City Council Meeting   5/5/2025

Good evening.

Mayor Wade is in Ghana this week, and so I'm going to preside with the meeting.

My name is Brian Pinkston.

So I have the call to order and the roll call.

The May 5, 2025 Charlottesville City Council meeting will come to order.

Ms.

Yes.

Council Oschrin?

Here.

All right, please cast your vote.

Motion passes.

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

Second, it would be followed by a closed session or recess.

As of now, there are no items for a closed session.

So you will begin with the reports, and we'll begin with the United Way of Greater Charlottesville's PROSPER program.

And we have Robbie Cooper here tonight.

Thank you for being here, Robbie, the United Way president.

Thank you.

Do I need this, or can you guys hear me?

Can you hear me OK?

Great.

And somebody will advance slides?

Yes.

Thank you, Ashley.

Excellent.

Well, first off, thanks for having me down today to talk a little bit about PROSPER, which is a program United Way's been working on for the past couple years.

Finally launched in January and we're really excited to share a little bit more about it with you all today.

So next slide.

So you've heard United Way present before, so I know you've heard a little bit about what our vision and mission is.

But just to remind everybody, we're here for a strong, equitable community where everyone can thrive.

And we align with the city around that messaging to be a place where everyone thrives.

So a lot of the work that we do really, I think, aligns with the strategic priorities of the city, which is to make sure our community members have all the opportunities that they need to be able to be economically stable.

So a lot of the programs we offer and some of the ones I'll talk about today are really about how do we lift families up and remove barriers and how do we do it well in partnership with other nonprofit organizations.

United Way really is about convening and collaborating at the essence of the heart of what we do in our community.

So next slide.

So strategic alignment, financial stability is one of the core areas of United Way.

We also work in early school readiness which intersects and is a good partner to financial stability and we'll talk a little bit about that in a moment.

For a Working Family, child care is essential.

To be able to work, you need child care.

So we'll talk about how the two kind of go hand in hand.

But today, we're here to talk about Prosper and a little bit about how we collaborate in this sort of ecosystem of family support system.

And again, how we choose and hope to work with the city on this particular program.

We do work with the city in a lot of different ways, but this is something new that we're proposing.

And I should say, has been funded.

Last year was the first year, or this year, that we've gotten some funding for it.

And so we're going to talk a little bit about what we hope to do.

next year if we were to get an increase in funding.

And the bottom line of all these efforts, as you can see there on the screen, is to increase medium income, increase the number of small businesses in our community, decrease our poverty rate, decrease the number of households who are paying 30% or more for housing.

We all know the affordable housing crisis, but one of the ways to tackle it is to help people increase their income so they can't afford the housing that is in Charlottesville if they choose to live in Charlottesville.

So next slide.

So existing collaborations, and I'm going to just add a little flavor to sort of some of the numbers around these.

So we currently administer pathways for the city.

We have since COVID.

When COVID hit, we actually partnered with the community foundation and the county and put together an emergency response program.

And as the year rolled on, we decided that the partnership had worked so well.

We decided to stay on work with the city DDS on this program.

So we're in year five now.

It's been a fantastic program overall.

working with Misty and her program in Human Services.

This year we dispersed $727,000 in funding.

We do get a 7% admin fee for that.

It's about $55,000.

So every week we disperse checks that help folks mainly from being evicted.

There's many nights where we run down and have to drop checks off after work to make sure folks don't get evicted, but a lot of it's around utility assistance and things of that nature.

So it's been a great program.

We do the Early Learner Scholarship Program.

That's a contractual arrangement we have with the city.

We currently get $215,000 and we place about 26 children, so that's full day full care for a child.

So if you're a working family making about $50,000 to $60,000, which many of our families do, child care right now ranges anywhere from $15,000 to $20,000, depending on the age of your child.

And so that can be a significant portion of a person's income.

And if you're Alice, which we'll talk about in a moment, which is asset limited, income constrained, but you're employed, it's essential to be able to work to have child care.

And not just child care.

not just daycare, we want you to have quality childcare where you're getting the type of intervention and support so you can get to kindergarten and be prepared to learn and do well with your more economically advantaged peers.

So this has been a long-standing relationship we've had with the city and one that's been really prosperous for I think United Way and the families that we serve and hopefully the city.

Go to Grow is another program that we do throughout the region but we work with city residents.

This year we're serving 516 families that have applied through the program.

This allows the family to access

All of our programs serve people under 300% of the federal poverty level.

But particularly in this program, we serve a lot of families that can be even under the 150 mark, so some of them are in the social safety net.

So we help place them with a childcare center that's near their home.

at a price that can work with a subsidy or whatever support we can offer them and what other services they might need in the community.

Envision Enterprise Grants is something that we've done now for about four years.

We actually do a partnership with the Economic Development Department, Chris Ingle.

We just finished up our most recent round of grants to small businesses in the community.

For that, we've done 26 grants over the past four years that amounts to $260,000.

For that program, we give $50,000 at United Way.

The city and the county each provide $50,000, and we all partner to do grants of about $10,000.

So that's been a successful program, and we're hoping to continue that as well next year.

Mixed delivery, we have right now 79 year-round child care placements.

That's a program that's supported by the state, ultimately the federal government, Department of Health and Human Services, funnels money through the Virginia Department of Education.

We're a subgrantee.

We're one of nine regions in the state that gets this award.

We're on our second round of awards.

We just got it again for three years.

Right now we have 520 placements across 22 counties.

So we've expanded to Winchester, Hairstonburg, Augusta, and Augusta, Waynesboro, and then here in the Thomas Jefferson Planning District.

But how it shakes out here in our community is we support 79 families with those full day, full childcare placements.

And then we work with a couple centers, YMC and Barrett are the two big partners on that program.

And Head Start, we applied for the Head Start grant this year when it was relinquished by MACA.

We just found out today we should hear early July.

It sounds like it is currently as of today not being removed from federal funding at this moment, so we're positive and hopeful that that will go forward.

We are the only applicant we understand in our region and so it seems

favorable that we'll get it.

If we do we'll have 16 children attending Head Start here in the city working with the city preschool program on that.

And then most recently thanks to Ashley doing some work with the city here we applied for the Southern Cities Economic Initiative which is to build and we're going to be building a business plan for early childhood education and that's all about building economic prosperity and inclusion through access to quality child care basically training the teachers that will be in the classroom

many of whom really see this as sort of a job and if there's a better job that comes along they'll leave the classroom and so we have a lot of transition for children with trying to recruit and keep child care workers.

So giving them access to a CDA or some sort of basic child care training is really crucial and we currently have a real shortage of teachers and so this is a

Way to help with workforce development around something that's really needed in the city And this grand opportunity that we were just presented with So that gives you a sort of a big picture of all the things that we currently do already with the city And then we'll talk a little bit more about prosperous the next slide

So just again, a little bit about Alice working families.

Is it okay if I ask you guys a question?

Is that appropriate or can I ask?

Okay.

How many have heard about Alice?

You're familiar with the term Alice?

So mostly, okay.

So you can kind of see up there, we've got almost 3,500 households in the city of Charlottesville that are considered Alice.

You can see what that means from an income perspective just to kind of help for a family of three.

We serve a lot of like single moms and with two children.

That's a pretty normal scenario for United Way.

And you can see if their budget is about $58,000 a year with child care too under the age of five, rent being what it is, leaves very little resources for anything else.

And this is a scenario we deal with day in and day out in terms of the clients that come to United Way.

They're not in the social safety net, meaning they're not receiving any social services.

But they don't make enough to really succeed and to really get out of sort of the cycle of living right at the line of poverty.

And so everything United Way focuses on and our new strategic plan is on supporting Alice families

in the city, in the county, and in the Thomas Jefferson Planning District.

Next slide.

So current needs among Alice families.

This gives you a little flavor of what we're seeing when families come in.

First off, 64% are the primary income earners in their household.

They all work at least 30 hours a week.

Roughly 50% are single female head of households.

48% are black households, and 32% are white households that we currently serve.

and in our financial resiliency task force work we're able to do surveys and see where the most support is needed and you can kind of see in that little chart there financial coaching is a need, home ownership, housing ownership of course, transportation is big and we have some programs to address that and then child care is really the number one area that families are looking for support.

You can see some of the partners that we work with listed there at the bottom.

One of the questions is, is anybody else kind of doing this work with Prosper?

And the answer is not exactly what we're doing.

Networked Work does an incredible job serving families, workforce development support, but they're mostly serving the social safety net folks, and then we're serving Prosper.

The last bullet there, 48% of black households are Alice, 32% of white households.

Correct.

Got it.

But we can shop data, however, right?

So we are looking at city today, but there's some really good data across our region, what's happening.

So your last statement puzzled me.

I'm not sure I heard it correctly.

On the left.

If you want to say 48% of Alice households are black,

That's what I'm interpreting, your oral statement.

OK.

Correct.

And then we have Latino, of course, and other populations that make up the balance.

But we can make that more clear on this slide.

Next slide.

So the evolution.

I've been here before.

I've talked about the financial resiliency task force.

That was a group of organizations that came together, all of whom you've heard of or worked with, City of Promise, CIC, Habitat for Humanity, MACA, Network to Work, New Hill Development, Piedmont Housing Alliance, Yuhara Foundation, and United Way got together summer of 2019.

We worked for five years.

We worked on what was a problem we thought we could solve.

together in terms of supporting families to achieve economic stability.

Out of that work, we've really kind of solidified where we want to focus, which again are families that are earning over 150 percent but under 300 percent of federal poverty level.

And so that's kind of the chart you're looking at right there.

When we started, we were serving folks that were generally under 200 percent of the federal poverty level.

We were having a lot of challenges moving the needle on them being able to increase their income, increase their credit,

you know get into home ownership so we increase the percentage in terms of the bottom at that 150 and went to 300 and we're having a much better result with families that are earning just a little bit more but need a lot of those wraparound supports and so that's what a Prosper Client is.

But you see we have something called pre-prosper and the way that we're working with our partners now is to make it a continuum so you're in Ridge's program and you're pre-prosper so maybe you're working in a

local nursing home and you're you know providing care services there for 12 or 13 or 15 an hour you might go to RIDGES and get a CNA and now you're able to make 18 an hour but you're still maybe in social safety net you haven't actually gotten to Prosper or Alice and so then you can come back and get further credentialing through some of the partnerships that we have or some of the opportunities that we're offering and you can get yourself up to that 50 or 60.

So the idea is that we're trying to all work together to help that person on the continuum to financial stability.

That's just one example, but we get referrals from pretty much all of the partners that I just mentioned.

And we refer out, too, where appropriate to our partners as well.

Next slide.

So Prosper launched this year, February 2025.

The goal here is to give individuals up to 2,500 apiece.

It's anything for career development, job improvement, certifications, entrepreneurship.

Individuals have to work at least 30 hours a week.

Our goal is to try to get 20 folks supported this year, so it's still a newer program.

And next year, we're hoping to serve 20 clients again, so it's really about scalability and funding.

Right now, we raised private philanthropy to cover the cost of this program, and then the city was gracious in giving us resources this year to go toward this program.

But, as I said, if you want to go to the next slide, this is something that we definitely want to scale next year and in years to come.

This is a client that we just supported, so Tamara, single parent, one child, working at UVA Health as an anesthesia technician.

She came just because she felt like she couldn't advance in her career, and we approved a stipend to get her emergency medical technician certification.

and by her uniforms.

So this is really basic stuff for $2,500, but it's really essential when you're living on that $58,000 we just talked about a moment ago, or $50,000.

And so you can go to the next slide, it's just another client example.

Rashid came, single father of two sons, non-emergency medical transport businesses he got off the ground, Caring Connections LLC, serving seniors and Medicaid clients, and we just helped him buy a laptop.

He didn't have a computer of any kind.

and helped him get some design up so he could promote his company.

So again, right around $2,500.

And he's a past CIC participant.

So he did go through CIC's program for Entrepreneurism.

But then, like a lot of CIC graduates, if they don't get a loan, because sometimes it's tough to get a loan in your small business and you're just starting off, then there's these sort of needs that you have.

And so grants can really be helpful in getting people to bridge the gap there.

So next slide.

So the proposal that we're putting before you today, this year we had 31,500 in support from the city, and then 46,000 was being invested in the program by United Way.

For next year, we're hoping to get 50,000 from the city of Charlottesville to fund another 20 Charlottesville residents in this program.

And then also, we make referrals to the downtown job center.

One of the things we've been working with Ashley on is how to make sure we're referring back and forth effectively as possible, making sure that Ella Jordan, who's our senior director on the team,

has the right contacts and knows who to work with at the city and direct contact with the city of Charlottesville for additional referrals as well and to some of our additional programs that we operate.

So in addition to the program I just mentioned to you, we have our LIFT program.

So we do about $12,000 a year where we give a family a code and they're able to get to work or to child care however many codes they need a week as long as we have those resources available.

If you're able to have a car, but it's old and having challenges, which a lot of our clients face, we have a vehicle repair program we just launched.

We invest about $50,000 a year.

We've signed an agreement with Network to Work.

We're going to be servicing their clients, and we have four or five local mechanics that we now work with that are certified, that we have a relationship with, and we're making those repairs up to $2,500.

So they're grants.

They don't have to be repaid, but they're keeping people on the road.

And then ultimately, if somebody wants to be able to be in a transportation, wants a newer vehicle,

The Driving Life Support Program.

We partner with a local dealership, Carter Meyers.

We invest up to $16,000 per family.

We help them with down payment assistance.

Insurance right now is extraordinarily expensive.

It's about $400 a month on average for families to get insurance.

So we help them with that.

The down payment brings their payment down, and they're able to make a payment of about $300 and build their credit and be in a newer vehicle.

So the idea is to scaffold the transportation continuum.

a lot of folks you know encourage bicycling and things in the city which of course makes sense but when you have young children and families it's sometimes tough also public transportation can be an option but buses that always run when a lot of our folks work a lot of our folks are doing two shifts so they work night shifts or they work weekend shifts and they can't always necessarily access public transportation and also with young children car seats things of that nature so that can be challenging so we're just trying to provide a full continuum of support to our local families as far as that goes

We do have a family investment program so families that are looking to purchase their home through Habitat get referred to us.

We invest $10,000 over two years and help them get in a position to be able to afford their first home.

So there are other wraparound programs that we have that support Prosper.

So Prosper is nestled in these other programs and we're really trying to have a program that meets every family's need that comes to United Way as long as we have the funding to support them.

So that's it.

That's what I wanted to share with you guys today.

I know that as a request for funding to the city this came to us relatively late and I gather that there are a lot of moving parts and some of them didn't move in all the right directions.

What can you

So we did make a request and we made a request of the repeat of 31-5 and it came back at half around $15,000 and so we did some sort of research to figure out what would be the best solution and we're encouraged to come back and share our program with you and see if there's any additional funds if they could be deployed for this program.

Restored to the amount of your request.

Yeah, and then we applied again in the fall and just I guess it was a month or two back where the funding had been cut to half and it wasn't specific to our program.

Okay.

Yes, so you touched on it briefly at the end about

How there's people who are advocating for bike usage.

Guilty.

And then you mentioned that in the context of the vehicle assistance program.

No, I would love to have an opportunity to work more.

Everybody that comes to us has a family.

So far, there's been a need for vehicles because of that, or public transportation.

Yeah, absolutely.

We would never turn down anybody looking for a transport option.

So far, we haven't had a request for that particular transportation option, mostly because it's a year-round thing, and it's winter, and it's cold, and it's raining, and it's this, and it's that.

And you've got kids, and groceries, and all the things we hear that families go through.

But certainly, we wouldn't turn that opportunity down.

Yeah, that'd be great.

Yeah.

Yeah, so I was going to walk you back through the process.

So United Way applied through the Vibrant Community Fund.

The request that was submitted was $31,500.

That's the amount that they are currently operating under this fiscal year that they were awarded last year.

The results from the recommendations came back at $14,805, which is the amount that they've been notified that they'll receive beginning July 1.

For FY26.

When I share with you all the list of all the money I had cobbled together to give you the big pot to play with, that would be where you would be pulling from.

Okay.

Michael, anything, any questions?

I would just close by saying I know it's tough.

Your job is tough.

I know we make grants and it's tough to decide where the money should go, but again, we're passionate about the program because we see it as crucial to local families being able to move forward and just the families we're supporting already.

It's just made an incredible difference and it's probably a small amount of money, so yeah.

Let me know if you need additional information.

We would do a check-in in the next, our next check-in to see where you are.

And just to clarify, it would be

That would be up for consideration as well.

That's your call, because as it's coming out of your council's strategic initiatives fund, that's where all the flexibility is.

This is no longer about vibrant community, because that fund is already spoken, that process is concluded.

Correct.

And what we would say to you is that you would be looking at this as a part of your economic prosperity strategic outcome area.

That's what I was going to say on that.

I guess that's really a good way to summarize it, if that makes sense.

The grants also go directly to clients, so we're not taking an admin fee right now out of this program.

I'm probably raising funds to cover staff time, overhead, operations, all of that, because

It's like anything that you're starting off with, we want to just try to get it off the ground and really show success.

Great.

Thank you.

Thanks for having me.

Really great to see you.

Appreciate it.

It was good to see everybody.

Yeah, thanks.

OK, next up is the water supply plan update.

Actually, Ruth Emerick with TJPDC is going to present, because

My apologies to Counselor Payne who's already heard this presentation once on Thursday.

I am here to cover the regional water supply planning update with you all.

Some of you are already familiar.

Back in October, there were some changes that became effective with Virginia state code relating to regional water supply planning.

One of the big changes, it's no longer just local water supply planning, it's required to be regional.

And there are these new regional planning areas that have been defined based on river basins.

We are currently in the Middle James I Regional Planning Unit.

That's Charlottesville, Albemarle, Green, Viviana, Louisa, and Buckingham Counties.

Nelson County is in a different planning unit.

At the kickoff meeting in March, the TJPDC was requested to coordinate the planning effort for the Middle James I Regional Planning Unit.

The next slide has a map of the regional planning units that were defined across the state.

There have been some changes in the boundaries that you see here.

I know there are a couple of regional planning units that have merged into a single planning unit.

And next slide, please.

This just shows that there are a couple of new sections to the local and regional water supply planning code.

And the next slide.

So the main components of this

Regional Water Supply Plan are really to take the existing data that our localities and water authorities have already compiled and put it into a single plan so that all the data is together by watershed, by river basin, and help us plan regionally to make sure that if there are risks to our water supply, if there are opportunities where we could be working together where we're not already, that we document that and are able to move forward.

And the next slide, please.

So you're probably wondering how this is going to be funded.

The General Assembly allocated some funds to support this effort over the next two years.

Well, really, this current fiscal year and next fiscal year.

TJPDC applied and was awarded about $8,000 to help with the administrative cost of this.

As you know, that's not a lot of money.

VAPDC, the Virginia Association of Planning District Commissions will be advocating at the General Assembly for additional funding.

Right now, we're still waiting on additional guidance from DEQ on what all is required to be in the plan.

We know that a lot of the data we already have is sufficient, but we also know that that may not be all that's required.

So there's a possibility that at some point what is required will be beyond the technical expertise or capacity of our local staff to complete this plan.

But the good news is the plan is not required to be submitted to DEQ until October of 2029, so we have a little bit of time to figure this out.

I mentioned that there was a kickoff meeting held for our regional water supply planning unit held with DEQ in March.

That was a well-attended meeting from each of the jurisdictions participating in our RPU.

and DEQ staff.

Last week the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission voted on a resolution to affirm participation for the PDC member localities that are in that RPU, so you guys don't need to consider a separate resolution.

Buckingham County, because they're not a part of the PDC Region 10, will have to

No problem.

So the regional planning unit that we are in includes all of the normal region 10 localities, but not Nelson.

But it includes Buckingham County, which is not in PDC 10.

OK.

So the TJPDC Planning District Commission voted last week on a resolution that affirms participation for each of the PDC localities that are in that RPU.

But they have to because they're not a member of TJPDC.

Yes.

And then Nelson County similarly has to do a separate resolution because they're in a different RPU.

Little complicated when boundaries don't line up.

We are planning to hold a kickoff meeting with the RPU stakeholder group in probably June because the funds have been awarded, but we don't actually have a contract from DEQ yet.

And we just want to make sure that any time that we're spending on it is reimbursable from the grant.

We know that we'll need to do a project scope and budget and a variety of other things, just figure out who's going to take the lead on which portions.

Great.

OK.

Thank you so much.

I'm on the Rivanna board, and so I've heard a little bit about this.

My initial freak out was, oh my goodness, you know, Charlottesville and Albemarle have invested a lot of money in our water systems here.

Are we going to be carrying all these other folks along with us?

And I guess all that's to be determined.

And I probably was prejudging things.

But yeah, do others have questions?

Michael?

Not really.

I mean I think obviously the feedback we've gotten the most is specifically around our community water supply plan and the central water line, but that is distinct from this process and doesn't really directly connect as I've understood it.

How does that play into this?

Yes, so Greene County is a part of the regional planning unit that we are in.

There was some discussion about a month ago about whether or not they would remain in this regional planning unit or opt to join the one that's just north of them.

So far, there has not been any movement in that direction.

So they will be a part of our regional planning unit.

But that does mean that there will need to be some considerations of are there connections, should there be connections, what's the risk,

We do nothing or we do something different.

And just to clarify, this was something that the General Assembly said, you're now doing this?

But yeah, I'm with you, Councilor Oschrin.

But this, after my initial sort of reaction in the RWSA meetings, I climbed down a little bit because Mr. Moyer told us, I think I've got this right, that there's going to be a lot of haggling that happens.

We may plan for

our water per these regions that have been laid out but whether or not we actually have cross connects or we're suppleting the water from Greene County all of those things are much further down the line I guess what the DEQ is asking is sort of like at a

Not a 30,000-foot level, but maybe at a 10,000-foot level.

And maybe that's like, well, this part of this RPU has this water system that works great, and this part not so much, and then the third part that's

in the middle.

I agree with that concern as least as I understood it this doesn't directly connect to that but it's something I'm also concerned about in the sense that we know that some of these surrounding counties have made a conscious policy decision to not fund basic water infrastructure and you know we can see in the news regularly lack of water pressure for fire trucks, water facilities breaking down and that was a policy decision they made and if there's any

where we have to end up subsidizing them.

But at this point, it sounds like that worry may be premature?

Yes.

I'm Jennifer Whitaker with Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority.

I'm the Director of Engineering and Maintenance.

I think it's fair to say our initial meetings

Everyone at the table is concerned about the bigger picture and ultimately where this all will go.

The one piece of reassurance that I have taken from this is that previously within the Commonwealth, anyone that had a water system did a regional plan or did a plan, right?

So we included the town of Scottsville, Charlottesville, Albemarle County, and then all the well systems within the county.

And so we had a plan, but there are large pieces of the Commonwealth that weren't included in any regional plan.

And so when you look at it from a statewide perspective, you are consistently seeing underestimation of what the true demand during a drought was for the entire Commonwealth.

And so I see this as the first step of the Commonwealth really trying to get its arms around what is the magnitude of the need within the Commonwealth

as sort of one step.

And then the second step is also getting everyone's plans sort of cataloged, if you will.

So I think each municipality that has a plan has been working on plans, and certainly this council has invested heavily in the community water supply plan for us.

and getting that catalog within our system.

So I really do believe that first five-year plan is going to be about cataloging the work that everyone has done to date.

So the initial part that's due in 2029 is

There is some overarching language that encourage regionalization.

And I think that has impacts on future permits.

So as you apply for a permit, is there water within your region?

How are you playing nice with your neighbors?

Those types of things.

But I do believe there is a lot of resistance politically

to forcing cross-border agreements.

And what was the drive for the General Assembly to do this?

Do you mind speaking in a mic so people at home can hear?

Hi, I'm Logan.

I'm also with the TJPC, I'm a regional planner.

I think it was more, I think in around 2001 there was an effort to dictate localities make forest supply plans on the back of a drought and I think they realized after that they wanted to, well, it's 20 years later, I don't know how quickly they realized, but

that they wanted to do it at a river basin level.

And so I think that map that you saw earlier was their best stab at articulating that on a river basin level.

So I don't know exactly why it happened now, but I think with the idea being that it's not just like a regional plan.

It was like a literal watershed plan.

Yeah, I'm not inherently.

I think it is odd to have a cross-jurisdiction

I mean, water is something that everybody needs, and it is something that is defined by environmental barriers, not by political barriers.

So I kind of understand that in the long term, it will be good to have some kind of regional analysis.

But as Michael said, we want to make sure that the partners in that region are investing smartly and at the same level as others so that there's not

I think you all have touched on the things I'm most concerned about.

I guess the one thing that might be not really within our, the city of Charlottesville's concern is to get a better sense of what the

and what the well capabilities are.

For example, in Albemarle County, we keep hearing that the reason why Albemarle can't do various things is because they don't have the water in the right places to enable them to do the things we might like them to do.

Sam?

I guess I'll pick up on what Councilor Snook just said.

To me it seems like this is an opportunity to do exactly that.

Find out certain things because we're being mandated to plan on a regional level, therefore you have to now be concerned about what our peers around us are experiencing and while we may be well suited for decisions that we've made,

to lead in that conversation it would be helpful for us to understand who might not and how far behind they may be and where a lift of some kind may actually come to play.

So for me it just seems like it's best about awareness at this point and it could become a challenge down the road.

I would admit that my reaction was the same.

of, wait, what do you mean?

We've been planning for our population of a city and a county that's still growing, and now you're saying we have to concern ourselves with others.

Yeah, and Rivanna is such a great organization, and you mentioned the piece about leadership.

I'm sure that it will be providing that, as well as with the PDC.

So thank y'all.

Appreciate y'all coming.

Thank you.

Okay, good afternoon counselors.

Good afternoon.

I'm joined

Tonight by Matt Johnson, he's also with our office, so I just wanted to mention that before we kick off here.

So at your last meeting, and thank you Remy, I guess you're going to advance slides on our behalf, thank you.

At your last meeting you had some discussion about affordable housing and a tax abatement program that could be coming

for your consideration soon to help incentivize affordable housing.

The EDA was mentioned in that context as a tool for accomplishing that, which triggered a few questions.

So city manager asked me to visit with you all tonight.

There was an opening in the earlier session.

So I'm going to do that, give you a little bit of history about CEDA, which is the Charlottesville Economic Development Authority, a little bit of overview of EDAs in the state,

quickly and then a little bit of some of the major projects that the EDA has been involved with over the years and then a quick peek at some current activities that we are working on.

at the moment.

In years past, the council orientation would have included a little bit about the EDA.

That has gone by the wayside a bit, so it occurred to me that the current cohort of counselors has little to no formal knowledge about the EDA unless you seek it out on your own or ask questions or come to a meeting, which

You likely haven't done.

So in any case, we apologize for that and we'll try and catch you up tonight on some of that activity.

So go ahead.

Next slide, please.

So in Virginia, EDAs and IDAs are synonymous with one another.

Industrial Development Authority, Economic Development Authority, they mean essentially the same thing.

They're born out of the state code, which you see on the right-hand part of this slide.

In the early 70s is about the time that the enabling legislation occurred.

And essentially, a little snapshot of a fairly long piece of state code is up here related to the public purpose is to promote industry, develop trade, industrial, government, nonprofit, commercial enterprises, as well as institutes of higher learning.

and Ag are all referenced there.

That language feels a little dated and that's because it was part of the original 1970s information that established the Industrial Development and Revenue Bond Act which is what EDAs currently still operate under.

So next slide.

So EDAs in Virginia have specific powers granted to them.

And these are some of them.

These are the most significant ones.

So make grants to private businesses.

Sell, lease properties on behalf of a city, typically.

Issue bonds for the benefit of private entities.

We'll talk a little bit more about that.

Make loans to private entities and or forgive loans as well.

As we go through the little bit of a history on Charlottesville's EDA,

All of these have been done at one time or another.

So we'll dive in a little bit more on each of those.

Next slide please.

So the private bond financing piece is essentially a carve out to allow tax exemption to occur for qualifying facilities.

So manufacturing facilities and charitable facilities, so 501c3 organizations, 501c6 organizations can qualify for that.

In this particular scenario, bonds

Bonds are simply a loan.

So we are a conduit issuer in this case, and this gets a little technical, but the money is not the city's money, and the money is not the EDA's money.

An entity would come to the EDA and say, we would like to have a tax-exempt bond issued.

EDAs are authorized to issue those bonds.

But once again, we're not liable for the payment.

We're just simply conferring tax-exempt

We get those requests from time to time.

related to that.

So that's a technical piece.

There's a whole specialization in the legal world in Virginia, and there's about 10 attorneys that do municipal finance, and they do industrial revenue bonds.

Our authority has on call one of those individuals.

Whenever we have these items, we rely on them heavily.

It's a very specialized piece of Virginia code and of the IRS code.

Next slide, please.

So CIDA.

CIDA started its life as C-I-D-A, as an Industrial Development Authority.

It changed its name in 2007.

The powers are not any different, but we felt it was a little bit more reflective of the activity that was currently happening.

in Charlottesville, which is more economic development and not industrial, as you might imagine, a small city of 10 square miles with no industrial park to my knowledge ever.

We've got a few little pieces of things like that, but in any case, industrial didn't really fit quite as well.

So we changed the name, but it did start as an industrial development authority.

I referenced the conduit financing.

So over the years from 1976 to current, 64 projects fall into that category in the total of about $342 million in total value.

About half of that is attributed to one major project.

Many of the projects are much, much smaller.

I'll show you a little bit of those as we move along here.

So next slide, please.

This is the mission and guiding principles.

We did this about 10 or 12 years ago.

We sat down with the authority and just kind of developed a little more easier to understand and share version of what we do.

So we didn't constantly have to refer to section 15.2 4900 of the state code which is kind of hard to read and nobody really wants to go there when you

when you ask about what the EDA or IDA can do.

So we created this mission guiding principles that we refer to regularly as we undertake activities.

So the bubbles kind of pull out the highlights there.

So it's about increasing the tax base, creating employment opportunities for citizens within our geographic boundary of the city.

and it's about enhancing the economic base, so that's traded sector, that's businesses that actually create a product or service that is then sold outside of the area, brings new revenue to the community, it's the lifeblood of how communities operate.

So we want to try and encourage that activity, create job opportunities, attract overall investment, enhance the tax base.

Those are the key elements of what you see there.

And some of you are studying this slide and wondering why there's a cute little motorcycle and sidecar on here.

And that is essentially as a reminder, sometimes I describe the city and the EDA as the motorcycle and the sidecar with the city being the motorcycle.

that determines the direction and steers the ship.

The sidecar being the EDA that rides alongside and helps out as needed on the things that it's enabled to do through the state code.

And we'll share a couple of those as we move along here.

So if you hear me refer to sidecar and motorcycle, that's simply what I'm referring to there in terms of how we go about our mission with the EDA.

Next slide, please.

And speaking of

and EDA board members.

I'd like to welcome Addison Barnhart who just joined us.

Glad you could be here.

These are the seven members of the EDA board currently.

Addison's our current chair for the year, and you see the other members there.

Seven members, that's defined in the state code.

They're set up for four-year terms, and they can have two four-year terms, and then they're kind of timed out, if you will.

So these are the current members.

We meet on the second Tuesday of every month at 4 p.m.

in city space currently.

And yeah, next slide.

So we do have an annual audit that happens.

We're currently using Robinson Farmer Cox.

That's the city's auditor.

They spend time reviewing our activities as part of their visit to the city.

But it is an independent audit.

It happens annually.

We've been doing that for years.

We also issue a separate annual report

that you see noted here and that just kind of captures the highlights of the most recent year and puts it into a narrative format so that people that have interest in it could take a look at that.

This is separate from the Office of Economic Development's annual report.

There is overlap and we'll kind of cover some of that as we move forward, but we do produce an annual report and we do have an annual audit.

Next slide, please.

So I referred to the industrial revenue bonds earlier.

Here's a list of some of these names you'll certainly recognize under the current category.

We've got four outstanding right now, and you can see the amounts over to the side there.

And then the retired bonds are ones that have been fulfilled, and they are just as examples of bonds that have been issued in the past.

You'll notice that all of these likely fall.

I think all of these fall into the charitable category that I mentioned.

There's two major categories that can qualify you.

If you're manufacturing a product, you can qualify.

If you're a charitable organization, you can qualify.

So when it makes sense for a charitable organization

In the process of building a building or something of that nature, working with their financial advisor, their bank, they will determine whether they would like to seek this out and they will engage the EDA as necessary from that point.

The process which takes two to three visits to the EDA also eventually comes to the city council for a vote as well.

It's probably been a year or two since you've had any of these come before you.

Once again, there's no liability for the city or the EDA, no obligation, it's simply the conduit financing occurring.

Next slide please.

So here's an example that you may recognize.

This is the live arts building on the downtown mall.

Their formal name is City Center for Contemporary Arts.

They sought a tax exempt bond issuance to build this building, some probably 20 years ago, maybe a little bit more at this point.

So they qualified as a charitable organization.

It made sense to them.

They came, went through the process, and had an IRB issued on their behalf.

fulfilled that at this point.

That's an example that people can visualize as a mall area organization.

So next slide, please.

So other things that EDAs can do is real estate acquisition and management on behalf of a city and this is probably the largest example of that that the EDA has been involved with.

This one goes back some number of years but it's kind of nice to show because it shows a fully completed project in that this was about 20 acres of land that was surplus to the railroad

after they changed kind of how they did operations and no longer needed as much kind of space alongside the railroad.

The city and the EDA as an entity recognized that land is scarce in our 10 square miles.

and that we ought to maybe put this to as best use as possible.

So the EDA actually bought the land from the railroad and did some remediation over some time and got some of it ready to, well got all of it ready to sell over a period of time.

This took about 15 years and it was sold off into a variety of uses including some of the first downtown,

Housing in the Belmont Lofts, kind of newer downtown housing in the Belmont Lofts that you see there on the bottom right.

The old LexisNexis building was a centerpiece of the east end of the mall for a period of time.

The CNO row townhomes are probably the most recent and last piece to be sold off.

But over time, you can see that a number of jobs were created in that space.

New residential units, tax base was added to the city's real estate roles.

So that's a good example of a project that has come to fruition over a period of years.

Next slide, please.

Another example is what we used to call the SNL building, now the S&P Global Building.

Many of you probably know the history of this building.

On some level, it used to be occupied by the federal government.

in the National Ground Intelligence Center, and they decided to move to the campus in Albemarle County, which gave the city significant concern, given that that was a major employer downtown that was going to leave and potentially leave a building vacant for a long period of time.

So working with state and federal folks at the time, a little over 20 years ago, the city was able to come into ownership of this building.

They leased it to the EDA.

The EDA worked with, then at the time, SNL Financial,

to put together a loan package and a long-term lease that allowed them to have control of the building and bring it up to standards into a really nice office building for downtown standards.

And this continues to this day.

A number of jobs have been created, taxes paid over time as you see there.

They pay a leasehold interest for a long-term lease.

So we don't get full real estate tax benefit but we get some of that made up.

It's a percentage.

I don't know the exact number, but it's a percentage based upon the length of the lease.

So the longer the lease, it's more like ownership.

So the more you pay and then as the lease gets shorter.

You pay proportionally less, but there's a minimum in the agreement, I believe, that requires them to pay a certain amount.

But the city does own it, leases it to the UDA.

How much rent are they paying?

I remember looking at it a couple of years ago and being really amazed at how low it was.

I don't know that it's a regret, but it was a deal that was struck.

So the city put $0 into this, and it's probably about a $30 million asset.

So they have done the first renovation and the second renovation, and they do all the maintenance on it.

So from that perspective,

Their rent is low, but their operating obligations are significant.

In many cases, some of those would be off put to a landlord.

In this case, everything is on their side.

On the one hand, I remember looking at the rent and thinking, gee, that's a pittance compared to the value.

But if we're looking at it as a return on our investment,

The 30 year lease, I believe ends in 2033.

So we're, it's in sight.

Okay.

And at that point, is there any, any constraint on the city?

I don't believe so.

There was earlier on, but not now.

Not at the end.

Opportunity for sure.

So just another example.

Next slide, please.

Public-private partnerships.

This one's right out the back door, the Charlottesville Pavilion.

It's a similar scenario whereby the city owns the land and always has.

Saw an opportunity to work with a private developer to create a music venue or attraction.

And so about 20 plus years ago now as well, this was put into place.

and it's been operating.

It's a similar scenario where the city leases it to the EDA.

The EDA leases it to the entity that operates the facility and that's also for a similar length of time.

That one's a 35-year term.

But the reason the city was engaged in it and wanted to do it is to bring people downtown to create an anchor for the east end of the downtown mall.

At that time there was not a transit center and there was not really a focal point at this end.

That part certainly played into the reasoning for why the city wanted to be engaged in something like that.

But the EDA is a tool for facilitating such activity when and if the city wants to do so.

Next slide.

Another good example is the Jefferson School.

Everyone's aware of this.

It was neglected for many, many years, and then a nonprofit was formed that put together a package that included a significant contribution from the city.

And the EDA facilitated that loan through to the nonprofit and historic tax credits and a traditional bank financing

created the other two pieces of this deal to make this come back to life.

It's a complicated project, but it's an example of where the EDA was used kind of as the conduit for passing through the city dollars to help reinvest in this important building.

Next slide, please.

This is a slightly different example.

It also involves real estate.

We turn these reimbursement agreements and it's exactly what it sounds like.

We paid the developer to, we reimbursed the developer of the Whole Foods site to create the stub of the road that was needed.

Hillsdale Drive, as folks might remember, was long thought of as a

as a plan in the state's mind to help with congestion around here, but they weren't ready to fund it back in 2009.

The Whole Foods was ready to move and wanted a bigger store, and the city desperately was desirous of having this type of store a little closer by, and the sales meals tax that comes from such a store was very attractive.

We created an agreement that said, you build the road, we accept it, we'll pay you what your cost was for the road.

But for the road, the Whole Foods wouldn't be there.

So it's one of these things where we had to kind of move pretty quickly to help something like this happen.

So when we put money into it, where did that money come from?

Yes.

So in almost all these cases, the city is the funding source for the EDA and would have provided, it probably would have been an economic development strategic money at that time.

And this road cost about $2 million.

So it would have been an investment from either contingency or economic development strategic investment or some other source to invest in this road and then

down the road, we didn't have to invest in that quarter mile, not quite quarter mile, but we didn't have to invest in that piece.

So as it turns out, the state ended up doing that many years later.

Next slide.

Correct.

Yeah, next slide.

Another example of a reimbursement agreement, also kind of out the back door, is Water Street Extended.

This also connects to that first project that I shared about the railroad property that was no longer needed.

So Water Street extended was a piece of that railroad property.

Water Street ended just past the Lexis Nexus building on Water Street where you would turn at I guess 10th Street there.

It dead ended.

Maybe it's been a decade, maybe 12 years, something like that.

And the coal tower was back there, but it was kind of a cheap road, if you will.

No Man's Land.

So there was no connection.

So the developer of the CityWalk property was interested in building these apartments, and the road needed to be put in, in addition, at the same time.

So it made sense.

The city was desirous of having 300 new apartment units fairly close to downtown.

The contractor that was on site to do site work for this property was engaged to do the streetscape, so the sidewalk, the street trees, the road, the utilities under the road, and the fence that protects the public from the railroad were all part of a reimbursement agreement similarly situated to Whole Foods.

arrangement to allow this to happen in a timely manner to this development.

So just another example of a reimbursement agreement.

Next slide.

So moving on to some slightly different programs.

AFID is a state program.

It stands for Agricultural Forest Industry Development and is a matching fund that the state

The EDA was the applicant in this particular case.

Three Notch is a local brewery that started and grew out of Charlottesville.

It's now throughout the whole state.

When they expanded from their original location to the current location that they're in,

They committed to using Virginia products in their brewing process, which triggers the agricultural piece of this grant.

So we were an applicant on their behalf and they did receive some matching funds from the state and helped their new facility kind of come off the ground.

So an example of a state matching fund role that we have played.

Next slide, please.

Another example of that same fund, a little more recent, the Beacon Kitchen opened in April of this year.

They also, because they are a commercial kitchen that is processing Virginia-based product and helping Virginia-based producers qualified for the AFID match as well.

So we were the entity that

applied for and received those fundings and we managed that over a period of about two years.

Those have a two-year window on them.

That equipment that you see in that picture has been purchased and installed and if you've been for the tour, a good portion of that was AFID grant funded.

Not all of it, but some of it.

Next slide, please.

Performance agreements, another thing that the city and EDAs do.

When you hear the governor make an announcement about a big thing happening somewhere, there's almost always an EDA involved.

The state makes the announcement and funnels some funds to an EDA that usually has an agreement, a legal agreement with the entity that's actually building a building or industrial park or something of that nature.

In this case,

This particular project, which is known as Waterhouse, did not involve the state.

It just involved the city.

World Strides was seeking a home downtown, the urban environment to develop, and a particularly tight site was challenging, and they sought out a little support from the city, so we created a performance agreement that works in such a way that once the project is in place, we take a portion of the tax increment created by the project and share that back with the

development for a period of years.

In this case it was five years.

This project has come and gone and World Strides is in a different place in a different time than they were back in 2010 as the world has changed significantly with regard to student travel.

But nonetheless the building is here and its value has only gone up as all buildings have in the city.

While the project might have changed and the jobs are not the world's tried jobs in this space, the building and the valuation is still there.

So an example of a performance agreement whereby the EDA managed this process on behalf of the city.

Next slide, please.

Another example, a little bit bigger project, also nearby the Martha Jefferson Hospital.

Everybody was concerned when that closed that there would be potentially a vacant property for many years that wasn't developed.

So we acted quickly to engage some tenants and worked with the state as well on this one.

to create a performance agreement that worked for 10 years.

And this one is now complete.

So we shared a portion of the real estate tax created by the project.

And in this case, the project wasn't a new project.

It was a renovation.

So the minor changes to the outside, but basically the same footprint stayed in place.

So just another example, a little bit bigger one.

Both of those are now completed.

So we managed those over the life of those performance agreements.

Next slide.

So some current performance agreements, these will be a little bit more familiar to you.

Kindlewood phase one has been built and is in repayment starting this year at some point.

So the way these work, you make the investment and then 12 months have to transpire, so you have to pay the taxes.

And then we validate the fact that it's been built and that the units are

doing what they said they would do with regard to AMI, and then that's when the grant repayment starts.

So kindlewood is about there.

Kindlewood phase two is under construction, so that's got a little bit to go, but you all have approved both of those, as well as the 501 Cherry, which is still in very early pre-development, but a piece of that financing and funding

that will help them get there is the knowledge that there will be a portion of the tax increment shared with the project for a period of time.

So those are kind of to come performance agreements and other examples as well.

Next slide, please.

So a couple of programs.

The EDA does support a few programs.

Some of these will be familiar to you, the Go Start Up program.

go hire program, Seville match program are three that are out there.

Seville Ale Trail and Made in Charlottesville are now kind of moved off from our radar, but we did help get those started.

And the EDA supports these efforts on an ongoing basis.

as part of kind of being the, going back to the motorcycle and sidecar, helping support the economic development strategic plan that our office is managing by riding alongside and supporting these that are programs that benefit city businesses and employees in some cases.

Next slide.

So just a slide about COVID.

Not as relevant at the moment, but during that time, the EDA took significant action really pretty quickly to help support some existing funds that were established and create a couple of new ones to help

Facilitator Relief to businesses at the time.

The Business Equity Fund was actually started by council in 2018, but when COVID happened, the EDA added to the Business Equity Fund, which is managed by CIC, Charlottesville Community Investment Collaborative.

They are in the business of doing loans, so they manage it on our behalf.

but additional funds were added to the business equity fund at the moment of COVID as well as the establishment of a business recovery fund which was also managed by community investment collaborative.

So just an example of kind of moving quickly using some reserve dollars to help in an emergency situation during the COVID moments.

Next slide.

And we're almost wrapped up here.

So this is just a graphic that attempts to show how we help across the spectrum of startup growth to mature and then declining businesses.

We don't focus so much on the

The declining piece, but we have programs that help across the spectrum there.

So Go Startup is a very early, you've just got an idea and you're not even sure how to get a business license.

Keith Grooms in our office helps run that program and it's four weeks where folks get their grounding and they get some help.

Eventually, they may need a loan.

The Business Equity Fund can come along.

If they're a food company, they might end up in the Beacon Kitchen.

So we've had significant help, as I mentioned, through the AFID process.

The city has also come alongside with a significant investment in Beacon.

Earlier, you heard a presentation from the United Way, and they mentioned their Envision, which is kind of their overall kind of program.

One of the grant pieces that was mentioned shows up on

on this screen as a slightly more mature company potentially applying for and receiving some grant funds through that program.

I mentioned the industrial revenue bonds.

That's a more mature entity, organization, C3 or C6, or a manufacturing type company.

I also mentioned the performance agreements.

That's typically a little bit more mature of a developer or company that would be engaged in that piece.

So that just gives you a flavor for how we kind of spread across the spectrum.

of Business Growth, if you will.

So that's kind of the history of EDA a little bit and some of the programs and projects that we've been involved in.

Currently, we are applying for a second Beacon AFID grant.

That application just went in.

We're hopeful that that will be useful in helping get co-packing equipment, which is a piece that they had to leave out of the first round of their equipment ask.

So that is in.

We're working on the second year of the Envision grants, which should be released here pretty soon.

So continuing that partnership with United Way.

We're also involved in some regional activities around the 29 corridor.

There's a strategic roadmap study that's being done around national security and bio and life sciences.

and how that can connect through up to Rivanna Station and down to the university.

So the EDA is helping with that along with our regional partners.

And then one other thing we're working on currently and details are early but we're looking at in the process of working with PHA over some time

Through the series of performance agreements, we were made aware that they have challenges from time to time quickly accessing funds for purchasing a property or a multifamily unit, not major new construction, but existing properties that they would like to keep in the affordable space.

So we're looking at a short-term working capital fund that would be helpful in those cases where an organization needs access to some funding in the short term, like a year

maybe up to two years we're working through that.

So they express the need and a desire for that and the EDA is trying to come to the table with an opportunity that might work for that space.

Details are to be worked out.

It'll be small, smaller amounts and shorter timeframes but kind of lower interest rates to make the affordability piece a little bit more easier for them to.

to get in place.

So just an example of a few things that we're working on.

And I think that's the last slide.

Probably next.

Yes.

Thank you for your time.

Happy to answer other thoughts or questions.

I've got one.

So just right at the end, you mentioned you're not really involved in the decline, which makes sense.

You've done the setup process.

People have been given the resources that they need to succeed, and people stop their business for all sorts of different reasons.

Not in a formal way, but I think informally in terms of just looking for patterns.

We're aware and we see and we ask questions, but as you might imagine, people in that situation are

You know, maybe less forthcoming than they might be when they're having a grand opening and they're looking for attention.

And we understand that and respect that.

So we don't do it in a formal way.

We do have a business survey that we have actually running now that kind of seeks regular information on how businesses are doing across that spectrum.

Anybody can answer it.

Regardless of where they fit on the timeline, but specifically to your question, do we focus on the declining businesses and why?

Thank you.

Thank you for this presentation.

I hope this was a lot of good context and good

place to begin a conversation among council in terms of how you outlined how broad the powers of EDAs are and how creatively they can be used, including in Charlottesville history.

A few questions and thoughts.

One of them, it was striking with the maybe more traditional deals of bringing in a large employer or trying to convince a large employer to stay in Charlottesville, that in all those examples,

those employers have either completely left or significantly downsized their presence in those buildings.

Is there any tracking of how many of the promised jobs stayed in Charlottesville or a measurement of how much economic activity actually resulted long term and whether that passed a cost benefit analysis in terms of what the city gave up at the start or is what the city gives up in order to facilitate that development so low that if it only lasts

Ten years and the employer's presence is largely gone.

Yeah, I can tell you with respect to the two big private companies involved with the World Stride Steel, the Waterhouse Project, they committed to 200 jobs.

They got up to close to 400 at their peak and then went down from there.

They are still a going concern in the city of Charlottesville.

They're not in that space.

and their footprint is significantly different.

It's kind of part of that cycle unfortunately and economic development process and strategy has changed significantly over that time and I think today if we were to do a similar deal we would have a little bit different characteristics around it and requirements so it's hard to track jobs anymore.

Jobs are

where people live in a lot of cases.

There's a lot of remote work.

So it's a little trickier because that's typically one of the metrics that economic development, the state is always touting a number of new jobs.

Communities do that as well.

So it's trickier to track that in this day and age.

We are aware that they've gone up and down at the Martha Jefferson Hospital site as well.

The primary tenant there, CFA, was the driver behind that.

They have downsized as well.

Now, the good news is that most of that space has been backfilled by other smaller companies.

So in terms of one bigger employee or five smaller ones,

If the number of jobs are similar, I don't know that it matters that much to us.

Diversity is typically a good thing across the various types of jobs and companies in the city.

If I remember correctly, I think at the state level they track the success of economic development programs by the amount of jobs in the press release that it said was created.

Well, that is a fair point, and to the point of our performance agreements, they are performance-based, so you must perform and then you get.

So we would check employment numbers versus the commitment annually, and if they got it, then they got the incentive.

In both of these cases, the real estate is the real estate and it stays.

So that valuation is still there.

The employee number harder to track and something that we're currently wrestling with.

And I thought one of the striking things as well is a lot of things we take for granted as defining features of Charlottesville, not just in terms of buildings, but as public spaces, the pavilion, live art center, were facilitated by the Economic Development Authority.

I know a lot of localities have used it that way in order for partnership with nonprofits, development of community spaces, community resources.

You know, the current partnerships in that world are just the Jefferson Scholarship and St.

Ann's Bell Field School is the largest partners.

And it sounded like it had been 15 to 20 years since the city had done use of the EDA for

Things that relate to acquisition of land or partnership with a nonprofit to build a community space or even some of the examples you outlined bringing in a grocery store to the city or development of a larger housing.

apartment complex.

It's been 15, 20 years since the city's done that and our current list again is just Jefferson scholarship and STAB.

Why has that type of use gone away for so long?

When the Economic Development Authority does that, is it really relying on the council

That's a good question.

With respect to the industrial revenue bond piece, that's more a reflection of the market and where organizations are with are they going to build something and does it make financial sense to them.

and that's a little outside of our ability to influence in any significant way.

With respect to the other part of your question, the EDA is a tool that's been around since 1976 here in Charlottesville and we stand ready to work with the city on projects that make sense.

And have there been some discussions in the last few years?

of significance to the pavilion, probably not quite as many, but the one that comes to mind that kind of came on the radar and then went off was Market Plaza on Water Street, city-owned property.

EDA was heavily involved in that deal to the point that it ceased to become a deal.

There was utility work that happened with that.

Didn't make the slides because it's kind of underground and not seen, but we helped facilitate the utility work that happened to lead up to that project that still has value to that project and the city.

So that was a case where we were about to be involved and that project has gone to sleep for a bit.

Yeah, I would just say I think there's, you know, huge opportunities for the council and city government to be as ambitious as it was when the downtown mall was created or the pavilion was created or live arts was created.

We take those things for granted, but there were specific decisions that had to be made and plans.

I think there's opportunities at the Water Street surface parking lot.

I think there's opportunities on West Main, on Preston Avenue, to be really ambitious in terms of what our goals are, and the EDA is there as a huge tool to help us do that, which I think is exciting, you know, if we're willing and able to be that visionary, as well as

In what you outlined, I think there's huge opportunities for the EDA to play a role in the city.

Having community wealth building strategies, huge role to play, and even things like trying to bring a grocery store to specific sites in the city, or partnerships with land trusts or non-profits, which it sounds like in part may be happening with that.

I don't know what you would call it revolving loan or revolving funding pool, which I think is really exciting and I think could have a lot of power and I'm excited to see how that develops because I think at least in the housing world that financing gap is huge and I think would play a huge role in facilitating potentially even just market development not even just

nonprofit affordable housing development is you know at the level of developing like duplexes or triplexes if there was some financing mechanism where they aren't able to get that on the private market.

Yeah, thank you for your time.

It was a very interesting presentation and I agree with what Michael just said.

I think it's helped to be reminded of this.

It's kind of like a Swiss Army knife that we need to remember that we have and hopefully we can

I don't know if there's more sort of story sharing we need to do with the local population businesses and non-profits to help them understand about this tool.

I don't know, but anyway, it's definitely, this is very informative and educational.

Anything else?

OK, I think we're good.

So there is no scheduled closed meeting this evening.

Council will recess until 6.30 PM.

Those joining by Zoom, there is a separate link for the 6.30 meeting.

Welcome to City Council meeting tonight.

This is the third part of our meeting, the actual business session.

We're glad you're here.

The mayor, Juan Wade, is in Ghana right now.

We'll start our meeting tonight with a moment of silence, please.

Are there any announcements?

In addition, we have some proclamations tonight.

I know we'd also like to announce the first full week of May as Public Service Recognition Week and Professional Municipal Clerks Week.

We have an amazing staff here in the city.

We're very proud of them and public service folks.

keep our roads and walkways and projects going for us and we're very grateful for them.

We're also grateful for our municipal clerks.

Clerk Thomas and her staff keep all of us on council headed in the right direction.

So we want to thank all of those folks.

And we do have some proclamations.

This proclamation for letter carriers stamp out hunger food drive day whereas every year on the second Saturday in May letter carriers across the country collect non-perishable food as part of the nation's largest one-day food drive distributing the donations to local food banks and whereas the letter carriers stamp out hunger food drive is just one example of how letter carriers work to make a difference in the lives of those they serve since the pilot food drive in 1991

More than 1.9 billion pounds of food have been collected, and whereas the city of Charlottesville wishes to recognize all letter carriers for their hard work and their commitment to their communities, but especially those in our own community whose efforts bring benefit to those in need here in the Charlottesville area.

and whereas we also recognize the noteworthy milestone of 33 years that the National Association of Letter Carriers Food Drive celebrates in 2025.

Now therefore the Charlottesville City Council proclaims the 10th day of May 2025 as Letter Carriers Food Drive Day in the City of Charlottesville and we encourage the residents of our community to support the food drive by placing non-perishable food items in or near your mailbox on Food Drive Day.

Your letter carrier will pick it up while delivering mail and together we can help feed those in hunger.

Just very briefly, thank you so much, City Council.

We really appreciate the proclamation.

Excuse me.

We hope to continue doing this for many years in the future.

And we can't do it without help from folks like you and the rest of the community.

And thanks mostly to the people of Charlottesville who generously donate year after year.

Very good.

It's this coming Saturday, May 10th.

Sounds great.

Thank you.

Thank you for your work as a mail carrier.

And before that, I actually do have one small announcement, which is this Sunday is this month's iteration of the Neighborhood Walks.

We'll be doing, led by the Charlottesville Bike and Ped Advisory Committee.

This month, it will be in Woolen Mills.

OK, now Bike Month.

Bike Month 2025, whereas bicycling is a healthy, clean, efficient, and affordable mode of transportation and recreation used by thousands of citizens and residents of all ages throughout our great commonwealth and city, and whereas traveling by bicycle has been proven to alleviate traffic congestion and reduce pollution associated with vehicular travel and offer significant mental and physical health benefits to bicyclists themselves,

and whereas the city of Charlottesville has undertaken ambitious goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and is committed to providing more multimodal transportation options for all residents and whereas Charlottesville, Albemarle County and the University of Virginia alongside a large cohort of businesses, agencies and community groups are hosting many bicycling events that promote awareness, safety, new travel options

as well as Building Community, and whereas these groups and many others are also promoting the use of the bicycle as both the means of transportation and recreation year-round to improve community health, economic vitality, environmental stewardship, and the simple joy of being active outdoors.

Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Charlottesville City Council recognizes the month of May 2025 as Bike Month in the City of Charlottesville, encouraging all who support bicycling to participate in the events planned and urging all road users to share the road safely.

And I would like to add that you can find out more about Bike Month by visiting bikeseeville.com.

There's a calendar of events.

This past weekend, there was a kickoff ride on Friday from

JPA down to Fridays after five where there was a bike valet.

There's going to be bike valets all month long at Fridays after five.

Then Sunday was family bike day.

And we had tons of people show up to test out bikes, to ride the new portable pump track, and to be outside and learn how to change tires and fix things and just a good family day for all.

So more events like that all throughout the month.

Great.

Whereas adults of all ages, particularly older adults and adults with disabilities, deserve to live with dignity, independence, and free from abuse, neglect, and exploitation,

and whereas adult abuse is a pervasive issue that can take many forms including physical, emotional, sexual, and financial abuse as well as neglect and self-neglect and whereas abuse of vulnerable adults often goes unreported and unrecognized making it imperative to educate the public, caregivers, and professionals about the warning signs and reporting mechanisms

and whereas the Virginia Department for Aging and Rehabilitative Services, Adult Protective Services, local human service agencies, law enforcement, health care providers and community organizations are all committed to preventing and addressing adult abuse through education, advocacy and support services and whereas raising awareness and promoting public engagement are essential to preventing abuse and ensuring that older and vulnerable adults can lead secure and empowered lives within our community

and whereas the City of Charlottesville recognizes the importance of fostering safe, inclusive, and supportive environments for all adults and reaffirms its commitment to protecting the rights and well-being of its residents, now therefore be it resolved that the Charlottesville City Council proclaims May 2025 as Adult Abuse Prevention Month in the City of Charlottesville, Virginia,

and we urge all community members to recognize the signs of adult abuse, to support prevention efforts, and to advocate for the protection and empowerment of older and vulnerable adults in our community.

Be it further resolved that the City of Charlottesville commits to supporting efforts to prevent adult abuse, to protect vulnerable adults, and to promote a community where all individuals can live with dignity and respect.

signed and sealed this fifth day of May 2025.

Go to Deputy City Manager Marshall.

Thank you so much.

So we're now at the community matters section of the meeting.

Currently, there are three pre-registered speakers leaving 13 slots for additional speakers on community matters.

Each speaker will have up to three minutes to speak.

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

Is our first speaker available?

Good evening.

My name is Alicia Lenahan.

I live at Villa Verde Lane 22902.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

I'm submitting these remarks as a retired attorney, an American citizen, resident of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and your constituent.

The actions taken by agents of the Immigration Customs and Enforcement on Wednesday, April 23rd at the Albemarle County Courthouse and their subsequent threats

are profoundly troubling and dangerous for everyone in this community.

The administration and Governor Youngkin are intent on labeling all immigrants as dangerous criminals, committing assault, rape, and murder without regard to the facts or the law.

This is evidenced by the egregious mistakes made by ICE in recent weeks.

Kilmer Abrego Garcia rendered to El Salvador,

by mistake.

American children, one undergoing cancer treatment, rendered to Honduras.

In Oklahoma, a mother and her three daughters were terrorized when 20 heavily armed men executed an apparent no-knock warrant on their home by mistake.

Governor Youngkin issued an executive order on February 2025 directing state law enforcement and corrections officers to assist with federal immigration

and requesting that localities fully cooperate with ICE.

It's my understanding that the Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security requested a certification from local and regional jail authorities confirming their full cooperation with ICE.

The action on April 23rd took place independent of the jail.

The judge dismissed the case of one individual.

The other was in the courthouse to pay a fine.

It's unclear how ICE learned about their presence.

These events are intended to terrorize all of us, our immigrant and refugee neighbors, their advocates, and anyone who is standing up for decency, democracy, and the rule of law.

The courthouse is located in the city.

Fear ignores government boundaries.

It is only a matter of time before federal agents show up in a Charlottesville court, at a public school, at a library, at a hospital, or even here.

What can we expect?

Has the city council agreed to cooperate in advance?

Has the city police department agreed to cooperate?

The actions of the federal government are becoming increasingly aggressive and lawless.

The residents of this country, this state, and this community need and deserve heroic leadership.

Will you accept that responsibility?

According to the HEFE report, the city government failed to protect this community on August 11th and 12th, 2017.

Finally, since March, thousands of people have lined the streets of Charlottesville to protect and defend democracy.

Thank you.

I am here to present to you my idea of a change of the statue of Lewis Clark and Sekah Wajaya.

The objective is to return the statue to the place where it had been for many years in Charlottesville.

I propose that the image was of Sakawaja as it is in the statue now be removed and be cast standing, standing tall,

and pointing in the direction that Lewis and Clark are looking at.

I would like the statue to represent our gratitude and respect for Sakawajeia guidance and contribution to the expedition.

I would like the council to consider this idea

as an option for the future of the statue.

If it were to go forward, it needs your approval, a budget, and people to observe the process.

The idea came from my encounter in the statue while I walk in the park two years ago.

Two things look out of place, the statue and Sacagawea.

I have visited the statue many times since, and I have come here to present the idea out of the thoughts that I have entertained while visiting the statue.

I believe my proposal could bring both the statue and the kawajiya to the right place.

Thank you so much.

Next up, Karen Mann.

I am a Scottsville resident.

Good evening.

My name is Reverend Karen Mann.

I do live in Scottsville, but I'm the pastor of Sojourners United Church of Christ here in the city.

My congregation and I were deeply disturbed when the ICE agents entered the Albemarle County Courthouse and arrested the two men on April 23rd.

I'm speaking to unite as a Christian pastor because that's what I am, but I know that many faiths share our belief that we are called to care for our neighbors and especially for our immigrant neighbors.

In fact, the Bible is abundantly clear that caring for the stranger is central to our faith.

My church is committed to the values of radical hospitality, inclusion, diversity, and justice, and our beliefs compel us to work for the beloved community.

And that's a community where all people, regardless of faith, ability, identity, race, ethnicity, or even legal status, can experience justice and live without fear.

The actions of ICE in our courthouse contribute to a culture of fear and intimidation.

They deny justice, and they do nothing but harm our community.

Our denomination, the UCC, is part of a lawsuit against Trump's executive order that reverses decades of protection for sensitive locations, restricting ICE from conducting immigration raids, arrests, and other enforcement activities in schools, hospitals, houses of worship,

and Court Houses.

We believe that raids conducted in churches violate the sanctity of our places of worship, but we also believe that raids in schools, hospitals and court houses violate the sanctity of our public communal life.

These raids are cruel and unjust.

People have a right to worship, to go to school, to get medical care,

and to engage in their civic duties without fear and intimidation, and especially kids should not be afraid to go to school.

You do not have to be a person of faith to believe that all human beings should be treated with dignity and respect.

This is a basic moral value.

I'm asking you, our city council, to demonstrate some courageous moral leadership in the face of the xenophobia and racism coming from the federal government.

Help our community to be a place of justice and dignity for all persons.

How will you protect the sensitive locations that are in this city and ensure that people can worship, go to school, get medical care, and conduct business in our courthouses without fear?

I urge you to do everything you can to resist these unjust raids, to refuse to cooperate with ICE, to refuse to sign any cooperation agreements, and to protect the residents of this community, citizens and immigrants alike.

because we are all humans deserving of dignity.

Thank you very much.

So we're now on our fourth speaker.

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

Yes, sir.

Hello, everyone.

My name's Mo.

I'm at 608 Cabell Avenue.

Here's an insane headline from tomorrow's paper.

City Council approves funding to hand all police data to a Silicon Valley AI tech startup in its consent agenda.

I'm talking about the appropriation of $150,000 in grant funding to buy CPD a one-year subscription to Peregrine.

It's the seventh item.

Peregrine is a tech startup founded by ex-Palantir guys that is basically a box they want you to put all your police department's data into.

In return, it promises to increase police efficiency by unifying a bunch of fractured data systems into one, allowing officers to, with a single name search, see an individual's license plate, entire criminal history, any tickets they've ever gotten, even known associates.

They're making the Panopticon.

The privacy concerns, much less the opportunities for abuse, should be self-evident.

And that's before we even bring in the fact that this thing has AI written all over it.

The website says that it can improve patrol by focusing deployment with supervisory analytics, which presumably means having an algorithm tell officers which neighborhoods to patrol.

Don't be surprised when it recommends exactly what you think it will.

It also promises to automate recurrent reporting, a polite way to say that it uses AI to generate police reports.

Great.

Those were already so thorough and trustworthy to begin with.

Now we can literally have a machine that doesn't know what truth is make them for us.

Technologies like this have already caused huge problems across the country because it enables lazy policing.

Officers inevitably end up just arresting people because the system spits out a name as a possible suspect.

Let's also acknowledge that Peregrine is definitely going to use the data we give them to train its AI.

I don't think getting a traffic ticket constitutes consent to have all your information dumped into the automated surveillance machine.

And finally, the elephant in the room, this company is centralizing all law enforcement data from agencies across the country into a single, private,

for profit Silicon Valley surveillance tech startup.

Just two weeks ago, we watched three faceless thugs raid the Albemarle courtroom without a warrant to arrest two of our community members.

Those people are gone.

You think if ICE goes to Peregrine and demands they generate a list of 100 illegals in Charlottesville to arrest, these guys are going to say no?

Get

Real.

We don't need this.

We pay officers to put in legwork.

All this does is enable lazy policing, offload critical work onto unreliable algorithms, and create massive opportunity for abuse, civil rights violations, and authoritarian overreach.

If Seville police want to improve data efficiency, they should hire someone to do that in-house, not offload all storage, management, and analytics to a private company in another state

that is literally trying to build the future from Minority Report.

I cannot stress enough, their website literally says, we control your data.

Like that's a good thing.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm John Hall of Fry Spring.

What I want to share with the council is a recycling program.

Recycling, sorting, and segregation of plastics.

And I've added four more.

Paper, compost, glass, and metal.

Compost, foods being food scraps.

And leaves and twigs are wood only, please.

Everybody knows there's seven symbols that are triangles

for seven types of plastics.

Paper is number eight.

The compost is number nine.

Glass is number 10.

Metal is number 11.

A budget, $1 million from city council budget.

Pay the homeless $21.50 each to do it.

We'll have to get them there to wherever we locate these

Roll off containers, one through 11, again, each one having a vat, which would be like a child's swimming pool that's nestable, a plastic childhood swimming pool, so that each of the recyclables can be rinsed.

Okay, we have the recycling 64 gallon containers

two of them, recycling container, which is currently just taken to the landfill, and composting container, as I've outlined above.

The City Council budget study, upon study, the money passed through to the Johnny Angel Network, 501C3, indigent homeless transportation, again, by CAT buses, with pulled out stop signs.

as seen in school buses, which is good for our children.

In schools, it's good for our adults riding buses.

Just as a final note, once we prove that this is efficacious in what we do with it, I have located about four different plastic houses.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Appreciate that.

Are you going to leave that with us?

OK, that's fine.

You can bring us a copy.

Yeah, thank you so much.

All right, next up.

Yes.

Hello, my name is Kettie Rupnik from 219 Langford Avenue.

Okay, first of all, thank you all for providing us with the opportunity to speak and to share concerns about our community with you all.

I am here to speak with you about concerns regarding speeding on our street, Langford Avenue.

We've appeared before city council.

This is the second time.

We've had numerous speed studies that have been done on our streets and I'm concerned that those speed studies are not representative of the actual speeding problem that occurs on our streets.

The speed measuring device has been placed in the street where you have to slow down to get around it.

So naturally that's not going to provide you with reliable data that shows the speeding incidents.

We had asked to have the speed study redone multiple times and were not responded to then eventually another speed study was conducted and we haven't learned the results of those studies.

The first study showed that there was not significantly statistical speeding issues and that there was not an issue with speeding on our streets.

I would like to highlight that although the measured speeds might not be statistically significant, they were upwards of 50 miles per hour, 45 miles per hour.

As a reminder, Lankford Avenue is a residential neighborhood where the speed limit is 25 miles per hour.

Of the 12 homes that are on the upper part of Lankford, there are 18 children that live within these 12 homes from ages 6 months to 11 years in addition to seniors within our neighborhoods.

As a parent of two of those children and also a family friend to all the others, I am terrified that one of these children will be seriously injured or even killed because of speeding on our street.

I am asking more so begging that you all help us to implement some traffic calming measures within our street and protect these children while we still have the opportunity to do so.

There's currently a video in each of your inboxes that was taken from my home on our Ring camera.

from our front door of my family, including my three year old walking to the car and five feet away is a car going down our street at 50 to 60 miles per hour.

I really would appreciate if you could watch that video to show you what kind of issues we're talking about.

Lastly, Councilman Pinkston, you brought this handout to my door the other week.

The third bullet on here says, our team will ensure kids and families feel safe in their schools and neighborhoods.

Currently,

The children and the families on Langford Avenue do not feel safe because of the speeding issue.

Thank you.

I'll come back.

Ms.

Robin Hoffman, Caroline Avenue, and Willem Mills.

I'm here today because I felt compelled because on Friday I was walking down the mall enjoying the art, which became projected really coolly for first Fridays, I mean Fridays after five.

And so what they did was the art teachers of the city

had their students compile different artwork, and then they videoed it during the concert.

So you had this whole interaction, and the art was amazing.

I have to tell you.

Very educated in art, and I was floored.

So I just want to thank all the teachers, but while I was walking around during the day, Friday, I happened upon a woman who was lying down in front of Sky Bar, or former Sky Bar, and she had no shoes on, and her shirt was up.

and you could see that she was wearing a brassiere.

So, I kind of freaked out but I didn't like react right away and then I said, what am I doing?

I'm a nurse, you know, whatever.

So I went over to her, and I said, excuse me ma'am, do you need help?

And she said, no, I'm fine.

And she sounded very articulate and confident.

And I know the rules about people who are challenged mentally, that they actually have rights, which is fine.

But she was no shoes, and her shirt was up.

And she was kind of talking to the glass, too.

So I said, she's in trouble and she doesn't know it.

So then I said, ma'am, if you don't need help, then why don't you have any shoes on?

And why are you laying on the floor?

She said, no, I'm fine.

I'm fine.

Thank you so much.

So I'm like, no, she doesn't know she's in trouble.

All right.

So I called 911.

and at that point the police officer was really good communicating that they had had somebody speak to a woman officer early in the morning and that again it was her right to lay down on the ground even though she was obviously in trouble and that they were going to get some people to help her.

Well anyway I wanted to tell you all that because it was a 911 call

and they actually followed it up.

The police officer called me about an hour later and they had gotten somebody to counsel the woman and she agreed to be helped.

But it's 2017, we didn't have those conversations.

I want to say that that's, you know, where is the antifa?

Where's the anti-fascist people?

Okay, thank you so much.

Hello, thank you for this opportunity to speak.

My name is Asa S. Locker of 214 Lankford Avenue and I have the honor of being here with my 11 year old daughter Violet Jennings S. Locker as well and we're here representing our neighborhood and the residents of Lankford Avenue.

Just like our neighbor, Kety Rutnick, just mentioned.

We're here about the speeding and we're here advocating for speed bumps or speed humps or some other similar type of speed management on Langford Avenue.

Like Keddie said, there are around 18 children, young children, on our street.

Violet's the oldest.

We can trust that she'll cross the street looking both ways before crossing.

But there are six or eight young kids, ages three to five, on both sides of the street.

and we're seeing more and more, it's great that this neighborhood, that this community of children, you know, we're all interacting, we've got great social solidarity and connection, we're building a social infrastructure on our street and in our neighborhood, but we're still dealing with this issue of speeding vehicles.

And so we're here again to advocate with our art, with our voices, with our bodies being present,

about our worry and concern about speeding vehicles on Langford Avenue.

And in the spirit of Bike Safety Month, another reason why we're here to advocate again.

But I also have a note from my wife who can't be here right now, but she wanted me to read this aloud, that last week

She watched two neighbors ages three and four who had been playing together in their yard across Lankford Avenue and were crossing Lankford Avenue before an adult could get to them.

And despite being told numerous times by their parents not to cross the street by themselves, they wanted to say hello to another neighbor who lives across the street.

But then a car whizzed by shortly after they crossed.

And there are now dozens of young children living on Lankford Avenue.

I think it's more like 18, but we'll say dozens.

And we would like to go on record saying that someone is going to get hurt or killed if this issue is not addressed.

And once a construction of South First Street is complete, the traffic will only increase, because South First Street is at the bottom of Lankford Avenue.

And once traffic will only increase, so the time to enact

Speed calming measures or speed bumps, speed humps is now.

So we implore the City Council and I ask, you know, what will it take?

Will it take some sort of crowdsource funding?

Will it take a petition?

What else do we need to do to advocate for speed bumps or speed humps on our street on Lankford Avenue?

After

I'll just interject really quickly after seeing you all the other day.

Thank you.

All right, who's next?

Hello, I'm Kevin Cox.

I live on Fairway Avenue, and I'm here tonight to talk about Elliott Avenue.

Elliott Avenue, it's a street in Charlottesville.

It's a street in a neighborhood.

It's a street where people walk, ride bikes, where kids play on the sidewalk, where they draw on the sidewalk with chalk, and that's an inspiration to me.

But according to the city, Elliott Avenue is not a street.

It's an arterial road, a high speed through road.

And that designation is the reason there is no crosswalk at 2nd Street and Elliott Avenue.

2nd Street goes up an X. A lot of people use that crossing.

Crossings are deliberately limited on arterials to keep traffic moving.

That's a street, not a road.

We need the breaks in traffic.

But like everything the city traffic engineering team does, Elliott Avenue,

I would just encourage you to not use ad hominem attacks, please.

Go ahead.

Not do what?

Ad hominem attacks against our staff, please.

Please continue with your statement.

Don't interrupt me.

Don't interrupt me.

When the city engineer first arrived, he wanted to raise the speed limit on locust from 25 to 35.

That's how he thinks.

And that's poisoning transportation and sidewalks and pedestrian issues in Charlottesville, that underlying thing.

That wasn't an ad hominem attack.

That was a true fact.

And it's in the record.

Designating a neighborhood street as an arterial speaks volumes about the city's ideas about what the streets in town really are for.

And things only change when residents finally get energized and riled up like happened over at Rose Hill Drive and Rugby Avenue.

and the crosswalk at Barracks Road.

And I'll tell you, most people are not going to do what the deputy city manager has told you they should do and walk blocks and blocks out of their way to avoid using that legitimate legal crossing into ICS.

And people do come from the neighborhood to use that.

The flashing beacons, they're great.

Nobody's gonna change, or very few people are gonna change their route because of those flashing beacons, okay?

They're gonna come down.

They're either, what most of them do, I've stood there for hours and watched.

And most people who wanna cross at second and are walking on Elliott will either jaywalk or they'll walk to the Second Street Crossing, which is a crossing, and cross there without the benefit of a marked crosswalk.

That's what they do.

They don't detour.

Think of it this way.

Would you accept a half a mile detour when you drive to work?

Just an unnecessary routine detour that adds that much time?

Of course you wouldn't.

And neither should pedestrians.

And they're not going to.

They're just not going to.

That's the fact.

Now I want to say one other thing.

The reason I'm going to keep doing this in spite of the intransigency is because of people like them, the newcomers to this town who so inspire me with their desire to live in a walkable town.

Thank you, Mr. Kochis.

All right, who's next?

Anyone else?

At this point, we have the consent agenda.

Number seven.

Is that what it is?

Yes.

Could number seven be put on the business, the action items?

I had questions about that myself.

Do we need a motion and second for that amendment?

Second the requested amendment.

Or second.

I don't think we have to have that.

The request of any one person is enough to move it.

OK.

OK.

Consent agenda.

Number four minutes, April 10th budget work session, April 21st regular meeting, April 24th special meeting.

Number five is a carryover from the CDBG community development block grant and home investment partnership programs resolutions from the previous meeting, and there are three of those.

Number six, a resolution to appropriate Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services Victims of Crime Act Grant Award, FY 25, $123,600, one of two readings.

Skipping number seven, number eight is a resolution to appropriate $26,210.96 to the Charlottesville Albemarle Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Caspca, one of two readings.

Nine, resolution to appropriate $20,000 in Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services, Children's Justice Act, one-time grant program funds, one of two readings.

Ten, resolution to refund $115,692.68 in business tangible personal property tax.

Number 11, resolution to appropriate

Is there a motion to adopt the consent agenda?

Is there a second?

Second.

Cast your votes.

All right.

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

And I would like to add specifically the continued requests we've had relative to the crosswalk in Elliott.

Any update on that?

Good evening Vice Mayor Pinkston, Members of Council.

So first off, as you know, staff has been working on what we've called our urgent infrastructure list, which is a list of projects throughout the city to improve safety through a variety of mechanisms.

So one of the projects on that list is at Langford Avenue to install a speed cushion or a speed table.

Now the proposal at this point is to install that as a test feature, see how it works, drive fire trucks over it,

make sure that we're comfortable with the tool, but the idea is that once we've done that, we would then move forward with installing a permanent solution.

I just know that we're aiming to have all of this entire list done before the end of this calendar year.

And so I don't know when any of things on this list are going to actually appear on the ground.

So it could be sooner.

Okay.

Yep.

I have a list here that has,

And so you're saying by the end of the year, all 34 will be installed.

Hopefully there'll be some prioritization.

As I said, I was on that road the other day, and it's definitely.

Yeah.

Do we have an approximate?

Alright, in addition to that, we have expressed the priorities of the staff in working through the consideration of Elliott Avenue and there is no update as to what we've committed to at this time.

I also want to just express support and thanks to the PCOB staff, Inez, James, and the board for a great town hall meeting last week I was able to attend.

We had great public engagement as a part of the conversations for ongoing civilian oversight of our police department.

And I also wanted to share a staffing update.

Last month in my work plan update to council and the public, I shared that we were in the process of bringing on a leader for our city attorney's office as well as our HR department.

HR director has started.

The city attorney staff member will be joining us on the 14th.

This individual is moving from out of state from North Carolina.

He has to be admitted to the bar in the state of Virginia.

So he will be joining our team as the managing director of the office, working with ongoing acting city attorney, Pam O'Berry, who is with Sand's Anderson Law Firm.

So as soon as he has completed that transition, then he will become officially named city attorney through your action of approving his employment contract.

He's going to lead the office and continue to fill law efforts to fill vacancies in that office.

There are still five vacancies in that particular office, so he will get to work on that immediately, as well as working with me on some policy and procedure reviews for things that we need to get done.

So that's fantastic.

Yes.

And I also want to join in acknowledging Public Service Recognition Week.

You all don't know how hard it is to serve the public.

We do love you, we do care, and we try our best.

but we can't meet every expectation so we just keep trying.

I want to thank the city staff for the work that they do.

We've had a series of open houses scheduled this week to just share amongst ourselves the great work that we're doing in this community and I will gather with the team on Wednesday to provide a proper thank you to the team.

So we're down to action items.

The first item has to do with the Board of Architectural Review appeal denial demolition certificate of appropriateness for 144 Chancellor Street contributing structure.

Mr. Warner was going to present with a 10 minutes max.

Then we have the appellant can have a chance to speak, and then the BAR chair as well.

Before he starts, I just need to stick something on the record.

One of my other functions in life is that I am the trustee, a trustee, there are three of us, of St.

Paul's Memorial Episcopal Church, which is right down the street from this address at 144 Chancellor.

I am not paid for serving in this role.

I have no financial stake in anything that's going on, but my name does appear on various documents and deeds and so on.

I didn't want to

Thank you.

Good evening.

I'm Jeff Warner.

I'm the city's preservation design planner and I'm here tonight in the capacity as the staff for the Board of Architectural Review, or the BAR.

The matter before you is an appeal of a BAR denial of a certificate of appropriateness, a COA, to allow demolition of a structure at 144 Chancellor Street.

After my introduction and summary, Kevin Blair is here to offer comments on behalf of the property owner.

And following that, David Timmerman is here to provide comments on behalf of the BAR.

Mr. Timmerman is the BAR's vice chair and at the January 22nd BAR meeting he served as chair.

And then after those comments certainly we can answer any questions that you all have for any of us.

So on January 22nd, 2025 the BAR by a vote of six to nothing

denied a COA to allow demolition of an approximately 20 foot by 56 foot single story wood frame structure constructed circa 1905 as a schoolhouse.

The building was reportedly vacant by 1920 after which it served as a residential rental and it was acquired in 1979 by the current owner, the sorority,

and it's most recently been used for storage.

This structure was designated by city council as a contributing structure within the corner architectural design control district and per city code the demolition of a contributing structure requires approval of a COF.

In considering that request for a demolition COA, the BAR's review criteria are specifically limited to the city code provisions under Chapter 34, Section 5.2.7.

However, on an appeal, city council may consider any other information, factors, or opinions it deems relevant to the application.

In appealing the BAR's action, the appellant states the structure is not architecturally unique or tied to notable individuals, and it has outlived its purpose.

In reviewing the COA request, the BAR relied on the 1983 state designation, the 1984 federal designation, and the city's 2003 designation of this property as historic.

All established that this vernacular structure is valued for its contribution to the surrounding historic district.

In appealing the BAR's action, the appellant also asserts demolition is considered the most practical path forward, citing expert analyses showing the building is unsafe and would be costly to repair.

The appellant asserts that despite maintenance efforts, structural issues make rehabilitation unfeasible, and even if feasible, the building has limited value as a usable structure.

In reviewing the COA request, the BAR did not refute that the analyses support demolition.

Instead, they noted that the analyses presented options to repair the structure.

Additionally, the BAR concluded the owner bears responsibility for the deteriorated condition of the structure, given that it is a contributing structure within a design control district.

The BAR did not refute that the repairs could be costly.

Instead, applying the review criteria and following their primary charge to preserve buildings, the BAR concluded that repairing the building is the preferred remedy.

So tonight the matter before you is to approve or deny that COA request, not overturn the BAR.

It's your vote on the COA.

So should you all deny this COA request to percode, the owner can appeal that further to the Circuit Court in addition to the further appeal

following a denial by city council.

There is a provision in our code that allows the owner, as a matter of right, to be entitled to demolish the structure if, for a period of 12 months, the property is offered for sale at a fair market price to a party that will preserve and restore it.

Mr. Warner, could you say that last piece again?

It's a little bit complicated.

It is a provision of our code that allows the remedy of an appeal to counsel, say you all deny they have an option of appealing that decision to the circuit court.

There is also a, you can do both,

The opportunity that, and it's happened, I think the last time it occurred was 2014, a property was offered for sale and the period of time is based on the assessment.

And if after 12 months, for this property's value, if someone has not offered to acquire it, then they can return and council can allow them to demolish the structure by right.

Little complicated here, hoping we don't go down that route because of the way this parcel's situated.

To be clear, that option is there.

So finally, the staff's recommendation to you all, and I'm here representing the BAR, is that you all render a final decision and by resolution deny the COA to allow demolition of this structure.

If, however, council agrees with the appellant, then you should approve by resolution a COA to allow demolition of the structure.

Just a couple quick questions.

One, an application had come before both the BAR and city council on appeal in 2013.

And both times a demolition permit was denied.

So it's been a little over a decade since that has occurred with them making the same request.

And that period, the advice was given that restoration was the preferred remedy.

It's difficult.

And I would say that the rehabilitation work used to that term in the sense that not restoring it to an original use, but rehabilitating.

And that's what our guidelines are anchored in.

I'm trying to reflect what the BAR said.

Yes.

But it's come before, you know, in 2013 and coming back again.

This is one of my historic designation 101s.

So in the city, we have properties that are designated on the state register.

And then on the state register, they can be nominated and listed on the national register.

Those are honorary.

The thing that matters in the city of Charlottesville is the local designation.

So part of the BAR's criteria is to look at that.

Is this listed on the state national register?

And in this case, yes.

and then but the thing that brings the BAR's purview is that local designation and I think an example I've offered before my house downtown is not on the state or national register but it is a designated individually protected property by the city so therefore I have to go to the BAR because of that local designation so yes this is on all three designations which matters to the BAR

Right.

So not their purview, but it was on state and national registers since 1983.

Correct.

So the owner would have been aware of state and national listings for about four decades.

I hope so, yeah.

And the final question, I don't know if it's a question for you or for the BAR if it's more appropriate, but the

And I know they're following their guidelines, and that's the key.

They're following their guidelines and recommending denial as happened in 2013.

But part of the reason it is a historically significant property is that it's the only remaining one-room schoolhouse left in the city.

It's a one-room schoolhouse.

It's got the one room, and it has several rooms in it, but colloquially a one-room schoolhouse, single story.

It is unique as far as I'm aware of.

Thank you.

Oh, please go ahead.

Ms.

So sorry, I thought you were going to have questions too.

So I watched the BAR meeting.

I was looking back at the 2013 list of deficits to the building then, and it seems like some of the same.

It's not like since the 2013.

request, it's fallen into disrepair.

It was already kind of in disrepair in 2013.

So just to clarify the historic registry business, the building itself is listed or it's just a historical building within the district that makes the district more historical?

It's identified as a contributing resource and within some of the districts on the National Register you have structures and properties that are eligible in and of themselves.

There are others which, lacking the context of a district,

may not be eligible as an individual property.

under the eyes of being on the National Register or being eligible for the National Register, whether you're individually listed or even eligible for, carries the same weight.

For example, the Sammons Family Cemetery that blocked the bypass was deemed eligible for the National Register.

It was never nominated.

It never went through the process.

But the fact that it was deemed eligible

caused VDOT to hit the brakes on that project.

So it's difficult to say, oh, is this more historic or less historic?

I have to go with this has been determined to be a contributing resource.

OK, cool.

Thanks.

And that's kind of the thing is it's not really a distinction, but yet we all know there is.

So, but it really, it's like I said, that's a value point that the BAR weighs.

And then one of the things, one of the members of the BAR said that there's, we have a duty to maintain buildings, especially historic ones.

What is, is there an official duty or is it just kind of like we like historical things, we should preserve them?

Or is there like actual,

There's a rule.

And I will tell you, I struggle with this one.

My house is a beat up old house.

I wish I were finished.

It's not.

My wife wishes it was finished.

So it's difficult to go around and look at every historic property and say,

you know I'm gonna cite them for this and I don't have the time we don't have the resources so we try to you know stay on top of it with letting people know or if there's a complaint we'll respond to it but I'm not out policing the city looking for things and I would say from the street if I were by and looked at that I'd say yeah that's an old building covered in looks like you know vinyl siding maybe they need to clean their gutters but I would not have

gone and banged on the door and said this thing's falling over.

OK.

Yeah.

Well, because it's all one parcel now.

And a strict reading of the code says that the resource and the land under it.

And I know back in 2013, that's actually what the sorority had attempted to do was to create a parcel in which

It could be put on the market separately.

I don't know.

I wasn't here with the city at that time, but there was some issue with that subdivision.

But as it currently, so think in terms of right now, they are appealing the BAR's decision.

And so it's sort of that property as it is now.

We were to take the code and say, well, we're going to do this.

Well, that would be the property as it could be.

I don't think we would want to compel the sorority to sell their entire parcel.

Does that make sense?

So that's where I'm hoping that provision is available.

I'm not an attorney.

I urge Kevin that they can certainly explore it.

Another very good question.

The BAR struggles with that because by policy, we're evaluating the loss of that building.

When we know something's coming in its place, you try to not make that decision.

But it's impossible to divide those.

In this case, we don't have anything.

It's the express concerns that Mr. Blair will get into.

And so the BR really didn't even have a, oh, we're going to get something else.

We've had projects where it's relatively simple to evaluate a demolition.

knowing what the historic nature is of a building and what might go there.

But in this, no, we haven't been offered an idea of what may be going there.

For the BAR, it shouldn't.

So one of the questions we could be permitted to ask is, what's going to happen next?

Got it.

Yeah, our box is very small for demolitions.

Anything else?

Not at the moment.

Okay.

All right.

I think the B.A.R.

chair up next.

I'm sorry.

The appellant has up to 10 minutes to speak.

I apologize.

Yes.

My name is Kevin Blair.

I'm here to represent before you the client, my client, Delta Zeta National Housing Corporation, the owners of the subject property located at 144 Chancellor Street, also known as Delta Zeta Annex.

I am here this evening for two specific reasons.

Number one, to appeal and refute some of the sentiments and positions of certain Board of Architectural Review members expressed during the recent January bar meeting,

Number two, to seek direct redress of this body for our desire to have the unsafe, uninhabitable, and obsolete aforementioned structure properly removed as to mitigate further damage to our student population and the public whose travel is in constant direct proximity to this building.

As to our appeal of the bar, we take issue with comments in the January 22nd meeting

regarding the inferences and claims that we have intentionally neglected the building for the purposes of having it demolished.

This is patently untrue.

As evidence shows, we have made efforts to maintain the exterior weathertight envelope of the building.

We installed a new asphalt shingle roof after trees fell and damaged the roof.

These trees were planted long ago too close and impinging on the foundation wall of the building long before we purchased the property.

The aluminum siding that exists was installed prior to our purchase of the property in 1979.

We have chosen not to invest assets internally in the building as it was a smaller structure on the property when purchased that has never had a specific use or purpose to us.

for us.

With regards to our redress before you this evening, we realize to a degree that what we had tasked the bar with in seeking demolition of this structure falls outside of their stated charge and duty to preserve at all costs historical structures.

The cost to relocate or renovate this building is no longer feasible and far exceeds its remaining intrinsic value.

We are asking you not to overrule on their due diligence, but to instead separately make a choice for us to grant the demolition and removal of this building.

It has reached the end of its expected lifespan due to inferior construction.

For example, engineering methods, standards, and materials of 120 years ago.

In the interest of public safety, we hope you will advocate for our needs.

We have no deceptive or ulterior motive of removing that building other than to produce safety for the neighborhood and our students that are parking mere feet from that building, walking within feet of it.

We realize that there's no

To move that structure, the streets are not wide enough.

The utilities are not compatible.

There's a railway that's well below grade behind that property.

There's no intermediate staging area to take the building apart and to load it and all that.

It's just a tight area there.

And as Ben mentioned, the building does not possess any

special architectural features that haven't been produced in other buildings and couldn't be reproduced.

It's a very basic multi-room school that was used for three or four years after it was built in 1905 and it's been a rental property, it's been a storage place, it's been a flophouse, it's had no real

enduring life unfortunately during the period of 120 years.

Thank you, sir.

It's going to be a grassy area.

maybe some sitting area, a trellis, a few benches for our girls that live next door in the 16 room house that used to be a hotel and just a, there's no structure that, we have no plans to put any structure there.

Okay.

Thank you sir.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, council members.

My name is David Timmerman.

I'm a member of the Board of Architectural Review, vice chair, but I was the chair the night of this hearing.

And so we're here to discuss what's known as the Little Red Schoolhouse.

and we've heard already some of the BAR criteria that we use to make these decisions and of course we serve at your honor as your advisors so we've already heard some of these points but

As a major BAR criteria, we're looking at historic architectural or cultural significance.

Does this building have any of those?

We've talked about it being built in 1905.

We've talked about it being a contributing structure in the Rugby Road and University Corner Historic District.

The house does represent an unusual building type in the corner district.

The simple design of the schoolhouse has been retained, hasn't been modified very much through the years.

So that in and of itself I think has value according to our evaluation.

and the schoolhouse is linked historically and aesthetically to the other structures on the street.

So for making this motion, the points that we dug into more specifically was the idea of this house remaining intact.

When you go into the house, a good deal of the wood floor, the plaster walls, the window trim, all are there the way they've always been, in a way.

Special thing that you recognize because you don't see that very often, especially in this particular district.

So in some ways it was a little bit of a time capsule you might call it.

The fact that this building is unusual.

It is in fact, as far as we know, the last remaining ones

So I think that carries some weight as well for everybody to consider.

The exterior, along with the interior, remains intact underneath the aluminum siding that was put on sometime before the owners received the building.

According to our assessment, the aluminum siding was put on over what looked like the original siding.

In fact, when you stand on the street, you can look at the house and when you really think about it without its aluminum siding on, you can picture it as it was probably a hundred years ago.

And then another point that came up in our discussion was perhaps maybe more significant than the, or just as significant as the house itself,

is its contribution to the rest of the neighborhood, in particular that street.

Chancellor Street is fairly well intact.

A number of the buildings are historic, a good number, and I don't think you can discount the fact that

having such a well intact historic street so close to UVA in a region, in a district where the historic fabric is quickly eroding in a lot of places.

Wortland Street comes to mind.

That's a very important factor as well in our

and are looking at this project.