City Council Meeting   5/19/2025

Hello, everyone.

I call the Charlottesville May 19, 2025 meeting to order.

Charlottesville City Council meeting to order.

Ms.

Yes.

Councilor Oschrin?

Here.

Councilor Payne?

Here.

Councilor Snook?

Here.

Second.

OK.

That's me.

Okay, the motion passes five to zero.

The meeting will be divided into three sections.

The first section is a work session to hear and discuss presentations that do not require a council vote, followed by a closed session, and then the city council business meeting at 6.30.

Today we will have two reports.

Good afternoon, Council.

It is a pleasure to be in front of you to talk about such an important topic.

But more importantly, it's my honor and privilege to pass it on to our experts in the community who do this work day in and day out.

And without their dedication, time, effort, and expertise, unfortunately, many members of our community, our neighbors and friends, would face immense suffering.

So for today, you're going to hear from several of the members of our nonprofit community, starting with our Continuum of Care Lead Agency, Blue Ridge Area Coalition for the Homeless, often known as BRAC.

We'll hear from The Haven, from Shelter for Health and Emergencies, often known as SHE, from our Salvation Army, as well as from PACHAM.

Just briefly, just a reminder for you all and the community that homelessness is extraordinarily complex and it is a pressing challenge within our city but also within the Commonwealth and the nation.

It impacts individuals, families, as well as broader community members.

And the city of Charlottesville, I'm very thankful to say, remains committed to advancing equitable solutions through collaboration with our nonprofit partners, regional partners, and most importantly, listening to those with lived experience to find out what they need, not what we assume that they may need.

So we're honored to provide this briefing workshop to you and the community to learn more about the state of homelessness here in our city, the work that our nonprofit partners are doing,

and for many of them, the work that they foresee doing.

You have a list of presenters in front of you as well, but it's my honor to turn this over to Ms.

Thank you, Ashley.

Hello, city council, city manager.

My name is Shayla Washington and I have the pleasure of serving as the executive director of the Blue Ridge Area Coalition for the Homeless, also known as BRAC.

BRAC aims to make homelessness rare, brief, and non-recurring by collaborating with communities to help both individuals and families achieve housing stability, financial health, and improved quality of life.

We serve as the continuum of care lead agency, which is responsible for the annual application process for federal funding through HUD, also known as the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

We're also the lead body for state grant management through the Department of Housing and Community Development.

as well as developing policy, improving the performance of homeless service providers, and managing our COC wide homeless management information system which has about 65 users.

We also provide overall coordination and collaboration amongst and with all the service providers across our continuum of care.

So you'll see on this graphic here, this is just kind of a snapshot of all the different buckets in our continuum of care.

One agency I did neglect to leave off by accident is under the yellow circle on the left-hand side under prevention and diversion.

Piedmont Housing Alliance is another really great program that helps with prevention for addictions.

But yes, this is covering everything from outreach, coordinated entry, affordable housing, transitional housing, emergency shelter, rapid rehousing, diversion, and permanent supportive housing.

And we really need help in all of those buckets to really make this a strong continuum of care.

Another back responsibility is our point in time count and also the housing inventory count which happened on the same night.

This is a HUD effort and it happens the fourth Wednesday of January every year.

That's where we go out and assess who is staying in shelters, who's staying in transitional housing.

and who is sleeping outside.

So you'll see those three different lines representing those three different categories.

Just to provide some explanation, in 2025, so in January of this year, we saw 41 unsheltered folks, and that's that dark blue line at the very bottom.

The middle line, which is the middle blue color, is transitional housing.

You'll see a little decrease in that.

We served eight individuals this year in four households, but there were some children taken away from the home.

in early January, which is why there's a decrease in that number.

We only have four transitional housing units online at this point.

And then there are 116 people sleeping in emergency shelter.

Previous years, just for comparison, 2024, we saw 126 people sleeping in emergency shelter, 14 unsheltered, and 19 in transitional housing.

So you can see the increase in the number of unsheltered folks went from 14 to 41 in the last year.

And I think some of that was in part due to me transitioning into this role, not having enough robust number of volunteers to help assess all the different areas.

We also had some input from other counties this year.

As you can see on our by name list or the BNL as we call it for short, that's a list of everyone we know to be experiencing homelessness at any given time.

We try to keep this up to date in real time as much as possible given all the providers who are giving information into our system or our HMIS.

We approximate having about 220 people on the list at any given time.

That's up from last year.

We usually had about 200 at any given time, but that number is slowly increasing year over year.

For the last year, from June 2023 to 2024, we had 498.

Fast-forwarding one year, we have 571 people.

So again, we're seeing that increase going up for people who are unsheltered or sleeping out in a shelter or transitional housing.

Anything that's paid for by a third-party service provider, like hotels, all of that counts towards people on our by name list.

Currently, we have 241 people on our by name list.

So the next slide shows you a breakdown.

Where are the people who are unsheltered or sleeping in emergency shelters from?

We have 241 people on the list.

157 reported where their last permanent address or locality was located.

107 of the 157 reported being from the city of Charlottesville.

So that equates to about 68%.

Of the total by name list, that would be 44% of everyone.

But as you can see, we had 84 people who we didn't collect the data on.

We are going to be having a data quality training for all of our users next month, actually.

So hopefully we can start to ease down that unknown data not collected section.

But as you can see, the vast majority do come from the city.

And this is just a slide kind of detailing that.

So 68% reported being from the city of Charlottesville.

25.5% reported being from Albemarle County.

The rest all came from either Nelson, Louisa, Fluvanna, or Green.

So what's up next for BRAC?

We are in the process of hiring an outreach coordinator through private funding for one year.

This is just a pilot program for us, trying to see what the need is throughout the COC.

So we also cover not only the city of Charlottesville, but the counties of Albemarle, Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa, and Nelson.

Once we do have that outreach coordinator hired, we plan to create a lived experience advisory council that that position will be heading up.

We continue to do a lot of outreach with our fellow COC lead agencies across the state.

There are 16 of us.

We're working on, of course, creating advocacy because we can see that the need for HUD dollars is stronger than ever now.

And we're just kind of working on improving systems and policies and procedures across the COC.

So we are working on a strategic planning process.

We just got approved for funding through Virginia Housing, so we'll be embarking on that process starting next month.

and doing a strategic plan not only for BRAC but also for the whole continuum of care to see what the needs are.

So we'll be interviewing different stakeholders, nonprofits, community members, city council members, city manager, just to see what are the needs, where can we fill in some of those gaps and the capacity building funding from the city is going to be a great help for that.

So thank you for voting on that last month.

We're also working on hiring a grants and marketing manager who can help us with grants management and performance for that.

Lots of reporting involved, especially with the HUD reports.

We're working on bringing in professional development opportunities for our non-profit service providers who don't have budgets for that and also supporting both the Haven and Pocham as they embark on their strategic planning processes as well.

So yeah, I'll have somebody that's probably best for me to wait until the others.

I have a question, Ms.

Washington.

You referred to being a lead agency in the continuum of care.

I'm just curious, is that a responsibilities only kind of a thing?

Or do you get some extra money for your agency for being the lead agency?

Sure.

So the lead agency is responsible for applying for federal funding through HUD.

We do apply for a planning grant every year, which is the max we can get as our, based on our size of our continuum of care is $50,000.

Okay.

I'm glad you get something for that.

No, we also apply on behalf of Region 10 for their permanent supportive housing project, which is almost half a million dollars.

Okay.

Yeah, thank you for your presentation and for your work.

At this point, no.

Yeah, that's pretty much it.

Piedmont Housing Alliance Sunshine Maython at PHA has been really great about spearheading these weekly calls about federal funding and what to expect.

And so we're all kind of sharing news with each other as we hear it.

But

A lot of it is kind of wait and see.

I know Trump released his skinny budget very recently with plans to cut about 40-some percent from the HUD budget, hoping that doesn't pass.

But if it does, we just need to be prepared to kind of pivot and look for other alternative funding sources.

So right now it is a fingers crossed, wait and see game.

OK.

That's fine.

It's OK.

Thank you.

I'm hitting the back button, I promise.

Sorry about that.

It's okay.

So you had 84 folks

So 107 plus 40 plus 84 plus those others equals 241.

Okay.

All right.

Correct.

And I'm sure, you know, once our service providers come up, they can give more intel into that because most of the folks who are collected in this management system are either staying at Salvation Army or Pacham.

Do we have any idea, particularly for the folks that are from Charlottesville, from the county, how it is they're ending up in homelessness?

Do we have any, is it, I mean, is there like a common thread just that

I think for the most part each case is unique.

I will say there are a lot of evictions happening just because of rising rents and people not being able to afford it.

The cost of living is very high here.

And so you miss one month of rent and you're automatically up for eviction once you go through that process with your landlord.

It's very expensive to live here.

And the people who are from here want to stay here.

And so sometimes it does mean sleeping on the streets because they don't want to leave the only home they've ever known.

I've talked to many people in that respect who

I think there's a narrative out there I don't know how true it is but I've been doing a lot of door knocking recently and talking with people really all over the city and

Again, I think our service providers who are doing the direct service work can speak more to that, but I think that there are a lot of really great resources here.

UVA Hospital, our social services and human services programs are very robust.

I do think that people who come here probably don't stay here for very long if they're not from here just because of the rising rents and the fact that people can't afford it in general.

There's a common misconception that people are being bused here from other communities.

Okay.

Yeah.

Do you want to go?

Can you tell, you know, we mentioned some of the HUD funding that's up in the air.

Yes, we get roughly, let's say 60% from the state.

So the Department of Community and Housing Development, DHCD, they give us funding for coordinated entry, rapid rehousing, homeless prevention, our HMIS or homeless management information system.

and some for planning dollars, so COC planning.

But that is our biggest source of funding.

Okay, that was going to be my next question.

As I know the city pitches in a little bit, I was going to ask how much the county contributes.

Yeah, currently it's 6%.

And sorry, that's 6% combined from county and city?

Oh, I'm sorry.

Yeah, that is combined, city and county.

Thank you.

Likewise.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Shayla.

I know you're out there.

I'm in a lot of meetings, and you're there representing, so thank you.

I'm trying to locate myself on the slide deck.

But hello, city councilors.

Good to see you all.

My name's Owen Brennan.

I'm the executive director of The Haven.

As many of you probably know, The Haven is the day shelter.

We are open 365 days a year, located just off the downtown mall.

We offer respite care for anyone in need every day of the year.

In addition to that, we also provide housing resources to help prevent folks from falling into homelessness and to help folks exit homelessness once they've found themselves there.

And yeah, we open our doors wide for anyone and everyone, no matter their circumstances.

We are a low barrier shelter.

There's been a lot of talk about low barrier versus high barrier shelters in our community.

So we are oriented for folks who truly have no place else to go, folks who are experiencing sometimes mental health crises.

are struggling with addiction.

Despite that, we are a community of folks, staff and guests who care about each other and we really aim to provide radical hospitality for anyone who comes and a safe and welcoming space for folks to begin again and get back on their feet.

We work closely with Brock, obviously.

We work really in tandem with them.

Brock sort of does the 30,000 foot planning and strategic work for our COC.

And The Haven has long been sort of the direct service provider, one along with Pacham's Salvation Army, who are directly serving our homeless neighbors.

I mentioned our day shelter.

We are open 365 days a year.

We serve breakfast every day of the year, lunch on Fridays and Sundays.

Folks can take showers, do laundry, access computers.

They can get their mail sent to our address.

We sort a lot of mail every day and distribute it to folks.

And then we have really built a strong in-house programming

including we have a partnership with UVA Health.

They have a health clinic that comes every Wednesday afternoon, sets up and does primary care visits with anyone, any of our guests who want to see a primary care provider.

And then they refer folks to UVA for specialist visits.

They have in-house psychiatry as well that they provide.

Over the last year, and it's something that my predecessor, Anna Mendez, set up, was a partnership with an office-based opioid treatment program out of UVA Health.

So every Wednesday, there's a team of nurses

and counselors who are showing up and meeting with anyone who's struggling with addiction is trying to use less, anyone who's trying to end that cycle of addiction.

They have been just a tremendous partner as far as working with folks

not just on addiction but also on getting housed which is really what all of our services are oriented towards.

Homelessness is a housing crisis and so we want to provide a welcoming space for folks but we don't want folks to stay with us forever.

We want to move them to their next stable housing situation.

Just a quick snapshot.

This is data for the last nine months ending end of March.

We had 21,715 visits to the day shelter.

That breaks down to about 80 people per day.

We served 20,000 meals, I think that's like 75 meals a day over that time period.

And then we saw 412 unique guests.

So of the 80 people who are showing up every day, a lot of those folks are in transition.

Most folks who experience homelessness in our community, it is pretty brief.

a month or two.

And then we have folks who have been experiencing homelessness for a number of years.

Those are the folks who we target with our housing programs.

And so once we have welcomed folks, we have fed them, then as quickly as possible, we're trying to connect them with our housing programs and a way out of homelessness.

We operate the homeless intake hotline, or the homeless information line, which provides the first step for someone.

This is for anyone who is either experiencing homelessness or is at risk of experiencing homelessness, can call the homeless information line and

and speak with someone who's going to triage their situation.

If they are currently experiencing homelessness, they're going to be referred to one of our housing programs.

If they're at risk of homelessness,

Depending on how close their eviction date is, we may be able to serve them with our homelessness prevention program.

Homelessness prevention provides financial assistance up to $3,500 to pay either rental arrears or to move someone who is about to be evicted into a new place if they're not allowed to, if they're not able to renew their lease where they are currently.

To be eligible for that program, someone has to be within 14 days of losing their rental unit.

So these are folks really on the verge of eviction.

We have limited homelessness prevention funds, which we get from the state, about $100,000 every year.

So we're really trying to identify who are the folks who have an eviction court date, but are most likely to actually enter shelter.

If someone has already lost their housing, they are currently homeless, they may be sleeping in a shelter, either the Salvation Army or Pacham or the Shee shelter, or they may be sleeping outside in a tent, in their car, or some other place that's not fit for habitation.

Those folks are then eligible for either the Laura DeLappe Haven Housing Fund or our Rapid Rehousing Program.

We've been administering the rapid rehousing program the longest.

This is a federal program and our community focuses those resources on the individuals who have been homeless for the longest time and have the most serious medical psychiatric conditions.

So we house about 40 households every year through our rapid rehousing program.

This is a really robust program that provides rental subsidies but then also case management support for up to two years and the goal of that program is to bridge someone from the subsidy to being able to either pay their rent on their own or connecting them with a long-term housing voucher.

After administering rapid rehousing for many years and seeing a number of folks who have been chronically homeless moving out of homelessness, we realized there was this big gap of folks who had not been chronically homeless, had been homeless for a short period of time, had some kind of income coming in, just needed a light touch to get out of homelessness.

So we started the Haven Housing Fund.

It was renamed for our

Beloved co-worker, Laura DeLappe, who was tragically murdered a few years ago.

And the Laura DeLappe Haven Housing Fund provides that light touch financial assistance to help bridge people out of homelessness into housing.

Security deposit, first month's rent, and then those folks have income, can pick up their rent, and continue on.

So we receive a lot of calls to the homeless information line.

A lot of these calls are from folks who are behind on their rent but don't qualify for our homelessness prevention program.

So we refer them to either the City Pathways Program or to the Albemarle County ACERF Program.

I do want to note that the overwhelming majority of callers are from either Charlottesville or Albemarle.

We have 49% of callers are from the city, about 40% are from Albemarle County, and then the balance is from the other counties that are in our catchment area, Louisa, Green, Fluvanna, and Nelson.

There was the discussion of is Charlottesville a hospitable community, so hospitable that we're attracting people to our services.

And as someone who works with the folks who are entering homelessness for the first time, I can pretty emphatically say that the folks who are experiencing homelessness in Charlottesville are very local.

They're from Charlottesville.

They're from Albemarle.

Folks experiencing homelessness don't have the sort of resources to move around and shop around for resources.

That's not something we have seen.

In our day shelter, if we identify that someone has another place, either family or friends they can stay with,

They have to confirm that they have got a safe place to stay, but we will pay the $100, $150 for someone's bus or train fare.

I use that example just to illustrate that our guests don't have an extra $100 or $150 to find a better location to get services.

In our experience, our folks are very local.

The last collaboration that I want to highlight is a collaboration with the Department of Human Services here with the city.

We had a brutal winter and there were three stretches of nights where either the temperature was so cold or we got so much snow that people and the Pocham and Salvation Army demand for overnight shelter just skyrocketed in that time.

The city offered to pay for hotel rooms for anyone who wasn't able to access Potsham or the Salvation Army in these three stretches of time and our staff coordinated with hotels to house

a total of 40 unique people over these three periods of time for a total of about 140 nights for everyone and that was a really great collaboration thanks to Misty for helping out with that and Ashley Marshall also made that happen so we're really grateful for the partnership with the city for that and just

In general, we get a very small amount of federal funds for our rapid rehousing program.

Our housing programs are largely funded through a state agency, DHCD, but our day shelter is really funded through private funds, foundations, grants, and the city of Charlottesville has been a big supporter of that through the HOPS program as well.

So that is an overview.

I'll start with you.

Sure, I can.

Yes, I'm sorry that those numbers didn't make it in.

And then, you know, trying to say it's not the right approach, but with Rapid Rehousing, are you finding that that program, in terms of being targeted for people who have been the longest in chronic homelessness, that that program is

No, that's been the, so Brock set that priority about 15 years ago.

This is how we're going to prioritize using rapid rehousing funds.

And so yeah, this is a case in which we work closely with Brock to sort of set those priorities.

A number of other communities target folks with less intense needs.

Right.

Are you finding that that creates

a barrier where for some people that two years is just not enough and they're kind of cycling back into homelessness?

Yeah, that's, that's a great question.

The success rate is, is around 90%.

So, so, and, and most folks at this point are not staying on, staying in that program for two years.

We did have a ton of emergency housing vouchers come through our community over the last five years.

So a lot of folks were moved from rapid rehousing to an emergency housing voucher.

Some folks get either working income or work with our case managers to get social security disability income to pay their rents going forward.

Okay.

And I guess with the emergency housing vouchers, what kind of agencies are those coming from and then

You know, what's the scale of the problem you've encountered?

Sure.

Yeah, that's a great question.

So my understanding is emergency housing vouchers come from HUD to localities.

So I think that both Albemarle County and the City of Charlottesville, housing authorities administer those.

There's not a bottleneck for rapid rehousing clients.

We're trying to find a way to sort of spread the housing navigation resources throughout our day shelter because we do have folks who may get a

A mainstream housing voucher, whether it's Section 8 or something like that, currently homeless, and they need assistance finding a place.

Yeah, and I know with Section 8 vouchers, I'm sure it applies, there's just not, even with all the navigation, sometimes there's just not open units that are low enough rent where

If the rent's too high, HUD doesn't, you can't use the voucher there and have it be affordable.

So I just wonder to the extent that's a problem.

But no, yeah, that's all very helpful.

Thank you.

Sure.

Kind of on that same vein, I'm wondering where are you finding the housing for these folks?

Is it within city limits?

We're generally housing folks within Charlottesville and Albemarle.

If someone has access to Jaunt or their own automobile, we may look outside of the urban ring, but 90% of the folks we're housing are within Charlottesville and Albemarle.

And I mean, our housing team is really terrific at partnering with private landlords, property management companies, building relationships with landlords.

That work really depends on strong relationships with landlords who know that if we house someone with them, we're going to be there to support that person and be able to troubleshoot any problems that might arise.

But yeah, that's someplace where our housing team has really shown in navigating folks into places.

So the limit for us is not yet not having places to put people when they've been identified for rapid rehousing.

Yeah, a couple things.

Has the Haven considered the possibility of actually becoming not only a day shelter but an evening shelter as well?

Is that something that my understanding is that you've asked this question and it is cost prohibitive to do that or it's just not really your model?

Yeah, I guess I can only speak, you know, I came on as interim director last July.

And at that point, the conversation between Pacham and the Salvation Army as far as creating that low barrier shelter option had sort of begun to move.

And so that's, we're very supportive of that project of expanding low barrier overnight shelter year round for our community.

And we're also, I mean, our MO has always been like, what does the community need and how can we provide it?

Thank you for that.

If there was a, if you could

sort of Hermione Granger up a list of you know a couple of two three interventions that you wish or funds that could just be sort of you know gifted to the haven are there are there some sort of

Are there ideas you might have to really make a step change in how the unhoused are served here?

Sure.

It is true that there's more demand for our

Homelessness prevention subsidies that we can meet.

So we have more people who are being evicted who have a high likelihood of entering homelessness than we can pay rental arrears for.

And if we can stabilize the rental market by having enough funding to prevent all the folks who are about to fall into homelessness, then that would give us a better sense of what is the rental market right now.

Right now, to some extent, our housing model is dependent on folks being evicted from places and then new folks moving into those units.

The easiest thing to do is to keep someone housed.

We don't have to navigate them.

We just pay their rental arrears and keep in touch with them to see how are they doing.

Can I ask a quick question?

So it sounds kind of like you said that the model is kind of predicated on

housing becoming available by people leaving and then having to find.

Absolutely.

And I am remiss in stopping for affordable housing.

I know you all know this, but what we ultimately need is more affordable housing.

Absolutely.

Yeah, 100%.

The stop gap between now and then, and also to figure out how much affordable housing do we need,

It's not all folks being evicted.

Specifically for the unhoused, I mean the folks that are right on the hairy edge of being kicked out of their

Am I making sense?

Well, that's a harder number to nail down because probably thousands of people go through the eviction process every year.

Of those folks, not all become homeless.

OK, we're going to have to scoot, because we have several more presentations and another.

So Lloyd, did you have any questions?

I have no idea.

I'm sorry, just one quick one.

You mentioned you were counting in terms of households earlier.

And I know that is a catch-all term.

How many of those are individuals versus families?

I think we got to move on.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, everyone.

I am Anna Mendez.

I have the privilege of being the executive of the shelter for help in emergency.

It is lovely to be here with you this afternoon.

I do want to say that I am so heartened to see so many youth in the audience.

Thank you guys all for being here.

And please keep showing up.

With that, I'm going to see if I can make this work.

Here we go.

All right.

Shelter for Health and Emergency.

We are the regional wraparound service provider for people who have experienced intimate partner violence and also as much work as we do to meet the needs of those who have already experienced violence.

We are also working with primary prevention strategies so that people neither experience violence in their lives nor become people who perpetuate violence as well.

There are a lot of words on this slide.

What I would like to draw your attention to is at the very bottom, make informed decisions for themselves.

That is both the hardest and most important part of our philosophy

at the shelter.

What that means is that we work incredibly hard not to recreate the cycle of power and control that people coming to us are seeking to flee.

In other words, we do not tell people what they should do, which can create some really hard situations.

We also firmly believe that people are the experts on themselves and they know when they are most ready.

and when it is safest for them to leave the situation that they're in.

We are the only intimate partner violence organization that serves Planning District 10.

Our outreach office is directly across the street from Albemarle High School.

Our emergency shelter facility is located at an undisclosed location.

in the kind of urban core of Charlottesville and Albemarle.

We primarily serve Planning District 10, but we do provide shelter services to people who live in other locations in Virginia.

that is because we want those localities to extend the same consideration to us.

When we are full and have a survivor who needs housing tonight, we would love to be able to make sure that if there's a bed in Stanton, that the Stanton IPV organization is willing to step up.

And so we extend that same consideration to our partner organizations.

Before I move on, something that we as an organization are working hard to do a better job at is to be more accurate and precise with our terms.

So while you may hear the terms domestic violence and intimate partner violence used interchangeably,

And while perhaps we may still use them interchangeably on our website, they are not in fact the same.

So we are working particularly to end or prevent patterns of behavior that work to establish or maintain power and control.

over someone's current or former romantic partner.

So how that is relevant to this conversation is that we are unable to offer shelter to people who have experienced domestic violence that is not in fact intimate partner violence.

So for example, if your roommate who is just your roommate, not your romantic partner,

assaults you, you are not eligible for shelter at our service.

Same if you're living with a cousin, if your adult child has serious mental illness and is living with you and there is a domestic disturbance in the home, that is not intimate partner violence.

And so I just am grateful for this opportunity to state very clearly

what the boundaries and limitations of our service provision are.

And we provide a lot of service in the community.

We answer a 24 hour, seven days a week crisis hotline.

We offer emergency shelter.

We provide resource assistance, both financial and tangible goods to people fleeing intimate partner violence.

information and referral sources, legal advocacy and court accompaniment.

We cannot yet currently provide legal representation in court, though that is something we hope to be able to change in the future.

We provide, we have 24 hour a day access to a language line, so we can actually provide all of our services to any language that people may speak.

But we also have staff

on site who are able who are themselves Spanish is their first language.

So that is that is why we emphasize Spanish speaking services on here.

We are our community's access point to the statewide address confidentiality program that people can access through the attorney general's office.

If you are in a stalking situation and it is not safe for your home address to be a matter of public record.

We also offer prevention and education programs in the community.

We have a pet safe program because not having a safe place for your pet to go when you need to come into emergency shelter is a really, can be a really significant barrier for people.

In 2024, we provided over 6,000 shelter nights to individuals who needed shelter.

We answered over 1400 hotline calls and we helped community members secure over 100 orders of protection.

One thing I will say that is very relevant to this conversation is that of those 1400 hotline calls, slightly less than half of them were individuals who were seeking shelter but had not experienced intimate partner violence.

which is partly on us.

Our name is the shelter for help in emergency.

So it would stand to reason if you are someone about to experience homelessness that you would think calling us would be a next first step for you.

But those calls are really heartbreaking for us because we don't have a solution for that person.

and that person can often become pretty frustrated that they've reached out for help only to discover that we are not a solution for them.

We work with law enforcement partners in our planning district to do real-time lethality assessment screenings with them when they are actually in the field responding to a call that either toned out as a domestic violence call or perhaps didn't but by the time they got there the officer was able to see that yes there is an intimate partner violence situation

happening here and we need to do a screening.

People that are screened through that assessment and are looking for shelter are able to be fast-tracked for shelter if they so desire with us.

We also work in many local public and private K-12 schools doing semester-long youth education around prevention and we are really really grateful to be able to do that because

Ultimately we would like to not have to have a shelter building serving this community.

And then just about every weekend of the year we are out at a fair, a festival, a community event working to teach the community who we are, what we do, and what services we offer.

Before I stop talking to take questions, two things that I think are important for me to mention is we've recently taken kind of an audit of how can we help the people who are coming into our shelter be more

successful.

And as a result of that, we have changed our policy around bringing dependents into shelter.

So I'm grateful to be able to announce that now anyone who is eligible for a shelter can bring any number of dependents with them when they come.

As long as that dependent was living with them at the time of the intimate partner violence, we no longer have any restrictions on

ages or genders or relationship of those dependents to the survivor.

Recognizing as well how difficult it is for people to leave our shelter and be able to find their next stable situation, we have also recently increased the length of stay that someone can be with us.

On one level, we're really grateful to be able to do this for individuals because we want to help them be as well set up for success as possible.

On the other hand, extending length of stay does not magically increase the number of bedrooms that we have.

So we also recognize that by doing that, we are likely reducing the unique number

of people or households that we're able to serve in a year.

And so we're gonna continue to do some data analysis to try to find what is the length of stay that best helps get people launched into stability while also recognizing what a life-saving service we are providing for people who haven't yet been able to meet us.

So Lloyd, I'll start with you.

Quick question.

Just on what you just said, for the people who are extending their stay, what are the reasons that people extend the stay?

Lack of housing.

I know we've got two other organizations, so I'll just keep it to one, but what are the programs you're relying on the most that people are accessing the most in order to move into housing?

We are primarily helping people be able to access market rate housing.

It just takes time to be able to be somewhere long enough where you can save up enough of the money that you are earning to then be able to sign a lease with a deposit and first month's rent.

And then perhaps if you don't have

a strong credit history.

Maybe there's also like an additional deposit that you have to do as well.

For many of the people who come into the shelter with us, their name is already on a lease and they are a co-leacy with their abuser.

And so in Virginia, if the person wants to pursue a criminal legal remedy,

and we are able to help them get a protective order.

Once they have received that protective order, that protective order allows them, like provides a way for them to be immediately released from that lease so that then they can lease up somewhere else.

You're welcome.

Good to see you.

Good afternoon.

My name is Major Mark Van Meter with the Salvation Army and I appreciate being here with the other service providers in the community.

I think this is now my sixth community I've served for the Salvation Army and in all honesty I've never found a more cohesive group of service providers who want to work together.

Just a little bit about the Salvation Army and I'll try to move along for the sake of our

for the time here.

The Salvation Army provides a soup kitchen 365 days a year.

The rumor is we have one of the best Thanksgiving meals in the community, and that's due to faithful people who come out on Thanksgiving Day and serve and provide a great meal.

We have food seven days a week, Monday through Sunday, breakfast and lunch.

I'm sorry, on Sundays it is just breakfast and lunch and the rest of the days it's breakfast, lunch and dinner.

We have a 58 bed shelter here in the community and we partner with Blue Ridge Food Banks Rescue Program and other food programs to provide into the community.

You are probably aware of our Center of Hope project going on at 207 Ridge Street.

On my right, probably your left, the Highbury Emergency Shelter that we are proposing includes 114 beds for sheltering in the community, an expanded dining room, currently we have about 50 seats for

for feeding, but the new facility will have 120 chairs and we would certainly hope this would never be needed, but we are planning for the next COVID outbreak type situation with our air conditioning and containment areas, sick bays for people to have respite.

In addition, this new building has seven transitional apartments for families and they are two bedroom, two bed apartments and we're looking forward to providing those.

And then you're all aware of the conversation about the year-round low barrier shelter and

That will be 50 beds initially and there will be some space provided for offices, meeting area, and if necessary, eventually expanding the low barrier shelter to 100 beds.

I again want to express my appreciation to Pacham and Brock and The Haven, our conversations we've had about how to best utilize this space and partner together to make it a comprehensive community effort for the low barrier shelter in the community.

Just 2024 by the numbers so you can get a snapshot.

There was approximately 1,900 cases that we assisted, representing 4,500 unique individuals.

There were 16,000 nights of lodging provided in our shelter.

My quick math tells me that's approximately 45 individuals per night, representing about 75% capacity of our shelter.

that little sub point under that.

One of the things that my wife and I initiated when we got here in Charlottesville was that we weren't just providing emergency sheltering, but we were also working to help individuals get out of the perpetual cycle of homelessness.

And I'm pleased to share that currently we see on average between 10, 11 individuals leaving our shelter monthly with stabilized housing and employment.

And

that's really the outcome that we like to see.

54,000 meals provided in our little soup kitchen and we anticipate in the new facility that will push closer to 90,000 meals very quickly.

On the other side there, 750 hygiene orders.

These are people who really cannot even afford basics.

Soap, laundry soap,

Shampoos, in addition another 1,300 grocery bags of food sent out and then just over $17,000 worth of vouchers that we submit to our thrift store for goods in the community and that number really you know it's guys that are getting jobs on

Road crews or they're getting ready to work at one of the local restaurants and we can provide them with a nice polo shirt and nice slacks and those sort of things.

So that's what our thrift store is used for on the regular.

There was a snapshot taken in September 2024 that showed 30 to 35 percent of our clients are regularly referred to us by hospitals or Region 10 for respite care, if you will, at our facility.

And that's an annual number, about one-third.

On September 10, we just grabbed a unique date.

Seven out of 39 folks in our shelter had been referred to us by the local hospitals.

So these are individuals who the conversation has been, you know, where are the homeless coming from?

Are they coming from out of town?

Some are.

There might be an individual from Lynchburg who's having some treatment at UVA.

but you know these numbers kind of represent some of that.

That does not necessarily mean they're permanently homeless in our community but nonetheless they are homeless for a period of time.

And then we recognize on average 13 calls per week from hospitals and healthcare institutions seeking a facility for individuals to come and stay.

The Salvation Army provides a million dollars a year in direct and indirect services to the community and

We're very pleased to be able to do that.

We receive no state, federal, county, or city funding specifically for our social service programs.

Those are all dollars generated by our donors in the community.

We're hoping to change that.

We have to change that, especially in our new facility.

and so we're looking forward to increasing our relationships not only with our other partner service providers but also the city and county as well as we attempt to serve those in the community.

So I tried to keep my time brief.

Just briefly, I want to thank you, sir, for your initiative and willingness to be creative in helping us put some solutions together.

There's still more work to be done, for sure, but you've been a real breath of fresh air, I think, in terms of helping us be creative and show initiative as far as ways to improve our delivery in this area.

Thank you so much.

Hey there, I'm Cindy Chambers, I'm the Deputy Director of Pacham.

You all probably know us, we've been in the community 21 years now.

Our organization was built on a collective of congregations and it continues to be kind of central to our work, that sense of collective collaboration.

We are a very small agency, five year-round staff and about 30 seasonal staff to make it all work and hundreds of volunteers.

There's roughly 50 congregations that are pretty active with us that help us run our services and we've recently been trying to kind of figure out what would that look like if they weren't offering that service.

So for two weeks of sheltering

men through our shelter program that serves 35 men every night.

For two weeks of that, it cost roughly $17,000 is what one of our recent congregations told us.

If you're counting the food they're spending, the space that you would need to rent, all of the utilities.

So this really is an organization that is community built that a lot of folks are putting their time and effort into.

So I just want to emphasize a lot of our partners are in the room, but also first responders are a big part of our work.

I just want to emphasize how much it matters that we work with the Anchor and Heart teams, which are the crisis response teams, and a lot of calls from emergency rooms that would like to discharge folks.

And so it's important that we maintain that health connection in our work.

So our low barrier cold weather shelter operates roughly mid-fall to mid-spring.

We serve 30 to 40 men roughly every night and 15 to 16 women.

I will say on any given night we have more men showing up than we have beds.

We host at different congregations mainly, although we'll look for anywhere to host that has the facilities.

And so we move every two weeks during this time.

Just to kind of explain a little bit about low barrier shelter.

It's a harm reduction approach.

I think Owen at The Haven kind of explained this.

We serve people on all levels of where they are and maybe their decisions about changing their life.

And what that means is that we remove as many barriers as possible to make it accessible.

So you don't have to have an ID to come to our shelter, you don't have to be sober, you don't have to have a job, we don't make you do case management, we don't even make you pre-register, you just gotta show up.

We keep an amnesty box, so we hold if people have any kind of weapons like knives or tools, recognizing that they keep that on them to be safe on the street.

So we hold those things so they don't come into the space at night.

And we also offer transportation.

So if CAT is not running, which is every Sunday, and if the church is not on a CAT line, we offer transportation.

We spent roughly $24,000 on that this year, and about $9,000 was through CDBG funding.

So we served roughly the same number of folks as we did last year, a little under 300 folks.

I do want to point out just 15% of them have used our shelter at least twice in the last three years, and 3% every year.

These are folks that we are talking about how do we better target our resources to, right?

I don't want this to be a housing plan for folks.

If you just ask me, you know, what's a common, if I just ask who's using this shelter, I would picture an African American man who's 55.

Roughly 70% of the folks we serve are men.

and we have a disproportionate number of BIPOC individuals using our services compared to the folks that live in our community, so an overrepresentation of folks experiencing homelessness.

Hitting on the same data there, roughly most of the folks we serve are from our city, if not the county.

and I think you had some questions about where folks come from.

We do have some folks that come from out of state or other jurisdictions typically not here for very long coming through but the people who consistently have been coming every night are from Charlottesville or Albemarle.

We do receive referrals from both the police and hospitals.

I mentioned that just

because of that kind of cycle of when folks have nowhere to go, they often end up at the hospital and also their health declines.

So as we're kind of thinking of creative ways to help folks, an essential partner in this are our medical systems like UVA and Martha Jeff.

We had an increase this year in folks who had higher medical needs.

And so if you're thinking about where you're going to house that person into permanently,

You often have to think of their health needs to figure out that solution.

So about half the folks that come to us have no income that they report.

Of those who do report income, which is about 25% of folks, most of them, their income is Social Security benefits, disability.

And I share that to kind of point out, you know, when we're looking for housing, if they have income, they're making roughly 970 a month.

So we have to find somewhere to house folks with that much income.

It's tough to get kind of where folks go when they leave us because they're going all over and we don't have the same folks every night.

But I did want to share some of our positive exits.

32 guests moved to permanent housing and that could be anything from fair market rent to assisted living.

And 14 guests moved to temporary housing, which is typically the Salvation Army.

About 40% of our guests report having a mental health diagnosis, and that was about the same as last year, and I just share that as kind of when you were thinking about low barrier shelter,

One of the most common things we are doing is managing behavior.

We have a lot of folks that have a lot of needs who may be of different levels of sobriety.

And so thinking about the needs we have, we're currently trying to problem solve over how do we deliver more mental health services on site.

You may not know that we have a small but mighty housing program called Secure Housing.

We looked at those who are most vulnerable on the street, different subpopulations.

And we decided to target older adults and women.

These are both folks who may be more likely to experience violence or exploitation if they're left out on the street.

So that is who we work with.

It's anybody who comes through our shelter, uses it regularly, and has a steady income.

And so I do share, it's what we would consider kind of a medium supportive program.

You do have to have income to do it because we don't have vouchers.

Ours is simply money for deposits and then a little money if you maybe fall behind.

But it's one year of mainly case management support and housing navigation.

So we successfully served 25 folks and we were able to move people into housing this year a lot through our relationships with landlords, which I think you've heard over and over.

It's kind of the only way you're getting folks inside.

I'll highlight that Attain on Fifth, formerly known as Cavalier Crossings, worked with us to come up with a way to house eight individuals for the summer at a very low rent.

And that we also work a lot with the congregations.

We try to recruit folks who maybe their kids have grown up and moved out of the house so they have some empty rooms.

Anything to creatively find a way to house someone.

I just want to point out.

So we had 83 people do case management with us this year.

And I can't emphasize enough that that is what makes us more than a drop in hypothermia shelter, is the case management services.

We are focused on getting people out of our, like this is a, it's rough to move night to night to different places, carrying your stuff everywhere.

So our focus is trying to find permanent housing options.

And I just want to emphasize how important it's been to work with Charlottesville and Albemarle's Adult Protective Services.

We've had a few folks who, frankly, were not suited for our environment.

Their needs were too great.

They required a lot of care.

And we anticipate this happening more and more.

One of our largest growing populations are seniors that we're serving, those age 55 and up.

Lloyd, I have no questions.

Thank you.

Not questions for Pacha, I'll just say at the end we get... So yeah, we're there, just comments and questions in general.

Just briefly, I know we get this presentation at least once a year and I think it's very much a time as a flat circle moment of every year we get an update that the population increased during COVID, it stayed there.

And I think it just continues to come down that for as a city government we have to invest in a permanent year-round shelter and then also invest in more permanent supportive housing so people can move out of that shelter into permanent housing and I think until we make those investments you know we're just going to get the same presentations.

I have a specific possible question.

You mentioned all of the congregation sanctuaries, fellowship halls, gyms,

et cetera that contribute space throughout the season.

We explored some options with them, and they weren't able to provide any space for us this year.

They mainly help us through having the UVA med school students come, as well as the addiction center services.

So I just had a couple of questions.

Really, I'm not sure which agency would be the best to answer this, but just in general, these are some, imagine I'm challenging some questions that I get from the public.

And one of those questions is like, what is this community doing about the individuals on the side of the road?

I'm asking for money, you know, so do, are we actively, you know, I'm asked are we actively going out there seeing if they need help or, so if someone can address that because I think the public would need, would like to know and I could use a refresher.

So when we think of individuals who are, who are at our

at our streets asking for support.

The first thing I want to make sure everyone knows is that what they're doing is legal.

So as long as we want, of course, them to be safe, we don't want them to accidentally be injured in that process.

But also standing there does not mean that they are unsheltered.

So those individuals may never come into contact with our friends here that have presented because they may currently be living in shelter.

They could be living with a friend, a family member,

That could be the way they are staying in a hotel room or even paying for their rent.

If those individuals, however, are unsheltered, they of course are more than welcome

to be able to work with our participants here.

But that is one of those moments where that individual, again, may actually, we know of individuals across the nation who that is part of the way that they make their living, but they actually then leave and go to work.

And if we think about it, most people, I think the statistic still holds, roughly one in four individuals are one paycheck away from being homeless.

That means if we think about the amount of people

in this room who are 18 and up.

Of course.

I wanted to uplift.

Shayla is hiring an outreach coordinator.

So, street outreach, as Michael had pointed out, that we need housing, we need shelter, we also need street outreach.

So would a family be treated, if someone comes to a shelter with children, would he or she be treated different if someone comes as a single male or female?

Ms.

Washington, if you just want to go ahead and take that other podium, I'd appreciate it.

One of the things I do want to make sure I uplift and also from the city perspective is that the city CPMT as well as the county CPMT did draft a letter to council as well as the Board of Supervisors uplifting the fact that this community does not have an official family shelter.

The Salvation Army provided that supportive services until their facility no longer could provide those services, their current facility.

You'll notice it is within major's plans in the updated facility once they're able to do that building.

But at this particular moment, this community, including the county, does not have an official family shelter.

So these teams may work to help provide shelter for those individuals in hotels or other options.

And your own Department of Human Services does a lot of that work.

Number one, trying again as

Owen said to keep people in their housing.

That is one of the most equitable things we can do, especially for a family, help stabilize them in that housing, as well as provide them with the access they may need through Pathways, for example.

If there is intimate partner domestic violence, calling our friends at SHE to help provide, again, that stability.

And then there are some potential other resources to keep them in housing.

Everything Ashley said.

Right.

I have one more question to kind of channel through the questions that I get just being in the public and that is like if someone refuses, you know, help or they actually, I don't know if the term is want to be unhoused, they don't want

shelter, you know.

They may come in for a meal, but I don't know.

I'm asked that.

Yeah, I think it varies person to person, but I think most people who are avoiding shelters because they, for a number of reasons, they don't want to stay in a congregate setting, they don't want to hear other people snoring and, you know, having bodily functions right next to them inches away from them.

They don't want to follow the rules in terms of waking up at a certain time and having to be out of the facility and

Dragging their belongings everywhere they go for the day because there is no 24-7 shelter.

I think the folks who are currently choosing to remain unhoused do want housing, though.

I just have another comment.

Building off of what Michael said about how this

is a really useful and informative presentation, but often the data feels like it's similar year over year.

Yes, the city is investing in various programs to try to ameliorate some of these scenarios, but one of the things we can also do up here and on city staff is be

to allow and to be enthusiastic about housing abundance, not just from city, but from private partners who can also create more units.

You know, as we heard, there's only so many units available.

We could give people vouchers all day long, but if there's nowhere for them to spend it, if there's no market rate, if there's not enough market rate housing for the people who can afford that and all of the ladder of opportunity at every level, that's something that we can also be influential in up here is making sure there's just increased housing

across the board at every level.

So yeah, one of the things that we have done is the zoning ordinance that we passed.

And of course, we haven't seen the impact, I believe, the true impacts of that probably for many years.

But you're right.

I just think we need more housing, more housing type.

And I think that's what the zoning ordinance will do.

And a lot of it is by right now.

So they'll have to come to us.

Yeah, well, that's the goal.

OK, any other questions?

You guys rock.

You allow us to do so much more to extend our reach, our impact in the community with nonprofits and community partners like you all.

Thank you.

Thank you all.

Greetings.

I'm just here to quickly introduce Youth Council.

They waited patiently.

They've been doing AP studies and SOL testing, and now they're here to present what they've been working on all year.

Hi, my name is Olivia Zumbrun.

Good afternoon, counselors.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

I'm a freshman at CHS.

Hi, my name is Zena Parker, and I'm a senior at the Renaissance School.

Youth Council is a group of teenage students that collaborate and work together to look at issues that affect Charlottesville's youth.

It is both middle and high school students that work to target issues and then dig deeper into them to find solutions to these issues.

So in the early to mid fall, we looked at the issues that impact Charlottesville's youth.

And then from there, we looked deeper into that and narrowed it down into two research questions.

One, what is the state of youth mental health and sense of safety at CHS?

So most of us are new faces to youth councils so we started off getting to know each other and starting to share frustrations and viewpoints on certain issues or aspects in our in Charlottesville city and then using those viewpoints we started to narrow them down into certain topics and we voted on those topics to focus on one of them and then using that one topic we formulated our research question which we saw in the last previous slide and

And then we started figuring out ways to collect our data.

So we needed to know who to reach out to and how we would collect it.

So we decided to do focus groups with CHS students in it.

And to do that, we sent out invitations for one of our meetings so we could conduct those focus groups.

So during that meeting, we conducted our focus group.

And then using that data, we collected it, we organized it, then we analyzed it for common themes or common topics that we saw.

Okay, so for our methods we had two focus groups with six members each and every member had to have attended CHS for at least one year.

Our first finding was that

Within school personnel, there was some miscommunication and lack of trust.

And so when we talked to our focus groups, we found out that a lot of people, a lot of students, did not really trust or have a strong connection with the people that were supposed to be their trusted adults in the community.

So counselors, CSAs, teachers, other staff that are supposed to be helpers.

They didn't really offer that much support for mental health issues, especially counselors, and weren't really successful in fulfilling their rules.

So some quotes that we have collected as evidence are, it just seems like counselors are more there to hurt you than to help you.

I wish I could talk to my school counselors.

Communication issues, I just feel cut off.

The reason why I don't talk to most of the adults there are because they're not really doing their job.

There's an issue with school counselors.

So our second finding was mainly about the student experience at CHS and how that's affecting how they feel about the administrators and also the counselors.

And so specifically about the administrators, there's a lot of feeling, especially with the CSAs, which are people that are in the hallways

who take students' phones, that taking the students' phone for the entire day and having them in the office is not necessarily productive, especially because it's led to some students at CHS being late to catch their buses after having to wait in line at the end of the school day to get their phone back.

We did some brainstorming as a council, as a youth council, and we thought that perhaps teachers taking away phones in class if that was an issue would be a better and more beneficial solution.

and we don't know how much influence this Charlottesville City Council has over this.

We think especially if allocating any more budget for more counselors at CHS just because a lot of students at CHS express never actually meeting their counselor or getting an introduction with them and then they feel like they can't access their counselor if they actually need mental help, mental health help or just help with their classes throughout the school year.

And one quote that we collected was

I feel like there are resources, but they're not being prioritized or maintained.

and then our third and last finding was basically about potential actions we can take.

So deprioritizing the cell phone policies, strict enforcement, taking away the phones for the whole day and only allowing to collect them at the end of the school day.

Examining the role of CSAs which are the people in the hallways who are not teachers that take away cell phones.

Creating new procedures for school safety was something that we were worried about at the end of the year or at the beginning of this year but has actually gotten better.

and changing the system from the roots.

So some actions that we believe that we could take to help combat these issues was to have more capacity and funding for counselors because we feel like the

Counselors who are currently in the Charlottesville City Schools not only aren't really being used properly, but also there seems to be a barrier between them and students.

And another thing is the phone policy, which has been seen by a lot of students to kind of obstruct class when counselors come in and they take phones and it kind of messes with the flow of class.

And then lastly, our suggestions for the next year's Youth Council is to pick a topic that everyone can relate to and provide insight about.

Be open to listening to different perspectives and speaking your mind, taking advantage of this unique opportunity to have conversations with people from different Charlottesville city schools, and having fun.

So that was really great.

Y'all, I'm glad that I see Vice Chair of the School Board is here.

Amanda, thank you for being here.

They made some great... I'm not sure that you're planning to make this presentation to the School Board.

Is that part of the complaint?

I would definitely recommend that you share it with them, particularly the comments about

The counselors, I heard a lot of things that they feel like they're not trusted or accessible.

I think that that's something that Mr. Malone, the principal, that he would want to know.

It could be just having more office hours.

I'm not sure.

and the young lady that made the recommendations.

One of the things that you said that you all had to kind of balance some political pressures.

I got it.

Because we've heard, at least I've heard from some people that they like not having the phones set but I hear that, you know, I didn't think about that.

if they take it and you have to get it after school that you might be late for your bus.

I think those are things that can be worked out as intrusive as it is to get them.

But those are things, Amanda, so hopefully you took some notes for that.

We do work hand in hand with, for your questions, with the schools for their priorities and their needs.

And so, yeah, we'll be looking forward to seeing how we can continue to support them.

I know that that role of the CSA is being studied now for the SRO officers, and they're going to be probably coming back with some type of recommendations.

in the fall for the next budget.

So I think that that's the timeline.

So you'll hit the nail on the head with that.

So I just wanted to know what I did take picture of one of them, Dylan, because he's part of the youth group of my church.

So I kind of know him.

So that's why I took pictures of him.

So I know him.

So any other questions or comments?

Thank you.

Really appreciate it.

Yes.

Great job.

Thank you so much.

I think we are going into closed session.

Yeah, this is quite the closed session reading pursuant to section 2.2-3712 of the Virginia Code.

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

Under Virginia Code Section 2.2-3711A1 for discussion and consideration of prospective candidates for appointment of the following boards and commissions.

Affordable Housing Fund Committee, Board of Architectural Review, Board of Building Code Appeals, Board of Zoning Appeals, CDBG and Home Task Force,

Citizen Transportation Advisory Committee, Community Policy and Management Team, Historic Resources Committee, Housing Advisory Committee, Human Rights Commission, Java Board of Directors, MACA Board, Minority Business Commission Personnel, Appeals Board, Piedmont Virginia Community College Board,

And we'll be back by 6.30.

Is there a second?

Second.

Can we vote?

Thank you.

Is there a second?

Second.

OK, can we vote?

OK, so we were in closed session making appointments to various boards and commissions.

And so Max is playing double doodle.

Were you able to get?

You were?

You want me to read them?

OK.

Boards and commission appointments.

The Board of Architectural Review, Jennifer Lauer.

Jabba Board of Directors, Elliot Weiss, MACA Board, Sarah Schalf, Minority Business Commission, Tiara Farley and Conan Owen, PVCC Board, Leslie Fravel, Region 10 Board, Francesca Diggs, Richard Stott, Joe Zakos,

Retirement Commission, Lindsay Idson, William Newberry, Sister Cities Commission, Allison Brown, S. Lyndon Herndon, Edward Herring, and Sherry Stewart.

Social Services Advisory Board, Avon Batten, Benjamin Dick, Omwira Nakiri, the Vendor Appeal Board, LaQuinn Gilmore, and Youth Council, Grant Patterson.

Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, can we vote?

Before we begin our meetings, we want to have a moment of silence.

Are there any announcements from counselors?

Yes, I have it pulled up.

Okay.

2025 My Help List Award winners.

Alexander's 10th annual My Help List contest winners have been selected.

The contest is a thinking, reading, writing activity for students in Charlottesville and surrounding counties.

Students in Charlottesville and surrounding counties, students share their thoughts on the importance of helping others and list five things they can or do to help someone.

This year's winners are Zoe Halbert, second grader at Jackson Via, Alexandra Kim, fourth grader at Mountain View Elementary, Elijah Fernandez, seventh grader in Fluvanna County, Haley Gray, and a ninth grader in Albemarle High School.

The winners will be awarded a $100 cash prize at a gathering on Thursday, May 8, 2025 at 6 p.m.

at York Place, the Charlottesville Media Center on the downtown mall.

The winners, their guests, sponsors, and media are invited.

Sponsors are Mr. Johnny Bates, Pat Nall, Attorney Bruce Maxa, Sheriff James Brown, J.F.

Thank you.

Thank Alexandra again for always doing so much in the community, particularly to uplift out the youth in the community.

We do.

It is public works week.

Whereas public works professionals focus on infrastructure facilities, solid waste, street maintenance, engineering, and traffic field operations and services to make Charlottesville's quality of life better for people to live, work, play, and visit.

And whereas these infrastructure facilities and services could not be provided without the dedicated efforts of public works professionals who are engineers, managers, skilled trades,

equipment operators and employees at all levels of government who are responsible for rebuilding, improving, and protecting public buildings and other structures and facilities essential for community members.

and whereas the Public Works Department maintains 160 miles of streets, 155 miles of sidewalks, over 1,500 ADA ramps, 75 traffic signals, 13,000 traffic signs, 70 buildings consisting of 1.6 million square feet and 655 vehicles and pieces of equipment and responded to five snow events clearing streets and 31 miles of sidewalk and trails and whereas the Public Works Department is responsible for a $30 million operational budget,

manages the engineering project management and construction to include $125 million for transportation projects.

and 260 million five-year capital improvement program to include Charlottesville Middle School Walker Pre-K Center bypass fire station and the completion of the Belmont Bridge.

And whereas it is in the public interest of Charlottesville to gain knowledge of and maintain an ongoing interest and understanding of the importance of public works programs in their respective communities.

And whereas the year 2025 marks the 65th annual National Public Works Week sponsored by the American Public Works Association and the Canadian Public Works Association.

Thank you.

Mayor Wade, Vice Mayor Pinkston, Members of Council, Deputy Director of Public Works Mike Goddard here.

Just want to thank you for this proclamation.

City of Charlottesville is a wonderful and special place with high expectations and we endeavor to meet those expectations every day.

Thank you.

I have a proclamation for Older Americans Month.

whereas May is recognized as Older Americans Month, a time for us to recognize and honor older adults in the city of Charlottesville and their immense influence on every facet of society and whereas Charlottesville recognizes how through their wealth of life experience and wisdom older adults guide our younger generations and carry forward abundant cultural and historical knowledge and whereas

She also recognizes that older adults improve our community through intergenerational relationships, community service, civic engagement, and many other activities.

And whereas our community benefits from people of all ages,

abilities and backgrounds have the opportunity to participate and live independently.

And whereas Charlottesville aims to ensure that older adults have the resources and support needed to stay involved in the community, reflecting our commitment to inclusivity and connectedness.

Now, therefore, the Charlottesville City Council proclaims May 2025 to be Older Americans Month.

We urge every resident to flip the script on aging, this year's theme, and transform how we talk about and perceive aging, celebrating older adults' profound impact on our local community, empowered by social connections, health resources, and support for older adults.

Signed and dated this 19th day of May 2025, Juan Diego Wade, Mayor.

Mayor on behalf of Jefferson Area Board for Aging and the seniors in this community and surrounding areas, we very much appreciate the support that the city gives us as well as the

recognition here.

Thank you so much, sir.

So we're now at the time for community matters, and six people have pre-registered, leaving ten slots open to speak at this time.

And the first speaker we have is Louis Huichin.

Allow me to introduce myself.

My name is Louis Huchen, and I am a student at Community Lab School.

The problem that I'm here to explain is that Charlottesville isn't a very bikeable city.

This issue is personal to me and my family because we had a family member pass due to a bike accident in 2020.

Other families should not experience what my family went through.

According to People for Bikes, Charlottesville has a 26 out of 100 bike rating, which shows how inaccessible it is to bike in Charlottesville.

Under way, Charlottesville isn't

is in a very bikeable city is the lack of bike infrastructure.

The Belmont Bridge being redone with curbed bike lanes is beneficial because it helps to keep the road and the bike lanes separate.

This is what the council should be doing as well as increasing the number of bike lanes around Charlottesville.

Another way to reduce crashes is to add curbs to the bike lanes to help separate them from traffic.

This would make bike lanes safer.

Between 2019 and 2023 in Charlottesville there were a total of 36 crashes involving cyclists, one of which was a fatal crash.

In conclusion, I respectfully request from the council an increased amount of funding for cyclists and pedestrian infrastructure.

Thank you very much, and we're sorry for your loss.

Good evening.

My name is Jill McKinley.

I've lived in Charlottesville since 2011, and I've been a Charlottesville parent since 2017.

For the past two years, I've also served as the PTO chair of Johnson Elementary.

I'm here tonight representing parents, educators and neighbors who care deeply about our public schools and who believe we're at a crossroads.

When we learned about the former Federal Executive Institute property would be transferred to UVA, many of us felt a mix of shock and disappointment.

Not because UVA is expanding.

We understand that.

but because it felt like another moment where a public resource that could have supported public needs but didn't.

But we also know that UVA isn't giving the space back.

So now we're asking, what can they give forward?

This is a moment to reimagine the relationship between UVA and Charlottesville City Schools.

It's an opportunity for UVA not just to be a good partner but a great one.

Over the past week, a group of parents from across city PTOs have come together to draft a proposal for a long-term partnership between UVA and CCS.

This plan is inspired by successful models in other cities, such as Penn's investment in Philadelphia schools and UCS's investment in Los Angeles City Schools.

The proposal lays out a 10-year vision with sustained investment in four areas, supporting teacher retention and housing, expanding afterschool and enrichment programming, improving digital access and academic achievements, and strengthening the infrastructure of our schools, especially for students with special needs.

We're preparing to bring this plan to Dr. Gurley and the school board,

because any real partnership has to start with the district's leadership and vision.

But we're here tonight because we also believe the city plays an essential role in this conversation.

UVA listens when the city speaks, and we believe a unified message from parents, the school division, and from city leadership can help bring UVA to the table.

UVA's growth has brought enormous benefits to the region, but it has also driven up the cost of living, especially for public servants like teachers and school staff.

These systems may be separate, but they're deeply connected.

Charlottesville teachers earn between $56,000 and $78,000 per year.

Many of the staff who support our students every day earn far below what's needed to afford housing in the city.

The median home price here is over $500,000.

These numbers are unsustainable, and they're unsustainable just minutes from a university that's deeply invested in the city of the future, of the future of the city, also the city of the future.

We're asking for your support in elevating this conversation, because when educators can't afford to live in the community they serve and students still lack reliable access to technology and opportunity, we can't pretend these systems are disconnected.

We're not here to point fingers.

We're here to build something better together.

In the coming days, we'll be sharing a full proposal with district leadership.

We would also welcome the city's review and support as we work to turn this from an idea to a shared commitment.

Because the stronger our schools are, the stronger the city becomes.

And as President Ryan himself has said, the stronger Charlottesville is, the stronger UVA will be.

Thank you very much.

Yes, I'm John Hall from Fry Spring.

You've understood the seven types of plastics I want to recycle for the homeless, providing them jobs.

I think Vice Mayor Pinkston asked me to further elaborate so he might be able to better understand it.

We might be able to add metal glass and composting into the mix.

We mainly have these triangles that we match with roll-off containers, the same triangles.

And we have the homeless people.

We get them there through the Charlottesville area transit buses and give them $21.50, I said, but make it $25.

This would be funded through the budgeting of the Charlottesville

on the City Council consent agenda and be able to have something that would benefit all the homeless people, giving them something to do, getting them to the job, having the churches to cater the event.

I was thinking of the

Recycling trucks that come around the neighborhoods.

You get one or two to start.

I understand there's like 100 homeless people that we know of in the Charlottesville area.

Get them to the area and that we have the roll-off containers and be able to pay them when we get them there, $25.

and have supervision at $50 an hour, making sure that the recycled plastics go into the right roll-off containers and all the residual would be creating a new market, essentially, being able to take care of our waste at the same time as we take care of our homeless problem.

It's a win-win situation that I see.

And it's well thought out.

At this time, I've thought about this for a long, long time.

And I really believe that if we were to vote on this and get the Charlottesville Investment Collaborative people behind this so that I can't do it all myself, have the human resources set up for it,

for the program.

Good morning, City Council.

Thank you for letting me speak.

My name is Earl Hicks.

I live in Charlottesville, Virginia.

I am speaking for the People's Coalition.

We ask you to vote no on funding

a bit bigger on jail on June the 2nd.

This is not just about money.

It's about doing what is right.

Building a bigger jail won't fix the unfair way black people are treated in the legal system.

A study showed this problem

show this problem years ago.

It's still happening now.

It also costs too much.

The price is already rising, and the city is losing money from the federal government.

That means less money for schools, housing, businesses, and people with mental illness.

No need to be locked in cells.

They need care in the community, not in jail.

Let's use our money for things that help people like housing, mental health care, schools, not more jail cells.

Please vote no on the jail expansion.

So I'm going to tell a quick story.

I do want to give you this.

I'm not going to read this.

I wanted to go to the Blue Ridge Jail to talk to you.

And what I talked to him about is organizing.

And I'm talking about this campaign real quick.

And I told him it's going to be like $27 million for a million dollars a year.

And I looked to the young man beside me who's a young black man who's in there.

And I asked him, what would you do with a million dollars?

You know what he said?

Bill Bigger Parks, and I almost fell out my chair.

And so what I'm going to say is I don't know if y'all talk to people like that who's incarcerated, the young people, but I told them what they're doing is building a jail for y'all.

What that said, these are the organizations who signed on to our petition.

The City of Promise, Conjugate Charlottesville, the Senate of Enslaved Communities of UVA, Lending Hand, Louisville Charlottesville, not me, I believe, People's Coalition, Poor Olympic Running Crew, Sojourner's Union Church, Seattle Club, United Campus Workers of Virginia, and the Women's Initiative.

And I'm gonna just hand all this to you all, and I really hope

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Ronald Ignatz.

Thank you.

Ronald Ignatz, 1420.

I attended the council meeting on May 5th because of my concern about the ICE action at the Albemarle County Jail or County Courthouse.

But I listened with interest to the young man who spoke about Peregrine, a database subscription service being considered for the Charlottesville Police Department.

Doing some research since then, I've found that Peregrine Technologies was founded and backed by former Palantir Technology executives.

Palantir's website leads with quote, AI powered automation for every decision.

Palantir is known for its data analytics software and it's used by government agencies supporting law enforcement efforts such as ICE.

Peter Thiel is a board member of ICE.

Palantir.

As a spin-off, Peregrine is known as a member of the Palantir Mafia.

That's from their website.

Sequoia Venture Capital invested 190 million dollars in Peregrine.

Sequoia

dedicates its resources to artificial intelligence.

Elon Musk is a founder of that organization.

The public must know what data is being collected and what can happen to it.

According to the Peregrine website, this information includes a profile and contact information, including first and last name, email, phone numbers, web page interactions, IP address-based

local information, resumes, job information, and a LinkedIn profile.

From the Peregrine website they say all personal data collected may be transferred to a third party if Peregrine upgrades or undergoes a merger, acquisition, bankruptcy, or other transaction in which a third party assumes either whole or partial control.

Peregrine may create aggregated, de-identified, and anonymized data from the personal data they collect.

They may use such aggregated data and share it with third parties for other business purposes.

Data may also be shared to fulfill Peregrine's legal obligations under applicable law.

Regulation, court orders, or other legal processes such as preventing, detecting, and investigating security incidents

and potentially illegal or prohibited activities.

Chief Kochis assured us that the police department data would only be accessed via a warrant or court order.

What if that warrant is issued by ICE or Peregrine?

Using this database appears to be a very dangerous and unacceptable venture.

Thank you, sir.

Good evening.

I'm Steven Christensen, President of Hillenwood Funeral Home and I want to thank you all for the opportunity to speak this evening.

I'm here to request your consideration of the proposal before you later this evening for a parking agreement to enter, excuse me, to allow Hillenwood Funeral Service to enter a revocable parking agreement with the city for the designated parking spaces along First Street during service times.

Our funeral home, which has been a member of the Charlottesville community for 118 years, plays a vital role in our community, providing essential support and dignity to families during their most difficult days.

In the past, we've relied on the courtesy and respect of the public to honor a request that certain parking along First Street be reserved for the families of funeral vehicles needed for services.

This was communicated using small sandwich board-style signs that were and continue to be the funeral company's supply standard.

but, regrettably, in today's fast-paced world, these signs are increasingly overlooked or simply ignored.

We understand that street parking here in downtown Charlottesville is extremely limited and creates an obstacle for the owners, employees, and prospective patrons of the businesses in the downtown community, but we, aside from our obvious bias, would respectfully submit that there is a public service in what we do.

Honoring and celebrating the lives of community members who have passed is why our business exists.

Funeral homes are unlike many other businesses in that when we as funeral service professionals do everything right, the vast majority of what we have done goes unnoticed.

And that's how it should be.

But the devil they say is in the details.

And as it happens, one of those details relates to not only having an adequate number of parking spaces, but also the location of those spaces in relation to our chapel doors.

and ensuring that as we exit our chapel we can directly access our hearse while also arranging vehicles for procession when relevant and at other times simply having sufficient convenient parking as guests to funerals are often not familiar with other parking options in downtown Charlottesville.

This helps us maintain the respectful and efficient conduct of ceremonies ultimately benefiting the families and the community as a whole.

While we do ourselves have challenges with adequate parking during services, we are also blessed to operate a parking lot which that when there are not services is larger than our needs require.

It has been our privilege to offer public parking in many of the spaces on our lot during non-service days free of charge for many years.

Since beginning this conversation with the city several years ago, we have invested in easier to understand signage to help facilitate public awareness of this resource.

While we recognize that a request, if approved, may at times cause some small level of inconvenience, we hope that the greater number of spaces we provide and a greater frequency reflect our commitment to serving the public good while we practice our profession.

In conclusion, I encourage the council to approve this measure while we ensure that we have the resource, parking resources we need to serve city residents during their moments of need.

Thank you, sir.

We have opportunity for 10 other speakers.

If anyone would like to speak.

When I last spoke to you, I had concerns over the city's possible adoption of peregrine technologies.

I was extremely frustrated by a lack of transparency in what exactly they offer and was driven to some amount of speculation and some amount of guilt by association.

I appreciate that you reached out to them.

Their statement provided some much-needed information, and while it assuaged some of my worst fears, I remain trepidatious.

Either way, I wanted to clarify that I really thank you for listening to my concerns and taking them seriously.

It's better than I've grown to expect from our House representative.

The number one thing that makes me less concerned is that they claim that they are not training any AI with the data that we give them.

They also continuously repeat that they lay no claim of rights or ownership to the data.

I'm no lawyer.

Even if I were, the contract they're citing isn't public.

But if that sentence means how it reads in plain English, this is very encouraging.

They also make clear that my reading about a claim around automation of police reports was uncharitable.

They aren't generating police reports, just crime trends reports, which is something anyone could automate with Excel with just some basic database management.

Nothing sinister there.

All around, if their statements are to be believed, I think it's fair to say that my previous statement went a bit too far and was driven certainly by some amount of, although I think reasonable, paranoia.

That said, there are still valid concerns.

Number one, they absolutely still have our data on their servers.

They made this clear.

They host a copy of the data on AWS servers accessible to them, which means the nightmare scenario of a hostile federal government demanding access remains on the table.

There's simply no way that they can avoid complying with FBI orders.

Number two, this is an extremely powerful tool to hand to officers.

It lets them see basically everything police know about a person with just a few taps on their device, including known associates, any previous history of interaction with police, etc.

It just seems like a lot.

And then finally, number three, privacy of the officers themselves.

The previous speaker also spoke about this.

This is something I didn't flag until after the last meeting, but they collect a ton of data on anyone that is using their software.

In particular, they will collect from every officer using the app what websites they visit, geolocation data, job title, job history, and even go so far as to crawl the officer's LinkedIn account.

They also retain the right to share that data for some purposes aggregated and de-identified and for other purposes not.

All around, I'm less outraged now and more confused.

It seems like all Seville police actually wants is a better system management and more easily accessible crime trends.

This seems like an extremely overpowered tool for that.

I guarantee you can just hire some in-house information scientists to do this for cheaper.

and they won't build an app that tracks your cops while they're at it.

That said, again, I want to be clear, if everything in their responses to your questions is truthful, this company is far less sinister than I had concluded and I don't think I would be a reasonable person if I didn't fess up to that.

Personally, I still feel like a no on this.

Thank you.

Thank you.

My name's Richard Allen.

I live in Charlottesville.

And I think something's confusing me here in town right now.

And I want to thank you for listening to my confusion and connecting your heart to what I'm about to say.

I've been doing my best across the last year, a year and a half, to follow this issue about the new jail.

And as best I can distill it, it works like this.

were overdue to make some changes, renovations, and needed structural corrections there at our regional jail.

I have been in the regional jail, and I appreciate its services.

And I know that we need a jail, just like we need police.

We need to have these structures and consequences around us.

But at the same time,

$49 million.

I have been in construction myself, certainly not cinderblock construction, and it still seems to me like a very, very large amount of money to spend on the things that I hear the money is detailed for.

What concerns me even more, and I have a sign here today saying I'm deeply concerned about the amortization and basically mortgage-based manner in which you're going to handle the loan, such that there's going to be $23 million of carrying charges in terms of interest that the banks who are funding this proposed idea will put in their own pockets.

It feels to me like something is wrong in the common sense department of the citizenry and you remarkable and dedicated leaders of our community if you do not see the fallacies in pouring money into more architecture that's going to consequence people

at the very same time when our Commonwealth attorneys are using their common sense to pull people out of jails, put some kind of a device on their ankle and confine them at home while I believe also providing them with some services that will keep them out of jail, surely.

you could consider revisiting this whole issue and dropping that $49 million investment down by half, let's say $23 million, $24.5 million and do the absolutely crucial things that the jail needs without, there's a president who's been talking an awful lot about waste.

I don't mean to suggest that this city council

is intentionally engaging in waste.

I certainly don't believe that, but I believe that the project itself is overblown.

Good evening, everybody.

My name is Mario.

I live in Cullison Hall, and this is my

Six times visit this place.

I did not get any help.

I live on sixth floor.

I have neighbor on fifth.

He's drug dealer, and he is heavily drug user, especially on weekend 24 hours.

It made me very sick.

It come through to vent because when it's cold, it turn the heater.

It come, it make me sick.

I hospitalized seven times.

This is all the report from Martha Jefferson, not UVA.

And I call police.

The police went by his door.

He doesn't open the door.

And sometimes, one time, two times, he opened the door.

The policeman couldn't arrest him, didn't arrest him.

He told me, those pigs, if they cannot catch me, they are done.

Anyhow, he told, he threatened me to kill me.

He said he was in the gang.

He has gone.

They took, he's gone away.

He's gonna get new gun.

He threatened me.

He said he's gonna beheaded me.

I didn't know what is beheaded mean.

and I asked some American people, they told me, it means he chopped my head.

This one was Saturday before Easter.

And anyhow, I called many time Chief Pekashas,

and left message with his secretary.

He never replied to me.

And I gave him my complaint.

He told me, sent it to me.

I sent it to him six months ago.

He never replied to me.

He said, I saw him.

He said he gave it to his assistant.

I didn't ask him who is his assistant.

Anyhow, I was first year medical school, I met President Obama and he wrote me letter as you see his signature and I couldn't find his picture.

And I called, I was going to meet President Obama and President Biden.

He was sick.

After that he has to go to

Ukraine.

I called governor's office.

His secretary told me he has to write a lot of checks and he hasn't met him.

He's gonna

replied to me, anyhow, this drug is very dangerous.

No, no, you've had three this time, I'm sorry.

One minute.

Nobody cares.

The last time I was in hospital,

Yeah, Mr. Sales doesn't do anything.

He threatened me with the butcher knife.

He slashed my tire.

Officer Velazquez, Officer Kirby took picture.

We have opportunity for three or four other speakers.

Good evening.

Don Gather, city resident.

I rise in support of the recommendation from the People's Coalition.

Imagine, if you will, what this community could do with $49 million and how far that would go to assist in helping to house and feed the homeless.

I'm certain that the educational system could certainly use those additional funds.

Be better put towards mental health resources.

Simply hold on to the money not knowing what that idiotic dude in DC is going to do next.

There's no real rehabilitation that's going on in that jail.

It's warehousing.

We really need to do something to help, and expanding a facility that's already not being 100% utilized is not the answer.

It's sad that we have to deal with these sort of things, but the word tells me that what you've done to the least of these, yet you've done to me.

So it's important that we do what's right and not what's popular.

Sadly, I know that you all probably pretty much have already made up your minds about this and this is now a minute and a half of my life that I'll never get back.

But you all have the power, you have been empaneled with the power to do something right in warehousing or continuing to warehouse people is not the answer.

That's not the solution.

Sit down, come up with some viable solutions that

that are alternatives to locking someone up and then doing nothing else for them.

Thank you.

Hi, good evening.

My name is Kelly Hart.

I live in Albemarle County.

I come down to the city an awful lot and I want to thank the

I'm here for his research.

I came down to say I don't want to live in a police state.

I don't want Orwellian type surveillance.

So think carefully about that plan.

I don't want my personal information out there.

I don't like that idea at all.

And I also want to support the idea of no more jails.

I'm a retired teacher.

I'm for education.

I'm for parks.

I'm for mental health services.

Hi, I am Andrew Shelton.

I'm a county resident, just barely, but I've lived in the city my whole life and spend most of my free time here.

I'm here to speak about Peregrine, but I'm actually going to start by talking about Flock, even though I fully understand they're two different companies.

I was up here speaking when you all were getting ready to take your Flock vote and cautioned that I didn't think that you could trust those companies, that their basic premise is to gather as much data as possible and try and shape it into a marketable product.

and I have those concerns about Peregrine and the reason I'm tying them into Flock is, I don't know, four or five days after the last city council meeting where this issue first came up, 404 Media dropped an article that was based on some leaked documents retrieved from Flock about a new product they're working on that is intended to bring all of the data they can access, social media, license plate readers being obviously their primary thing.

into a searchable tool called Nova that would be something where you could essentially do direct tracking of individuals, not just vehicles.

The reason that I think this is relevant to the Paragon issue is that they list Paragon as the number one competitor.

I fundamentally don't believe that you can rely on these companies with this type of business model to give you an accurate representation of what they're going to do with their data, our data, that they then have access to and are able to ship it off into the cloud, at which point we have no control over that.

I think this is something that is, you know, it's a very clear-cut thing to me.

I understand y'all may or may not agree on that, but I think that we can look back at the cautions that people gave y'all about flock and say, yeah, those were justified.

And so please consider that that may be the case here.

And that's not even getting into the issues with our current federal government and the fact that if you centralize all of that information in one place, it makes it very easy for somebody to, you know, get a federal warrant and go hunting down individuals, as we've seen with ICE raids in our community.

I think last meeting, Councillor Snook, you said something along the lines of your suspicion of centralized databases has increased greatly in the last four months, and I really appreciate that.

I understand that every single one of y'all up there cares genuinely about our

immigrant neighbors in this community, many of whom are facing threats of having their previous legal status revoked for arbitrary reasons.

Please do not enable further digging down into the level where they will be put at greater risk.

Please.

So Kate, I'm sorry, but you already ceded your time.

I want to see it.

We have to make sure no one else wants to speak.

So anyone else like we have opportunity for three more speakers?

Anyone?

I'm sorry.

Good evening, my name is Rosea Parker.

We're the people for the people.

We need to invest in the village and not the jails.

These issues, mental health, affordable housing,

Food insecurity, health care, education affects myself as well as others in the community.

Our daily life will be changed struggling to live.

I stand in solitary with the People's Coalition fighting against a system that is unjust as the jail chooses to host the unhoused black and brown citizens due to minority disparity as well as others with mental health, substance abuse.

Some of our citizens commit crimes just to have somewhere to stay, sleep, and eat.

There should be more services in place to help the community instead of the jail expansion funding.

Strongization to youth going into adulthood.

Our youth needs more diverse services such as proper probation, better intake services, counselors, school to prison pipeline, rendering more services to the youth in the school system.

Money should be put into programs that may be cut due to federal changes in the near future.

Taxpayers' money is being used to create this expansion of the jail funding.

As a taxpayer, I am very upset, my money being used as a taxpayer to harm my fellow citizens putting them in cages.

So I ask you to vote no on the expansion funding, because it could be well utilized in the community for other things, such as what

People's Coalition, and myself have spoken on.

Thank you.

Anyone else like to speak?

So the People's Coalition was asked by Reverend Brenda Brown Grooms, the pastor at New Beginnings Christian Community to read this to you.

Dear Mayor Wade, Councilmember Pinkston, Councilmember Oschrin, Councilmember Payne, and Councilmember Snook.

As the Reverend Dr. William Barber II, whose repairs of the breach and now leader of the Moral Mondays, responded to the Trump administration's immoral budget policy, shouts from the steps of the Capitol, budgets are moral documents.

They reveal whether or not our leaders, local, state, and federal,

care about the welfare of the people they are entrusted to serve.

This jail expansion proposal is a tone deaf response to the documented concerns this community has repeatedly laid out to the City of Charlottesville and the County of Albemarle through the Manager's Community Budget Forum.

We need more affordable housing, better public transportation, a plan that forwards economic growth and educational development for our children,

and mental health protocols that do not rely on the police.

Rather, they rely on mental health local, community mental health services.

We do not need an expanded jail that sucks up our fiscal budget to build more cages for people who need care that jails do not and cannot provide.

We mean to make you hear us.

This community doesn't need more cages, it needs more care.

The budget vote you all vote on will show clearly whether or not you are concerned about the real people who have told you again and again which issues are a priority to them.

Thank you very much.

Opportunity for one more person to speak.

We have an opportunity at the end.

Okay.

And Mayor, if I could just to address the comment about the Federal Executive Institute, because I think it warrants mentioning.

Obviously, the city had gotten it.

It was rescinded.

Both the city and city schools had given a formal request to the university not to pursue that application, but did.

It was rescinded, whether the Board of Visitors was involved in that, you know, we don't have direct information of, but I think it's worth acknowledging the impact of that of tens of millions of dollars of impact on the school system, as well as now that that parcel is not producing any tax revenue.

UVA avoids paying over 20 million dollars in taxes, which creates a structural inability to fund public education.

I say all that just because I know the school board published an op-ed requesting that the city get together with city schools and request a meeting with UVA to discuss the impact of their decisions as well as the tax situation.

Can I make a quick update about the consent agenda?

Is there support to pull out the Dogwood Vietnam Memorial Foundation of Virginia?

from the consent agenda.

Is that something we usually get?

Okay.

Consent Agenda 4, Resolution.

Resolution to appropriate Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services Victims of Crime Act Grant Award, FY 25, $123,600, second reading.

5.

Resolution to appropriate $26,210.96 to the Charlottesville Albemarle Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Resolution to appropriate $20,000 in Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services Children's Justice Act One-Time Grant Program Funds.

Second reading.

7.

Resolution to appropriate police warehouse outlet sales revenue to equipment replacement fund.

Resolution to appropriate $7,285.76 from the Virginia Department of Social Services to use for overtime for Medicaid unwinding.

One of two readings.

9.

Resolution to appropriate $419,279 in additional funding received from the Virginia Department of Social Services to support staffing and operations, one of two readings.

9.

Resolution to appropriate $15,000 from NLC's Southern Cities Economic Initiative Program to use for project planning, one of two readings.

Resolution to allocate $134,967 from Charlottesville Strategic Initiatives Fund to support local services agencies.

13 resolution to appropriate $304.80 in state assistance and citizen donation for spay and neuter program at SPCA.

As amended.

As amended.

The next item on the agenda is the city manager's report.

Yes, Mr. Mayor, members of the public.

We have our quarterly financial report that we're going to begin with.

Ms.

Good evening, Council.

Chrissy Hamill, Direct Budget.

And we're going to do this in three parts.

I'm going to give you the most boring part.

And then Mr. Cullinan is going to talk about ARP.

And then Mr. Fries will talk to you about a new CIP dashboard or report.

So,

At the end of March 31st, that ended our third quarter.

Our revenues are approximately, or were 67.5% collected.

Keep in mind that our real estate, which is one of our largest revenue sources, is due on June 5th, the second half, or the first half, excuse me, of FY25 taxes.

This year's budget is just over $251 million.

were about the current revenues.

If you can switch to the next page, please.

The revenues are tracking slightly above that, just at $4 million, or 1.8%.

As a note, this year, in comparison, third quarter, our revenue surplus was just a little over $11.5 million.

So as we look to this chart, you'll notice that our major drivers continue to be the real estate assessment and personal property.

Sales and use, transit, room or lodging tax, and meals tax are all still lagging.

They are continuing to not perform as well as what we've seen.

However, we do note that

With the lower percentages here, we are getting back more to what we think are our normal trends for revenue growth.

We're not going to be experiencing double digits, percents anymore.

And so with that, I'm happy to answer any questions on that part of the presentation.

Expenses are tracking pretty much with budget.

So don't think we're going to have tens of millions of dollars of surplus.

We are not anticipating that.

We are anticipating a much smaller surplus than we have had in the past.

And so I think what this tells us is that generally our trends are moving more to something that's a little more normal or what we have seen more over time.

Thank you so much.

I realize I should have asked you this earlier, and I'm sorry, but I think it would be interesting to see the quarterly year-over-year comparisons, just because I wonder if first quarter is generally a little slow.

Sorry, third quarter, first three months of the year.

I'm happy to get you that.

Just keep in mind this is an annual projection, so this is taking into account all of that.

This is our projection as of the third quarter, but it is an annual projection.

So it does capture the spring and flash year?

It does.

Got it, okay.

Yeah, thank you.

So this is what we're anticipating for the year to end.

Got it.

Okay.

Okay.

Then never mind.

No problem.

We've got it.

So, Chrissy, so for, you know, you've been involved with this a long time.

I don't want to say there's anything that necessarily keeps me awake.

I think it is different for us to actually see revenues underperforming.

We have generally, as we've talked about a lot, we generally

take our projections and we're pretty conservative with those.

We were not anticipating declines like this, especially since we had raised the lodging tax and the meals tax.

Meals is, you know, hanging in there.

So I just would like to ask staff to keep this on your radar.

If there's anything that we can do

as council to address, you know, as we're moving along because to have a strong business community allow us to do all of those things that we can do to make this community open for everyone.

No, fair point.

Thank you.

Yeah, I will say that this is purely, I'm not completely anecdotal, but it aligns with what restaurant owners are telling us, at least on the downtown mall.

I know it's interesting the vacancy rate in Barrack Shopping Center is significantly higher than the downtown mall vacancy rates, but regardless

So I mean, what we're seeing, though, is still a robust surplus.

It's just not crazy out of whack like during COVID.

So it's not as if the economy is, our local economy is falling apart or flailing.

I mean, there's still a surplus.

That's how I read it.

So this is only half of the picture.

We have not gotten to the expenses.

So will we have a surplus?

To be honest, where from where I sit, yes, we shoot for one, for two to five percent.

That's where we'd like to be because we certainly would rather have extra than be short.

But, you know, we still have another quarter of the year to go and we still need to see the expenditure side.

Yeah, and I'm not trying to like, you know, panic, but I think that people are telling us that they're getting hit in those categories.

And that's what we're hearing.

And it's lining up with this data.

One more question about lodging.

I know a couple of years ago there was some controversy over whether or not we were getting accurate information from the Airbnb and those type of services, because they're supposed to handle the lodging tax revenue and then turn it over to us, but they also don't share their data, so there's nothing for us to cross reference.

Have we seen a change in

So I would defer, we can find that answer, I will defer to Mr. Divers and others who work with that data more closely than myself.

I will just remind you that in the budget we actually included software that will help make that a compliance issue where it will actually

help us to pull that data out and make sure we're collecting what we need to collect.

Okay, thank you.

So we owe you quarterly year over year and then we'll get you more in depth about the Airbnb.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of council.

I'm Chris Cullinan, the city's director of finance.

The city manager asked me to give you an update on the status of the city's American Rescue Plan funds, also known as ARP.

As you recall, in beginning in 2021 and 2022, the city received approximately $19.6 million.

and relief funds, ARPA relief funds from the federal government.

To date, through the end of March, we've spent about 18, or I should say, yes, the end of March, we spent about $18.4 million of those funds.

And what you see in the chart on the right side up there is what's remaining or what's obligated, and it's approximately $1.2 million across a couple of different projects that are still underway.

And just to refresh your memory,

At the end of December, we passed the first significant milestone in the ARP legislation, which was by that day, we had all the funds obligated.

And what that meant was not just appropriate, but obligated in terms of being on a contract, a purchase order.

some sort of formal purchasing mechanism.

And any funds that were unobligated had to be returned to the U.S.

Treasury.

And so we concluded last calendar year all of the city's funds were obligated.

We didn't return any to the federal government.

And so what you see up here is the outstanding balance of those obligated funds.

The next big deadline is December 31, 2026, and that's when we have to have these spent by.

And so departments who have these projects are going to be spending these over that period of time.

Some of these projects are one-off sorts of things.

They'll be done, purchased, expended.

Some of these will extend through the end of that time period.

They've been planned out in that manner.

And so I have to make a report to the U.S.

Treasury every quarter on what we've actually spent.

So we'll start working our way through these funds over the next approximately year and a half.

One thing I also want to mention, and we've talked a little bit about this in the context of the city's financial relationship with the federal government, I have not heard any language nor seen any that has talked about or contemplating clawing back any already obligated funds, that 1.2 million that you see up there on the screen.

That is still a concern, and so in talking with the city manager,

We've been accruing interest income on our unspent ARP funds over the entirety of that period and it approximates almost as much as you see up there and so our recommendation is we're going to keep that interest income in our back pocket for the time being in the event these funds are somehow clawed back so that we have a backstop against these projects that we can continue to go ahead and fund these projects through their completion.

And so that ARP interest will then be used for that.

In the event that doesn't happen, then those funds are free for reappropriation at some point in the future.

And just to conclude, the only, you know, as I mentioned, I haven't heard any language about clawing these funds back.

They seem to be more focused on those entities who did not obligate all their funds by the end of December.

Sometime in January, February, we received a very strong, I would call collections letter from the US Treasury saying, please remit

any unobligated funds ASAP with the appropriate banking information and so forth.

But since then, there really hasn't been much outside of the norm.

As I mentioned, we still do quarterly reports to the U.S.

Treasury, which we've been doing this whole period of time.

Can you go over that interest business again?

Sure.

No, no, no, sorry.

Right.

Yes.

So, so then the reason the rationale that I think I under stood, you just said was we're going to keep that idle cash until it gets spent.

But if it gets clawed back, we have that interest just in case.

Well, that is a choice.

The interest income, there are no obligations in terms of how it can be used.

There are no conditions on it.

However, as I mentioned, with the evolving nature of the relationship with the federal government, it would be a risk in that if there is a clawback of $1.2 million worth of money, we don't have anything readily identified to go ahead and do these projects.

And so it's certainly a choice, but it does carry some risk.

Yeah, but what I would say to you is, as Mr. Cullen is explaining, the $1.3 million that we have in interest, it's a little bit, 1.5 I think is the number now, is the stopgap to what you see on the screen.

So if the federal government were to come at any point in the next few months and say, give us what you have not actually spent, then the $1.3 million that we have, we could tell our team,

Right.

Right, so, but if we have the 1.2 and the 1.5, the 1.5 is the interest, the 1.2 is the money money,

If they claw that back, that fills the gap.

We spend one amount of money.

We can't guarantee that the 1.2 will get spent any faster than what we've already accounted for.

So if the government comes back and takes it before, we lose it.

Right, we can't reallocate it.

Yes.

Got it, okay.

As long as Ms.

I guess I have something new to share.

All right, good evening, Mayor Wade, members of council.

My name is James Freist, deputy city manager for operations.

So tonight, and I think coming up on the screen shortly, hopefully, I'm very pleased to be presenting our capital project dashboard.

This tool will be available to council, of course, and to the public, and will allow people to, excuse me, people to track the, I'm sorry, to see the status of construction projects and

where they are in terms of development and see their financial status.

What we're sharing today is essentially a demonstration of this tool.

So it has a select set of high-profile projects that we've included in it, and we will make this live.

And then over time, we're going to build this out with the remainder of the items that you can find on the CIP.

So with Brian Ray's help, he's going to help me demonstrate this.

We're just going to walk through what you have up there in front of you.

So first off, up in the right-hand side is the list of projects.

That shows the financial status of each project, and it can be sorted in different ways.

But the interesting thing here is that the dollar figures you see there are drawing live out of our financial software, so this is effectively live data that's updated every day, basically overnight.

Then in the bottom right corner, you see a map that shows each point is one of those projects up on that list.

Then you see a pie chart kind of in the bottom middle.

That right now is showing you the total status of our CIP, but watch that space.

It will change as we go through.

Then in the bottom left is basically a list of or a bar graph showing the allocation of the projects that are shown up in the right in terms of different categories that we've identified.

So then if we click on the transportation one,

Thank you, Brian.

Now our list up in the top right is just showing our transportation projects.

Our map is showing the locations of our transportation projects.

And again, that pie chart is showing the financial status of transportation projects.

So you can see it updates as we move through it.

So now if we click on the Rugby Avenue project.

Fun.

Now we got pictures.

And as we scroll down, we get information about the project.

So in this case, we have the design date,

what people really care about, the end date for the project, the anticipated end date and some narrative information about the project, what's happening and that kind of thing.

So you can see that for each project.

Now we can also see the map is updated with the location of this project and our pie chart has updated with the financial status of this project.

So then if we click on the new sidewalks item, this is one of our

multiple projects.

So you see the map now has two points on it because this is currently showing two of our sidewalk projects.

And the narrative description describes both of those projects with images.

Just noted in passing, St.

We got that.

Thank you.

All right.

So the narratives and the pictures, those are all updated by our project managers in public works.

So as they're working on the project, this is where they put in their updates.

And that's actually a live feed from the budget book landing page as well.

So really the idea here is there's just a lot of automated work in place to try and minimize the degree to which we have people spending time putting this together.

while also providing a great deal of information out to the public and to council.

So I want to thank our budget office for putting this together.

I'd like to thank our public works department for providing all this data and doing the work of actually making sure this stuff is available and ultimately doing the work of getting all this stuff built.

I would just say I think the budget tools we had before were amazing from a transparency level for the public to actually look at each department and what they're doing and I think this for the CIP is

I also think that the amount of information is just right.

People don't necessarily need blueprints, but it's great to have the photos so people have a reference point.

People can read an intersection and it's hard for it to come to mind.

but having the picture there is great and then something for the map that's also very useful but I'm also kind of interested in keeping a dot even after the project has been completed but maybe it's like faded or something so people can see the progress over time and you know one of the things that's great about infrastructure projects is they are visible representation of your government at work

We can noodle on that.

The map could get filled up.

Ideally, it gets filled up.

Remember, we have a lot more projects to add.

And I failed to note, Brian, that

Yeah, that's great.

And I know all of these projects are currently underway, so they're all going to be active dots.

But at some point, future past dots would be, I think, cool to see.

We all have been waiting for this.

A long time.