City Council Meeting   4/21/2025

Hello everyone.

I call the Charlottesville April 21st, 2025 City Council meeting to order.

Ms.

Council Oschrin?

Here.

Here.

Thank you.

Second.

Okay, can we vote?

Okay.

Motion passes 5-0.

This meeting will be divided into three sections.

The first one will be now, which is the presentation on where we will hear presentations and discuss various items that does not require

a council vote and followed by closed session.

And today we're going to be hearing the affordable housing report in housing ecosystem.

So all housing stuff today.

So Mr. Sanders or do

I'll just simply say that, um, this for the benefit of council and public, this is your annual affordable housing update.

Uh, I think it was 2022 when I did it, uh, for the first time and ended my presentation with, and you'll get this report every year going forward.

As if the baton wasn't heavy enough, you had to add sir to it.

Good evening, I'm Antoine Williams, the Housing Program Manager in the Office of Community Solutions.

I'm excited to present our annual affordable housing report.

It is a chance for us to step back to see how we

are doing year over year against the city's 10-year affordable housing plan as it was adopted in 2021.

As it was highlighted, there isn't a requested action required for this.

This report isn't required by any kind of regulation.

Again, it's just a check-in.

At best, it's a mirror or a reflection of how we're doing against the affordable housing plan.

And they look forward in context to the affordable housing plan's aims and objectives.

In this report, this report is also meant to be our primary accountability tool for staff.

In addition to our efforts to track investments and production outcomes from the year FY22 to present, this also helps inform our work plan over the next fiscal year.

We use this to measure progress towards the plan's goals.

There's a number of specific tasks, if you will, that are kind of highlighted in the plan.

and especially around equity, transparency, and targeting of our dollars.

In this plan, in this effort, we'll have a broader discussion, particularly about scale and consistency, but as we do, consistent with the plan, we'll discuss our funding investments in essentially three buckets.

Direct investments, our tax relief program, and administrative costs, and progress towards our affordability goals.

Before I get too deep into numbers, if you will, there's an important highlight that I like to

highlight today, which is this, our housing staff is making meaningful progress towards meeting one of the pillars of the affordable, excuse me, the funding recommendation in your, in the affordable housing plan.

And the excerpt of that page is page 25 of 147 of your packet where it outlines four pillars.

Essentially they're stated here.

scale consistency targeting in context to the AMIs we serve in unit analysis but the highlight here is about transparency.

We have started a testing of a dashboard platform offered through a service called Airtable where we will be able to essentially take data sets and create visualizations and narratives around those

and make them public facing.

We are going to be testing this platform over the next 60 to 90 days and hopefully we'll inform what type of platform that the city needs moving forward.

All right, so let's get into it.

Through FY22 to FY25, what we've been working towards is significant and meaningful funding commitments towards the $100 million commitment over 10 years.

With that, we're targeting about 1,100 new supported affordable units.

You may hear me mention those as SAUs throughout this presentation.

We're seeking to preserve about 1,300 units.

and up to about 2,200 unit households stabilized.

Across those funding buckets, if you will, if you were to aggregate that down into what that would mean for each, that's approximately $70 million for direct housing investments and $20 million to tax relief and stabilization and about $10 million to administration staffing systems and oversight.

So with that in mind, one thing I want to flag early in terms of what you might want to consider moving forward is that while we're doing well in terms of our effort to spend consistent to the affordable housing plan's recommendation, we do remain in balance in some areas and then there's some areas where we might want to strategically

or more align our funding spending moving forward.

If you can

make sense of what's in front of us there in terms of visual.

It outlines about where we are with regards to our total spend these past four years with a total sum of approximately $58.7 million.

Within that table, you can see the percentage breakdown of where those amounts fall.

So with regards to direct housing investment, we have about

61% of the total accounted for in the CIP at about $35.7 million.

And then we have another 21% accounted for in that total for direct investments that occurred outside of the CIP or after a budget was approved through some other council action.

And the amount of about $12.15 million.

and so forth.

You have about 16% of the total that is supported by $9.5 million towards tax relief programs and rounding that out is about 2% of investment towards administrative costs and capacity building.

So again, as I mentioned, we are near

60% of the total affordable housing commitment almost being met in these past four years.

So as I mentioned at the opening of this presentation, why that might be significant for you to consider now is where we are with regards to our support and production of units that are

meant to service 30% AMI households and less.

With regards to that, however, there's a consideration you should all be aware of with regards to a number of those units are set to be met through products and development through our community.

Charlottesville Redevelopment Housing Authority.

Correct.

So on this table, we break down some of what those direct investments have been in the CIP and that have occurred outside of the CIP.

They're listed here.

It's aggregated into a total with $35.7 million that have been

either designated within the CIP or identified to date.

And then another 12.1 million that are identified outside.

And they may appear, for example, in the CIP moving forward, but these are decisions that were made that weren't initially a part of contemplation of the budget planning process for that applicable year.

I know that was a word salad.

Hopefully you follow what the context of that was.

All right, great.

And with that in mind, here's where we can pat ourselves on the back.

To date, we have about 900 plus units in the pipeline.

With some recent decisions you all made regarding hops and cash grants, that number has now increased another 40 additional supported affordable units to 1,023 units.

And within that breakdown, you can see the scale of what's being serviced in those units.

So you have about 348 units that are targeting 30% AMI and below

The suggested target for where we should be should be about 50%.

So that number should be a little higher.

Respectively, same for 60%.

And that target should be at about 30%.

Why it's in the red is because we're quite over, right?

So we also want to not create defect by creating excess in one area.

So it's important that we be mindful of that.

How are you defining what's in the pipeline?

So no, West Haven isn't incorporated in that pipeline just yet.

West Haven is going to be discussed in the context of this slide that's before you now, essentially 26 and beyond, and those numbers also in terms of unit count will be in that as well.

How we are getting to that conclusion?

through a number of methods where we're going through agreements, we're going through resolutions, we're going through agenda action items, and then we're also looking at how that funding ask or commitment is designated for what's being offered.

So sometimes, for example, in the council action item, you all may be presented a packet about a project that says within the portfolio of units, we'll have XML and unit types designated for 60% AMI or 30% AMI,

we aggregate that and we distill that into a projection.

In addition to that, we get regular reporting for units that have been funded, or projects that have been executed, or agreements that have been executed rather, and projects that are underway.

We get that reporting, we distill that down into a reporting.

Now, that type of reporting particularly applies to like HOPs, grants, CAF grants,

or projects that have already delivered from years previous, 21, 22-ish, to get that projection.

It's a projection.

Could I ask you, on the prior slide, there was mention of the fact

that there are 40 additional units from the April 2025 CAF approvals.

So that would be a projection.

Some of the units, for example, were for it, like one of the programs, the down payment assistance program.

And I'm trying to go off memory here.

But it's what is ever in that slate of grant applications that was approved in that.

Yeah, I'm just trying to figure out.

And I just don't have a recollection of there having been something in there that says, and this means we're going to have 40 additional units.

Is this 40 additional, or 40 additional maintained, or set it?

Great question.

So that's counting all three of the categories.

Because again, we're speaking of this in context as supported affordable units.

So anything that you all have made a decision or dollar towards, we count that in the bucket of supported affordable units.

And to your point, Councilperson Snook, you're correct that in the write up or the resolution, I never stated that unit count.

But I believe in one of the work sessions, I did highlight that

The reason for my question was not to suggest anything unusual or improper or whatever, just puzzlement on my part that I didn't remember us having done anything that said this will translate to 40 additional units.

Great point.

So you actually raise a good point, too.

We have to get better at elevating those things so it can be more visible.

And within those 40 units, for example, there are projects for AHIP for rehab.

We count that towards affordability stabilization.

There are projects from Habitat, for example, for down payment assistance.

And the Piedmont Housing Alliance also had some projects within that.

That is only three examples.

That helps me.

I guess what I'm wondering is how are we going to, how are you going to sort of keep track of those on a yearly basis to know, for example, if we've made down payment assistance in one year, does that now constitute a supported affordable unit?

For how long?

Yes, you're tracking well.

Yeah, so exactly.

We will track that.

The ideal would be is to get all of these repositories that we collect information to feed into a dashboard, for example.

to where it would inform a response to that type of question.

And in terms of applicability and years of affordability, it will be maintained according to the agreement, such that if it's a project that has an affordability period on that particular unit for that down payment assistance for 15 years, that's how long we'll track it, consistent with the reporting requirement.

That's all going to be spelled out in agreements.

So the agreements should inform the dashboard as well.

with these projects.

I didn't put a live link to it, but I have a QR code.

You can go in and even identify dollar amounts to specific projects and address eventually.

Right now it's just kind of there static, but the idea being that it'll be the most responsive tool at low cost for a smart setup as possible.

My goal is to have everything feed into one stream of information such that if the city manager or even a stakeholder from the city, which has occurred actually in the last few months, a realtor calls with a very nuanced question, I can find the information very easily.

Okay, thank you.

I'm going to go off memory here a little bit.

is a whole picture, right?

So for you all to kind of just think about your funding commitment up until now is only half the picture.

There you just recently approved a budget for the upcoming year.

But through that budget process, you were all informed about a five year CIP program.

and in that program is about $52.9 million worth of direct housing investment.

Now as it stands, if this were to hold true, seven years from now, if I were presenting this report in front of you, what the numbers indicate is that we could potentially be spending over that $100 million commitment by the tune of close to $20 million.

So that's what's highlighted there in red as an observation.

Again, these are soft numbers because the only real number for you all

I'm sorry to interrupt.

So I'm having trouble with my finger counting here.

And then 26 through 30 is five years, which is nine total.

Right.

So I'll be, go ahead.

We're talking about 10.

Are you just putting that down?

So that's the projection or implication even at nine years.

The reason you've got the second column is because that's the five-year CIP.

Correct.

And that's as far as we are at this point.

I would just add as context, I think the affordable housing plan was formally adopted in 2021, but that 10 million a year number was developed in 2018 and 2019 and it was kind of

developed on what is our goal for the number of supportive affordable units, and it was developed in that context.

Obviously, shortly after that 10 million number was adopted, the pandemic completely exploded the cost of construction materials.

So the environment of how many units that 10 million produces fundamentally changed from when it was developed.

Absolutely.

Yeah, you're correct.

You may be going to talk about this in a second, but yeah, so you've got it.

There's your second bullet point, administrative capacity.

And couldn't one also flip that on its head and say, oh my goodness, we've gotten a whole lot done with not nearly as much as we thought we'd need from administrative capacity.

Sure, and that's a fair point, but I would counter by saying that that's also been in a soft environment where a lot of what we've been doing has been administrating, setting up programs, paperwork, a lot of design, concepting.

Now, as it relates to our compliance monitoring program that's going to require boots on the ground for inspections, additional staff physically to follow up,

and that's going to only increase in demand with the number of units that are produced and delivered within the pipeline.

I remember in one of the reports,

We've had enough of them that they sort of blur together at this point.

There was specific discussion or recommendation out of the ten million dollars that we think about one million dollars of that for what I will term sort of bureaucratic infrastructure.

And clearly we're not there.

And I'm just wondering whether that is perceived at this point as

Okay.

Mayor Wade, Vice Mayor and members of the City Council,

That's a very important point, because currently, actually, while the housing staff is bearing the brunt of the capacity of the workload, some of the projects are found out, actually, to other members of the staff to enable us to meet the obligations.

And part of this presentation, probably the next slide you will see, you'll be looking at land bank

as an item there, and you also be looking at the tax abatement.

So I think I can go to the next slide here.

So in terms of closing out this part of the presentation, again, there's no action required, but the feedback and dialogue that we glean from the dialogue and feedback from you all will help inform our work plans.

and to that extent, you know, what we would like to focus on is sound recommendations that reinforce funding for that deeply affordable affordability, that 30% AMI critical need for our community to scale administrative support accordingly and appropriately as demand increases and two of those points being highlighted that might involve also increased demand as it relates to the Land Bank Authority and the tax abatement program once eventually there's a decision on that.

and then maintaining tools such as the dashboard.

Now the affordable housing plan does highlight a number of cities that created dashboards and then what myself and the compliance officer within the Office of Community Solutions have found is that a number of those cities, those dashboards have kind of gone unmaintained and so the information is only as good as it can remain current and that will require a staff level to support that.

And then I've listed a few questions for council just to kind of start the discussion as props.

So those are some questions.

But I think we all definitely support that.

But just general discussion questions.

And General Michael, this is something you've been involved in.

for a long time.

Sure.

I mean, well, I would just start to say, I think you know, even though the report clearly highlights that there's more to do, I do think it's a major success story in that I think we still have the highest per capita investment in affordable housing in Virginia, one of the highest on the East coast.

And, you know, when you're talking about affordable housing, certainly at 50% AMI or below,

You're talking about a product that the market is just never going to produce because it's losing money every month.

And it's an area where it has to be stepped in from local, state, and federal government to invest in it as a public good.

And most localities don't do that because it's extremely expensive as we see in this report.

There's no avoiding that it costs a lot of public money.

and I think it's a huge success story that we've made this commitment and we are seeing a lot of projects coming through to completion.

To the questions, I guess, I would say, you know, I definitely think it makes sense to continue supporting, you know, that prioritization of the deeply affordable housing, recognizing that once you're getting 30% AMI or below, it just gets more and more expensive.

So it is a proposition that

To meet that goal it may require the city to commit even more money than we do right now and I think that's just the reality of it because the situation of how much projects cost has just really fundamentally changed since 2018 and 2019 and will probably continue to change with situations with tariffs and supply chains.

I would add on to that when I see that we're going above that $100 million total commitment.

To me, I also think that's unavoidable if we're going to maintain our commitment to building the number of units we wanted to see because the cost per unit has just gone up and it's going to continue to go up.

And so I think we should anticipate that we will go above $100 million over that 10-year period.

and I think it sounds like we're moving in the direction for CIP projects and kind of having a more formal process to evaluate proposals that would be for affordable housing in the CIP and I think it makes total sense to do that and try to evaluate them on how many units are being, basically what's the cost benefit analysis of number of units, AMI levels, years of affordability.

To some extent it's a little unavoidable that sometimes projects are kind of opportunistic when you have pieces of land come for sale or long-standing affordable housing that's risking losing its affordability but to the best that we can kind of systemize like what is the cost-benefit analysis of are we getting the most affordable units at the deepest AMI levels for the longest period of time and being able to see like this project does that better than this one I think definitely makes sense and I would also

I think it would make sense to amend our affordable housing plan to just be very clear that money that comes in from payment in lieu fees, which we're going to get over the next couple years, very significant ones with the VRV and the other student apartment project, that we're just very clear that that money that comes in should be viewed as above and on top our existing $10 million a year commitment.

and not considered to just cover it.

I think it should go, again, just be very clear on that, which we've kind of informally stated maybe that's how we view it, but there's nothing in writing to kind of solidify that.

Yes, so I'm excited to hear kind of the next two presentations.

Obviously we'll wait to chat more about that.

But I think Michael makes several good points about how the cost for development has skyrocketed in the last several years.

And so I kind of view, I agree with a lot of what he said and I have some other expanded ideas to expand on that as well.

The dollars that we spend

The public dollars we spend on things like vouchers and rapid rehousing and all of that can stretch further the more available units we have, whether or not they are built initially to be part of the deeply affordable housing supply or just regular market rate units.

And there's enough of them that we have more options.

And revenues from residential units are higher than a lot of other uses in most

than many other uses.

For example, you know, we know an apartment building generates better tax revenue for the city than a parking lot.

Even if we do a tax abatement program, we'll get to that in a little bit.

Eventually, the idea is eventually once the abatement period is over,

We're seeing those revenues again.

And in the meantime, we've allowed more housing to be created for people.

So with the cost of the projects increasing, there's all the more reason for the city to do what it can to reduce the administrative and regulatory costs and encourage private development that does not require as significant a public investment because we'll see the benefits of that

in the housing ladder.

People will move up to a new unit if they can, leaving their old unit available and cycle down that way so that at all levels housing abundance can contribute to affordability.

So it's yes and.

One of the things I'm struck by on those lists are the opportunities that came up, Dogwood and the Mobile Home Park.

and the fact that we were nimble and willing to get creative and take advantage of those.

Sometimes it was an emergency situation, which we felt compelled to act.

But I think another thing is that I believe a number of those were paid for with the money from COVID relief.

Is that correct?

No?

Surplus.

Surplus?

OK.

Of which we might not have as much in the future.

The other thing I'm struck with is how many of them come from longstanding and really good partnerships with CRHA and with PHA and with Habitat and with other folks.

So I think we're really, really fortunate to have that kind of set of partners in the community to work with.

Perhaps some of the administrative costs that we might have taken up or spent because we've got good partnerships with people.

Maybe that's why we don't have to spend as much money on that.

So I just want to acknowledge the fact that I think that on the whole we've demonstrated a willingness to take advantage of opportunities and

that we've got a really active nonprofit space that we're good partners with.

Yeah, the risk of disagreeing with one of my colleagues up here, I don't regard it as decided

that the money from the VRV and other similar projects, the payments in lieu, are going to be on top of any commitment to spend 10 million dollars a year.

And I say that with a couple of reasons, a couple of things in mind.

The first is that we are also being asked to make commitments to purchase a whole bunch more buses, to hire a bunch more people to drive those buses.

We are also being asked to make a number of other commitments that I put them in quotes because I don't regard anything that's purely a matter of a budget as a commitment on the scale of my wedding ring, for example.

That's a commitment to an individual person.

That's a commitment that I'm not, you know, that survives pandemics and everything else.

But as we balance budgetary priorities,

whether we're talking about transit or rebuilding our schools or whether we're talking about housing these are all things that we are committed to in a general sense but I don't think I think we need to avoid the suggestion that there is a true commitment that says this is an inviolable thing that I don't care what the other budgetary conditions may look like we're going to adhere to this

and that's to me what a commitment would be and I don't think we're in a position to make a commitment in that sense.

So I, if and when the money comes through for the VRV and the other projects, I for one am going to look at it on an individualized basis in a particular year to say, okay, we will

We'll make the accommodation in this way, but not in that way.

And then the difference, there may be a difference from one year to the next.

There may be a difference depending on what our plans are on things like housing.

And we know that things like transit, and we know that those are related and you absolutely have to see them as being related.

So I'm simply saying this to try to

Thank you.

I just had a couple of comments.

I know we have a few other presentations to give.

I just wanted to first thank Sam and staff because we're just so light years ahead from three years ago when I was here and one of the first meetings that Brian and I had on council, we had a presentation on housing and I asked a simple question like how many units have we done with the money we've already spent and that question couldn't be answered.

and we just weren't in the space to be able to gather it and have the information to know where the money was going and we're just light years ahead so I want to thank Mr. Williams and

and staff for pulling this together.

This is great.

I feel good about the weed when the public hears that we're spending 10, 12, 13 million dollars, whatever it is, that we can say what it's going towards specific projects and what it's going toward and what it's doing, the impact that it's having.

Had some questions on land bank.

We're going to talk about that in a minute.

A couple of things that I just

I had questions on is the impact of Section 8.

Are we still able to have property owners to be Section 8 housing?

So I'm not abreast on any terms with respects to decisions at the executive level or federal level of our government, how that has trickled down into changes into our housing choice voucher program administration through our partner CRHA.

I do know that it's in focus.

I do know also that just that concern aside, there has been an increased effort to figure out a way to incentivize a better partner with landlords to consider more voucher holders.

Because even prior to this current administration, there had been

Sequences of where we've had extensive wait lists, both for the Housing Choice Voucher Program and for our own program, the Charlottesville Supplemental Rental Assistance Program, CSRAP.

So it's a policy point that actually has come up and hacked, as of late, a housing advisory committee.

It's something that staff is acutely attuned to, and we are evaluating it.

Michael, did you have another comment?

Yeah, I was just going to quickly say to that point, just from like CRHA's perspective, you know, what I've heard is a huge problem before anything happening at the federal level is our average rents in Charlottesville are now so high that someone with a voucher can't, the rent is too high in the private market for them to qualify for that unit.

So the average rent in Charlottesville, someone with a voucher can't access.

So increasingly, the only way someone with a voucher can get any unit is if it was built as a, with public money as a public project.

and then just one question that came to mind from points about staff capacity is obviously you know even our initial analysis we were never gonna get thousands and thousands of inclusionary zoning units but over a 10-year period we'll have some amount do you feel like staff is positioned to have everything they need in order to kind of track and monitor compliance for inclusionary

I honestly would say that's a point of valuation.

We have what we need to have gotten us this far, but as that need increases or when those units become online, for example, we'll have to evaluate the level of capacity needed to sustain the service delivery of those programs if land bank happens or if tax abatement occurs.

Right now, as we've shared some of that through other team members of the Office of Community Solutions, Council Person Pinkston has raised a great point in that we've been able to meet some of that demand through our partnerships.

But keep in mind, too, that these community partners, too, are probably likely to be affected by the changes at the federal level.

And they might not be able to sustain some of the capacity that they've been able to carry and have aided us in being able to meet, basically, hold the line that we're at.

I feel like I've only answered your question in part.

Let me just add, I'll just say that we've known that as development happens there will be a need for additional staff to work to maintain the compliance measures and even the tracking.

We have not gone as far out in trying to anticipate any of that yet because we're looking for the

I had a quick question I found in my notes.

Sorry for not asking it earlier.

If we go to the 10-year affordable housing plan framework overview slide, it lists the 10-year housing targets of 1,100 new supported affordable units, 1,300 preserved, and 2,200 households stabilized.

Do we know how many people

are left over after that?

Yeah, like these are all steps towards progress.

That's a very important and good question.

Just FYI to that point.

One of the ways we can ascertain that is at some point in time, maybe after five years, or five years from 2021, when the affordable housing plan was adopted, we're going to do an updated analysis of existing housing assessments.

And on that note, I just want to inform the City Council that at this point in time, the Thomas Jefferson PDC,

is conducting, they've written a consultant firm to conduct regional housing assessment needs.

And as part of that scope of work, some of the things we wrote into that is to provide or to take a look at a comprehensive analysis of City of Charlottesville's housing needs assessment.

And I think we believe that with that,

Okay.

I just had one other comment and then I know we get going to be pressed for time to get the other comments, but I still, I think council is supportive.

to continue to support deeply affordable housing.

I also want to continue a strong part of that being to try to keep the residents in their homes if we can do improvements and things to keep them in their home that we continue to do that because in large part they already own the home or they have a mortgage or something that they can maintain but to have that as part of the

affordable housing component.

Is that correct?

It's the housing ecosystem anti-displacement toolkit and two components that we evaluated.

This is the first that we'll be discussing this evening.

If you recall,

We had introduced this item back in October as a concept that we were working on.

And first let me also back up a step just in case anyone's just now joining us online.

My name's Antoine Williams.

I'm the Housing Program Manager with the Office of Community Solutions.

And this item, the agenda today, discusses the Land Bank Authority of Charlottesville as a concept.

introduces a draft ordinance, but it's not an item for you all to take action on today.

It's just to bring you up to date on where we are with regards to our work efforts.

So one of the things I wanted to do early is kind of highlight how we got here.

There is, as you can respect,

This slide doesn't quite do the city justice in terms of how long it's been working on or discussing this concept.

But so there are a lot of in-between activities and discussions between these bulleted points here.

But the last two is what I would like to specifically point out to you as to the rationale for what informed the draft ordinance that's in your packet today.

Actually, the last three, too.

We wanted to create a more robust tool than the set of tools we had in existence.

The Affordable Housing Plan highlighted land banking as a concept.

It also highlights tax abatement as a concept to add to your tool.

So we have brought those to you respectfully.

With regards to the specific rationales that are stated there, we have incurrences of rising land costs, speculative development that may happen within our market.

particularly because in some areas where we've for positive intent try to mitigate the stagnant development of units and areas by removing relaxing some of the density or incentivizing density for the development of affordable housing and increase inventory.

to kind of support Councilperson Oschrin's point that we'll be able to deploy services like our CISRAP voucher a little bit better when we have increased inventory, particularly around inventory that's designated for ADU use or affordable dwelling unit use.

As I mentioned, I'm not sure which page number, but you have a draft of an ordinance within your packet, and it is just a draft.

It has gone through an initial internal city attorney's office review, and that was really just to kind of make sure the terms were appropriately defined, aligned with, nothing that went incongruent with the enabling legislation.

for example.

Could I ask a question about this on this slide?

The last two bullet points make a point that I want to make sure that I understand because I'm not sure that I do.

It says, collaborates with the Office of Community Solutions is not a city department but is aligned for operational and policy coordination similar to the Charlottesville Economic Development Authority in structure and function, not a city department.

Aline for operational and policy coordination.

The Land Bank Authority will have a board, just like the Charlottesville Economic Development Authority has its board.

And with respect to decisions or projects that get vetted through that process for performance agreements, for example, one narrow example, that authority serves as the functionary body that filtrates those activities, if you will.

I think it's to really distinguish that it isn't the Office of Community Solutions administrating.

We are not the land bank authority entity in and of itself, right?

I guess the question, the analogy that leapt immediately to mind was not to the Economic Development Authority, but to the Charlottesville Development and Housing Authority.

And I don't know enough about whatever differences there may be between the two of them to know whether there are any differences operationally.

Was there a thought that we wanted to be more like the EDA than CRHA?

And if so, why?

What are the pros and the cons?

Well, the housing authority doesn't have a city department or section that is direct facilitator or oversight, if you will, to be strict.

The house authority is a separate quasi-public entity.

It's its own administration, its own executive director.

This, again, puts the land bank authority a little bit closer to home in that administrative and business process in terms of operation of the land bank authority for its inception, at least.

will be channeled through the Office of Community Solution as it is with, for example, the Office of Economic Development for CEDA, or the Economic Development Authority.

So it was meant to give you that parallel.

So the fact that both CRHA and CEDA are both, quote, authorities doesn't really tell us a lot.

Yeah, it's just name.

OK.

So we just stood up this entity called CARTA, Charlottesville Albemarle Regional Transit Authority.

And for that, we had to get explicit permission from the General Assembly.

It sounds like this is similar.

It's an authority.

It's a standalone board.

Correct.

The apparatus for you is the Land Bank Entities Act.

Yeah, it's highlighted there.

It provides the mechanism and powers for you all to proceed if it's your desire after going through a prescribed process.

It does require public hearing, for example.

It does require you to draft the ordinance, for example, and also name board members in that ordinance.

So there are some steps that you do have to follow to stand it up that aren't as flexible.

Make sure I'm on the right page here in front of me.

So proceed on with some of the

the steps that are before us with regards to implementation.

I have just mentioned that it does require a public hearing and ordinance adoption and detailed what some of those components within that ordinance adoption must include.

I want to also emphasize that within this draft there are certain things that are

detail within it that are meant to be responsive to the enabling legislation.

And then there are elements or components in this draft that are really just policy positions and are open for dialogue with regards to how they are ultimately interpreted or written into ordinance.

So I just want to say that there's a lot more work to be done before this becomes a matter of

Law, if you will, locally for us.

So just consider that as well.

Not everything within this draft is completely responsive to the ordinance.

So Antoine, a few years ago, maybe, council, we were invited to,

House Warming, House Opening that PHA did for some units over on Prospect where they use, as my understanding, it's been a while, kind of the land bank for that where they own the land because the biggest part, at least then, was of owning the house, of constructing the house is the land.

Right.

That's very interesting, the things that I see here.

Items two and three, for example, in the sub-bullets.

We're doing those things for CARTA right now and over the course of the last couple of months.

Kind of deforming of it?

Yeah.

So it's very interesting.

It sounds like there could be some lessons learned from talking with Ben Chambers, for example, about how that worked.

Anyway, just an observation.

One of the other components to highlight are bullets four and five with respects to funding and operational planning.

And the work plan that immediately follows those two bullet points

It's a sketch, to be fair.

It's windows of time where we believe that those key actions can be achieved.

After today's presentation and additional discussion with the executive team, we'll pin this down a little bit more.

and project out what that work plan will look like.

But for right now, the appropriate quarters that are reflected there align with the key actions that we believe can be obtained with regards to the milestones with the idea that this could be operational essentially a year from now more or less, given the work that's needed to get it stood up.

And I'll pause here if there's any questions about specific activities that are required with regards to creating a land bank.

I'm curious about one thing on this page where it talks about identifying funding sources.

I had sort of assumed that the funding source was a check from us.

We hope.

It's an evaluation.

We hope that there are other sources and not just a check from us.

I think one of the concepts that were floated around was about particular, and this is also up in discussion now with some changes that have occurred, but for example, there was a point made about community redevelopment activities and reinvestments, and that's being evaluated to see how feasible or likely that is for our area.

I also have been informed by a number of nonprofit entities who are in discussion with foundations that are also trying to explore how they can be more supportive in this ecosystem.

And so in terms of key considerations, just to prompt our discussion before we move on to the next presentation, these are sort of the questions I've outlined for us.

Well, so one of the concerns or refinements, as you ask here, to be addressed for a public hearing,

I don't know whether it has to be before public hearing, but at some point, I guess what I'm really kind of interested in is the extent to which the land bank authority of Charlottesville would be sort of, you know, I don't know whether the right way to put it is just who's in charge.

I'm always concerned about entities

within the city government.

And I use CRHA as an example.

I don't mean to pick on them, but we have no real idea.

I mean, Michael Payne sits in on their meetings.

He's a member of the board, but for the rest of us,

I don't think we have very much of an idea what CRHA is doing or how it's doing or whether it's doing it well.

For the Economic Development Authority, I have no idea what they end up doing.

I know their meetings are publicly available if I wanted to zoom in or something, but I don't have any routine way of knowing.

I have to assume that somebody somewhere is paying attention because it isn't coming to me.

And I would like to give some thought

to how the Land Bank Authority of Charlottesville would work in this way as we're calling it part of the ecosystem.

How are we going to be coordinating all of these different pieces?

Do we simply say, okay, it's all, Office of Community Solutions is under the city manager, so Mr. City Manager, it's all your problem?

Or to what extent is council expected to be a part of ongoing issues in that way?

I would just say I think as I've said before to me the ultimate goal is how can we have something that gives us more policy flexibility and fiscal flexibility for when

you know land or affordable housing project comes for sale where there's immediate risk of displacement we can act quickly and however it's structured to accomplish that ability to act quickly and have fiscal flexibility is what I would support.

To me the authority has seemed to make sense because

that would give the land bank bonding authority, which isn't a silver bullet, but using the Carlton Mobile Home Park as an example, if there was a legal mechanism by which the city could have paid for that with bond finance as opposed to cash, maybe in different situations that creates more fiscal room for the city when something like that comes forward.

So I think there's an advantage there.

And certainly if there's any way that it can acquire private capital,

or you know over a period of maybe 10 years start to leverage its own housing portfolio to make additional purchases that would be beneficial as well so over time it can lean less and less on the city and for the capital it's using but I do still see like a value to a land bank as being you know part of that solution of acquiring land for the purpose of affordable housing

even when some of our non-profit partners aren't immediately in a position to immediately develop that property.

Something I've been thinking about is, you know, Charlottesville is not a very large city.

Our square footage is small and we never really went through a massive financial downturn that left abandoned properties all over the place the way that other cities have.

And so my question might not be something that is

A good thing to share publicly, so if it's not, don't tell me about it.

But I'm just curious about, do we have some kind of running list of properties that a land bank might be interested in keeping an eye on?

And what is the potential for application?

You know, yes, it's nice to have ready to go to deploy as needed, but are there actually a lot of places where it could be useful?

I'm not aware of such record existing.

I will say though that that is a question even since back since October of last year that we contemplated recognizing that Charlottesville's use of a land bank might be a little bit more

broader or unique than what other cities might typically use a land bank for, narrowly speaking.

I would say that there is not a single source repository.

I think you're getting at kind of the point of what we are trying to get to.

There are multiple lists and they have a different, each list has a different purpose.

NDS is aware of where they're enforcing.

Economic Development is aware of commercial development opportunities and then we know of city-owned property that's a part of Community Solutions effort, but all in one place, not yet.

Okay, thanks.

I assume that people had ideas in mind, but I didn't know if it was worth discussing at this point.

So for this presentation, I thank you all again for the opportunity.

Antoine Williams, the Housing Program Manager with the Office of Community Solution will actually just introduce the item, but the item itself will be presented by my colleague, Alan Puryear, who's our Grants Analyst within the Office of Community Solutions.

This is an initiative.

The Charlottesville Affordable Housing Tax Abatement Program is, again, meant to be one of several tools that the 2021 Affordable Housing Plan encourages you all to consider as part of your toolkit.

You may hear us refer to it as CATTAP or CTAP for short, just for presentation fluidity.

Thank you.

Good evening, mayor, councilors, city manager, and staff.

I'm Alan Puryear with the Office of Community Solutions.

This is my first time at the podium here, so I'm honored to be here.

And now that you've heard the Affordable Housing Report and the status of creating a land bank authority, let's move on to one additional tool.

One additional tool that's working its way for your consideration, and that is tax abatement.

Tax abatement is a reduction in real estate taxes to serve as a financial incentive to building affordable housing.

Affordable dwelling units are ADUs.

At this point, staff is calling this idea the Charlottesville Affordable Housing Tax Abatement Program, COTAP, which rolls right off the tongue.

And this is our first time discussing this with you.

On this slide, you can see the core components that I will be highlighting in the next few minutes.

Why are we looking at a tax incentive for affordable housing?

Because the new zoning ordinance includes the 10% ADU building requirement, and this creates a financial constraint to the ongoing operating revenue of rental housing.

That constraint can be quantified as the difference in revenue between market rate rents

and the affordable rate rents for the 10% ADU requirement.

And there is a concern that this financial constraint may be a material impediment to rental housing construction.

So a tax abatement could provide a financial incentive to make market rate housing developers whole from this new financial constraint and address this potential impediment.

Well, what are the options, the tools that city government could use to address this new constraint from the 10% ADU requirement?

Well, there are grant programs, of course, like CAF and HOPPS, and you could consider increasing grant funding.

But grant funds, first of all, cannot be given to for-profit developers.

And grant funds come from current city revenue or obligate bond capacity.

These essentially commit current funds today for ADUs that will be delivered in the future.

And current revenue and bonding capacity may also be needed for other city government priorities, like education, public safety, and parks.

On the other hand, a tax abatement program uses future real estate tax revenue that will come from the new added increment value of future development.

Existing base revenue, the tax on base property value, that that already exists, is not abated and that revenue continues to fully support ongoing government services and that's what's meant by the base

the existing value versus the new increment value that would come from that new housing development.

You protect the base revenue that government services depend upon and you commit a portion of this added increment revenue for new priorities.

In this case, affordable housing projects.

And this may be an optimal way to make your commitment to funding affordable housing more sustainable going forward.

An abatement program provides a financial incentive to affordable housing by promising funds in the future after the housing is delivered.

And those funds are not taken from current funding priorities, as it is revenue that will only exist in the future as new revenue comes online from the new housing value.

And of course, developers can monetize today the value of that future tax abatement to support the financing of their construction projects.

So how would this program work?

Well, in 2022, the Virginia General Assembly approved and codified in, again, the Industrial Development Revenue Bond Act, a provision to allow local governments working with economic development authorities

the authority to reimburse a defined amount of real estate tax on the new increment value of new affordable housing projects.

The amount of reimbursement is based upon creating a formula to reduce real estate taxes that will be owed in order to incentivize new housing construction.

That's the Commonwealth authority under which staff is looking at creating this program.

Other jurisdictions in Virginia have created similar affordable housing tax abatement programs, including the City of Richmond and Albemarle County.

The county created an affordable rental housing incentive program, which provides a 15 percent

Since Virginia law does not allow governments to directly abate or forgive the real estate taxes owed for affordable housing, these programs create a tax abatement calculation at the front end.

of the program with a performance grant distribution at the back end.

In other words, the tax incentive is calculated through a real estate tax abatement on the new increment value and the abated tax amount is then reimbursed after it has been paid through a performance grant process.

So it's a two-step process.

Just clarify that to make sure I understood, if you don't mind.

That is correct.

State law does not allow a local government to forgive taxes.

You have to pay them and then rebate them back.

The one thing I would correct, my answer was the county is currently

giving back 15% of that new increment value.

Cool.

And VA law and Virginia law requires that a local government affordable housing tax abatement be administered jointly with an economic development authority or should Charlottesville create a land bank authority, we believe it could potentially be administered jointly with that authority instead of the economic development authority.

But wait, how do we know this program is needed?

Aren't market rate rents so high in Charlottesville that the market rate revenue will subsidize the 10% ADU reduction?

Or if not, how much taxes should we abate?

Well, at this time, the Office of Community Solutions is working with a consultant on a comprehensive city housing market analysis to help us establish the extent to which this program is needed.

That analysis will help us to identify and quantify

other cost impediments that exist to housing construction like materials, labor, financing, and interest costs and help us keep those costs separate and distinct from the actual cost of the 10% ADU requirement.

This analysis will help us to determine the degree that market rate grants could subsidize the ADU cost.

So therefore, the goal of this analysis that we'll be doing over the next several weeks is to establish three things.

clearly and objectively establish if we need a tax abatement program.

If so, quantify the need and help us devise a tax abatement formula that keeps the developer whole from the ADU requirements so that the program can effectively incentivize housing construction.

And finally, this analysis may help guide consideration of whether to target different abatement levels to different geographic areas of the city.

Perhaps the tax incentives should be higher where market rate rents are lower and tax incentives should be lower where market rate rent is higher and can partially subsidize the cost of the ADUs.

So for now, while we are completing our due diligence market analysis, here are some of the policy issues that staff is considering and discussing with stakeholders in the community.

Starting with the high level options to frame the development of a program, option one, tax abatement should simply make the developer whole from the additional 10% ADU costs the ordinance requires and then allow market conditions to dictate overall profitability of affordable housing projects.

or option two, tax abatement should be more generous and provide a tax incentive that exceeds just the cost of the 80, 10% ADUs.

Essentially providing incentives that might kickstart housing construction that expands affordable housing units.

How much more generous would need to be identified?

And of course, as always, option three, do no tax abatement, do nothing, and solely allow market rate rents to dictate the pace and volume of housing construction and the building of ADUs.

Next, from that high-level framework, assuming our market analysis counsels that we need this program, staff is considering what should be the maximum percentage of new increment revenue that should be abated.

How much new revenue should we be investing in ADUs, 15 percent like the county, or perhaps 50 percent, 75 percent, what about 100 percent?

again on increment value.

In addition, how long should the abatement period last, 15 years, 30 years like Richmond, perhaps 99 years to match the ADU affordability requirement?

And finally, once the above parameters are set, staff is considering additional elegance options, ideas that may increase ADU construction through eligibility requirements and bonuses.

For example,

To even qualify for any abatement, perhaps a project must build more ADUs than simply meeting the 10% minimum requirement.

Perhaps we require 15% ADUs in order to even be eligible.

Or perhaps we make the abatement richer if the project builds more.

than the minimum required ADUs.

For example, the abatement increases by 5% for each additional 5% ADUs that are built.

And what about providing an abatement bonus if projects build ADUs at a deeper level of affordability?

For example, those built at the 30 to 50% might receive a higher abatement, or even those building at 30% AMI might receive 5 to 10% bonus abatement.

And again, as proposed above, perhaps the abatement should be variable based on location in order to incentivize areas where affordable housing is harder to build because the market rate rents are lower.

So, Mayor and Councillors, this is a basic overview of the components, the policy considerations, the due diligence needed via market analysis.

and that we need to determine the need and establish a rational basis to build an affordable housing tax abatement program.

Moving forward, staff will be completing the market study so we have a genuine starting point and then we will be putting together draft recommendations for your consideration and building a working model that can demonstrate the fiscal impact, allow refinement and ultimately move towards a draft abatement ordinance.

If that's the direction council wishes to go.

I really appreciate the thorough list of what if thens that you've got included in this.

There are a lot of elements that can go into this and it's great to hear that staff is leading the charge in figuring out what the best formula is going to be because there are a lot of

variables and it's good to of course compare us to examples elsewhere in the state but you know we have our own unique set of needs and so to see what works best for us is and the fact that we're addressing this at all I think is great so it I don't know that was a very thorough presentation and I feel like we're in good hands with staff leading this the charge and then getting the market analysis from the outside consultant seems like a good strategy.

Brian.

I would agree with Natalie.

I think it's very thorough and the presentation was excellent.

It sounds like the devil's going to be in the details in terms of working with a consultant or whomever to figure out what makes the most sense.

I do think we want to jump start if possible, but at the same time,

be thoughtful about how much money we're giving back from future taxes.

Yeah, I think all that makes sense.

Obviously, because there's a lot of work still to be done, it's hard to figure out what specific questions to formulate.

But one general question,

is to what extent is it legal or desirable to individualize project by project the kind of tax abatement that might be given?

Is this something where there should be one basic formula and everybody tries to work within that formula to get to the right answer or is it something

Councilor Snook, I would say that the ideal is that it has a set formula that's predictable so that developers know what to expect when they begin to scope out a project, so they know what to expect.

And that is in fact what Richmond has done, although they have a formula, it's multiplying square footages by amount of

Affordable versus non and taking commercial off the table if it's going to be a mixed use project.

And then the counties is simply you qualify, you get 15% if the county council approves.

So yes, I think a formula that's predictable and knowable is probably what is best and in the literature that I've been looking at.

And so that's probably the direction that staff would go.

not making it subject to negotiation to the extent that we can.

Well, I mean, I would think that that's a better way to go for a number of reasons, only one of which, I mean, there are two reasons come immediately in mind.

One is so that you don't have the sense that everything is negotiable.

Right.

And two, so that hopefully when the decisions are made on what this formula is going to look like,

It'll be made on the basis of some degree of expertise rather than entrusting the decision on this case-by-case basis to folks who may not have that degree of expertise.

I just had, I don't know whether it would ever come before council.

but I would not feel comfortable as a counselor trying to evaluate somebody's pro forma to try to decide whether they really need what they're asking for.

That's just not an expertise that I have and I don't know, I don't know who in city government would have it to the degree that would be necessary to be fair about that.

Well, Councillor Snook, it's important that you raise, that was an excellent question and point about the pro forma and that's part of what our consultants will be helping us with as well is to help us be prepared to analyze and perhaps have a consultant on call to provide that analysis so that we can

essentially be confident that we understand the pro forma layout, particularly if in one of the scenarios that I talked about that we've been looking at is if our goal is simply to make developers whole for that 10% cost, we'll need some expertise to be able to identify exactly what that 10% requirement, the gap between

the 10% affordables and what they would have gotten at market rate grants.

So we're going to need some financial expertise in the pro forma analysis as well.

Thank you.

Michael?

I'm glad to hear there's a consultant doing a market analysis because I think the granular

Data is going to matter tremendously for all of this.

I know when we were developing the inclusionary zoning program, we had a consultant who did rate of change and economic analysis, which looked at variants of neighborhood by neighborhood differences in construction materials.

Are you using that same consultant?

Are they able to build off some of the data and research they did?

We actually have just worked through the procurement process and have on call three consultants, one of whom is the one who did the prior and two are not, but certainly

Right.

Okay.

Yeah, that's good to hear.

I just say my – as others said, you know, it's hard to know without seeing a lot of specific data.

I would just say I think – I definitely think this is worth

I'm exploring but I have a lot of caution in terms of I think we really need to take the time to figure out how it's going to be structured based on actual data.

I'm particularly curious about do we get an estimate of what the total cost could be and then kind of figure out does that even pass a cost-benefit analysis because

It's not the same as a direct immediate upfront subsidy, but it is still a subsidy over time.

And again, you know, depending on how it's structured, can that kind of blow out of hand and is it passing a cost benefit analysis of what that money could have been used for otherwise.

I would also say I'm a little cautious, not that this should exist, but how it could be structured and that the inclusionary zoning analysis, you know, was done to doing a market analysis, looking, trying to get at

What is an inclusionary zoning program that the market would deliver without subsidy?

I'm completely open to market conditions have changed since then.

Certainly they have also that it could vary project by project, location to location, but

I don't know, I feel like sometimes there's a reaction of, you know, market rate development isn't happening at the scale we like, the inclusionary zoning is the problem.

It's part of the cost, but as you mentioned, there's also interest rates, construction cost increases, supply increases, changes in the investment environment where, you know, maybe their investors just aren't viewing it as a competitive asset class versus other things they could invest in.

and so I don't want us to go overboard on this because I feel like that could be a policy mistake.

So I am curious to see that data and I guess I just want to make my thought up front and I'm open to data changes that the program really should be structured just to try to cover the cost of some portion of the affordable dwelling units.

We should not be in the business of tax abatements to subsidize market rate development.

Well, Councillor, thank you for that input and to that point in terms of

The consultant study and the research that we did, we found at least one jurisdiction that was contemplating a tax abatement as a follow-on to their inclusionary zoning.

They did a market study and determined that indeed they felt that the market rate rents could subsidize and so they chose not to do a tax abatement.

And so that's part of the reason why staff has recommended taking that extra step.

And then to your other point, indeed, while there is comfort in the concept of obligating future revenue that wouldn't exist but for development, it is always a threat to the city budget.

And I think the question is, depending on how you structure it, could you be taking

market rate development that may have happened anyway.

Are you losing tax revenue on that?

And I would just finally, I think looking at it geographic area, I think definitely makes a lot of sense because I remember in there, that market analysis for inclusionary zoning, they found it varied a ton versus whether you're near UVA or near downtown where rents are higher versus other areas.

and I think you know I just I think they said even even without inclusionary zoning if we didn't have that development above seven stories they found was likely only feasible right around UVA because that's the only area where rents for students are high enough where rents actually aren't high enough in Charlottesville for a lot of higher story construction to be competitive in terms of the return on investment they need with the investors they have to be competitive with the other asset classes investors are looking at

I just had a couple of comments.

One, first, I agree with Council Snook about the pro forma analysis.

That's something that's not my skill set and I would like to have staff to or

or a consultant to review those before we do.

But as far as how the program work, I kind of wrote down some numbers because I have to be able to explain it first to myself, but mainly to the public and people that I'm speaking to.

And I like to do it just on the fourth grade level.

So here's a scenario that there's a property for $100,000.

And these numbers are not, you know, to scale, if you will.

And right now they pay $5,000 a year on taxes for it.

That would be correct.

So what I was saying is that now the new property value is worth $200,000.

And I said now they pay $10,000 a year in taxes.

So the increase is... The incremental difference is $5,000.

Because they would, no matter what, they would continue to pay the five... The base level.

The base.

Correct.

Good example.

All right, I'm crystal clear on this, Nelson.

So no.

Quick question.

When is the base amount determined?

So if there's a property and they knock down the building, well, now the base amount would theoretically be reduced.

So when is that point?

Councilor, that's actually an excellent question, and that'll need to be part of our analysis.

If there's no teardown, the base would be whatever the last year taxes were that they paid before improvements began, typically.

Any other comments or questions?

Yes, yes.

All right, so I'm going to go backwards since we'll go with Alan still at the mic there.

So I'm hearing that you are interested in further exploration of a tax abatement program because you know I like to do my list.

I like to check and make sure I'm hearing what I think I'm hearing.

and that you definitely approve of the engagement of technical assistance and how we develop that.

I'll point out to you that some of the consideration that still has to be worked out is that set of percentages as Alan described.

because I have never met a developer who can't make a case for why tax abatement is needed for their project, not just wanted because it is a capital stack that they're putting together and they don't usually have all their answers upon coming to us to ask for anything or any other party involved in putting their deals together.

having had to do those in the past myself.

But what I recognize is that there is an interest in 100% abatement on the improvement above what we're already collecting.

There's a case to be made for why that is of consideration because today we're receiving the $5,000 that the mayor just laid out in his scenario and the improvement is worthy of consideration for how to use that

to spur that activity to happen in the first place.

So there's a question there, there's a real conflict there and I think there's more work to be done and we will definitely lean on the consultant to help with scenario planning.

We've been doing tax abatement in a very limited way already.

That is done through CETA right now.

We have

Two agreements with Friendship Court, different phases of Friendship Court, and how those scenarios came to pass was a request was made, a deliberation occurred internally, and therefore a decision was made on what we'll take to council.

When it came to you, meeting of the minds had occurred, and we had pretty much gotten to the place of agreeing to what the cap is, the percentage is, and the duration.

I think we would like to explore standardizing that so that we don't have to feel like that's the way to go about every single project.

But that is to speak to some of the work that has to be done.

So we're moving.

There's a lot more to dig into in that space.

Going back to the land bank.

I think I heard your question specifically, Councillor Snook, on what is the difference between the land bank, CETA, and the Housing Authority.

I think we can put something together on a sheet.

Three columns tell you the difference.

Make sure that you can see that.

They're different, but the land bank is something that, just like the other two, you will make appointments.

The council will make appointments to that body.

So there will be direct influence in that regard.

And part of the recommendation, I can assure you, will be that one or two of you be the appointees, especially in the start of this.

I've been backing up into one thing I just want to state for the general processing of affordable housing in this global presentation tonight.

We have talked about adjusting the NOFA schedule, the Notice of Funding Availability schedule, where we issue an RFP in successive months.

from October to December, something like that, that we will be moving the request for investments.

That's when developers share with us what projects they're working on, moving that earlier in the process because there's no funding commitment so that we can go ahead and get that information.

Review it, consider it, and bring it to council before the budget process has really gotten underway so that we will have your feedback on which projects on that list you might be interested in are prioritizing integration into the budget cycle so that that becomes now a normal step in the process.

And I would just say, at least for me again on the tax abatement, I think we should absolutely explore it.

And I'm open to this the way it could be structured, but I would just want to see data justifying even 100 percent, as well as open to the question of cost-benefit analysis.

If we want to spur the private market, I've read of localities that have done that by

seeing when it comes to the construction of triplexes, fourplexes, one of the biggest barriers is those developers can't get capital because of the scale they operate at and they've created revolving loan funds where over a longer period of time the city's actually making money on that.

So if our concern is spurring the private market, maybe the cost-benefit analysis is that direction versus just losses for the city trying to subsidize the private market.

But I don't know if that's the answer.

Do we have closed session today?

We'll come back here at 630 for the regular business meeting.

Thank you.

you

you

you

Sam, you ready?

Okay, I will bring the regular business meeting to order.

So, we will now, let's see, begin with a moment of silence, please.

Yes, I have one.

It's brief because we'll hear more about it later, but I just want everyone to get ready for May, which is Bike Month.

So there's going to be a lot of bike activities around Charlottesville, including Bike to Work and other activities.

a bike valet at Fridays After 5 and a group ride to kick off Bike Month.

So if you check out bikeseaville.com you can stay up to date with all of the fun bike events that are coming up in May.

And I have one announcement just that Charlottesville is currently accepting applications for boards and commissions now through May 1st.

Current vacancies exist on the Affordable Housing Fund Committee, Board of Architectural Review, Board of Zoning Appeals, Building Code of Appeals, CDBG and Home Task Force, Minority Business Committee, Youth Council, and numerous other boards and commissions.

If you Google Charlottesville boards and commissions, you can find which vacancies there are as well as apply there.

Thank you.

If not, we do have a proclamation for this month.

Ms.

International Dark Sky Week in Charlottesville April 21st through 28th, 2025.

Whereas the aesthetic beauty and wonder of a natural night sky is a shared heritage of all humankind, and the experience of standing beneath a starry night sky inspires feelings of wonder and awe, and many people in Charlottesville live under a dome of light pollution, excessive artificial lighting at night that disrupts natural darkness.

and may never experience the visual wonder or ecological and health benefits of living under a dark sky.

And whereas light pollution has scientifically established economic and environmental consequences which result in significant impacts to the ecology and human health of all communities.

Whereas the city of Charlottesville is in close proximity to the Shenandoah National Park and is surrounded by rural Albemarle County,

and these natural landscapes are home to many species which rely on undisturbed night environments to hunt, mate and thrive.

And whereas the city of Charlottesville is a neighbor to McCormick Observatory and Fan Mountain Observatory, both observatories operated by the Astronomy Department of the University of Virginia, and the observations and research carried out at these observatories

is hampered by the effects of light pollution.

And whereas the city of Charlottesville is within a reasonable distance from the James River State Park, which is one of four Virginia State Parks designated as an International Dark Sky Park by the International Dark Sky Association.

And whereas peak spring of bird migration falls during dark sky week and 80% of migrating birds fly at night and need starlight to navigate.

Now therefore, in the city of

Now, therefore, the Charlottesville City Council proclaims the week of April 21st through 28th, 2025 as Dark Sky Week within the city of Charlottesville.

Thank you.

Is someone here to accept that?

Maybe I want to take some pictures.

OK, please.

Is this working?

Yes.

Thank you for allowing us to speak and to promote this initiative.

On behalf of the Dark Sky Piedmont Group, which we are members, I want to thank you for your support for dark skies and your help in raising awareness about our growing problem of light pollution.

All living things on this planet have evolved with the predictable cycle of day and night.

This rhythm of light and darkness is essential to our health and well-being.

With the advancement of inexpensive and efficient LED outdoor lighting, the darkness of the night is disappearing at an alarming rate.

Excessive light at night disrupts our sleep.

It confuses migrating birds and nocturnal pollinators with deadly consequences.

It obscures our views of the stars and disconnects us from our place in the larger universe.

The good news is with proper planning we can utilize LED technology to create community-friendly lighting that works with our circadian rhythms, saves energy, and keeps us safe.

LEDs can last for more than a generation, so we don't want to be stuck with lights that are too bright

and a source of blinding glare.

We applaud the city's efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and responsible outdoor lighting plays an important role in meeting our climate goals.

Let's not over light or light spaces when not in use and let's certainly turn the outdoor lights off during the day.

Do you want to add any more?

We did want to just point out that just walking down the downtown mall, that the lights are on.

All the street lights and the trees are being uplit.

So just as a reminder, as we're working towards saving energy, I don't know when the lights go on, but they're on during the day.

And we're now at the first opportunity for Community Matters and we have three registered speakers and that leaves the opportunity for 13 others to speak during this opportunity.

And the first person to speak is Ms.

So my name is Lakera Mills, I reside in Greene County and I'm a social worker.

I would like to share my experience as a family advocate and a social worker navigating through systems without receiving any help and resolution to the problem that was impacted by my sister and niece.

On February 14, 2025, my sister moved out of her residence

In the county with her one year old child due to unforeseen circumstances, my sister has a housing voucher and receives other benefits such as SSDI, EBT, and TANF.

My sister has limited family support and I was not able to take both of them in at the time due to transitioning back home.

My sister and niece were left homeless with no assistance.

My sister used her monthly income to stay in hotels, but all of her money ran out.

I assisted my sister by calling available resources and organizations in Charlottesville.

These organizations included the Homeless Hotline, which the call log was two weeks behind, Charlottesville DSS, Albemarle DSS, The Haven, MACA, Salvation Army, Shelter for Health and Emergency, Region 10, OAR, Patrim, Ames,

Love Inc.

United, Way of Greater Charlottesville, and amongst others.

Each organization provided misinformation and my sister and I was passed along from one organization to the next with the outcome of not receiving any immediate assistance and was left with dead ends.

On March 13th, I contacted

the mayor of Charlottesville, Mr. Wade through email regarding this issue.

I too was passed along to different people such as the city manager Sam Sanders and Ashley Marshall who is the deputy city manager for social equity.

The outcome of these conversations had no resolution to the problem and was provided with links to different websites to programs which has already been explored.

The programs that was provided by Ms.

Marshall requires a lot of steps to meet criteria

Ms.

Marshall shared that the city had not found anyone to step in the gap left by the Salvation Army when they had to stop using the apartments that helped families

out due to the facility's needs.

She also mentioned that the community doesn't have another nonprofit that has stepped into that space for families who finds themselves literally homeless.

So as a result of my outreach to organizations and exploring all avenues on my behalf, a mother was separated from her child by Charlottesville

Department of Social Services, despite taking all the steps to prevent a child from entering in the system and being another statistic.

So I pose these questions to city council.

How can system barriers be improved to assist those who are most in need?

Since there hasn't been any other nonprofits to fill in the gap, what other alternatives has been explored?

Thank you so much, Ms.

Mills.

Debating those questions, you know, right now.

So thank you so much for your time.

The next speaker is Mr. Hank Krahn.

Okay.

The next speaker is Richard Farrow.

Hey, Richard, how you doing, sir?

Do I start when the clock starts or do I?

You start.

Okay, all right.

I appreciate y'all taking time to hear me and appreciate what y'all do.

I don't ever want to have to sit in y'all seats, so thank you for your service to the city.

I just here for a little thing, just a little thing.

It's the Fifth Street Road.

I just want to make an offer and a suggestion to keep it the way it is.

I was thinking about how 15 years ago the school board had a group come in and analyze what needed to happen with the schools and they said you know we need to get rid of one of the elementary schools and in 2010 that made sense I guess but I think we can look back now or we can look now and say oh glad we kept all those schools you know I remember that yeah so I yeah I don't yeah anyways um

So yeah, anyways, all that to say is, you know, I like what we're doing with the city.

I like that we're trying to make things more bikeable, we're trying to increase the density.

But I think we can find other routes.

I think Cherry would be a good candidate to maybe slow that down and make that a good bike lane for people wanting to get to the grocery store.

I think 5th Street's important for not just for people who live here but people who live in the surrounding counties coming in and out of the university because we know it's hard to live here and work here.

And the last thing I'll say, I've lived, you know, some of y'all know me, I've lived in Prospect area for 17 years now and I've learned from my friends in the neighborhood the best way to get to McIntire Park or to Martin Hardware or whatever

is to go through 6 and a half street or something a half street.

And especially during busy traffic hours, I can save you 10 to 15 minutes cutting through there.

So anyways, you know, it's not, you know,

Probably the best for the folks who live there, and I get that.

But I kind of think if we do that at 5th Street, we might have similar problems in Cherry or Old Lynchburg or some of those routes as well.

So anyways, just wanted to throw that out.

I know I'm a little late to the game.

I just heard about it on the radio.

So anyways, appreciate y'all.

Thanks.

Thank you so much, Richard.

We have an opportunity for 14 other speakers.

Good evening.

I'm Jim Moore, resident of Charlottesville, and I thank you for this opportunity.

I have not prepared a proper presentation so I apologize if my observations or questions don't reflect full knowledge of your current work and efforts.

I have some questions about, I sat through the housing status report and I'll just run through these.

My understanding is that we established the Affordable Housing Fund in 2007, I think.

That was 18 years ago.

So has its goals been achieved?

What was the total investment to date from that time?

A mistaken prone AI estimates that we've spent to date probably exceeding 200 million.

Is this accurate?

And then I think most important, if we're concerned about availability of affordable housing, you know, how many new units and how many unit renovations have been achieved?

How many new and renovated units will result from the current CIP and the proposal tonight?

How does the

Additional funding of SAUs contribute to the affordable housing goals in terms of reducing the cost of housing.

If you acknowledge the total free market failure, you know, why don't we look at universal SAUs?

What is the long-term

cost benefit pro forma of the land bank and its per housing unit overhead cost.

What will be the burden resulting from converting that land to tax exempt status?

Can multiple variables for each of the zoning official abatement program housing authority and land bank be provided to prospective developers efficiently and economically?

And then quickly, concerning current economic status of the city, I'd like to share some possible red flags that I asked for your consideration.

Why does the city budget and budget process like this and other important processes appear void of interest by the residents?

I'm not an economist, but when your prior tax increases result in a decline in revenue, I would encourage you to at least inquire with the financial director.

for an assessment of that.

According to the auditor of public accounts, we're the third costliest Virginia city per capita.

For 2023, we have the highest administrative cost in Virginia.

When tax increases, I already asked you that one, what percentage of our employment depends on tax funded sources?

Thank you.

Thank you so much for your comments.

Anyone else would like to speak?

Yes, I'm Kevin Cox.

I live at 311 Fairway Avenue, and I'm here to talk trash.

One particular trash can, in fact.

And here's the problem.

This can has not been scheduled for routine emptying and pickup by the city.

It's a city-owned trash can.

For ten years now,

A neighbor of that trash can has gone out regularly when the trash blows all over the street because the trash can's overflowing again, picks up the trash, calls the city, somebody comes to the trash can, takes off the top four or five inches of trash and leaves it.

The trash is rotten, been there for a long time, stinks.

The bag and the trash can liner is completely shredded and it's no good anymore, okay?

My friend has been doing this for 10 years.

So he finally decided that he was going to try and get a resolution to the problem.

He was going to try and get the city to schedule a routine pickup.

So he called Public Works.

Public Works said, no, not us, them.

Transferred him to Neighborhood Development.

Neighborhood Development said, no, not us, them.

Transferred him to CAT.

What did he get at CAT?

Voice mailbox has not been set up.

The end.

He called the city manager's office.

Several calls.

Got a very nice, polite young woman who helped him, tried to.

Eventually, he got a message back.

We're going to have a meeting to discuss setting up a route to discuss determining which department will pick up that one trash can, okay?

We're going to have a meeting.

The trash can needs to be addressed, so I'm asking you to please take care of it.

You know, it's really awful.

The bus stop is really awful.

It's got weeds growing all over it.

It's a storm sewer, a stinking storm sewer with a stinking trash can on it.

It's really gross and it says what the city really feels, how the city really feels about poor people who take the bus.

If that offended you, I would invite you to go to that bus stop on a summer's day and stand there and wait for the bus on that stinking bus stop and then you'll know what offensive is.

Now please, use your influence to persuade the city administration to take care of this once and for all.

Thank you, Kevin.

I'm not sure if this is the correct venue exactly since I don't really have comments.

I just have questions I wanted to discuss since I am saying that Tia was talking about with housing policy.

I am very interested in just understanding what the city is doing to decrease the cost of housing and decrease both rent and the cost to buy a house within the city and to incentivize development.

I don't feel like I understand

everything that the city is doing and I want to know if there's any materials or space where we could like have a dialogue back and forth and discuss that.

And I also would suggest looking at the four o'clock meeting from today, we had a big presentation about the affordable housing fund.

The office of community solutions.

Yeah, Mr. Williams will get you that information, the card that you have there.

Anyone else like to speak at this time?

Consent agenda number three, April 7th, regular meeting minutes.

April 14th, special meeting minutes.

Number four, a resolution to appropriate $1,304,308 from the Virginia Department of Transportation for the Monticello second project.

Okay.

I'll second it, but before we vote, I wanted to ask a question.

Okay.

And I had posed this question via email in the hopes that someone could explain for the benefit of

Good evening, Council, Mayor.

I'm Michael Goddard, Deputy Director of Public Works, and I'm here to answer that question.

I just, I mainly just, I think the public ought to know what it is that's going to happen there.

Okay.

So the project's at the intersection of 2nd and Monticello.

If people aren't familiar with it, it's kind of that crossing that people take from downtown to get to the X Art Park.

Quite a busy intersection on a Saturday morning.

The project is meant to shorten what we see as too long of a crossing for pedestrians across Monticello.

So the way that we're going to take care of that is to widen the sidewalks and build ball belts on the corners.

So the traverse will be shorter.

We're also going to make some bike modifications.

So we're going to put bike boxes at the front of those intersections.

And there will be a new mast arm with some new

The 1.3 million is VDOT money.

Thank you.

So we have Motions been seconded.

Further discussion?

If not, can we vote please?

We're now at the opportunity for the city manager's report, and we're going to get several annual reports.

So good evening, mayor, council members of the public.

A couple of different things.

First, I'm going to allow Mr. Fries.

Very quickly.

I just wanted to share on behalf of the utilities department that we have

a new free attic insulation self-assessment tool that they've launched.

This is building on a range of programs they have to support home energy efficiency.

More information can be found at Charlottesville.gov slash utility incentives.

Thank you, sir.

In addition, I have both our police chief and fire chief.

Are you making the presentation?

Well, our police department and fire department will be presenting their annual reports this evening as a part of my revision to how the city manager's report in the past has strictly been or most likely myself and maybe from time to time

Comment from a deputy or not.

I'm now using this time to also make presentations on things that I think are a benefit to the public, giving a little more light to certain things that we're up to.

Mayor, Councillors, City Manager, thank you and good evening.

I'm going to start with the annual report just by putting up our mission, our why, what we do and our values.

This is baked into everything we do within our organization and so it's important to know, I know many of you have seen it, it's throughout our police department and again it's our guiding principle.

Our strategic priorities, when I stood here before you about two and a half years ago, I laid out three priorities.

One was to address gun violence and build community partnerships.

Number two is to improve recruitment and retention.

And number three was the treatment and wellness of our staff.

These have formed our strategic priorities, and that's how this format is laid out.

So 2024 going back for our three-year average, right now we're looking at for 2024 was total part one crime reduced about four percent over three-year average.

2024 compared to 2023 we had a reduction of 10% of part one crime and part one crime is what the FBI and how we report crime to the FBI is classified and it's the most serious crime.

It also includes larcenies.

Aggravated assault specifically is down about 13%, burglary is down 17%, homicide is down about 75%,

24 to 23 was down about 76%.

Larceny is actually up, and the driver for that is mainly caused by thefts from vehicles.

Motor vehicle theft is down 23%.

Robbery is down about 13%.

And sex offenses are down 30%, which you can't see because it's kind of cut off on the bottom.

When we look at incidents involving firearms, over a three-year average is actually down about 40%.

40%, yes ma'am.

Shots fired, shots fired isn't, we don't report

Shots fired cases to the FBI or uniform crime reporting, but it's something that we do track locally because I do think it tells a story.

And so overall, for a three-year average, it's actually down about 30%.

You can see you have verified and unverified.

The difference between the two, verified if we get a call of a shooting or shots fired and we respond and find casings, a building struck or something like that, that's considered verified.

unverified as being dispatched to a shots fired.

People heard it.

We show up, but we couldn't find anything.

We still track those numbers.

Calls for service.

This one is one that really stands out to me.

Currently, or 2024, we responded to 60,653 calls for service.

That is up from 2022

I'm sorry, 2023, which was 40,989 calls for service and 2022, 37,341 calls for service.

And so as you can see, we continue to be the call of choice and the calls continue to rise.

What's notable here is that of those 60,653 calls, 0.15 force was used.

That is a very low number.

And we'll get into some of the training and the treatment and wellness stuff that we're going to talk about at the end here that I think is contributing to that.

Overdoses.

So I think these numbers can be deceiving.

We have seen a reduction in 2024 for our overdose calls.

But I'm not sure we really know what that number is.

And I say that because the availability of naloxone right now, and that's a good thing, people may overdose and save themselves, and so they won't necessarily call us.

And so as the availability in naloxone is out there, we're not seeing the fentanyl and the opiates out there on the street.

It's still there.

But we're not getting the calls as much for overdoses.

So that could be a good thing, but it makes it difficult to track the level of the issue.

And then so 2025 for the first quarter, what we're seeing now is about a 31% reduction in part one crime for the first three months of this year compared to the first three months of last year.

And then our community partnerships.

So everything we do in the area of community engagement is very intentional.

It has to be designed to ultimately build trust within the community.

And to do that, we have to build those relationships.

And to do that, we have to be present, present in times that it's not an emergency or a crisis happening.

And so all of these programs that we do, we do regularly.

It's consistent.

We've done a community walk in this city every day for the last two and a half years, every week for the last two and a half years, one a week.

and we will continue to do it because we continue to get great information and great engagement out there in the communities, on people's doorsteps, in their living rooms, on their front porches.

It's just been a really great way, an organic way of building those relationships.

Our community police academy, we've expanded it to a teen community academy.

We have another teen community academy going in June.

These have been

filled very quickly and we have to ultimately turn down applicants that we get because it fills up quickly.

We have the graduation of our first Hispanic Community Police Academy this Wednesday at the police department.

That one again was filled up very quickly and it's been a great experience.

And then our weekly courtside chats at the Boys and Girls Club.

Again, you will notice it's the consistent things to do.

They cannot be one-offs.

I think you see that a lot where people will do maybe coffee with a cop here or this or that there.

Anything we do, we require that it be done regularly and designed to really build those relationships.

Goal two is recruitment and retention.

So currently we are allocated 111 sworn officers.

We have four vacancies.

That is down from 30 vacancies two and a half years ago.

To put it in perspective though, in 2016 we were allocated 130 authorized officers.

So we are going to be, we prefer, we look like we're going to be fully staffed July 1 with the new academy coming up.

But that's fully staffed at 111 sworn and as you can see with our calls for service they're significantly higher and if you go back to 2016 where we had 130 officers at the police department

They had 44,000 calls for service, where today we're responding to 60,000 a year.

So it's just to put that in perspective.

Yes, ma'am.

Has there been any other variable that would require you to respond to more calls than there used to be?

Does that question make sense?

I don't know is the answer.

I can guess.

We're seeing an increase in responding to calls for mental health.

We have our anchor team out there doing a ton of work, but that's one team.

It's very helpful and they've been taking some of the calls that we would normally respond to, but we're just being called a lot more often.

The diversity within our police department, 17% of our department, our sworn staff are African American officers, 17% women and 7% Hispanic.

Our 30-30 initiative, the goal to get to 30% women officers by 2030 is still something that we're striving for and so we hope to get there.

and then our professional staff, currently we have three vacancies and that's down from eight in 2023.

And so we've made a lot of progress in the area of recruitment and retention and I think that's the key piece is we're keeping people now.

People aren't leaving and I think that's really important.

The treatment and wellness of our staff, so why aren't people leaving?

Well, last year I stood here and I said if we were going to have conversations about police reform,

and doing the important things that our community expects.

We needed to start within the four walls of that building over there.

And that's what we've been doing.

And so one of the things we've done and this council approved this last year in the budget was a new contractor for psychological screening for not only new officers but any specialty unit before someone gets assigned to whether it be a special response team or anything like that, they undergo a psychological exam.

Impact first responders, that's a contract that we have in our budget that

that helps officers who may need to go talk to someone.

Officers are dealing with people on their worst day.

They see some pretty bad stuff.

And so they need to be taking care of themselves if we're going to expect them to be out in the community and do the good work we ask them to do.

So we're aligning the training and hiring unit with Internal Affairs.

We did that because what we were finding is in internal affairs investigations, you identify training needs.

You identify hiring issues.

And so to have them all together is just a much more efficient process that we've been seeing some results in that.

Internal investigations is doing all our investigations now.

In the past, some complaints would be handled by like a first line supervisor or another supervisor.

Now our internal affairs section does every internal affairs investigation to ensure consistency, to ensure they're done correctly, and they're all done the right way.

We've created a use of force review board.

or use of force review panels.

So when there's a use of force, it makes it way up through its approval process.

But now before it gets to me, there's a panel.

That panel includes the executive director of the police civilian oversight board who also reviews their use of force with them and then sends me a recommendation.

So that's been created.

And then obviously, thanks to this council, collective bargaining has given staff a voice into working conditions and their pay and benefits.

So thank you for that.

and the CPD Futures Program.

Again, we hired 30 officers in the last two and a half years.

It's a lot of cops.

It's a lot of young cops.

It's also an opportunity to build a culture and an organization that this community expects and we're starting to see that pay off.

And then investments in training.

We've implemented what's called ICAT.

It's integration, communication, assessments, and tactics.

It's a new way of looking at use of force by implementing CIT, the CIT program within our use of force training.

And when I watch body cam footage, I see that in play, that training come out.

And it really focuses on de-escalation, understanding the difference between what's a threat and what's actually threatening.

And we're seeing some good results with that.

And then different training, like de-escalation training, confronted bias in law enforcement, and then we recently entered into an MOU with the UVA Center for Public Safety and Justice to do research on different topics.

They're right here in our backyard.

We should be using them as much as we can.

And then finally, measurements.

So we have entered into an agreement with the Justice Department COPS Office.

We did this last year, a program called the Collaborative Reform Effort, where they come in and do an organizational assessment of our police department.

These are recommendations that they've made so far.

They've been here multiple times.

They've come out.

I know they've met with some of you.

And unfortunately, I was just notified about two weeks ago that the Justice Department has paused that program.

And so I don't know where that's going to go at this point.

But we've gotten some great feedback from that.

And I'm hoping that it restarts because there's

There's just a lot of value in that program.

Michael, I'll start with you, sir.

Natalie?

No, I don't think I have questions.

I just appreciate the update and the report.

I think it's a testament to you and to your staff, the good work that you're doing, and we appreciate it.

I think that the ongoing engagement with the community is really just super essential.

And it sure seems like y'all are working on that.

I'm very encouraged that our staffing numbers have stabilized.

That tells me that not only are we responding, able to respond well, but we've got a culture and an organization that's sustainable.

I just want to offer a couple thoughts.

First of all, I was out on the mall Saturday evening.

Lots of cops there.

The second thing I wanted to add and just sort of commenting on, on the overall tenor of, of the way things have changed in the five years that I've been

and up here, almost six now, is just the attitude of the culture, I guess, is a better way just to characterize it, is so much different from the police department.

And I think that most people in Charlottesville who have interacted with the police department in the last year or two have come to appreciate that difference as well.

And of course, it starts at the top.

I appreciate your service in that respect.

The one sort of substantive question I have is whether there is any effort to A, continue to analyze the data and B, to figure out what may flow from the data or from that analysis on the longstanding observation that

people of color tend to get stopped more often than white folks and that has led to of course the disproportionate minority contact reports and for some reason it just sort of has stopped there and I know that you have produced some statistics over the last year or two that indicate that there is still a problem in that respect so I'm wondering whether you've made any

Trying to figure out why.

Why is it that there's disproportionality when it comes to traffic stops or use of force?

There's no doubt that there is.

I see it in the data.

When I speak to my peers across the country and the reports that they've had done, they see the same.

But what nobody can tell them in any of the reports,

is why.

Why is it?

I'll concede that the implicit bias of police officers that exist, exists with all of us.

We all have implicit biases, every one of us here in this room.

The difference is when a police officer acts on an implicit bias, that's a really bad day.

But that can't be the only reason why these disproportionality stops in use of force exists.

And I don't know that answer.

One of the studies I haven't talked about here that we're still kind of working through is we have the Center for Policing Equity looking at that data, use of force.

And as I've had the conversations with them and at that data, I know what it says.

It says the same thing in every other urban area in this country.

But why does that exist?

We have to have some difficult conversations and look at this data holistically.

And so the problem for us right now is we've been turning over some of this data, but some of the other data they want like GPS data where it happened and all these other things, we don't have in one place.

Some of them are paper files, some of them are here or there.

It's just a lengthy and robust process.

I would agree with you.

Trying to figure out why this is, I think is a much more nuanced answer than just one thing.

I don't know that answer.

Thank you for your report.

I just had one comment.

I appreciate your willingness to kind of be so available to the public.

I've been with you on a couple of those community walks, and I like the fact that you and your officers are meeting the community where they are on their front porch or, you know, wherever they are, particularly with the youth that are running up to the officers and greeting them, kind of creating that

relationship that's needed.

And for a long time, particularly a community of low wealth and color, it wasn't there.

And I see that you're generating that.

You're creating that now.

And it takes time.

It's a complicated issue that I've really struggled with trying to understand myself, to be honest with you, that question.

You know, the numbers, I did want to say this and then I'll let my firefighter friend come up here, but the numbers all up there look pretty good, those reductions, but I will tell you that when you have a shooting that happened this Friday night in a neighborhood, when we walk in the community, and we're going to be walking that community this week, they don't want to hear Parkland crimes down 10%.

They want to know why there wasn't a cop on that block when their house was shot up 60 times, 60 rounds, fully up.

I watched the video, Friday night in this community.

And so the numbers may be down, but how people feel matters as well.

We did our community walk last week on Charlton.

I had a mother with her kid standing next to me who thanked us.

He said, hey, you know, a year ago, my daughter was up here on this Champ Proline and pointed to it.

And there was a shootout across the street.

We had to run up and bring her down.

We haven't had a shooting on this block in a year and a half.

And so those are the real stories and the real impacts that we see when we're out there in these communities and we talk about measurements and what's working or why.

Yeah, these numbers, they're all great and fine, but when you're woken up at two in the morning for a 60 round shot in your neighborhood, you don't care about those numbers.

Quick question.

This wasn't mentioned in your report so if it takes looking up and getting back to me that's totally fine.

Yes.

They are.

We're on track.

We just filled the PSA.

I reviewed it this morning, actually, to push out.

And so we'll be getting that out to the community.

Just to Lloyd's point earlier, just because I think it's important, my memory was from the, and I just looked it up to verify it, from the disproportionate minority contact report that one of the big areas they said they didn't investigate was socioeconomic status, and they attempted to use education level and employment status as a proxy for it, but they acknowledged that was very imperfect, but they found a very strong correlation with those variables as well as nationally.

And in that conversation at the time, a big part of it was because of the history of urban renewal and redlining, there's a systematic destruction of black wealth.

The average black income in Charlottesville is 50% AMI.

It's more than double that for your average white family.

And just so that socioeconomic variable, in addition to the implicit bias in the report, was highlighted as very important.

And because of policy decisions made in the decades prior, there's a systematic policy reason.

disparity in educational attainment in income and wealth.

I agree with you, sir.

Mayor Wade, Members of Council, Mr. Sanders, Madam Clerk, good evening.

It's an honor to stand before you as your fire chief and serve and represent the members, men and women of the Charlottesville Fire Department.

I'm accompanied tonight by my three deputy chiefs and I'm proud to

introduce you tonight to my Senior Deputy Chief of Operations to present to you our department's annual report highlights.

Good evening, Mayor Wade, Councillors, Ms.

Thomas, Mr. Sanders.

It's a pleasure to be here tonight to present an overview of our 2024 Annual Report on behalf of our Chief Thomas.

But before we get into it, I would like to at least talk a little bit about our department and as far as what we are.

We are much more than a fire department.

Some people know that, some people don't, but we want to put that out there.

We are what's known in the industry as an all-hazards department, meaning we handle fire, EMS, hazardous materials, technical rescue incidents, and we also play a hand in emergency management here in the city.

We're staffed with 127 full-time employees.

We had a hiring event or rather a skills assessment and agility test that started today and hopefully at the conclusion of that within the next 60 days we should be at full staff.

One of the things that's riddled or that's all through our report that

What is pretty important for us in the city in whole is the fact that the Charlottesville Fire Department is an ISO Class 1 department.

ISO Class 1 is an insurance services organization ranking.

It's the highest ranking that signifies an exemplary fire capacity in a locality.

Nationwide, there's about 38,000 fire departments.

We're one of just shy of 500 departments that carry that ranking.

We also are an internationally accredited agency through the Center for Public Safety Excellence.

That organization gives us an accreditation model that's based off self-assessment and that promotes excellence through continuous improvement.

and that helps us by providing a quality service to the committee.

To talk about the two together, that puts us in a totally different realm.

Of those same 38,000 departments across the nation, we're one of 114 departments that hold both of those certifications and we're one of seven in the Commonwealth that hold that certification.

We're alongside

City of Fairfax, Newport News, Fairfax County, Hampton, Henrico, and Roanoke.

So let's talk about our experience for last year as far as when you see the trucks going up and down the road.

We ran 7,800 calls give or take for service.

Last year we were down from 2023 about three-tenths of a percent, but right now we're trending to be up as much as 7% through March of 2025 versus 2024.

64% of our total calls are related to EMS services.

I pulled out a couple of those types that are kind of, for a patient, are high risk, low frequency events.

Those are your cardiac arrests, your strokes, your opioid overdoses, and those types of things.

We responded to 55 incidences of cardiac arrest in 2024.

And of those 55, we had a return of spontaneous circulation on 20 of those 55 cardiac arrests.

Strokes are a little bit tricky because they are actual true strokes and then they are also sometimes dispatches of stroke because of someone that's got low blood sugar or high blood sugar or they kind of get grouped together.

But we responded to 1338 of those and of those, 49 of those incidents were marked positive for stroke symptoms that we alerted the hospital for and turned them over for final definitive care.

Overdoses, CFD, much like Chief Kochis' numbers, we only looked at CFD, not CFD in cars combined, although the numbers were not that far off.

73 incidences of opioid overdoses within the city.

Our crews administered Narcan on 71% of those incidents.

And of those 73 responses, 88% of the patients showed improvement in their respiratory rate.

And of those, 63% of them showed an increase in their cognitive ability after the administration of Narcan.

Fire and other types of calls accounted for 36% of our car load for 2024.

We picked five fires that we had in the city, Carlton Avenue, Fifth Street Southwest, Virginia, Monticello, and Palatine Avenue.

We experienced the loss of just shy of a million dollars, which sounds like a lot, but we also saved a little over $5.5 million of personal property in the city through our response.

Can you go back?

OK.

All right.

Thank you.

The fires that we pulled out, like the house, the vacant house on Fifth Street was one of them.

I don't know, Joe, have you rolled those?

No cause due to the amount of damage to that building.

It was a vacant structure.

OK.

All right, thanks.

We can follow up.

I've got a quick question, too, on the same slide.

Yes, please.

Thank you.

And I don't know which category this would fall into, maybe a special incident.

OK.

So everything that's not an EMS call, meaning us rendering treatment for an individual, would fall into all of these other categories.

Yes.

And how do we get to

To have a workforce that's developed, we dedicated 61,164 hours to training, which was broken down between specific fire-related training, recruit training, or new hire training, and EMS training.

Some value adds to the department and to the city.

Obviously, at the gracious approval of you all, just like Chief Kochis spoke to, the labor agreement was good.

It did give our employees a voice for wages and benefits and working conditions.

Alternative response team, Anchor, we mentioned.

That's a great community partnership between us, social services, and the police department.

2024 also brought a new fire station coming out of the ground for the

Fifth time in the city's history.

ISO, we completed, required a bit of information that we sent in.

We were then recommended to go in front of the council for them.

We scored enough points to go to the council for recommendation to be ISO 1 again.

We're still waiting on the final notification of that.

And just so you have an understanding of that process,

The fire department itself is only responsible for about 50% of that process.

The remaining balance, that remaining 50%, we rely on communications from the communications center, which we also support regionally, and our water department.

It's broken up to about 40 and 10%.

So, without their help, we could not continue to maintain that status.

Accreditation is a five-year process.

We're in between submissions for reaccreditation, but we have to complete an annual compliance report.

We submitted that last year.

The DEA changed some rulings in the Commonwealth about pharmacies and specifically for us drug kits and how they're exchanged at the hospital.

It put that burden over on us specifically and solely.

So we had to apply for a pharmaceutical license.

We had our medical director had to give us approval to buy drugs under his license.

We had to do some security work, which all resulted in us hiring a pharmacy technician to provide oversight for the intake, disposal, and the use of those drugs in the department.

Yeah, I just say similar to the police department.

I really appreciate the work that you all do and appreciate these slides.

I think they're

Very informative, really impressed with the accreditation.

I know that those things I used to work in industry, I know that they're hard to get and they reflect a lot of effort and quality on our part, y'all's part.

And I might add that that we have been accredited to through CIPSI four different times.

While not consecutive, we weren't consecutive because of our own request.

We didn't feel we were ready to go for accreditation in that off year.

So we paused it and then reapplied and were accredited.

I just, having thanked the police department for being out on Saturday night, I want to thank the members of the fire department for being out there on Saturday night too.

I want it to go unnoticed.

I heard that our fire department might be getting some smaller sized fire trucks.

Is that true?

The reason why I ask is because sometimes we hear that there's additional steps that is not specifically just fire department but EMS in general asks for like when someone applies to build housing then the fire department says well

OK.

Thank you.

Are our smallest trucks at that minimum, or are they bigger?

They're at the minimum.

OK.

Michael?

That made me think of a very random question, but I've read in some localities there's a problem of basically monopolization of getting fire trucks, like there's only one vendor they can use, and I know we've had costs go up and the time to actually get a fire truck has significantly gone up and it may connect with even

the flexibility, you know, in the products you can even get.

I think what you're speaking to is the federal, the requested federal investigation into the Rev Group practices.

Rev Group represents several different brands, but they all fall under that one conglomeration.

We have previously purchased from Rev Group but don't currently have any trucks on order with Rev Group but it doesn't discount the fact that our lead times are long and it's not just in fire apparatus.

30 months from when we yanked the contract.

To kind of put that in a realm of things, and I don't want to miss me for Will.

Will's taken over when he came to us, taking over Fleet.

Prior, it was me, so I'll speak a little bit to it.

We have, in the past, purchased

apparatus through different programs to get those build times down.

But we had to make cuts on options and special options to meet our needs.

But we did that strategically because we knew that we could get those options added at an aftermarket vendor.

So the options that we cut off were strategic.

That cut what was projected to be a 40-month build time down to 28 months.

But we still do have one full custom bumper that's a 40 month delivery.

And an aerial now, a tiller, which we use quite regularly.

Right now those build times are approaching 60 months.

No, that's very helpful.

Yeah, and just for the public, I think we had a similar conversation with trash pickup.

It's kind of interesting.

Yeah, and we're pretty blessed that we're healthy right now, both

from an employee standpoint, a department standpoint, an apparatus standpoint, meaning we have trucks.

Our neighboring department had an unfortunate incident over the weekend.

The only other question I had is I doubt we're in this situation because we're way less rural, but I remember Albemarle had a stat that just kind of blew my mind in terms of what percentage of calls for service were people basically essentially using that call to get transportation to a more routine doctor's appointment for preventative care or other basic non-emergency services.

Yeah, I don't think that's germane to any one locality.

I mean, we experienced that.

I don't have a number for you off the top of my head to tell you what that's like.

And I'm sorry.

I have one quick follow up.

You mentioned that there's a minimum for size of trucks.

Who sets that minimum?

Is it state or local?

Our local department sends it.

It really depends on the piece of apparatus we're purchasing.

The pumpers we're trying to keep around 32 feet long.

The tiller that we have is 64 feet long, but remember that truck articulates in the middle.

We do have a tower ladder that is somewhere in between those and takes a little bit more distance to turn around.

Just had a couple of comments, one had some friends or you know constituents that actually you know were part of those emergency calls so thank you for your life-saving service to the community and secondly a few weeks ago I kind of did step outside with

Sleepout Seaville to kind of bring awareness to the unhoused.

It was a real uncomfortable night.

I got an idea of what it's like to be unhoused.

But throughout the entire night, I heard the fire engines and ambulances and things.

Throughout the entire night, I didn't realize that it's truly a 24-hour service, and it doesn't necessarily slow down at 2 and 3 o'clock in the morning.

I got a broader appreciation of you all's work as well.

So thank you for your service.

Thank you.

Okay.

Good evening again.

So this is my check-in, my quarterly check-in with council and the public just to kind of share with you all things, highlights as it relates to the work plan that I follow.

I just remind everybody I rolled out work plans across the city organization last year and asked the lead team to begin using a tool that would help them plan their work and the goal would be for you to take the calendar year and lay it all out over the next 12 months associated with the budget that you've been allocated and try your best to deliver on the things that were a part of that plan.

is the key to developing the plan of course is then once you finish you now have to work the plan.

So this is my quarterly update I'm saving you the full layout document that will be posted online tomorrow so anyone who is interested in what we've been up to can go to the transparency portal or to the city manager's page and the update will be there.

I'm just going to walk you through a few slides just as a highlight for this third quarter.

So we're going to talk a little bit about placemaking, capacity building, how we've been leveraging opportunities, and then just give you a few hints of visible progress because I like to toot the horn of the team because we don't always hear that or get that.

In the making place area, just looking at Jordan Park Bridge, Tom Tom Festival, US 29 Bridge, and then Seaville Spectacular have a few things on that.

So I have the great fortune of being a part of the Jordan Park Bridge ribbon cutting just last week, a week and a half ago.

It's a great moment to have our Parks team along with our Community Solutions team who work really hard and diligent on getting this bridge added.

This is a connection.

in Jordan Park where people in the past have been basically traversing rocks at their own risk and now we've actually made it possible for it to be a multi-modal tool and amenity so it's now for bikes, for walking, for wheelchairs, for anyone who wants to get to the other side in a much more safe manner so these are always fun moments and even in the rain we found a reason to celebrate and we brought Alexander out to have him cut the ribbon as a member of the Belmont-Carlton neighborhood.

Tom Tom had a great time last week actually was on stage with Jim Ryan and Jeff Richardson for a conversation about innovation something that hasn't happened since I've been here and something we've been trying to make more regular more consistent

I wanted to demonstrate that regional is the thing and it is possible for the three of us to get along and we can do it in public just the same as we can behind closed doors.

So it was a great opportunity for us to do that.

The mayor was on full display with Wendy Horton from UVA Health.

I did not realize that they are bosom buddies.

They have a lot going on between the two of them, which is great for us as well because that means that there's a connection into further conversations.

and I was a judge at the crowdfunded pitch night last week as well as a part of Tom Tom.

It was my first time attending and if you could look really hard you can see in the back were the winners for the night and that was the food co-op for the grocery store proposed for Fifeville.

So it was a great moment to be a part of that recognition as well.

This is hard to read, and this is how a lot of people in the engineering space within the city work.

It's the only version of what I have.

But I'm just pointing out to everyone, there's a pedestrian bridge that is being constructed as we speak to connect a pedestrian from Seminole Square to

Stonefield is going to go across US 29.

That bridge is now going to have markers on it and those markers will represent the county, city, and the university as a placemaking project and on both sides of that bridge.

So when you come to town or leaving town you get a chance to recognize where are you and that is important for placemaking and just branding the fact that we are proud of ourselves and welcome to our community.

And we're bringing fireworks back.

So if you hadn't heard, they're coming back, fireworks on the mountain.

This July 4th, I was given the task of trying to figure out how we could get it back next year.

And I thankfully found that a lot of people have been talking about it.

So it was easier for us to go ahead and try to pull it off this year.

So they are back this 4th of July weekend.

And then we will make them even better next year as we celebrate Virginia 250 as well as the downtown malls 50th anniversary.

We're making moves within the city.

I always like to give you all just updates on the big highlights of big positions.

Joe Gilkerson, our new HR director, started last week.

Our new city attorney joins the team on May 14th and we are interviewing for an emergency management coordinator as we speak.

We fill those three seats and the leadership team for the city is filled for the first time in quite some time.

And then I'm going to walk you through a few of the opportunities that we're working on.

I have to give Deputy Marshall big props for taking advantage of opportunities to get the city of Charlottesville actually recognized nationally.

In three different moments, we have opportunities to bring

an opportunity for peer sharing as well as in some cases some small resources to make it possible for us to kind of innovate around issues that we have here local in this community, but we have the benefit of working some of those things out with peer communities that are struggling and dealing with some of the same things.

So I'm just going to highlight for you real quickly, she and Chris Engle were a part of the ICMA Economic Mobility and Opportunity Cohort.

It's an opportunity for us to work with community members who are just trying to get ahead in that economic prosperity space.

If you think about in your strategic outcome areas you identified economic prosperity as a priority area and this is an example of how we are working to implement that by looking for ways to bring resources and various innovations to the table for here at the City of Charlottesville we can implement those things and we're doing it in partnership with other communities.

We kind of learn from others as well.

The National League of Cities centering all people practitioners cohort, again another opportunity to express and share things that we may be doing.

The goal hopefully that the local infrastructure hub will still be available since the federal government is doing things.

and we hope they will stop doing things so that we can access the funding that we try to get into this for.

But ideally if you think, if you look under that third bullet under project is to seek funding for safe streets, brownfields or rail transportation and doing so while showing equity in the work that we do.

We know that last bit they don't want to hear about but we're not going to stop doing the work that we need to do.

And then lastly we have applied and we feel like good news is coming so we're waiting here if we have been approved for the National League of Cities, Southern Cities Economic Initiative

and this one is important because we were able to bring the United Way of Greater Charlottesville in as a partner and I am interested in how many times we can be a part of initiatives like that and bring some of our local partners to those opportunities to again go and engage with our peers around the country.

In some cases they figured it out so we can learn from them but in other ways we can figure out things together and hopefully make a difference right here at home.

So we're also making progress.

These are just some examples.

This was for TomTom this weekend.

There were a few of us that got very, we nerded out about this, like very excited about the idea that we were able to put barriers on the mall that are not trucks, that belong to the city government, that are not manned by individuals, that I'm paying to stand out there and watch and wait for nothing and hope that nothing happens.

But now I actually have the ability to

We were, in this case, rent meridian barriers, deploy those, and then use our resources in a much better way.

By all accounts, they worked.

Thankfully, there was no need for them to work, but the goal is to have them in place.

And as I shared with you all when I talked to you about this last week, the goal is that I'll be coming and asking you to spend money on this.

Because what we know that happened here in 2017, this is the kind of stuff that we should have actually done immediately after to outfit this city with the right tools.

And this is a great example of the right tool that's being deployed around the world.

And I believe there's a reason for Charlottesville to have its own version.

So I'll be bringing that to you shortly.

As an example, it's just an example of recent activities.

I have now really gotten to our team in that they love to send me, we're doing this, we're doing this, we're doing this, and it's hard for me to keep track of all the things that we're doing because we're doing better at a lot of things.

But just to show you that we were able to save some money on the Quarry Monticello sidewalk project,

and with the savings we're adding four crosswalks here and while I know that may be small and while I know that there are many more crosswalks that people want and while I know there are certain crosswalks that people would prioritize

I'm just asking everybody to appreciate that more crosswalks are happening.

So for that we will continue to do this work and the goal is to make it safe wherever we need to make it safe and to continue to find ways to maximize the work that we're doing so that we can save funds and use them in other ways and get more of our safety priorities implemented across the city.

and again, something to nerd out about.

We had a issue with the bus shelter that we put into Belmont Park.

We had to take it up.

We had to start all over.

Now the bus shelter's back.

I actually walked this weekend, walked past it I don't know how many times and was proud of the idea that we got the bus shelter done.

I have now said, please get Midway Manor's bus shelter done because I owe Mary Carey a snack and sit on the bench with her and say, now, isn't this nice?

So the goal is for us to try to get that done.

But we, and this is the great work of the team, the transportation team, the team at CAT who's been working to make sure that we get these amenities across our entire network and one of the benefits, one of the beautiful things that we're working on right now is it's not just in the city, we're in the county setting up opportunities for us to deploy these amenities as well.

So I just thought I would take a moment to share with you some of the things that make me smile because there's so many other things that don't.

And that's it.

That's what I got for you.

Are there any questions?

I shouldn't have said that, I'm sorry.

Any questions?

I would only highlight for the community, these are all great and these, I don't want to say they're small because they take a lot of work, but these kind of things that maybe for the community can see small build up to be the foundation of what a high quality of life and functioning city government services are.

But all this is also occurring in the context of city government doing really big things with implementing collective bargaining, close to 10 major affordable housing projects, expansion of bus service, implementation of the climate action plan.

So it's not just this.

I mean, there's some really foundational changes that have been going on as well.

Thank you.

Yes, and I'm sure other councilors have heard of

The strong support for your leadership throughout the community.

They appreciate your matter-of-factness and just getting things done, bringing stability back at leadership.

So all these other things that we've been hearing about from 4 o'clock to now, it would have been really difficult for those things to take place without your vision and strong leadership.

All of us.

Yes.

The next item is a public hearing for the City of Charlottesville proposed real property tax.

We are almost done with the 26th budget.

So close.

Tonight is our formal public hearing on the tax rates or the real estate tax rate for the 2026 budget, the 2025 calendar year.

As you'll recall from all of our budget work sessions, there were no changes to any of the tax rates.

And so tonight is a public hearing for anyone who would like to speak on those.

Okay, any questions?

I think we've had several.

Okay, I will now open up the public hearing.

Would anyone like to speak on the proposed real estate property tax?

Thank you again for this opportunity.

I guess I want to say again that according to your advertisement for this hearing, you did, according to the legal language of the advertisement mandated by the state, you have effectuated an effective tax rate increase.

So just to clarify the record, that is what you've done.

I want to reiterate that increasing your housing tax rate by more than three times inflation continues to be a burden on residents, possibly even more so on low income residents.

On top of this you're effectively, you have an effective 9% increase on your water tax revenues because the water rates are going up

and I assume, I'm pretty sure you're not adjusting your rate to compensate.

That also burdens residents.

These things add up.

In terms of the notice, I'm done with the issue over the property tax increase notice that you're supposed to do, but just for your information, as of today, I still can't find one that's required at City Hall, and your lobby receptionist is not aware of any.

In terms of other effects to housing,

I know of at least two property investors that are simply reluctant to develop new housing without some assurance that your cost increases, city cost increases, will at some point in the future align with inflation.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Anyone else like to speak on