

An ADA transition plan is about the journey, not necessarily about the destination.

It's a process.

You identify these barriers, you identify these issues, and you develop a process for moving towards greater compliance.

The key is to identify these goals and then to act on the goals.

As Paul said, that's the important part, is you're consistently making progress, you're consistently putting budget towards these issues, you're consistently focusing on areas of high risk for people with disabilities and people without disabilities.

So I mentioned alternative maintenance activities earlier and I'll drill a little deeper into what I'm talking about now.

Alternative maintenance activity is something that is not just demolition and replacement for remediating a barrier.

So as I mentioned before, if you have a sidewalk panel that is completely deteriorated, you need to take it out, pour new concrete.

That's sort of the classic traditional method for handling an issue.

There are alternative maintenance activities that don't require removing concrete and putting in new concrete.

The one that we typically discuss most is called horizontal saw cutting.

This is where you use an angle grinder with a diamond blade to remove the trip hazard from a sidewalk panel.

And you do it at a 1 to 12 ADA compliant slope, which is really important.

You can use a grinder.

to remove the material, but it typically doesn't do it at a one to twelve slope and it doesn't do a few other things that make it an ADA compliant repair.

So we recommend using this horizontal saw cutting to remove these vertical height displacements.

Again, because these vertical height displacements are your number one barrier,

and the alternative is traditional demolition replacement, which is a huge driver of total cost.

So the chart here on the right shows the cost if you were going to use traditional methods for removing those vertical height displacements and the demolition replacement panels.

It's about $67 million.

If you use horizontal saw cutting instead of traditional demolition replacement, you save a substantial amount.

It's only $16 million.

I don't know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We highly recommend it.

Again, it's an important way to save some money.

It's ADA compliant.

Wait, sorry.

So this pie chart is saying that if we were to look at the 27,189 vertical height displacement things and

Did demo and replacement for all of them, it would be 67 million, but if we just did the grinding, it would be 16 million?

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah, so there's, and we can talk more about prioritization of course, as you're making these investments in remediating barriers, you want to strike a mix of removing what we'll call low hanging fruit, you know, stuff that you can do efficiently, cost effectively, and also tackling some of the, you know, some of the worst barriers as well at the same time.

So on the chart on the left where it says vertical height displacement,

What does that number mean?

Yes.

So this chart, we need to work on this chart and make it more clear because earlier I was getting some grief because it wasn't clear enough.

So if you look at the vertical height displacement number and the cost, it says 3.6 million.

And then you look at the demolition replacement number, the cost is 12.7 million.

What we're saying is total DNR and vertical height displacement, it will cost you $16.4 million for both of those categories.

If you were to instead use traditional demolition or replacement for the vertical height displacements as well, it would cost $67 million.

Yeah, I'm sorry it's not more clear.

Yes.

Yeah.

And then

Yeah.

The key here, that 3.6 number for vertical height displacements, we're assuming that you're going to use horizontal saw cutting.

Okay.

So for the vertical height displacement, it would cost,

3.6 million dollars for the saw part of it and 12.7 for the replacement of the ones that you couldn't saw.

So those two line items were kind of the same.

Got it, okay.

Yeah, we'll work on the chart.

Thank you.

Yeah, okay, thank you.

No, I mean there's a lot of things doing multiple jobs on that chart, so thank you.

The key takeaway here is that we highly recommend using these alternative maintenance activities to make progress with your remediation.

That's what we're trying to accomplish with that chart to show you the dramatic cost savings you're going to have if you do that.

Right now, concrete is expensive and it's only going to be more expensive.

So again, any method that doesn't involve pouring new concrete is going to be more affordable now and likely into the future.

So for this plan, we've budgeted a million dollars per year based in consultation with City of Charlottesville.

Again, one thing that's really important to note, that's not necessarily, you know, this doesn't need to be locked in for five years based on the plan.

This is just to help plan for the future.

What we're trying to show here is that based on the cost of inflation, that each year that you're at that one million dollar level amount, you're going to be going down in the amount that you can actually accomplish because every year that you're not remediating a barrier.

It's more expensive to fix in the future.

So just know that there is a cost for inaction as well based on inflation costs in the future.

Total, after these five years that we've planned for, you would have $131 million left based on these $5 million per year investment.

So that number is based on just conversations that we were having during the period of trying to get the transition plan completed.

The proposed budget includes $2 million a year.

We're working to finalize what the first year's actual amount is, because there's some question about how we pull that number together as we finalize the budget.

But absolutely in years two through five, we have $2 million set aside.

And the understanding is that the team needed time to really rally around all of this new information, this updated information.

And I would anticipate that Mr. Rudisill will be coming back and saying, OK, we figured this out.

We have our plans in place.

All other departments have been consulted.

And the number we would like to increase, to Charlie's point, is that we need to increase over the going years.

And we anticipated that in setting out on this course.

But the goal is just to try to figure out what can we actually get done in any given year.

Absolutely.

Yeah, and one thing I'll just note.

We can update this pretty easily and it's also important to note that the general mix of what you're working on each year doesn't change based on the budget.

Typically we recommend to spend some of the budget on vertical height displacement, remediation, curb ramps, demolition and replacement, vegetation,

are sort of the four main ones that we focus on to start the process.

So if you have a million you can do a certain amount of that.

If you have two million you can do more of that.

But the mix doesn't change much in the early process.

So we also reviewed facilities, did a self-assessment of facilities to see where barriers.

The pictures that we have here are just showing what the process looks like.

These are not actually from Charlottesville.

This is from City of Pittsburgh, where we had a little photo shoot for the guys.

And it involves using a two-foot level to check curb ramps, people out in the field physically, again, assessing different components of infrastructure, seeing whether it's ADA compliant.

We use a software called BlueDag.

to capture this information.

One of the things that's most difficult about ADA transition plans and something that's a huge benefit for ADA transition plans being done now as opposed to five or 10 or 15 years ago is that there are more tools for capturing some of this information.

So in the future, or I'm sorry, in the past, you might have to use an Excel spreadsheet and just sit there and put information piece by piece and try to put notes about where you're talking about and what you're talking about.

and it's a challenge.

It takes longer, it's less actionable and therefore it's usually more expensive as well.

Bluedag is the industry leading software for capturing this information.

It's great for capturing the information in the field and it's also great for creating these PDF and accessible reports that can be handed off to people within the city of Charlottesville with very detailed explanations of what we found, why it's not compliant, how it's prioritized, whether it should be done year one or year five,

and then also the expected cost of the remediation.

So we looked at 42 facilities across the city of Charlottesville and we found just under 2,700 barriers.

Again, completely in line with our experience looking at other cities.

What these barriers are, so accessible routes, this is the pathway typically throughout a facility or to a facility and throughout the facility.

So that could include the sidewalk on the exterior of the facility.

It could also include the interior of a facility if you're trying to get to like a tax window or something.

Is there something that's preventing someone from getting to that tax window?

Knee clearance issues, or typically if there's somewhere where someone with a wheelchair would try to come up to a picnic table or a table outside, would they be able to physically wheel under that table and access the table itself?

Parking, exactly what it sounds like.

Are there accessible spaces?

Are they designed correctly?

Do you have enough?

Are there fan spaces that sign is correct?

There's a whole host of things that we look for in the parking.

Toilets, bathing rooms, saunas, not so many saunas I don't believe, but toilets, bathrooms, are the stalls the correct width, are the sinks designed correctly?

For instance, one of the things we often see is the pipes underneath the sink aren't insulated.

So if someone is using a wheelchair and they go up to the sink and the pipes aren't insulated, they can burn themselves.

So we're checking for things like that.

Reach ranges, can someone physically reach something that they need to reach?

This would be paper towels in the bathroom or paper towels in the kitchen or something like that.

Counters are actually separate.

It's one of these things where sometimes things overlap a little bit or seem to overlap a little bit and you just do your best to stay consistent throughout how you're recording things.

That's the key component here.

So just some pictures here showing.

Over here on the left, this fountain, one, the fountain itself is probably non-compliant.

I would guess, just based on the picture, that it's also creating an accessible route issue, although I can't say without seeing the left there.

The sink in this situation, it's probably too high.

So that's an issue where someone in a wheelchair wouldn't be able to access that sink.

The reach range, it's for the toilet paper there.

Someone might not be able to access the toilet paper when they're on the toilet in that situation, so that's a barrier.

The transfer platform here is not flush with the ground, so someone using a wheelchair wouldn't be able to access that particular feature within that playground.

And then the seating, where it's placed and how it's placed, wouldn't be considered accessible.

So looking at costs here.

Generally, doors and gates is your number one cost feature here.

One thing I do want to talk about that's really important when it comes to the facility costing.

The right-of-way costing is, you know, there's certain well-known costs associated with, for instance, pouring new concrete, putting in a new curb ramp.

There's obviously variability, but you can drill down with some specificity and say, okay, this is going to be generally within the ballpark of what we're looking for.

It's much more difficult to do that with facilities because there are a lot more variables about what it takes to remediate a facility.

So some of the limitations of the data that you should be aware of.

One, there are certain things within the data where we note it as capital investment.

And what we mean by that is it needs further study pretty much.

So a good example would be if we went into a park and there's a standalone bathroom in that park that was built in 1970.

and that bathroom physically cannot be made to be ADA compliant.

It's not the right size.

It's not the right configuration.

The sink, bathroom stall cannot be moved in such a way as to be ADA compliant.

The door can't be made wider to be ADA compliant.

Really what you need to do is just build a new bathroom.

Tear it down.

Start fresh.

That's a situation where we don't even try to give you the cost for that because it's so variable.

It involves design costs.

It involves labor costs.

It involves many other costs.

So the reason I bring it up is because as you're making your budget decisions, you should be aware that this is really a four of where it's going to cost, and that very likely it's going to be significantly more expensive in general.

Another limitation, this is for material cost, not for labor cost.

And it's the same situation here.

Labor cost is incredibly variable.

Sometimes it's done in-house.

Sometimes it's done by a contractor.

Depends on the season, depends on the year, depends on the

So, extremely difficult to drill down on that labor rather than try to kind of guess and give you a number that's a little bit misleading.

We just take it out, we give you the material cost, and then let your team make determinations in the future about how you want to augment that number to get closer to the actual cost.

So typically, the rule of thumb, just so you have a general sense, is that labor is 100% of materials.

So you can just take these numbers, multiply them by two, and that gets you a little bit closer to the true final number.

But again, each piece is so independent of the other pieces.

There's so many different variables.

For the, um, there's overlap here with the accessible routes and the sidewalks that you mentioned.

No.

So if the sidewalk from, let's say, the parking lot to the facility, that wouldn't be included in the right-of-way assessment.

That's considered accessible route for the facility.

Same situation for the park.

So it's not double-counted facility, park, and right-of-way.

Right-of-way is its own separate thing.

So parks assessment, again, just a reminder of how we collected this information.

Same exact situation for parks, same categories for the most part.

30 parks, we found 1,029 barriers throughout the network.

Very similar breakdown to what we found in the facilities and same explanations for the most part.

So just some pictures here.

So on the left, an accessible route issue.

So there's a feature.

In this situation, it looks like the feature is maybe a pond at the bottom there.

So if somebody with a disability wanted to access that feature of the park, there's no way for them to make it there based on the fact that it's only serviced by these stairs.

Knee clearance, again it's a little hard to see in the picture there, but that's a picnic table and it has a bench sort of around, wrapping around the table, so somebody with a wheelchair wouldn't be able to access that picnic table.

Access aisle in this situation, there's a number of things that could be causing barriers there.

The width might be off, it also might be too extreme of a cross slope or a running slope, so that if someone was in a wheelchair, was exiting their vehicle, they wouldn't be able to do so in a safe manner.

Pipe insulation I mentioned, you can see it there in the picture second from the right.

It's a pipe underneath the sink where there's potentially hot water that somebody in a wheelchair wouldn't know that it's hot, could burn themselves because it's not insulated.

And then on the right there, paper towels, you can see somebody in a wheelchair wouldn't be able to reach up and get a paper towel there because the reach would be too great.

Breakdown of the cost for the parks, same stipulations apply to the cost here as apply to the facilities.

Can I ask a question?

So the piece about not including labor is pretty remarkable to me.

Would it make sense to like have an asterisk or something on this to say material only?

In the report itself it's noted.

So it's absolutely noted in the report how we determine the costing for each one of these items and the limitations.

And again, one thing that's important to note is this is your transition plan.

Obviously, we're your consultant, and we're here to tell you how we think it should be done and tell you what the best practices are.

But if it's more helpful to estimate labor and include it in the cost, we can absolutely do that.

The key here is to give you a document that's helpful for you and also for the future as well.

Yeah, I guess I'd look to our team that's going to end up doing this work.

We're going to need some sort of document that we can go around with and say, you know, this is the all-in number.

Yeah, I mean, I've found that, you know, the studies I've been involved with that if it's so far out, and if you include the labor, you know, that cost is going to

changed so much and it kind of gives you a false if you kind of know from the beginning that it doesn't include the labor.

Absolutely.

And again, the key here is the transition plan is meant as a guide.

It's not meant to lock you into the future into any specific, you know, must do actions.

It's not meant to give you the exact budget that you need to account for in 2035.

It's a guide.

This is where you are today.

It's a snapshot in time for where Charlottesville is from an assessment and accessibility perspective.

That's for right-of-way only.

And that is the all-in estimate for right-of-way.

As I mentioned before, there's a few less moving parts for right-of-way.

You know, it's more standardized.

Dollar per square foot, exactly.

And it's easier to bake that into design costs can be baked into there's just fewer moving parts.

You know, you don't need to move plumbing and electrical and things like that necessarily.

Again, you know, as with any estimate, you should know the limitations of the estimate.

But we're able to get a little closer to what we think is the truth on the right of way.

So in addition to, we've been talking a lot about physical accessibility barriers.

There's more than just physical accessibility barriers considered under the ADA.

A digital assessment is also a really important component.

This is getting more important every single day.

There's more regulation coming out about digital accessibility.

This is something that I think is going to be sort of the wave of the future.

If you want to put it that way, it's sort of the next frontier for accessibility.

Many websites, it's the same exact situation as with the built environment.

Websites were built using standards from before, before accessibility was considered an issue.

Therefore, many of the websites that were built are done so in a way that is not accessible.

PDF is the same situation.

So we did a website accessibility, a digital assessment as well to see where you might have some barriers and recommend ways to move forward.

So we looked at, for a digital assessment, you don't need to assess every single page.

Typically websites are built on templates.

So templates are repeated, you know, over and over again.

So we looked at 29 different templates and 30 different documents from the website.

How we did the testing, we used WCAGM, which stands for Website Accessibility Conformance Evaluation Methodology.

So it's a best practice for how you look at these things and how you determine where you do and do not have barriers.

It involves reviewing a website, running a different software that checks for accessibility barriers.

It involves doing that on multiple different

Technology Platform, so you use a Mac, you use a PC, you use Firefox, you use Chrome to see how things play with different areas.

So the process, you start by evaluating the scope, you figure out which templates are the most useful for you to be assessing, you explore the website, you select that sample that's going to give you the best sample, you audit those pages and then you report the findings back.

So what we found, for the PDFs in particular, we found about 2.5 million barriers.

Again, I caution everybody, this is normal.

And what's important to note about website accessibility in particular is that

It's easier than physical accessibility in this manner that fixing something sort of at the root source can fix many of these barriers downstream.

So just because you have 2.5 million barriers doesn't mean you need to physically, individually fix every single one of those barriers.

What you need to do is start putting in place standards and processes to ensure that those barriers aren't repeated in the future, or you can take a document and you can have them remediated in one instance, not an individual instance.

Other findings, we found 244 other unique findings throughout the website.

Again, this is a situation where

You find your barriers, you plan for remediation.

Part of the planning for remediation can be physically or hiring someone now to make some changes to the code.

Another really important thing is, and we'll talk a little bit more about this as we get to the next few slides here, is really it's a culture situation.

So when you have a new vendor coming in, a new vendor supplying a new technology, so let's say a new tax payment application.

Part of your question is, is it accessible?

And then part of your questioning is proving that.

You know, prove to me it's accessible.

So that way when you institute it and when you roll it out to the public, there's no new barriers.

You've fixed that, you know, that particular area.

So the key here really is, you know, knowing the situation, knowing where things stand, and then making consistent decisions year over year, month over month, so that you are removing these barriers before they're ever created for future iterations of the website.

Of course that doesn't mean you shouldn't give up on remediating the website now, but it's just part of the process for moving towards greater accessibility.

I'll keep using the cliché, journey not a destination.

The key here is culture change, instituting best practices going forward to ensure that there aren't barriers to begin with.

So let me talk a little bit about the programmatic access assessment.

So a programmatic access assessment, we look at how well a city's programs, policies, services provide equitable access for individuals with disabilities.

So to use a tax payment counter as an example again.

If somebody without a disability can access that tax counter and pay their taxes there, somebody with a disability should be able to access that tax counter and pay their taxes there as well.

So if you have a policy that allows somebody without a disability to interact with

Some city government employee or anything like that, then it should be the same for somebody with a disability as well.

So the goal is to ensure all community members, including people with disabilities, can access and benefit from public programs, services, and activities.

After all, the goal is to serve all the residents of Charlottesville, not just people without disabilities.

What we're doing here with this programmatic access is we're looking at your programs, we're looking at your services, your policies, and identifying areas where people are inadvertently being prevented from accessing some of these programs, services, and policies.

So just to go a little deeper, what is a program of service?

It refers to the full range of activities, benefits, operations offered by the government entity, regardless of format or location.

So it's pretty broad.

It's a broad term we're talking about.

As Paul mentioned, sidewalks can be considered a program under the ADA.

So recreation programs, permitting process, public meetings, library services, emergency response, public information, all of it falls under this part of the ADA.

So a few things about administrative requirements that you should just be aware of.

Public notice, ensuring that accessibility information is posted across all different platforms, having an ADA coordinator like Paul with a clear role, authority, and access to resources he needs to execute on his job, and a grievance procedure so that if someone has an issue with access, they can talk to Paul, talk to someone within the city, and ask for access to something that they feel like they're being inadvertently prevented from accessing.

So recommendations here, standardized public notices, coordinator contact info citywide.

So really this is just an information type recommendation, more information, more standard information.

Adopt and promote citywide grievance form and process, again so that everybody knows, regardless of the department, where they should go and how they should present a grievance if they have one.

and then generally just continue providing staff training on ADA administrative responsibilities.

Everybody within the city government has many different responsibilities.

You have to wear many different hats.

It's really important to train as many people as possible on their responsibilities under the ADA because you never know when that person is going to be the front line for interacting with somebody with a disability who might need help accessing something.

So the broader you can disseminate this information, the more problems you can stop before they're ever started.

So a few systemic gaps identified, lack of consistent reasonable modification procedures, inconsistent effective communication policies across departments, and insufficient accessibility in emergency communications and digital content.

So recommendations, adopt a city-wide digital accessibility policy, so this will again help with

Removing or avoiding website-specific or communication-specific barriers before they're ever created.

Train staff on those reasonable modifications and communication standards.

And then develop a formal vendor and third-party compliance requirements for the future when you are working with a vendor on providing a new feature or program for the city.

So one important thing we should talk about is this idea of a maturity model.

And really what the maturity model is, is you're working to move from where you are today to the future, sort of an optimized way of acting as an organization.

So you can't

Unfortunately, you can't just wave a magic wand and be accessible.

It's a deep, consistent culture change that needs to start bottom up all the way through the organization.

And this isn't to say that Charlottesville doesn't already have lots of this good culture in place.

It's just to say that there's always more that can be done.

There's always more training that can be done.

There's always more areas to focus on.

As you can see, the ADA is a

Sprawling document with many different requirements.

Huge responsibilities, huge requirements, huge budgetary issues that you need to deal with.

So what the maturity model does is it takes what we consider to be a really wide, difficult process and tries to make it bite size so that each year, each department can learn a little bit more, do a little bit more, work towards greater accessibility.

So that's all the maturity model is.

It involves surveys that department heads will take and other members of staff will take on a yearly basis.

It involves assigning tasks to those department heads for the future.

And then those surveys year over year will track how you're moving towards greater compliance.

and in consultation with industry leaders or people who have done this across the country, our general experience, you're looking for a three to five percent improvement year over year.

So that sounds incremental, but it's actually quite dramatic if you can do that year over year.

So I think with that,

Yeah, I know some of us were asking questions as we were going along.

Lloyd, I'll start off with you.

Did you have any, you know, thank you.

Michael, you have any things?

Just like process wise, this is obviously the draft.

I believe the 21st is what we're shooting for to have a finalized adopted transition plan.

We want community feedback.

And then among the assessments that you did, I guess probably primarily for the right of way, is that

It includes all elements.

If somebody needs to access a program, the feature needs to be accessible, even if it was built before some of these standards were in place.

So everything was considered based on the current standards.

And from there, your staff can make determinations when something

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

So generally, the most important thing is considered can you actually get into the door of a facility.

So anything that prevents someone from getting into the facility, that's going to be a higher priority than something say like a bathroom, something, a barrier in a restroom.

So all the facilities and parks have been prioritized based on criteria generally recognized by DOJ standards and best practices.

For the ADA, sorry, the right-of-way barriers, we've provided some general risk prioritization for the city to consider.

Again, it's just meant to be a consideration.

It's not locking you into any particular way of dealing with your barriers in the future.

But what we like to do is we like to look at risk, so risk per street.

So if you have a street with more barriers per mile, then we're going to generally recommend that you focus on that area before you focus on a street that has fewer barriers per mile.

So, you know, it's kind of a fancy way of saying newer infrastructure might not need to be, you might not need to work on it right now.

Older infrastructure, more barriers per mile, you might want to consider moving that up the list.

So each street has been given this risk prioritization number and we've provided a full list for where each street is relative to the others.

Thank you.

Sorry to keep going here, but that information can be augmented with other ways of looking at things.

So it can be broken up by council district, it can be broken up by walkability.

If you have good stats on how many people are walking in any given area, you can use all this information together to make really targeted decisions about where you're spending money to remediate barriers.

Yeah, project prioritization was one of my questions, so thank you for addressing that.

But I got kind of a specific one.

I'm not sure if this is a question for the city or a question for you all, but you mentioned telephone pole remediation.

Well, I'm going to start with I think we're ultimately responsible for ensuring that our street sidewalks are accessible, right?

I think our ADA experts would agree with that.

But that's something we have to do in partnership with Dominion, right?

And that's a conversation we're having with them actively about how to

to shift their poles such that we have forefoot clear minimum on all sidewalk areas.

But sometimes that's going to require us to acquire easements or similar in order to actually create legal space where that pole can be relocated to.

Right.

Yeah.

And as noted, there's an additional part of this project that we're working on right now where we're going to do a deeper dive into the obstruction data to help the City of Charlottesville staff have more information to tackle that particular issue.

Right now, the bucket is just including a telephone pole and a mailbox would be in the same data.

We're going to split those out so that we know exactly how many telephone poles we're dealing with.

One more question.

So we've purchased services from you and it sounds like you all have done a really thorough job.

This has ended up in some sort of database.

Is it the database that you mentioned earlier?

So Pro-WAG is... Blue DAG.

Yeah, Blue DAG, thank you.

So there's a couple different tools that we use.

So Blue DAG is the tool that we use for facility and parks assessment.

Okay, and do we, is that something that we now have access to?

Is that like something we're going to continue to update?

Or is this like a static sort of data dump that we, I mean, how does that work?

I'm hopeful that the data that you have is something, I've heard the phrase living document earlier.

We hope to use Blue DAG continuously.

That's great.

And this is a city question.

Is this going to be like we have

So now we have to turn that into what our annual action plan on projects and then be able to put that into place because that would be a priority of mine as well to make sure that people can follow along and we're actually promising what we can actually deliver on.

Cool.

So I just had two kind of comments.

One, is this officially part of the comprehensive plan?

It noted something about the comprehensive plan, one of the goals.

It supports the comprehensive plan.

It supports it, okay.

And I'm sorry, sir, what was your name again?

Charlie.

Charlie.

Yeah.

When y'all were going out doing your assessments, how did you all address, like, and you were walking down the sidewalk, the sidewalk was fine, but it may have had a trash can, did someone move from the street or a scooter or

Trashes, you know, things that could be moved.

Temporary?

Generally, if it was temporary, we wouldn't note it as an obstruction.

So, if a trash can is a perfect example, if it was garbage day and there was a garbage can on the sidewalk, we wouldn't note that as an obstruction.

Same with scooters since they move every few hours.

We typically look for

built obstructions, things that weren't going to be moving.

And to drill down a little bit on the vegetation, the way we determine which vegetation we should include is we look for non-seasonal vegetation.

So if it was just going to die back in fall, we wouldn't include that.

And as far as the sidewalk, as far as the distance, if you had a sidewalk that had like a tree well in it where the sidewalk was wide enough where the tree was, you know, you have a little bed for the tree.

Okay, so it looks like it's going to come back on the 21st for our adoption.

Yes, sir.

Do we want to put this on a consent agenda item?

Is it something we want addressed outside of that?

If you all can go one more slide, I've been

Oh, sorry.

So the community can see the draft plan right now.

It is on our website.

That plan is ADA accessible, so all screen readers should be able to move through that document with ease.

And then if we go one more slide, we just again are encouraging maybe, sorry,

I'm missing one then.

It's okay, but this one works.

We are encouraging individuals in the community to send an email or give Paul a call if they reviewed the document and had any questions or concerns.

I want to ask a quick clarification.

The email address on here says ADA at Charlottesville dot org.

It's yes and.

It gets redirected.

So either will bounce.

It's just a legacy one.

Great.

Okay.

Lloyd, you had one comment and I'm not sure to whom it should be directed, whether it should be to staff or to Pam or who, but we've had a number of plans that have come to us recently and there has been some dismay occasionally expressed from the dais here that we weren't sure we were getting something that said, okay, here's the plan, here's what we're gonna do next.

and whether it's from you or from you or from other folks in the staff, I would hope that we would have, if not necessarily by two weeks from tonight, by sometime, let's say before the end of the fiscal year, some idea of

We're allocating all this money in the next fiscal year.

How are we going to spend it and when are we going to start spending it and who's going to make the decisions about what gets spent and what's the timetable for moving this thing forward and anticipating some of the emails that we all know we're going to get.

I'd really like to be able to be in a position to say, this is how we're going to move it forward, and this is what we're going to do, and this is what it's going to cost.

It doesn't have to be set in stone.

I always say that that great philosopher, John Bon Jovi, once said, you should always have a plan written in pencil.

At least write it in pencil, please.

OK?

Councilmember you'll be happy to know that part of the meetings that Mr. Rudisill and his team will be doing prior to the end of this year is working with the department team members who you see behind him who are here to support to ask them number one out of this plan and they all have access to you know to this information

Out of the plan, where do you see barriers that can be remediated within the next fiscal year?

What is actually accomplishable?

And when do you think that particular project, if by quarter we're not asking for anything super specific, will start?

So we really are leaning in on our partners here in the organization who are experts in the work they do, whether it's public works, engineering, parks and rec, our IT colleagues as well.

to let us know what they can do and get accomplished.

We will then meet with the city manager, make sure that he sees that information, and then we will have that as our guide for the next year of what we plan to accomplish.

If we can accomplish more, that's always fantastic.

So I'll say it a slightly different way.

Everyone who works for the city government has heard from me that I believe in work plans.

And a work plan outlines what it is that you intend to accomplish in any given year.

And because this is such a big, broad set of things that have to be done, I will be looking to receive a work plan on our ADA work efforts.

What is it that we're going to attempt to accomplish with the resources that have been set aside each year?

We're doing that with you right now for climate.

So every year you get a climate work plan update presentation from Ms. Rittervold.

You will soon see Paul on an annual basis doing the exact same thing because the scope is so big and so broad.

What Paul is going to be responsible for doing is herding the cats that are all the different department heads and individuals who have aligned to all the various things that Charlie has gone over with you this evening.

and share with you our issues.

Everyone's going to be leaving out and doing their things on their schedules and he will be the coordinator.

So he is the governor of ADA, put that word out there for him.

That is his role and responsibilities to make sure that everyone keeps talking to him, keeps that work plan up to date so that it can be presented to you.

And I'll just say, as one who has always been a list maker, one of the cool things about making a list is when you get to check them off.

And you can't check them off if you didn't make the list.

We don't need to make that decision at this moment.

I still have questions that I'll be getting answers before we make a determination on whether or not it's an action item on the 21st, but we will bring it back to you when we're ready to present it to you.

I'll put it that way.

Thank you, Charlie.

Thank you, Paul.

Thank you, staff, everyone, for working on this.

You're awesome.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Yes, I would move that we go into closed session pursuant to Section 2.2-3712 of the Virginia Code.

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

Can we vote?

Okay.

We're in closed session.

We'll be back at 6.30.

Is there a second?

Second.

OK, can we vote?

OK, for those who were joining us by Zoom, it was a separate link, and you can hear us.

We're not taking comments via Zoom.

And is, OK.

Yes, thank you.

Good evening.

My name is Pam O'Barry and I'm with Sands Anderson and we are the interim city attorneys for the city of Charlottesville.

This statement is regarding the public hearing related to the real property tax rate.

On Thursday evening, April 3rd,

2025, after 8 p.m., it was brought to the attention of the city attorney's office that there may be a problem with the notice of public hearing related to the real property tax rate.

On Friday morning, the city attorney's office began working with staff to understand the public notice process that had been undertaken.

By Friday afternoon, the city attorney's office had collaborated with the city clerk's office, the city manager's office and other city

staff and determined that there was indeed a failure to timely post notice of public hearing in a prominent public location at which notices are regularly posted.

Virginia Code Section 58.1-3321 subsection C requires that the notice be published, one, in a newspaper of general circulation

in the city, and two, in a prominent public location at which notices are regularly posted in the building where the governing body conducts its business, in this case, City Hall.

And those notices must be placed, published at least seven days prior to a public hearing regarding increases to the real property tax rate.

By that same Friday afternoon, a corrected

Corrective course of action was in place and that course of action was approved by the City Manager and now recommended to City Council.

The course of action that is recommended is that the real property tax rate public hearing scheduled for tonight should be removed from tonight's agenda and anyone who wishes to speak tonight on the issue because they have previously prepared to be here to speak should still be permitted to do so.

Is there a second?

No, that was just a statement, okay.

Right, right.

One announcement about the upcoming Black History Pathway community celebration.

Mr. Alexander is coordinating a community celebration honoring Central Virginia area musicians yesterday and today.

Black History Pathway at 4th Street to Preston Avenue was designated as an honorary street by the City of Charlottesville in 2021.

The celebration is on Saturday, April 19, 2025.

at Carver Recreation Center at 1 p.m.

Highlights include documentary on the history's Inja Store, musician Ivan Orr, the Clefs Band, United to Worship Dance Ministry, a host of dynamic young musicians, and a special tribute to past iconic figures with exhibits and more.

Black History Pathways, a celebration of historic achievements and contributions

of African Americans throughout the area.

Yes, I have an announcement as well.

This weekend is the second Sunday of the month, so the Bike and Pedestrian Advisory Committee is hosting their monthly neighborhood walk.

This month it's going to meet Sunday, April 13th at 1 p.m. at the Culbreath Garage and the walk is going to be around UVA grounds.

and the neighborhoods surrounding that.

So I encourage everyone to come out and take a walk with your fellow Charlotte civilians, UVA students.

You're more than welcome to join as well.

And we learn some facts along the way.

We get to talk to our bike ped coordinator and meet some new people.

So it's really fun.

Yes, it's really nice.

You got me hooked on those.

I can't go this Sunday, but even though I've been on the grounds plenty of times, I think you always learn something new because people are chiming in that maybe know something that you didn't.

So anyway, it's cool.

I'm glad that they do that.

Any other announcements?

There are opportunities for 16 people to speak.

We have three people that have signed up to speak.

And you have three minutes to speak.

And the first speaker is Tom Vanderveer.

Well, thank you Mr. Mayor and Council for the opportunity to speak to you.

I'm Tom Vandiver.

I'm the Executive Director of the Independence Resource Center here in Charlottesville.

Our organization is charged by the state to provide advocacy services on behalf of people with disabilities in our community and ensure that accessibility laws are enforced.

And as you know, we are particularly concerned about problems with appropriate access for the Dogwood Vietnam Memorial Plaza and access to the eastern portions of McIntyre Park.

Access is a critical issue that affects upwards of 5,700 of our citizens, over 12% of our population.

who have mobility impairments and need the required access modifications to fully participate in our society.

These are our neighbors and friends who have difficulty walking and climbing stairs, who often use wheelchairs, walkers, canes, or crutches for mobility.

There also are citizens who must contend with heart, respiratory, and fatigue issues.

For these citizens, distance and terrain are the major obstacles for them.

Over the past decade, since 2015, completion of the John Warner Parkway, these citizens have been the victims of city decisions that minimize the importance of full access, and instead say basically, it's not up to standards, but it's good enough for you.

Very late in the parkway development process, city officials abandoned their existing plans to create a parking area and a pedestrian bridge to the memorial.

As parkway construction neared completion, officials hurriedly seized upon a consultant's recommendation to instead create a 5% grade 500 foot switchback trail.

Although claiming the pathway as a trail allowed the city to skirt more stringent access standards, the city nevertheless ignored existing federal standards for trails and accessible parking and instead designated a path of travel from parking located a third of the mile from the memorial requiring the crossing of six lanes of very intense traffic to reach the site.

In 2019, non-compliant features of the switchback were identified but dismissed by city staff.

City Council, however, created a study group and charged it to provide appropriate and improved access to the memorial.

The approved draft report of that group stated unequivocally that the best and only permanent solution to the creation

It's a proximate parking area adjacent to the parkway and installation of a pedestrian bridge.

But city staff deleted that sentence when they presented it to the council.

Since then, the Dogwood Memorial has repeatedly urged

that is the foundation has reputed the city to include this project in our CIP budget and to make a sincere effort to provide true and easy access.

I urge you to do that, do what's in your powers to assist the veterans to make this project a reality.

The current switchback trail was never adequate, is now deteriorated and remains non-compliant.

Yeah, we need to fix it.

It's a city problem.

Yeah.

The next speaker is Hank Krahn.

Hank Krahn?

Hi, my name is Jackie Tempkins.

As I spoke to you about at the last city council meeting about adding the amendment to the Parks and Rec

plan about women's sports and bringing more equitable access to play services and partnerships.

I'm very pleased that they did add an amendment to the plan.

I think the inclusion policy would be amazing if they do indeed decide to implement it.

But I'm asking City Council and Parks and Rec to begin immediately implementing this plan and not waiting longer and longer to keep doing this.

This is all work that can get done now.

You know, Parks and Rec has hidden behind

Staffing issues as being the reason that partnerships aren't equitable, but that's just that's not acceptable You can't just use city resources for one group You can't you have to use whatever resources you have and you have to equally allocate them over all demographics Especially ones that are protected in the VHRA.

You can't just say oh, you know, this is how we've been doing it So this is how we're gonna do it until we bring on more people.

You have to look at the issue now and address it

The other part is that they're currently violating a bunch of their priority, their booking policies, and that is also a thing that they don't actually need more money to begin to address.

On 11 dates in March and April, Parks and Rec booked the Covenant Schools high school boys tennis team, which is not even based in the city, it's based in the county,

for every court available on that day in the entire city.

Some dates on two parks.

They allowed Covenant to book prior to other groups.

They allowed Covenant to book more courts than they told any other group that they could book.

And they allowed Covenant to book more hours for each of those courts than they gave every other group to.

Covenant also falls below other programs in their own booking policies that should have had priority over these different things.

And they have continuously violated this.

This is not even the first time this has happened and it has been brought to their attention several times.

So I'd really like this situation to be addressed prior to the next fall season.

There is no reason that they can't start working on it now.

You've got months to address it and it really shouldn't be a thing that we have to keep talking about because it's already their own policy.

They just need to implement it.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

So those are the two pre-registered speakers.

We have opportunity for 14 other speakers.

My name is Marnie Allen.

I'm a city resident.

and also on the board of a nonprofit called Reclaimed Hope Initiative.

Reclaimed Hope Initiative.

And it's kismet, I guess, that I was here to read a letter on behalf of the board when the strategic plan has been shared.

Because as I read through the strategic plan,

Some of our mission goals align very well with some of the goals that are outlined in the strategic plan.

Specifically in the section that's under partnerships, when you talk about the bullet, continue to develop collaborative community services as well as address gaps in social safety net and wrap around service provisions to enhance public outcomes.

Our board and the staff at Reclaimed Hope Initiative serve a very specific part of our community.

So I'm going to read the letter from the board and then I'll read it hopefully in time if, I don't know how these things go, but if council has questions or I can address anything I'm happy to.

from the board.

Dear members of the council, we hope this letter finds you well.

We're writing on behalf of Reclaimed Hope Initiative, a local nonprofit dedicated to serving families, navigating foster care adoption and the needs of children and families with disabilities.

Our organization offers a vital service that are unique to our community and we respectfully ask

for your support in funding our upcoming grant application.

Reclaimed Hope Initiative stands alone in providing comprehensive wraparound support for families who are often facing overwhelming challenges.

We offer parents night out, respite care, support groups, and an inclusive summer camp that provides children with disabilities an opportunity to experience summer camp activities in an environment where they can just be kids.

This is not in the letter I'm going to deviate just a little bit.

I've worked a long time in nonprofits, my time is running out.

Seriously, y'all, Google Camp Hope, it's amazing.

In addition to the critical services we provide, our work helps prevent the isolation many families feel when caring for children who have experienced trauma and with special needs.

No other organization in our community meets the specific needs of these children and families.

Time is running out, so I'm going to read this quote.

from a board member and also someone who receives services from RHI.

As someone who grew up in Charlottesville, I have a deep personal connection to this community and its people.

I am also a parent to children with disabilities, a foster and adoptive parent, a pediatric medical professional with years of experience serving families in the University of Virginia's Children's Hospital.

I've seen the services provided by RHI transform families' ability to stay connected and interface with families in dire of the services.

I know, just let me finish the quote.

A primary driver in my continued role on the RHI board is to contribute to RHI's growth in serving families at risk for children's welfare involvement related to intergenerational trauma and marginalization.

three minutes goes really fast.

If you can share with the clerk and she'll make sure we get it.

Thank you so much.

My name is Mario.

I'm a resident in Carson Hall

and the reason I am here, I was here five months ago, six months ago.

I talked to everybody, my neighbor using drugs and they sent all these few to my room to vent heater air condition and I talked to the manager, manager said

Nobody used drugs.

I was hospitalized seven times.

As you see, I was Friday night and Saturday night.

I vomited blood.

And I am here to just tell everybody I don't know who is listening.

I talked to Chief.

Kochis.

He told me five months ago, sent me the letter to my email.

I sent it to him.

He did not respond.

I met him two weeks ago.

He was with a bunch of his other guard police or something.

I told him to come talk to him privately.

I told him, how come you didn't respond to my letter?

These people, they threatened me to kill me, and I am not safe.

And even I called police, police said this is not our problem, this is management problem.

Anyhow, I told Chief Pekoshes,

I said, what happened?

He said he sent my letter to my assistant.

I told him, who is your assistant?

He didn't give me any answer.

Basically, they don't give me any right information.

But next two weeks, I'm going to meet the governor and

So they told me that his office told me to give them my social security, my driving license, everything for the governor's safety.

Anyhow, I do not want to be negative.

I want to see I'm not safe.

Who is going to help me?

They are still using drugs.

Two weeks ago, I was in the hospital, and last Friday and Saturday, I was hospitalized again.

So anyhow, thank you so much.

Thank you.

Maori, we hear you, and we'll have someone to follow up with you, okay, sir?

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Next speaker?

Good evening.

I'm Jim Moore, resident of Charlottesville, and I hope to speak a little about the real estate tax during that period that you'll allow us since we came to speak about that later.

But right now,

I'd like to address the process of notification of tax increases.

I feel there's a confusion over the purpose of what was to be that hearing.

Your agenda says this is about a real property tax rate.

Your daily progress notice says this hearing would have been about a proposed real property tax increase.

Your proposed budget says

that the budget does not require a tax increase.

So let's make it clear that the hearing that we will hopefully have or excuse me, the budget that you'll be voting on tonight does require a tax increase.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

There's no change to the tax rate.

There is a change to the reassessments.

Assessments.

The tax rate.

Thank you.

Would anyone else like to speak?

Oh, I'm sorry.

So I'm going to talk about an issue with one of the apartment complexes here in the city that I've been living in since July.

The apartment complex says that it provides safe and affordable housing.

We have garage doors to our basement that never closes.

and we have a door that leads you throughout the entire apartment complex.

It's supposed to be fogged, the door is broken, we've indicated to them three or four times that you can access the entire building through this one stairwell.

Bicycles have been stolen and the thing that really irritated me, I didn't plan to be here until two hours ago, the thing that irritated me is when you come up that staircase you can get into our lobby which is where our packages are put and this lady showed me that her daughter's birthday party

Gifts were stolen today.

Somebody went into the mail room, zipped the bag open, took all the contacts.

No cameras in the room.

We had people that come up to a staircase, sleep on the couches.

We had a man that we just found for two weeks, he's been living in our bathroom.

We just had a exercise room that was vandalized.

And it'll probably never open again.

But the problem that we have with this building is we have people from all over the world in this building.

So a lot of them don't dare to pick their heads up because they're afraid they're just going to get kicked out of that apartment complex.

Whenever we go to them, we're going to have a meeting tomorrow.

We have it every Tuesday, the second Tuesday of the month.

We'll have it to them.

We'll present these ideas to them again that the doors don't lock.

that there are people wandering the hallways, that people pushing the doorbells and running and nobody does anything about it.

We ask them why we supposedly have security cameras, why don't the security people look at those?

We have security in the building two nights, four nights a week and we've, why can't the security team look at the video cameras and they said no.

And we believe it's because they don't want anybody to see that there's a problem in our hallways.

So that's why they're not allowing anybody to look at the desk.

But yet they complain about our security team only looking at their phone while they're sitting at the desk.

I propose, why don't you give them something to do?

Let them look at the video cameras so we can see who's in the hallways, who's doing what.

So we have a real issue.

Since I've been there in July, this is our second management group.

Same organization, but second management group.

And some of them have even been replaced.

So if any of you would like to meet me sometime tomorrow or one of these days this week, I'd love to show you that the elevator, the doors don't shut for the garage.

We have people in there in the morning smoking marijuana.

All throughout the building, people are complaining about not feeling safe.

But we don't know where to go.

We don't know who to talk to.

We try to call the director of the nonprofit.

He won't take our calls anymore.

They're building more buildings, which we're afraid are only going to be a replica of what we're dealing with now.

In our neighborhood, we're the only group, the only building that has security.

So we're trying to figure out why is it that our building needs security.

And the ones across the street, beside us and behind us, which we're, they don't have security.

So, sir, can we make sure someone can follow up with him?

No.

And first, my name is Richard, the last name is Bard, and I'm in the Kindlewood apartment complex.

Okay.

You know, we've got people from everywhere.

We've got moms and dads.

We've got people from foreign countries who are afraid to say anything.

So when I saw the ladies' birthday gifts being stolen today, it's like, okay, we've got to talk to somebody.

One of our deputy city manager will talk to you before you leave.

Thank you so much Richard.

Would anyone else like to speak?

Consent agenda number two, we have minutes from March 13th, March 17th, March 20th and March 27th.

Number three, resolution for allocation of $788,000 of FY 25 Charlottesville Affordable Housing Fund grant funding.

Second reading.

Four, resolution considering 1114 East High Street special exception permit for Bill 2 requirements.

Number five, resolution considering a special exception permit request for 1418 Emmett Street,

Thank you.

Is there a second?

I'll second.

Okay.

Tonight I've asked Deputy City Manager Ratliff to provide an update on the internal work that the city staff has been working on in regards to your strategic plan.

Thank you very much.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council.

My name is Eden Ratliff.

I'm the Deputy City Manager for Administration.

It's an exciting time, and thank you to everybody who came out, I'm sure specifically to hear the update on the City Council's strategic plan.

We appreciate it.

If there's anyone who doesn't have this handout, I think I probably saw everyone before the meeting.

It has the nine strategic outcome areas agreed by the Council in not this past summer, but the summer previous to that.

and so this is an update where we with 112 city strategists who are all city employees in this organization work together over a very long organized day of figuring out kind of what should the work of this city be in order to help the city council

achieve its strategic outcome areas.

And this pamphlet, while not perfect, is very good in terms of establishing the work that has been done over the last two years and the work that we will continue to make substantial progress on to achieve your outcome areas.

So you heard me say what has been done and what will be done.

This is what we're calling a bridge plan.

This is a three-year document of which we are nearly two years through, so we have one more year to go,

of the city council's nine strategic outcome areas and the work that we have done over the last two years, which of course includes a change in administration in the city manager's office, what we will do for the next year.

In the fall of this coming year, what will be fiscal year 2026, we will regather the city council and a council retreat to look at the progress we've made, which is substantial.

You're gonna read some things in here and you're gonna go, hey, I know we've done that.

Couple examples, one of the things,

and that we have completed or is substantially complete is the reimagination of our locally administered program with the Virginia Department of Transportation.

There have been several public updates to the City Council and the great work that is happening in that VDOT portfolio.

So we're going to be reviewing all of that in the fall and determining what the final or next five-year strategic plan should look like.

So this document here, these strategies, is designed to say, hey, this is the progress that we've made in a lot, you know, nine strategic outcome areas.

What will come next are going to be measures, right?

You know, the question is always say, okay, well, you set these goals, you set these strategies, but what happens next?

How do you know that you're making progress?

How do you know what is happening here?

Well, we're going to measure that.

So this summer we'll be rolling out a portion of our website, what we're calling the strategic plan tracker, so that in real time you can see the progress that's being made on these strategies that

The city received an email earlier today and someone said, I would like to know how many affordable housing units are being built within the city after the new zoning code.

Great question.

That's documented in this plan, right?

We want to allow for there to be more affordable housing, right?

That's why the city council has taken

So this is an update to let the city council and the public know we haven't forgotten about the strategic plan.

There's been a lot of work.

I want to again thank the 112 city strategists throughout the city that have helped make it possible.

Thanks to the city manager's leadership to be able to

kind of rise all the way up towards through the organization of the work that needs to happen in order to achieve you know kind of the areas of importance the outcome areas established by the City Council.

Yeah, I mean, I just received it and it's very concise.

Happy to take any questions that the council might have.

This is available on our website.

I think we also have linked it on our social media.

You know, this is a document that's designed to kind of guide the action that we take.

The city manager and the budget office have done a really great job over the last several weeks in our budget hearings about talking about kind of the areas of focus in next year's operational budget that is designed to get the resources needed to achieve

You know, these strategies that are within this document to achieve your opportunities.

I saw you give the students some, did you ask them?

Yeah, absolutely.

No one's more excited about us than I am.

That is true.

We came in...

I'm sorry.

I'm excited.

Oh, good.

I'm glad.

I found a partner in my excitement.

There's some excitement.

I think I show outward excitement, but, you know, the buzz in the room and there are people here.

When we gathered 112 employees and showed this hype video of getting people excited about the strategic plan, they really engaged.

I thought it was great.

That's a great question.

So we started at the top of the organization, the city manager's office, and went to every lead team member, department director, for those who are not familiar with the terminology, and just said, who on your teams have opinions?

Who on your teams is doing some of this work?

Who on your team is passionate about the work they're doing in the city?

And we tried to make sure that we got a great cross-section of employees, and I think every level is represented.

What was really cool is to see them all like meet each other, right?

I mean, there's 28 different offices and departments in the city, nearly 1100 full timers doing incredible work.

And we started putting people not just in areas where they work now, maybe areas where they previous work, areas where they bring expertise, might have opinions about it.

And we created teams for each outcome area and just said, what should we be doing, right?

I mean, this is a council priority.

And you guys may remember you came up with

a couple sentences for each one and we said well what should the work do right for example public safety is not just police, fire and EMS there's a lot more to it than that and we had some of those conversations and it was great super appreciative of Raph Tellis, Michelle Ferguson and her team an outside consultant that partnered with us to do all this work you know it was a lot of fun

Thank you.

I have a question.

So the nine strategic initiatives were done, were initially created in

Council retreat, the year I think before I was- Summer of 2023.

So it was before that I was elected.

So of everyone up here, I was the one not involved.

But when I joined council, we had a conversation and brought up to speed and thumbs up am I on board.

Appreciated that a lot.

Thank you.

They are all things that I think are pretty and arguably good to support.

The one kind of note that I have, and my campaign was all about

transit and housing with transportation including our bus system but also bike and pet infrastructure.

Yeah, so I'll gently point out point number four if I can read it.

Develop the transportation planning capacity to prioritize and deliver projects that integrates all modes of travel, prioritizing safety and efficiency across the network.

So one of our transportation planners, Ben Chambers, who we can call out, who is also, by the way, very excited about the strategic plan.

That's what he's been saying, right?

In public meetings, he's been coming and standing right here saying, please don't give me more money.

I need more time to deliver on all of these projects.

He's done a great job of kind of emphasizing that point.

So I think from our standpoint, with one year to go and looking two years back.

So remember, we're starting in that summer of 2023 when we looked at kind of the needs of transportation and other modes, not just the bus system.

of Transportation.

What we were saying then was, what's the work we're doing?

What's the work that we need to be doing?

And how can we develop that infrastructure to make sure that we're actually delivering on that?

And recently in a finance committee, right, there's a memo that I think was shared with all the council.

We've made substantial progress on that in the next two years.

And now he is saying, let us develop this master plan, let us develop the capacity so that we can come back in a more informed way to the city council and ask for resources knowing that we can deliver.

In my mind, that is all strategic.

I thought it was fantastic.

And I love that it says that.

I would like to see it kind of called out and have the words bike and pedestrian infrastructure in here to give them kind of equal weight.

I know that's not in the graphic and we don't need to necessarily expand the graphic, but to, you know, make that bold and clear, because I think that that is super important to helping achieve not just that

will be a really great opportunity for this exact conversation.

Right?

I mean, it'll be an opportunity and I think we're going to guide the council through saying, okay, let's look at each outcome area.

Are they right?

Are they described properly?

Should there be more?

Should there be less?

Which I think we're definitely going to talk about.

You know, how do we be as strategic with this as possible?

So I think that's certainly on the menu.

But thank you for this.

Absolutely.

I'm glad you like it.

Any other questions?

This summer I am working on finalizing a few options for you right now.

and go deeper and go different, all of those things.

That's the reason for shifting to a three year because we pretty much have had so much already baking, if I can use that term.

I think one of the questions to exactly what the city manager is saying is, you know, we'll say, are these the right ones?

Are they described correctly?

And that's a broad question.

So a couple of other things that I have for just general public edification.

On Wednesday, April 9th at 5.30 in the gym at Jackson-Baya, our transportation team will be on hand to talk with the public about making 5th Street safer, so we encourage any members of our community who have

I've been concerned about what has happened over the past few years on that roadway to join us for that conversation.

In addition to that, the Charlottesville City Market kicked off its 52nd season, which is amazing, this past Saturday.

We encourage the public to join us from 8 to 1 downtown and we remind our residents who have SNAP benefits that they should check in with the market management tent to use their benefits to access the market for additional benefits.

Services that are available to them.

And lastly, next week is the start of the 2025 National Crime Victims' Rights Week, April 6th through the 12th.

On Tuesday, April 8th, Charlottesville Victim and Witness Assistance Program will be at the Freedom of Speech Wall hosting an information and resource table from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

I'm sharing that on behalf of the Commonwealth's Attorney's Office.

Thank you.

So we're now in the action items.

I just want clarification.

No, excuse me, sir.

Good evening, Council.

I'm Chrissy Hamill, Director of Budget.

We are here tonight for a public hearing on the budget itself.

As you'll note, the proposed budget was presented to you.

This is our second of two public hearings that we held on the budget.

March 20th was our community budget forum.

That was the first.

public hearing.

The proposed general fund budget is just over 264 million dollars that's detailed here.

We've also talked about some amendments and changes along the way through our work sessions.

We'll have a work session this Thursday night to work on finalizing some of those.

Could I, sorry to interrupt, the gentleman here.

Could you please help me, Sam?

I'm not tracking what's going on.

So there was an issue we had earlier where someone said that we didn't advertise things appropriately.

No, sir.

Sir, please.

We have to have order, please.

There will be a hearing and you'll be allowed to speak.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Have a seat, please, sir.

So help me catch up because I'm confused.

We did not meet the public notice standard of making sure that we posted the notice in a place that the public could access it beyond simply placing it in the newspaper.

So that was an oversight.

It is not something we are accustomed to having had happen.

It was an accident.

That's all good.

We're still moving forward through the budget process and we are making sure that we adhere to our obligation to provide proper public notice for the public hearing related to the tax levy.

So that is what we're resetting.

We're resetting the order in which that happens.

But we are still moving forward on the budget conversation because we can amend our budget at any time.

Okay, thank you very much.

And just to be clear, obviously there's a question, assessments happen, the city doesn't do that, that's the market that happens.

Get that.

To any of our taxes, any of our tax levy choices that we have available.

Right, and I just want to clarify that, that there are no rate increases for any of the taxes.

and there are no plans, I don't think we even have the ability, but we certainly don't have any plans to raise any of those rates.

So do we have any other clarification questions for Councillors before I open up the public hearing?

Were you finished?

Are there any other clarifications?

Okay, I now open up the public hearing.

I apologize for the distraction, however, I thought that the attorney had just announced that those of us who were scheduled to speak to the hearing that's been postponed would be allowed to speak anyway.

So when we moved on to the budget,

I now then just simply have the question of when would those people have that opportunity?

That's now.

This is the public hearing.

Okay.

Well, it was listed separately.

So now we can continue to agree to disagree that the budget does not require a tax rate

Again, your notice that you put in the ad specifically says there will be an effective tax rate increase of 7.359%.

So when you talk about temporal aspects of the complex state code and semantics, but this is important because you will be voting to effectively increase our taxes 7.4%.

Some of us, the reason this is important is that some of us will pay much more than that.

I lease a duplex apartment in Belmont to a UVA student.

Her tax will increase 19%.

Now, adding the last three years, consecutively,

That brings her total to 76%.

So this year, based on your votes, she'll be paying $1,104 more in property tax than she paid in 2021.

I'm the landlord, and I just pay it myself.

I try to keep rent stable for good tenants.

Unfortunately, I'm not rich.

The return on this property requires the tenant to bear this cost.

This home is a nice place.

The city estimates its value much lower than the average.

Now because of the hike in assessment, this property I know is not average.

It's unusual.

But I wonder how many other pockets of lower market homes face similar burdens.

As the third costliest city in Virginia,

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Would anyone else like to speak on the public hearing for the budget?

Okay, I see no other hands raised.

So the next item we have is the ordinance adopting a budget and annual appropriation of funds for the city of Charlottesville for fiscal year ending June 30, 2026.

Just to be clear, that's not a second public hearing.

What was the question?

A was related to the public hearing that was removed from the agenda, so A was also removed from consideration that will be considered once the other public hearing is held.

First reading on adopting a budget.

Yes.

Right.

One question I had is, Mr. Sanders, I recall that you or maybe Ms. Hammel, somebody had mentioned since the last time we were together that there were some additional funds that were to be spent or allocated.

I got only a sort of in passing mention of other money.

And then there was another in passing reference earlier tonight.

Sure.

So our revenue team has continued to meet.

The revenue projections in the budget are from February.

We have continued to work those.

Public personal property, those types of assessments have continued to come in.

So Thursday night we will be bringing you a few of revised revenue projections for you to consider in terms of it is additional revenue.

And that action is a part of the process.

It's our normal process that towards the end of you going through your cycle of work sessions, you have the most up-to-date revenue projections to consider.

And as Ms. Hammel just pointed out, when there's more than what we have allotted for, that was when I presented to you the proposed budget March 4th or 5th, whenever that was.

It was like a lifetime ago.

The goal would be to allow you, the council, the opportunity to use those funds for anything that's come up in the conversations.

You've heard from a lot of the members of the public over the course of work sessions that there might be an item that we did not invest in as a part of the proposed budget.

We may not have invested in as much as you might now want to.

So the flexibility that comes before we close the budget on the 14th through adoption,

Then you would have the opportunity to direct those funds.

So that's the reason for it being a part of this step in the process.

And that's Thursday night's work session.

That's our wrap up.

Chrissy labels this one the wrap up.

And as I recall, one of the things it's always sort of one of the last bits of data to come in.

is on personal property taxes, what the values of used cars have been like and so on.

So that can happen after the budget is closed?

Okay.

Because if it requires an amendment, you have the ability to take that action to amend if there's a change in any way.

So is there agreement to carry this item to the April 14th special meeting for a second vote?

Yes.

Okay.

Michael, are you okay with that, sir?

Okay.

We'll go on to item number nine of resolution for the City of Charlottesville Parks and Rec comprehensive master plan adoption.

Resolution is a second reading for that.

Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council, thank you so much for the opportunity once again to stand before you presenting the master plan.

Our consultant is online, so if we have any additional questions, he'll be popping in to answer some additional questions.

This will just be a quick presentation.

My last slide will be talking about what we heard from Council and also community members of how we amended the plan.

for final adoption.

So, again, master plan update.

We've been working really, really hard on this almost for 19 months now.

Again, we followed a very strategic plan on how to move

the Parks and Recreation master plan forward.

Again, it is a guide, it is a roadmap to a 10-year horizon for the Charlottesville Parks and Recreation.

We focus on investing in recreational opportunities for residents and also focus on community needs, unmet needs and importance.

We also look at reinvesting and reinvesting in city-owned and city

co-owned parks within the City of Charlottesville borders.

How did we do this?

Different ways of engaging our community.

We had a good number of in-person engagement.

We looked through the lens of not traditional engagement where community members are coming to us.

We had four events where we went out to the community and that was very strategic because

We have found out on our website that we never got certain comments in certain areas so we targeted four areas to actually go out to the community to get their feedback.

We also done a traditional survey and then also our project website that was a interactive map.

So for example if people did not want to go to our meetings they can just go

drop a pin and add what amenity they would like.

So those are the engagements that we use and again we also use focus groups and stakeholder meeting groups as well.

So that's a lot of community engagement and I want to take this opportunity to thank the community for actually really investing in their parks and recreation amenities.

The outcomes, again, community values and needs, assessing parks, facilities, and amenities and pools.

We looked at outcomes of programming and services, level of service provisions, operational and organizational assessment.

We also looked through the lens of park-to-park and facility-by-facility improvement plans, and then also framework plans from Chancellor, Washington, Market Street, and Court Square.

We also then focus on cost assessment for our capital improvements and then also a strategic action plan.

At our March 17th meeting, we took your comments to heart and we updated our master plan.

And I'll just read through number one, inclusion of gender equity status and then also recommendations.

We looked at emphasis on really focusing on leagues and sports.

because when we've done the analysis we have noticed that when we look at gender, around about 53% that uses our program are females and 44% are males.

But we do understand that when it comes to sports, we need to make an effort to focus on female sports as well.

We also then, number two, remove the term parking from our design guidelines on page 51 to 55.

Number three, we ensured biking into our connectivity chapter.

And you'll see that update made on page 63 to 64.

We then also incorporate what we heard was the three-notch trail was also in our plan.

That means we will make sure to work with our neighboring partners in order to make this trail come to fruition.

We also then added inclusion compliance and standards of best practices.

At the moment we found out that we do have a web page that talks about inclusion, but we're looking at best practices so that the community can come to any of our programs and we will provide a systematic approach of how to meet those accommodations, anything and everything within our parks and recreation system.

We also added cooperative recreation program standards.

Again, that talks specifically about partnerships.

How are we going to conduct partnership?

We are looking at a proposal.

And then how do we value those proposals to our values as Parks and Rec?

Does it meet our need as a community so that we do not get ourselves into a situation whereby we are accepting every proposal, but we're going to put it through a systematic approach?

Again, adding partnership best practices, we added that as well.

And then also again at the end in Appendix E, we looked at some inclusion policy templates.

So those are all the changes that we have.

And just to mention if you have any questions,

Once we do have a master plan, Parks and Rec staff has a lot of work to do.

We're going to have to then take all these recommendations and then figure out how do we prioritize for the next 10 years.

And again, just because we have a plan, Parks and Rec staff is very committed to sit down and look at priorities and make

a plan, a strategic plan so that we can get funding, so that we can start implementing these changes.

Just to touch on something that was raised earlier this evening, we heard again from Ms. Tempkin

about the emphasis that she wanted us to be placing on women's athletics.

And you've made some comments about that this evening.

And she thanked you all for having added that little line in there.

But she raised a number of very specific operational concerns about booking policies and so on.

I realize we're talking about the master plan here and not about booking policies.

But I just want to know, is that something, I mean, you've heard it now.

You would have heard it two weeks ago.

You heard it again tonight.

Is something going to be done to look into this and to figure this thing out?

Yeah, so we have an allocation policy.

And again, also in the master plan, we address that allocation policy.

Staff has been noticing an increase, especially in our tennis courts and pickleball over the last three, four months.

And the allocation policy that we have, we're going to have to pivot.

So staff is actually working at the moment is looking at allocation policy and really redirecting of the prioritization.

Prioritization meaning there's a specific

Parks and Rec recreation activities is always first, they get first access.

Then we go down the list to non-profits and certain schools are non-profits.

So that's how they fall into like a private school.

They fall into that category as a non-profit because they are a non-profit.

I mean on one of the things she was describing was that apparently the Covenant School had been able to reserve basically every tennis court in the city at a particular time

That seems to me to be something that probably isn't a very good idea and that maybe somebody should figure out, okay, maybe they're a non-profit, they get some priorities over some other people, but that's a specific policy that ought to get revisited.

A related question, which we also heard a lot about in the last few weeks, particularly on email, is the question of allocation of tennis courts versus pickleball courts.

Of course, the

the committee on which Councilor Pinkston and I serve, the Darden-Tow committee had agreed that we would authorize them to go ahead and convert those courts out there to all pickleball.

But one of the questions that I had raised at the time was, could we at the same time say we're going to say, Darden-Tow may be pickleball, but Penn Park is now going to be tennis.

And if there are

if there's a way to study the relative allocation of those courts.

When we were talking about this at our Darden-Towel Committee meeting a month or so ago, one of the things that struck me was that it didn't seem as though there was really any joint planning, any sense of, gee, we've got one community here, then they play pickleball and they play tennis, and let's figure out

between tennis and pickleball between the city and the county.

How are we going to balance these things out?

Yeah, we gave it a lot of thought, and we're still trying to wrap our heads around of what we're going to be doing.

We've been talking to the director of Albemarle County.

Also, how do we approach?

We even spoke about that the Darden Town Master Plan calls for tennis courts.

as well, and they have land.

That's an opportunity.

Penn Park, we have a lot of amenities within Penn Park, so it's going to be very difficult to see how we can expand.

But there was always one thing that always popped around with staff conversations when it comes to Penn Park.

We have senior programs, and it's very convenient for seniors to go to Penn Park and to play pickleball.

Do we want our residents to go to a non-resident park to just go play pickleball?

And that's where we're kind of debating and discussing that point is, does this make sense where we're telling our own residents to go to a county to play a sport that they would really like?

Or do we find other ways and strategic ways to still meet those needs?

And that's where we are at the moment.

I just congratulations on finishing this.

There was a lot of work and a lot of effort, and I appreciate you all have taken some last minute critiques and feedback, and I think you've handled that well.

And yeah, so just kudos on a really great work product.

Yeah, which is a nice segue into one of the questions or points that I wanted to make, which was just, I think I know this, but I want to just recap it.

Now there is money in the CIP.

There's $500,000 in the CIP for FY26, which has been, Mr. Anthony has been reminded, he is to prioritize ADA improvements

First and foremost, but because the parks team, as they're all staring at me right now, have many, many priorities on things that they need to get done.

So they will blend for us to look at what is a series of projects.

It may be one big project that we just need to get to and some barrier access issue improvements.

But the goal is to try to blend those two with a half million dollars.

and then the out years are kind of placeholders and that's what we'll hear later for a little more specific.

And then thank you for not only making the updates but presenting them in a clear way so we knew what the highlights.

I especially like seeing, I mean the right side was nice but the left side's got the gender equity

reprioritizing, parking, and biking, and then including the Three Notch Trail.

Those are all very significant and I'm excited to see, especially if the Three Notch Trail works out, the inner city connectivity on bikes is going to be super important.

Oh, Inner, okay.

Well, that is the trail.

Thank you.

Just one question.

The changes you outlined look good.

I know via email a few weeks ago you had emailed some changes around access to the Rivanna River.

Okay.

Yeah, but it's not in, again, it's a plan that we mentioned that.

Right.

And that is also including the

There were just some additional changes in terms of giving like general river access more prominent, separate from anything about like the specific plan discussed last work session, just kind of generally highlighting the Rivanna River as part of it.

And I can just quickly clarify.

I appreciate the question and the comment.

What we tried to do as part of the overall approach to the master plan was to take into consideration folks' desire to emphasize

as part of this to emphasize access to the river and so though we can't make any very specific concrete recommendations like say what we're doing with Tonsler Park or Market Street we do recognize that that they study needs to be done that is not something that was a part of this scope and so to emphasize that what I have tried to do is

incorporate the fact that that study needs to be done as part of the executive summary in the capital cost estimating plan as well as make more of a highlight on it in the actual cost estimating chapter.

But we did incorporate additional language just around the need for river access and emphasizing obviously the fact that it's a huge priority for your community.

No, it does.

I think I was just misunderstanding, but those are the exact areas in the email.

I just wanted to confirm they were still in there.

So that's it.

I'd just like to say thank you for the study.

You guys really got a lot of input from the public a lot of different ways over the course of the study and was able to receive a lot of input from us at the end.

So I'm excited that now we have a plan that we can work from.

So thank you and your staff so much.

I know in this community a study like this is exceedingly difficult.

I've been through it in different hats on.

So thank you all so much.

This was hard.

I know it was.

So do we need a resolution to, what is the action?

Yes, a motion to adopt.

Okay, so Page, okay so I would move the resolution

Second.

Okay.

Can we vote?

Great.

Thank you, Mr. Anthony.

The next item on the agenda is really just a written report.

I just want to make a quick note about that from the Charlottesville Convention and Visitors Bureau.

I serve on that.

Committee as part of the council.

And I love it.

I learned a lot from Courtney and other staff and other board members on that.

It's really, I just learned so much about this community.

Okay, thank you Courtney.

Appreciate you.

The next item on the agenda is the second time for Community Matters and so I'll open it up again for anyone who would like to speak.

You have up to three minutes.

Anyone like to speak?

Okay, I will close the community matters with no further business.

Is there a motion to adjourn?

Thank you.