City Council Budget Work Session - Capital Improvement Program   3/27/2025

The mayor's running a few minutes late.

I think we have Mr. Payne in the back.

Give him a second.

Actually, I guess we can go ahead and call the meeting to order.

We have three out of five.

So I hereby call this budget work session to order.

We're going to be discussing the capital improvement program.

May we have a roll call, Ms.

Thomas?

So good evening, Councilors and members of the public.

This is one of our second to last work session focused on the Capital Improvement Program, which we assume that everyone knows what it is, but just so that everyone does know, it's our Capital Improvement Program.

So that's where infrastructure works, street sidewalks, traffic signals, various things of that nature, construction and things that we may be doing across the city as well.

So Ms.

Hammel is going to walk you through the agenda and kick off a basic review of what we have accounted for in the proposed budget as presented, that I presented to you earlier this month.

And then we have some staff members that are going to come before you and speak specifically to a couple of things that are in the CIP.

Thank you, good evening.

So as City Manager Sanders discussed, we'll review the CIP, talk a little bit about what changed or what has changed.

We'll have Mr. Anthony from Parks and Rec come and speak and also Mr. Goddard.

And then we'll move on to talk about transit a little bit.

Mr. Freese will talk.

Then we'll have public comment and move on from there.

So taking a look at the CIP summary, this is our five year plan.

This is a slide you've seen before.

And you'll note that from just dollars and cents standpoint from a priority, education, transportation and access and affordable housing are the top three areas where we are putting our dollars in terms of the CIP.

For 26, you'll see that affordable housing is making up about 40% of that, education 19, and transportation and access are about 19.

But if you look at the five year totals, they all are about equal.

So that's just a perspective there in terms of where you're actually putting your dollars within the functions of the CIP.

Again, the total for 26 is just under $32 million.

Total for the five years is 189 million.

We intend to fund this with about $138 million worth of bonds.

about $47 million of cash, which is kind of shown here.

Most of our the majority three quarters of our bond, I'm sorry, of our CIP plan is funded by bonds.

And then the general fund transfer, there is about $200,000 a year that's programmed to come from the schools, and about $40,000, which are

public education access fees that are dedicated to the city's Channel 10 or studio in York Place.

Part of our, one of our budget guidelines or policy is that we do transfer at least 3% of the general fund to the CIP as pay go or cash.

If we were to look at that, that is about $7.9 million for the current proposed budget.

Sorry, can you say that again?

And we're a little bit over that at 8.3.

But that is because we have some projects that are cash funded, that make up the 8.3.

Okay, thank you.

So what is new in the CIP?

I just wanted to go down through each of the sections just to give you some highlights.

We'll start with education.

These are five year totals.

So over the five years, we have increased the lump sum by half a million dollars at $100,000 a year.

the school priority improvements program is receiving a $750,000 increase or $150,000 a year so both of those came out of our budget discussions with the school board the city facilities capital projects we are increasing the HVAC repair replacement account at a million and a quarter or $250,000 a year

Public safety, fire trucks, and EMS vehicles.

The lead time and the cost of those are continuing to be interesting.

Most of them are multi year lead times three to five years to get those.

so we did shuffle around some timing of those and we also did have actually a price reduction estimate of course that is about four months old now so by the time we get there that may change again but that is what is currently in the CIP we also had put in a hundred thousand dollars last year to repurpose or upfit the existing bypass fire station building once they moved to the new one

We've increased that by 100,000 to more accurately reflect the cost of what would need to be done there, hopefully.

And portable radios replacement for police vehicles.

We did not have a replacement program in place for those.

And so we've added about $340,000 or $68,000 a year to get those on a replacement cycle.

transportation and access, new sidewalks, finally we've heard a lot about this lots of the last budget cycles 4.8 million dollars has been added that is based and tied directly to the sidewalks priority list and the work that Mr. Chambers has presented to you

Correct.

All of these, yes.

Sidewalk Repair, we did reduce that by half a million in 26.

That is because there is a larger balance that's sitting there and we did that to better align the funding that we have with the work we know we're going to get done.

And then the ADA transition plan, that was a brand new project that was added this year over the five years that totals 8.7 million.

and Safe Routes to School was also something new that was added for a total of a million dollars over the five years.

Parks and Rec playground renovations increase of $460,000.

That was an increase of $88,000 a year.

That's basically just an increase to reflect the rising cost.

We did at the request of Parks and Rec, we shuffled around some of the funding for the trees.

So urban tree planting increased by a total of $125,000.

Wow, I should have done this list in order, but we decreased the hazard liability ash tree removal account and reallocated those dollars both to the urban tree planting and the invasive plant removal account.

We added $150,000 for Oakwood Cemetery for the drainage and road issues that we've heard about.

the downtown maltree management plan again this was just an amount that was added in 26 that will most definitely be added to in the future as we receive that plan and council make some decisions there

Parks Master Plan again same thing $500,000 was added in 26 with future decisions and Riverview this was I'm gonna take I'm gonna take the hit for this this project was

was not misnamed but not named appropriately in the CIP.

It is actually more about access management and the parking lot is only a small part of that and so we are going to change the name to be more clear about that and that was $250,000 that was added to the CIP.

Are we going to hear more about that later?

We are.

Thank you.

and then for affordable housing, as you know, $7.8 million was added over the five years for the Carlton mobile home park.

So those are the high level sort of new changes.

Everything else was basically in the five year plan from last year.

And I'll pause there to see if you have any questions or things you want to ask.

I've given to you this sort of the summary that highlights everything that's in the CIP.

If it's green, it means that the dollars were increased.

If it's yellow, it means the dollars were decreased.

And then if it's blue, it means it was added new to this five year plan.

Right.

One of the things that I've been saying to you all is that we're looking closely at the CIP.

And I am resisting continuing any effort to just simply add, because we've been adding on a schedule.

If we have accumulated funds that have not been spent, then I'm pushing back on the team to say, what will it take to spend what you've accumulated?

And what more do you need that you can spend in the same period of time?

So for that reason, we're just not adding what we have been adding.

There's $100,000 per year for the next five years for right-of-way appurtenance.

Is that recurring?

It is recurring.

Right-of-way appurtenance?

Apartments yeah, there's $100,000 a year over the next five years for right away.

I would have to look at those plans.

I mean, I do need to make sure that also it's not part of.

I don't know if it could also include other departments for that, so I have to look and get back to you on that one.

The bypass?

So with the new station then the plan is to allow that station to stay open and possibly be the fire marshal's office and other things that we need space for.

so that it's enough to take care of what would make it usable.

Once we get everything out of there we feel like some things might begin to fall apart because the duct tape won't last.

That's why we need a hundred thousand dollars.

Yeah, everything in the affordable housing.

I think so, I think it matches.

That was in 25.

1.8 million was in 25.

Yeah, it's still there.

And there may have been some money in 24.

I'm Stephen Hicks, Public Works Director.

We may need to retitle that.

That's actually for guardrail work, replacement work on areas that needed guardrail replace, i.e.

if a tree were to fall down, damage it, or just in general there's certain areas.

It's hit or miss.

We could have an accident although we process it through the insurance claim or we could have a storm and we could, yes we could spend it or then at the same time there may be some left over but what we could do is provide what our average expenditures are but typically that's our, what we ask is based on the average expenditures.

Okay, thanks.

Yeah, appreciate it.

No, thanks for clarifying that.

Yes, that's their request.

That doesn't address the grocery store.

Does not address the grocery store.

Okay, because there's two line items that were in the 25 budget.

Okay.

And that, that totally makes sense.

When would be an appropriate time for me to talk about Dogwood?

Is that now or later?

Okay, well I'm going to go through the rest of those first.

I'd share with Council Snook before that the downtown mall is considered one of the categories that I've identified for what I'll bring to you regarding the surplus.

for that being a good one-time use set of funds.

So there'll be some things that we'll try to prioritize being able to do.

One of the thoughts is that we would first try to tackle things that would be in support and complement to the idea that the mall turns 50 next year, 250th anniversary next year, many more people might be in town for that.

Okay.

Yeah, and Mr. Anthony will talk to you in a moment about the other project, but that was meant to be just an opportunity for the parks team to have some funds available

to initiate the beginning of the implementation of the Parks Master Plan because we knew that the plan was going to come after I would have closed the budget and or presented it to you and we would not have known everything at that point because we were still getting the final community input.

The thought was to give some funds for urgent projects that could be addressed.

So what I've asked him to do is to prioritize a list of access barrier projects within our parks that are identified in both the master plan and the ADA transition plan.

So that's actually checking two boxes.

In doing that, that gives him the window of time to digest the master plan and come back next year with what

Okay.

And the education projects matches what we've agreed to with the schools?

Yes.

Okay.

Sure.

And that too was an item that was after we had prepared the budget and

Ultimately what came was not a list of prioritized items, it was just a list of items and Mr. Goddard can speak to that when he comes up as well, but we have identified things that were already on that list that we had on our list so I think we know that we'll be able to get those things done to again prioritize checking those boxes

And we would be looking to the schools to identify other things.

Yeah, and we have internally already started that conversation, even today had a significant conversation about that.

The thought for me is to coordinate with the school board a joint session for you to happen this summer, late summer, early fall, maybe around school starting.

to begin some of that conversation but before we do that we need to have some internal discussions about our own assessments of facilities and then work with schools to identify what they recognize as needs and make sure that when we have the conversation of the two bodies we know all the things that we need to know for what that bigger conversation is going to be because it's going to be a very costly proposition and one that goes beyond one CIP period.

Yeah, that's important.

So I'm going to sort of make a plea for the Dogwood Memorial Veterans Foundation, the hill that heals.

I know that we've gotten literature over the last couple of weeks from them.

I can see how this feels like to some folks, like I can appreciate it.

It's like out of the blue at the last minute.

I think folks that have been on council for a while though know this group and know that this has been a consistent, they've been consistently trying to engage city council.

I'm going to state some facts that I think are facts, Sam, and you can weigh in on whether you agree with me or not.

I give further context.

So as I understand it,

that foundation reached out to city council in late 2019 and at least in their understanding got some sort of verbal approval or accommodation that the city would put into its CIP a certain marker amount of money in the CIP in 2020.

That did not happen because of COVID and because of elections and other things.

Their hope was to do that so that they could use that as something to help them raise money.

One of the challenges they've had as trying to raise money for their foundation is the very city that they're working in, there's not been like a firm commitment acknowledged in the CIP.

You did a lot of work along with the former city attorney Lisa Robertson on coming up with a language around a PPEA, which is basically a mechanism that lets us do essentially design-build projects with groups.

Subsequent to that time, they've received $600,000.

from the state.

They have taken that money and they've gotten a set of drawings basically up through I'll say 50% at which point it would go out.

for procurement and it would be a design build kind of option where you give someone the drawings and you say contractor finish these drawings and also build this for me and they would be responsible for the building permit.

The numbers that we heard the other day, total project of around $3 million, I think is what I heard.

That group has requested that, the other night we talked about putting $100,000 in for FY26.

They would like us to put in $500,000 for FY27 and $500,000 for FY28.

That's my recollection of what they said the other day.

Again, with the notion that that is sort of a promissory note that they can use to help raise money.

Their goal is to, I think, basically get a quarter of the money from the city, a quarter from the state, maybe a quarter from the county, and a quarter from prime raising.

Was that your sense of it, roughly?

that's what we initially heard that doesn't match what we're talking about now if 500 500 twice is going to be more than that so it would end up maybe it's 250 250 250 from i'm not so i'm not sure yeah whatever the numbers are so i'm just making that pitch i realize it feels late in the process it's not for this fiscal year it'd be for future fiscal years

I can appreciate, Councilor Oschrin raised the point last night, well maybe there's a different way to do this that costs less money

It was discussed, but there was no commitment.

That was one of the issues that the group took with the project in that it was being discussed.

There was even reference to funds being set aside for it.

That ended up not materializing.

It was one of the first projects that I worked on upon arrival and in coming here discovered a number of issues with it and the goal was to reset the conversation so the project exploration could continue.

and from that we were able to confirm that there was no money in the CIP as once thought.

There had not been an official commitment by the city to invest in the project.

That the city was open to the idea that the group could pursue the construction of a pedestrian bridge and parking lot because at one time that was even a question.

So we were able to get firm commitment that we don't object to a pedestrian bridge and parking lot concept.

We went through

A review of what amounted to three options for the siting of the bridge and parking lot connection.

We were able to work through that and eliminate two options as just not good options and therefore one remaining option existed.

That has been what the conversation has centered around since.

It's been for like the last two years.

Yes and that has been what the focus has been that what we are building is the option that exists and that was signed off

by the city engineer and traffic engineer at that time and the parks director confirmed because we had to really evaluate what was the impact to the park because the McIntyre Park would be affected by this and we had to make sure that it was going to work for putting this

So anyway, hopefully everyone understands I've had conversations with folks.

I don't know how people will vote but I'm wanting to put forward again $100,000 for this coming fiscal year and $500,000 for the next two.

Let me turn that off.

I would like to clarify the suggestion that I made because I was looking at the plans that were submitted and the context of where the suggested additional infrastructure would be.

The fact that it's next to a parkway, which is in a park.

We'd be adding parking to a park.

You all know how I feel about that.

And just the amount of infrastructure going into this project.

When I looked at a map and saw coming from the other direction there's already a parking lot and a relatively flat path.

In order to do my due diligence there, about an hour ago, hour and a half ago, I went and walked that to see how comfortable it would be, how flat it really was, where we could maybe make an adjustment that wouldn't cost several millions of dollars and help us be just aware of the additional infrastructure and location and capacity for adding car

The path from the parking lot on the other side of the skate park and that pedestrian bridge

It was lovely.

There's tons of trees that have just been planted that are going to make it very comfortable and nice as soon as they get a little bigger.

At the very end where it should connect to the memorial, there is a grade separation that would necessitate an additional path built.

Just based on how kind of simple that connection would be, I think that would be

save the city a lot of money and so provide access to the memorial as requested.

It's also much more pleasant to walk through a park than over a giant highway.

So with all of that being said, I'm where I was the other day, not keen to support this massive infrastructure project when there seems to be a simpler and more pleasant alternative that could easily be accomplished very shortly.

So my thought on it, going back to when it was first being discussed in 2019, is that while I agree with a lot of what Natalie just said, the option of parking in the area near the rescue squad building there,

their calculation was I think it was like about a one-third of a mile trip from there to go up to the monument and they felt that that was more than folks who were increasingly at this age likely to be handicapped would be able to handle.

And I have a hard time trying to put myself in the position of trying to decide how much inconvenience to handicap people is too much inconvenience.

I don't have a good measure for that and I'm inclined to put a fair amount of confidence in the involvement of folks like Tom Vandiver and the Independence Resource Center whose job it is to assess what is too inconvenient for handicapped folks.

The reality is that whether there was a commitment to build the bridge or a commitment to put a certain amount of money in the capital fund back when John Warner Parkway was built, it was clearly contemplated at some level that there was going to have to be something done to allow for handicapped access to that site.

I remember discussing with people right

a couple years ago about the question of access from up at the top of the hill coming across the bridge that's already been constructed over the railroad tracks.

That's still a pretty long way to go too.

It's not a quick thing.

So I think it's something that frankly if we

If we had been on our game back when the John Warner Parkway was built, it would have gotten accommodated in some way in the plans for it at that point.

And that really what we're doing now is trying to make up for the fact that it wasn't in fact incorporated into the plans.

I get back to saying I'm inclined to trust Tom and the IRC folks when they suggest what is too inconvenient for folks who are handicapped.

I certainly would, I'm okay with $100,000.

I told Mr. Eads when he and I talked today, in fact, I said I'm not necessarily sold on the $500,000 times two years, but I certainly think $100,000 to get things going, A, to help them with their fundraising, B, because they're incurring a lot of costs just in the planning of all of this stuff,

Would you support $300,000 in those two out years?

Well, I don't know, I didn't think about that.

I would like to have

I'll add from the staff perspective and the many years that have gone by, there are two options.

Option one is the pedestrian bridge and parking lot that we've been working on and option two is what Councilor Oschrin has proposed.

We don't see another option.

We have worked through all the others and that's how we've concluded that this is a viable project by eliminating anything else that is not.

Right, and I understand that in sheer number of feet traveled it might be longer than when you park at the emergency vehicle center or a proposed new parking lot.

The benefits of

the coming from the other direction is you're in a park much faster and there's no reason why we can't make that whole walk part of the experience.

There's design elements so that you're not just getting somewhere you're there already and you have a nice park experience not a by a four-lane highway crossing over a noisy four-lane highway experience and to me that has value

not just the number of feet traveled.

There's opportunity to expand the memorial.

There's opportunity to make the park more integrated with the memorial.

So when I first started getting tours of the botanical garden, that was the plan to have kind of a long bridge or access.

for the handicap to the Dogwood Memorial as part of that.

But it was eliminated at some point.

I'm not sure if because of the timing of the two projects or what.

But I think that where we are is that I definitely support the funding of $100,000.

And I think that maybe because right now we're having some smaller meetings to have

maybe at a four o'clock meeting or something just to talk through the alternatives, the two alternatives so that we can just make sure we understand what the two are because I'm supportive of it.

If the proposed one doesn't work, then

because I've been to several of them and what's going on now definitely doesn't work.

Mike, I haven't heard from you.

Can I ask a quick question?

Even given we've had a number of years, not at all disputing what you, Councilor Oschrin, have to say, but we have had, as this body, a number of years to evaluate options.

It's always worth continuing to evaluate.

But just speaking for that group and the fact that they, from their perspective, have been long suffering,

Even if we were to do some options evaluations, would that still be consistent with the possibility, Mayor, of putting $250,000 in for FY27 and FY28, realizing that we're not committing to a solution?

Yeah, so I think that we need to do one or the other and both of them are going to cost something.

So we need to put some money aside for it.

So I will be supportive of the $100,000 and some agreed upon amount in the out years, whatever, you know, if we have the votes to support that with.

The challenge with what you just said that you would do when I put on my former hat, you've just changed my fundraising proposal because I'm not fundraising for a pedestrian bridge and parking lot anymore.

And that's what all the conversations that they've had to date have been.

You've now said it may not be that.

It may be a different pathway or something to that effect.

I don't know how helpful that is to them if fundraising is the outcome that they're trying to work on if they now have to do this in a non-committal way to a funding source.

Can I add a question or a point also?

I know there's already funding from the state board.

I get that, but that's not really the issue.

I think almost anything will cost $100,000.

Spending $100,000 on even a sidewalk is not a problem.

I guess what I'm trying to make sure that you're doing is to stay focused on what it is that you're saying, that you're attempting to do.

Appreciating that, yes, the walkway and set improvements to the walkway is a project option.

That doesn't match what the ask is so you were making a different decision.

That is your purview to make that decision.

That would need to be provided in a clear manner.

I'm accustomed to walking away from our meetings and not having clarity on everything.

But we have members of the public that are waiting for clarity on the issue and I think that's my concern.

Yeah, I mean I would feel like if we were just starting from scratch and there hadn't been all these conversations.

I realize the notion of sunk cost and you can always make a decision, but I feel like from just the investment this group has made, the fact that it's been recognized by the General Assembly,

That's why I support the proposal.

If we were to go back to before I was on council when this thing was first conceived, I may have had a very different perspective.

This is a group that's done a lot of work on its own with a memorial that's the first in the nation or whatever.

Yeah, I mean I guess obviously this has been discussed for a number of years.

Well, first a question.

yes okay in if you park where in McIntyre Park

Oh, I thought that's what you were asking.

And for the McIntire Park entrance, you come around the front and then go around the back.

So there's extra paths to travel, whereas you could make an easier little connection on the west side.

And I know in years past,

Brennan Duncan, City Engineer.

So a lot of these discussions go back 8, 9, 10 years.

There are very small sections of that that have either settled over time, but the ADA allows for you to look at it in a larger span.

So when you're looking flat area to flat area, we meet the ADA standards, no asphalt

has been kind of torn up since it was installed with the John Warner Parkway.

At that point, we worked with the veterans to redesign the whole site and get ADA accessibility there.

So it has not been, the asphalt's not been redone since that time.

The last time it was checked for ADA compliance was about six years ago, I believe.

So when the John Warner Parkway was kind of constructed there

That whole experience was changed.

It used to be that the flagpole was kind of the memorial.

They built that whole retaining wall in front of it and created a whole kind of area there.

So the flagpole has always been kind of the defining mark for the memorial.

The flagpole never changed this location.

That was how they were able to keep their original designation of the oldest memorial in the nation that I know of.

So that has stayed.

The elevation of that didn't change, but they did kind of raise up that whole area in front of it with that project and build kind of a nicer area for everyone to get to.

That was when the pathway that gets from the corner of John Warner and 250 up to the memorial was built.

Right, yeah I mean I've said you know kind of my thoughts have been in you know since I've been a part of this conversation in a vacuum the most straightforward and clear path would seem to be the option laid out by by Natalie.

I think

I guess I haven't been nearly as involved in these conversations as you have, Brian.

I think there is a decision point for the city, basically.

The state funding, it sounds like Albemarle is potentially interested in providing some amount of funding- For a bridge.

For a bridge, correct, correct.

And so I think it would seem to me the options would be

On the city's end, either we're okay with the option laid out by Natalie, that could exist on its own.

But if a bridge happens and we're open to it happening, it would just be completely self-fund raised without city involvement.

I've thought the most straightforward path has been the one laid out by Natalie.

I'm potentially, given the state investment and the other things, if there's some clarity on what could actually be accomplished, I'm open to that and maybe this has already happened, but I'd be curious more feedback from staff in terms of

What is really feasible or needed on the city's end in terms of the amount of money?

Because I don't know if that $500,000 over two years, I would just guess if we go that route, there's likely to be a more substantial investment needed from the city.

and these are conversations that may already have happened as well.

You know, I'm also curious if that project of a pedestrian bridge has any potential tie-ins to improving park access beyond the memorial?

Like, are there broader accessibility benefits?

I guess all of which is to say, I guess I'm just kind of

I'm still skeptical about including $500,000 over two years and also whether that would be, if we went that route, whether that would be the total investment the city's needed to make.

Maybe this is information staff.

Maybe this is just, it's irrelevant to staff.

Yeah, the challenge is, like with any construction project, and this one's even more different, more different, even different-er, whatever, is that

It's very difficult to say what the cost is going to be before you've invested the money in the design and you've gone and done all of the work to get a price.

And when you add in the fact that this is a public...

PPEA was a very unique sort of procurement mechanism that also makes it more challenging to say what the cities understand the desire for clarity and what the city's actual investment is going to be.

When you also add on top of that the fact that you've got four different entities potentially contributing to this,

I just see this as a floor.

I see this as a statement that, and maybe it's not a million, maybe it's 500,000, basically us saying this is what we are willing to commit to this group of veterans who've been working on this thing forever, many of whom are getting very aged.

And if a million is too much, that's fine.

Then let's just say 500,000.

And I can also appreciate, Mr. City Manager, your desire for clarity before we just don't throw money into CIP to like be a placeholder.

But I think sometimes that's not a bad strategy.

We do it all the time at my job where you're like, I don't know exactly what the future looks like, but I want to put something close to it.

So I feel like, and again I can appreciate everyone's perspective, I just feel like these decisions were made six, seven years ago to go a certain path.

Maybe they were the wrong decisions, but we're at a certain point and a lot of time and money has been spent.

and reevaluating that I don't see as valuable.

And if we can't do a million, let's do 500,000.

I would like to add two more things.

Since we've established that it is technically ADA compliant already from both directions, I would like to also think about the money that is being requested as an opportunity cost.

We have a long list of ADA

We have a long list of places throughout the city that are not ADA compliant.

If we spend this money on this bridge, what projects are not being accomplished?

with that money, that is everyday life usage for people who are not just veterans, but everyone else who uses the streets.

And so that's something I also want to think about.

We have option one, what seems like a relative quick easy fix coming from McIntyre, and then you can expand the memorial up the pathway and make it a more fulsome experience throughout a park, which is lovely.

We have option B, or two, a large infrastructure project that

we are being asked to throw some sort of amount of money to which I can absolutely appreciate that people have been working on this for a long time but is the goal access or is the goal to build a bridge and if we already have access

then we can use that money for improvements elsewhere in the city.

And then for the point about it has been a process that's been going on for a long time.

Re-evaluating past processes is kind of our whole job.

That's what we've been working on.

They spent a lot of time years ago

downzoning the city.

We have reevaluated and have upzoned the city.

We've reevaluated several other things that past councils have done in projects that the city has worked on.

So we've reevaluate in a new context, in a new direction.

All right, so I think we just need to kind of get to some type of conclusion on this.

I'm in the camp of $100,000 supporting the existing project with the bridge which has been planned.

That's where I live.

Lloyd.

Nobody in the city manager's office, perhaps the exception of Terry Bentley, was around when any of these decisions were discussed.

The last time they were even discussed, much less made.

and I feel a little bit uneasy about, and I'll tell you what I remember of the discussions which took place before I, I guess after I was elected but before I took office was that there was discussion about how

They were going to be able to raise their own funds.

It was a question of there were some things that we needed to be able to do to help them out and then suddenly in the last three months or so the discussion became, actually it was in the last three weeks or so that I first became aware that they were looking for 1.1 million dollars.

and that's a discussion that is just a whole lot different from the discussions that I remember having taken place in 2019 and so on.

And I, because I have not had any need to go back and say to the folks at the RSC, the folks with

the Dogwood Committee, whatever.

Let's really look through this and make sure that we understand about the ADA compliance issues.

Let's make sure that we understand what is really convenient and what is not really convenient.

We have not, none of us has been a part of those discussions.

Maybe the City Manager's Office has had some fairly recently, but none of the rest of us have.

And I just

I, this is also a situation where from a purely science of decision making, this is the wrong way for us to be doing it.

I can appreciate that, but I've been on council three years and three months and this was something I learned about at the very beginning.

and at that, and there have been many conversations that have happened.

Maybe more fulsome, I don't know, but there have been plenty of opportunities to have these conversations with these veterans and yeah, so there have been opportunities and I know when I first came on council, it was stated, yeah, there's this marker out there for a million dollars.

Nobody could ever find

That wasn't 1.7 that was being asked from the city.

That was 1.7 that was gonna fund the entire project.

and now we're looking at $3 million.

Now I understand why things have gone up, everything else has gone up.

But I also understand that as far as I am aware, there has never been a vote taken by this body, not just us, not just the opposite as individuals, but as this city council that commits the city to doing anything.

There's never been a vote that says we are committed to a bridge

that we are committed to 1.7 or 3 point whatever million dollars and I just find myself feeling very

dissatisfied with the state of information that we've got at this point.

I will repeat that I tend to want to honor the perspectives of the disability community in their assessment of what is too inconvenient.

And I don't think that I am a good judge of what is too inconvenient for somebody who's in a wheelchair.

But I also realized that I've never seen a plan.

I've never seen a budget.

I've never seen a design.

Maybe somebody else has, but I haven't.

And if you're asking me right now to commit $100,000 this year and either $200,000 more or $500,000, whatever the number is,

I just don't feel comfortable right now doing that.

If we put a number on it for the next fiscal year, people are going to start assuming that that's set in stone.

So I think it's important that I clarify a couple of things because this conversation has been going on for quite a long time.

There has been no actual vote on the specific project of infrastructure happening in the city because that time has not arrived yet.

The PPEA is the process that has been outlined.

I have outlined that for everyone.

I have laid out what my recommendation is on this matter and that recommendation was to not put anything into the CIP at this time, get the PPEA done so that we would have an official project and budget at which time council would be able to consider whatever it might want to do in the way of supporting the project.

It is my understanding that the desire for the city to contribute to this project

is well known and has been long known for a number of years.

It has not been a formal ask in writing in my opinion until most recently, which I agree that that letter indicated what the specific ask was.

But again, I've outlined and I have outlined as a deputy and as the city manager on more than one occasion what I believe to be the appropriate steps.

You're having a CIP conversation tonight, so that's what makes it appropriate for a discussion if you want to put something in for an out year.

It did not come from me as a recommendation because I'm not recommending that.

But that's your purview.

You make the decision on what you want me to do and we figure out how to make it happen.

We have received some material information from the Dogwood group as recent as this week and that information has been now moved forward for us to be able to move forward on the PPEA actually happening.

That would be the official moment for council to vote but you all did actually indicate through a resolution support for this project.

Council did this and that was done to indicate to them that the city was not going to block its construction.

That was a direct request that they made and you all took that vote and approved it.

That was the indication that I desired for the staff because upon my arrival I found a team of individuals frustrated with, we don't know what they want us to do, they being you.

And I said, let me figure that out and we will clear this matter up.

And we have done that by eliminating two options for siting this pedestrian bridge and parking lot.

and getting what we deem to be confirmation from council that there is an interest in allowing the Dogwood Veterans Memorial Foundation to raise whatever funds necessary to construct the bridge and parking lot.

So staff has been working to support that.

We have done a land lease to ensure that they can add additional bricks, which is a part of their fundraising strategy.

We are days away from bringing that to you, I guess two meetings away from bringing that to you for a vote to approve that part of their strategy.

And they have gone and gotten the state to support the project by adding $600,000 to their coffers to pay for it.

Upon doing that, they ramped up their desire to see that the city and county joined in that support.

I again did not bring that recommendation to you because at this moment I don't know how much this project is going to cost and I don't have a complete set of plans from someone to tell me what is it going to take to build this.

And usually that is what I bring to you when I ask you for money.

I'm not criticizing it.

That's why you've struggled to be able to bring something to us concrete.

That is correct.

So all that I wanted to make sure is that the understanding is known clearly what efforts have been taken to simplify and straighten the line out as to what it is that we have been doing and are attempting to do.

It is my position on behalf of the staff that we have eliminated that alternative improvement from the existing access points.

both having been deemed by those individuals who are advocating for this new bridge and parking lot to be too much.

That is what I have heard consistently.

It's too far.

And to come from the car's parking lot requires a lot for individuals who have struggles, regardless of ADA status.

It's still an incline.

And if it's an individual in a wheelchair and the person pushing that person in the wheelchair, it is difficult to navigate, regardless of, again, ADA

meeting the basics of ADA.

All of that has been expressed to me.

I have spent hours with these folks.

I have heard all of this for now a few years and in all of it I have been attempting to make sure that we move forward through a process that I can bring what is a responsible recommendation to this council following everything that is me, discipline first,

and that what I said was that I would support bringing whatever information to you all once we have a PPEA document that identifies what it costs.

That's where we are.

And that is everything from the staff's perspective.

There is nothing else that anyone on my team can come forward and offer to add any further detail as to where we stand on this project.

which is why you're now having this conversation.

So the question is, and you have to, I'm not gonna say have to, you should make a decision at this point because the last item on the agenda for tonight, I'm gonna trigger this conversation all over again because you're interested in the $100,000 and that's on the list from last week's conversation.

From a budgetary perspective, committing $250,000 in 27-28 doesn't have any impact on us now, right?

It activates probably three or four times as much money from other sources to help build something that supports a community need.

Just because it's there, we don't necessarily have to spend it.

If that upside risk is too much for folks, I don't know.

On one hand, these are large numbers.

On the other hand, they're not really that large numbers when you talk about construction.

So I don't know what it would hurt us to, you know, in terms of like voting on things, like you said, we have, I don't know, this has come before us before.

And, you know, like the stuff with the schools or stuff with housing, these numbers float up and down a little bit.

So I think that you and I support the $100,000 goal and I'm not sure where you are on

At this point, $100,000.

I'm okay with $100,000.

Okay.

I got it.

Yeah.

Not necessarily opposed.

Okay.

I would just quickly say I agree with Natalie in terms of that making the most sense as the option.

It's difficult because I think there is past dependency for the expectation of the veterans and their families and nothing we will do will ever change what their expectations are and that's the reality of it.

I think I'm fine with the hundred thousand dollars.

I find it

I agree with Lloyd in that I'm not trying to dodge, I just genuinely find it, in principle, is having flexibility to put something in an out year.

If it helps with fundraising something, I'm like, we should never do no.

But I just have no basis for having any sense of what that number could be, would be, and I would worry that we would come back here in one, two, three years and be in a very similar place where that number just wasn't sufficient and didn't accomplish the fundraising goal.

So the simple answer is the county has not put anything in their budget.

Correct.

I think that there was

Ann Mallock reached out to me, I think they're probably in a similar situation to us.

So it appears that there is support for

What I need to clarify is no one's going to present that option because that's not what this is really about.

Where that would come would be as a part of the Parks Master Plan if in the assessments by the Parks team that there was a desire to further enhance that access point.

And Rhian, I'm just going to throw the curve ball.

Okay, that's what I thought.

And just to clarify, it's relatively flat or a slight grade right up until you get to the memorial and then there's a curve so it would have to go around the little tops of trees.

Can I make one more point?

Okay.

This isn't meant as a dig or anything like that.

I respect you guys.

I'd say I'm gonna love you sometime.

But we, Councilor Payne, we have made big bets on housing on like buying a whole mobile home park for eight million dollars.

We've made big bets without a lot of information.

because we felt like it served the common good.

And we've done that a lot on housing.

And this isn't just about a park, this is about representing and honoring veterans from our area.

Is it perfect if we had it to do over again?

Is it what we've done?

No, but I think it's, we do this kind of, we have done this sort of, we're not breaking precedent or creating precedent or whatever.

And again, as I said, I'm not even philosophically opposed to including in and out your some placeholder amount.

I just genuinely right now at this meeting right now, I feel that I don't have any basis for having a sense of what that number should be.

OK, you good?

Brian Anthony, Parks and Recreation Director.

I'm just here to give a quick update of Parks and Rec CIP.

As you can see, Parks and Rec has been very, very busy.

If you notice, we have a place held for $500,000.

We've worked very closely with our ADA coordinator.

We are looking at projects that we can meet the needs of the community.

So one of the projects is Washington Park.

outdoor restrooms per our master plan.

It calls for a lot of investment, reinvestment in our assets and our assets are not in good condition.

And so Washington restroom is one, Forest Hills.

Restroom is also one that doesn't meet ADA.

We're also looking at certain parks with access.

Access meaning from a parking lot, how do you get to a dog park?

How do you get to a playground?

So we're trying to connect those easy connections so that individual that is disabled will be able to have an easier transition plan all the way to a playground.

We're also looking at upgrading our key recreation center bathroom.

If you look at the key center, everything is upgraded, but our restrooms have not been upgraded and need also to be focused with our ADA lens.

So those are just a few projects that we will be doing.

Yes, so when you upgrade restrooms you have to meet the ADA compliance and our restrooms are not ADA as you just mentioned because it was built 20-30 years ago.

Yeah, I mean the plan was, because Ms.

Hamel and I talked about it a lot, what are we going to do on the master plan, the parks master plan, and just again thinking that the appropriate approach would be

Assume that we know that the list is going to be huge.

Give the team something to work with in the first year of its existence in our hands knowing that it is not a full category of things but at least something to begin with.

I don't have a question about the $500,000.

So the 100,000 is just our annual care and maintenance of the downtown trees.

Because what we have figured out... Those are the trees?

The downtown?

Oh, the CAFE permit, sorry, I apologize, the infrastructure plan.

Okay, the infrastructure, that 100,000 is small repairs, i.e.

mortar on bricks, bricks were popping out, we use that.

We also use there for some electrical problems that we do have on the mall.

We also take care of the downtown mall power washing.

I think it's Tuesday, I took a tour with Steve Gaines and the landscape architect.

We started here and walked to the end of the mall and they know every single tree and we

I have one more item to just update.

It's exactly a study.

I was going to do a presentation but I thought I would just again this is just ask for $250,000 to look into our access management plan.

So access management plan for park is very critical because it directly impacts safety, traffic flow and user experience.

This park, when you design a park, it is for pedestrian, cyclist, and recreational use so that we get to control vehicle access to minimize accidents, conflict, and potential injuries.

Clearly designing good access points avoids emergency vehicles to respond quickly to prevent

Blockage, meaning a lot of cars are parking, they cannot turn around, so an emergency vehicle takes longer response time to get there.

So, Councilor Oschrin I think will have a much better response to this.

We talked about this before.

I'm not, after what we just went through with the gas decarbonization study and some of the other studies, I'm not, I mean, I live in a world of consultants, so I understand the reason for consultants, they augment what we can do, and sometimes it's a better approach, but I'm kind of burned on studies right now.

What, and that's a lot of money for a study, is that

What is the scope?

What do you think they're going to tell us?

I mean, I think we've got some philosophical differences on council about, you know, hopefully, Councilor Oschrin can speak to this in a minute, but you know, maybe we don't want to have more parking there or maybe, you know, we just rearrange, we restripe it or something.

I don't want to like minimize or downplay

So $243,000, we have a concept plan right now.

And what this study is going to be looking at is, A, there's only one ingress and egress.

We're looking at the amount of people that use that park.

And over the summers, we know we have a access problem, reason being this is the only city park that has river access.

meaning river access.

It does not, yeah.

And I just lost print I thought.

So that's the only park and each park has different uses.

This use is kayaks.

So that means it's very difficult for telling community members or people that come to the park is to use, for example, a different mode of transport.

They need some vehicle, and most of the vehicles are either having a extension to their vehicle where they are putting the kayaks.

There is no spot to even park and drop off your kayak.

at the existing park and that's what the cause is because it started out as a neighborhood park but it's becoming a destination park so that means we are looking at when a company comes in to drop off kayaks we are finding cars parking not parking but waiting in line to get in all the way up the street

and neighbors cannot move because we get the phone calls at the end of the day is to say I can't move the park.

What's going on in the park?

I do not have a ranger program to send someone out there but when staff is out there that's the problem because the vehicles can't turn around because I have an extended trailer that I have my kayaks, they can't, they're having issues and it's just extend this.

What we are proposing is looking at is there another access point so when we go into the park

there's a clear sign there to say kayak drop off, take right.

You drop off your kite and you get out.

And so what would the study need to do?

That is just, again, that's the concept.

The study is going to look at by how many people are using it, really looking to see if that is the cause of the issue.

and then making a plan.

Again, this is not about increasing parking spots.

Yes, there are other companies that will come in because again, that's a drop-off.

If you look on the maps, Riverview Park is the pickup spot as well when they go all the way from downtown down.

So yeah, I'm, what, okay, hang on, another question.

I don't have the accurate number, but I know last year what I personally got, because they don't call me.

They will call the emergency vehicle.

I know at least four or five times.

And again, if you think about this, we get most calls that I can only call, I can only talk of myself.

It's going to be an individual that is intoxicated that got off the water.

because that's what it is for, kayak and they're drinking on the river, that's fact.

So they come, they get all the stuff, they're intoxicated, they can't walk, someone calls the emergency vehicle and that's where emergency vehicle or fire department has a hard time is to response time to get to the individual because they're either leaving

Not with a fire truck.

Because we sometimes have fire trucks that respond as the emergency vehicle that's available.

Some of the things that's concerning about this is there's not a lot of park there already.

There's the woods that start there where the trails are.

Then there's the parking lot.

Pretty immediately there's the playground.

There's not tons of space.

And then there's the river.

So any kind of asphalt expansion pretty much immediately cuts into the playground.

The turnaround is often filled with cars.

That seems like those cars are taking the opportunity to park there, paint, signage, enforcement, leaves that space available.

Something that is not

politically popular to say but is very true is that the streets surrounding the park belong to the public.

The homeowners who live on those streets do not own the asphalt in front of their house.

That is community space.

The same, and this is how I've described it to other people on here, the same way if you're heading downtown to go to a restaurant you don't expect to pull right in front of the restaurant and park there.

You might park a couple blocks away and walk in.

That's the same way a public park could also work.

There's street parking nearby.

There's bike access.

There's trail access.

There's different ways of going to the park.

When you increase

Parking, that's part of the plan.

Initially it was called that, so I assume there is some sort of parking adjustment going on there.

You're also inducing demand.

More people expect to be able to park instead of finding alternative ways to go.

If it's known as a difficult place to park, people aren't going to, nobody goes anywhere, it's too crowded.

Yogi Berra saying, you make more access than people think I can park and now more cars show up and then where are we?

We added 20 spots, there's 40 more people who want it.

We add 20 more spots, there's 60 more people who want it.

You never can state demand.

So increasing parking in the same way that Katy Highway in Texas keeps getting wider, traffic doesn't get better.

It's not a solution.

So increasing car parking is not going to make the park more accessible, and I want that to be something that people understand.

And if that changes the scope of the plan, so be it.

If we're talking about adding a boat ramp,

Especially given, as Councillor Pinkston said, we spent $300,000 on the decarbonization study.

We spent some amount of money on the trash study.

Both of those didn't do what we wanted them to do or missed the, changed the scope in some way that didn't manage expectations properly.

So that's a lot of money that could be used for something else parks related, such as the actual infrastructure.

If this was a discussion about building a boat ramp, making the lighting better,

and all of that, that's one thing.

Expanding parking?

Hard no.

and the point of community park is for families and kids and people to play in it.

If you make it something that is focused on the cars, you're taking away the space from the people that are using it.

So let me just say that I think we need to make sure that we stay focused on what the ask before you is.

The ask is for funds to do a study.

I believe your comments have proven why we need a study.

We don't know what to do and we know we have a problem.

That's the purpose of the study is to determine what are options, what are solutions.

So the reason that the $250,000 appears in CIP is to provide the room to determine what can be done to improve the conditions, the experience, the safety issues, the access issues.

What those recommendations end up actually being, yeah, we'll come back and you'll get that as the study result.

This isn't $250,000 to add parking to the park.

That's not even close to what it takes.

It is potentially something we could do in-house, but then you don't have the benefit of an expert who looks at all these issues together and gives you a recommendation.

So if that's the pleasure of the council that you want to direct staff to figure it out, we'll figure it out.

One of the things that struck me as I was down there recently is there are a number of places where there are manhole covers where I would not have expected there to be manhole covers suggesting that there's some interesting infrastructure problems in that site.

I would imagine that one of the things that would be discovered in the process of doing this sort of study would be to understand those.

So I think that we, I support, you know, proceeding with the study, not so much at this point whether to proceed with the expanded parking lot or whatever, but I think we need to understand what the project is.

Well, one, obviously the original was defined as a rearview parking lot.

What is the scope of the project just looking at access at that parking lot area?

Yeah, so good question.

So it's looking at access number one, but also what will that Zetto High property

will be in the future, and how can that complement that at the same time?

So if you really look at it, if you look at access, but you know there's a property sitting there, we don't know what that property is going to be, but we want to build something that will complement.

And if you just see what's happening at the park right now, we are busy with the restroom infrastructure at the moment.

Yep, the restroom is happening.

We are having stream restoration and what that suggests to me that more and more people will be coming because the restoration project, the riverbank will be looking much beautiful, much more stable.

We are just making

more and more people will just be coming so what Parks is doing is looking around the corner because that's what we do not looking for today but looking around the corner is to say hey we see this coming in stages we need to be prepared

And our first step is not just saying, hey, we are going to build an access, as I just explained, this is what I'm thinking.

But we really want to understand, what does this look like in five years?

And in that long-term plan, I also want to consider the fact that we are improving our trail connectivity and access from different points throughout the city so people don't have to put their bike on their car to drive somewhere.

They can leave from their house, get on a trail and bike somewhere.

They can walk, they can get there in ways that aren't car-centric and car-forward.

I guess I am just skeptical.

Euro East High is, I think, is going to see increased demand.

There's going to be increased participation revenue at River Company, things happening there.

What if any assurances that there's not $250,000 spent on a study at the end of the day if the goal is

If the only option is significantly increasing the amount of asphalt

at the two entrances to the park, and that's something that council is not interested in at that time.

To Councilor Pinkston's point earlier, maybe I'm just not envisioning what this study entails, but what is to prevent a dynamic like the decarbonization study where we spent a very significant amount of study to get to a point where it was just ultimately a decision council knew from the start, we're just not interested in pursuing that path?

I think this scope is again is all about access and safety.

It is how do we get

into the park and how do we exit the park?

Because of the amenities that the park has offered.

We know there's a river access.

That means there will be kayaks, there will be tubes coming.

And at the moment, if I have some form of vehicular way of transporting, I'm not going to park at up the street and try to walk with my kayak all the way into the park.

But how do I get someone to come in?

drop the equipment and then leave and park somewhere on the street.

And also just to again to try to make sure that we are explaining what we're doing here.

This is $250,000 to provide for a study to be done.

We don't know that it's going to cost $250,000.

That's just a number that we know that we need to have available because it could be somewhere in that ballpark.

The scope is about access.

Access means we're going to look at what the problems are, we'll identify what the solutions are, and we'll come back and determine what could be.

Is it possible that the recommendation would be an expansion of asphalt?

Absolutely.

Why?

Because today it's not big enough for what it's trying to accommodate, and the goal is to solve how you can accommodate what is happening.

If we need to create a space for different

Access points for those who are trying to access the river with a boat and they have their boat on the back of a ramp, a back of a trailer attached to their car.

We need to separate them from the people who are already parking.

So yes, there's going to be an expansion possibly in making that happen.

We're not trying to predetermine what that is, but yeah, the possibility is there.

The study is meant to frame what is possible so that we have options and then we make the decision on what it is that we're going to do.

And I just want to quickly point out that tubes don't require a trailer.

often are strapped to a roof rack.

There's not really the kind of boat trailer that we're thinking of for kayaks, unless it's a multi one like the ones that the Rivanna River Company has where you can stack several on top.

A single person in a kayak's not dragging that behind their car.

To do the study.

I just want to outline, if we do end up doing this study, the scope has to be something that I would like to see before it goes forward.

That's something that I thought we didn't have enough

When we asked for the trash study last year, we just got it a year later and didn't get approval on, is this the direction that you wanted to go in?

There's lots of access questions and lots of different ways to manage them which I think are important.

I think if the scope is a significant increase of the amount of asphalt, I do think it will just reach a point where council at that point won't approve that.

I don't think the community will support it either if it's not something that's looking at improving drop-off and relying on Riverside Avenue or other areas.

place to then, once you dropped off that equipment, park there.

So I think that's just the risk I see as being 250k and getting to the point.

So, their support to move forward?

Well, I haven't, I don't think I've weighed in.

Nothing.

You're looking for three?

You guys are for, you're against, you're against?

I mean depending on the scope.

I mean I talked to Councilor Oschrin about this the other night and really respect her views on this particular topic.

I appreciate where you're coming from.

I appreciate where you're coming from.

I live in this world every day.

It's a problem.

We need to study it to come up with options.

I think the struggle is we just came off of at least one study that I thought was not worth the money and time we spent on it.

I would be interested, like Councilor Oschrin said, to have a little more sense of who you're using, what their expertise is, what the scope is.

One of the, I think, the constraints on the study ought to be, yes, maybe expanding it slightly is something that we end up having to do.

that one of the constraints be we really want to minimize any potential asphalt increase because clearly that's not something that people want.

So if that could be part of your considerations, then I would support this.

I feel like you guys, you wouldn't be coming to us if you didn't feel like this would not be helping you solve a problem that the community has raised.

I just think that the points that have been made are important and also, you know, I don't know how much capacity we have in-house to do this kind of thing.

Take it you're forward.

There we go.

We have a move of Walker funding forward one year.

So when we originally anticipated doing this project, our position, my position, was that we wanted to protect ourselves from getting overwhelmed by having two projects running concurrently.

So the way that that was planned to work was that as we were finishing up construction on the Buford project, or now the CMS project, there would be an overlap of the tail end of that construction work.

with the beginning of design work through the summer of 2026.

There's been some requests or perceived requests from the school board to move that forward one year.

And I think that that is reasonable at this point.

So the proposal here is to move the design funding, the $4 million we have for the design of the Pre-K Center from fiscal year 27 up to fiscal year 26.

Impact would be that we begin design work this coming summer on that project.

So we're already through schematic design.

So we would just pick up and finish up with the design documentation.

And then fiscal year 28 is when we had the $26 million for construction funding.

We're proposing to move that to 27.

So there would be an overlap of construction this summer of 2026.

So there would be two projects going at once.

I think we can manage that.

Yeah, time is money these days, so we're hoping to save a little.

So yeah, we're feeling pretty good about how things are going, so I think it's prudent.

There has been an adjustment to the funding for the priority improvement program.

Just to remind you, that's the smaller scale projects to do modernization work in the schools.

So far we've gotten through all of the elementary schools and done the restroom project that you all have seen at Charlottesville High School.

Really, the $1.4 million is just an increase to keep up with inflation and to keep us effective in delivering those projects at their full value as money becomes more valuable.

And then finally, you know, this isn't actually a change.

It's just I wanted to make a clarification while I had a captive audience on the school's lump sum funding.

So there was a conversation recently about

The desire to fund security audit projects are in response to the school's security audit.

I wanted to point out that the school's lump sum is funding in 2026 a re-key project for both CHS and KTEC.

We've already done several of the elementary schools.

out of that lump sum and that's work that was specifically pointed out in the security audit.

We're also going to do some door replacements which are desperately needed so I just wanted to sort of toot our horn.

That sounds like a positive change.

Yes, I'm supportive of Lloyd.

Sounds good to me.

Yeah, I think the Buford project was the biggest thing we had done in quite some time.

We were a little nervous.

And there have been hiccups, of course, but I think we're feeling pretty comfortable with the scale of the work and our ability to deliver.

It's awesome.

Yeah.

We first came on board didn't seem like it ever happened.

All right.

So we're going to transition to Mr. Freese.

It's always more fun to share the hot seat.

And to know we're shifting off of CIP and onto operations.

At our last work session, there was some conversation around transit service, CAT service.

So we thought we'd provide a little more context, a little more information looking back at the last five years and the improvements to the system over that time and looking ahead as to our planning efforts that are underway and that process going forward.

First, wanted to just clearly state what we, I think, had talked about last time, which is that the FY26 proposed budget, as presented, invests just over $600,000 into, and that's new money into CAT.

and that's covering really three things.

One is the replacement for federal funds that have ended, CARES Act, and then also the funds that were allowing us to offer service fare-free.

So that means we are going to continue offering fare-free service going forward.

But additional money was needed to support that.

Second, we of course have continued increased costs derived from the collective bargaining agreement.

so additional new support for that and then lastly we did add a maintenance position in as part of this FY26 budget so on the note make clear those are the three investments again totaling just over 600,000 and then as a reminder last year we invested just over 1.8 million into CAT and that included within that is the eight additional drivers that were added last year but and then on that last piece again

Last year, in the drivers you added last year?

We added positions within the budget.

Last year.

Around this time last year.

So added those eight additional drivers.

Yes, I'm sorry, for this year's budget, FY25.

But those positions have not all been filled.

That's all kinds of positions?

That's just drivers.

because you're recognizing that there's a lot of support positions that are necessary for drivers to be able to do their jobs, right?

Like the maintenance worker we're adding this year, maintenance workers, customer service.

That's 62 drivers.

Well, I'm ready to talk about pre-pandemic because that's what these slides are here to talk to us about because we've been talking a lot about pre-pandemics being as kind of the standard that we've set.

that we're striving towards.

And I think one of the things we want to do today is point out that it's actually a little more nuanced than that, right?

Because when we think about the outcomes, what are we striving for?

Why are we adding drivers?

Why are we adding money?

We got to look past pre-pandemic and really get more specific about what it is that we're looking for.

So the first chart that you all have there is the pre-pandemic.

And so we say roughly, we have the equivalent pre-pandemic of about 72 drivers.

And I say roughly and I say equivalent because we relied a lot back then on temporary relief drivers to do the bulk of the driving.

And as a result of that, there was a certain lack of reliability in that.

because those drivers, the relief drivers, they can choose not to come in and if you don't have drivers on a given day, there may be a bus that doesn't run.

And then the other aspect of that is recognizing that those were relief drivers that were frequently being asked to work nearly full time but weren't receiving any benefits.

So what have we done over the last five years?

It's really important to recognize that we've professionalized the service over the last five years by making far more of our drivers professional drivers.

fully benefited drivers.

So we've actually moved towards creating jobs that offer economic mobility while at the same time improving the reliability of the service and the frequency of that service over time.

So if we look at the chart here that represents the fall 2019 one, now again we're just looking at weekday service in this case.

We're not looking at weekends.

We can talk about weekends, but we're focusing in just on weekday service right now.

That first chart shows that while our service

extended later into the evening.

It had some positive things.

It extended later in the evening.

The trolley service was at a 15-minute service.

Let me start with the colors, sorry.

Red, greater than 60 minutes, obviously.

Yellow is 60-minute service.

And then the green is 30 minutes or less.

And obviously, that's green.

That's our target.

We're aiming for 30 minutes or less over time.

So that first one has some benefits, has some positive things, extended service and all those things.

I know you recall that we had full weekend service in that time period, including Sunday service.

But we also had some things that weren't so great, like all the red that you see within that table.

and you also see some variability in the times, stuff like that.

We've really tried to move towards a more regular system with regular time intervals that are more predictable for your riders.

And then you see there the total ridership, and I can't even read it from here, what does that say?

1.3, so FY 2020 ridership 1.3.

So then we go to COVID and everything we experienced there.

And one of the things you see is that the timeframe in which we're offering service tightens up so that we're ending at 9 a.m.

predominantly.

But you also do see some improvements in terms of some of the other measures that we use, like the regularity of the service, and some of that red has disappeared.

Service went down if you look at FY21 and FY22 to just over 600,000 and then in FY22 rose again to 1.1 So if you go to the next slide, next page

And we're looking at pre-November 9th, and I want to differentiate pre-November 9th and post-November 9th is basically accommodating those eight additional drivers that we added last year into the system.

Again, we didn't have all the drivers, but the timing starts to reflect the availability of those positions.

We've got, even before that, we already have a system that's got no red on it.

And we're starting to extend past 9 p.m.

on some routes.

And finally, you get to the post November 9th of this year, and there's a lot more green showing up.

More lines are extended.

It's looking a lot better.

We still don't have Sunday service.

Yes, every month.

I think I have to check the team, but it looks like it's a copy and paste area.

Copy and paste area.

We'll get you the right ones, but it's 1.1 both of those years, the difference is negative.

And FY, that was, and the last one should say FY25, right?

And that's the current year.

It should.

Garland Williams, Director of Charlottesville Area Transit.

I can get you the exact numbers, but when I first got here, one of the things I talked about was getting on the side of what I call a death spiral for our ridership.

It had been declining.

year after year I believe 2016 or 17 we're at 2.1, 2.2 million riders so we've lost a significant portion but we're hopefully making significant changes in the head waves to make it standardized and more frequent with the effort of putting most of our resources in the weekday

right now to take advantage of the state's model also.

The more ridership we have, the more money we get from the state.

So that's the adjustments we're starting to make now.

A couple questions.

First, can you help me understand this chart?

So if I'm looking at the hours across the top and then the time below,

Is it at 6 23 a.m.

Which one are you talking about?

How does this... No, the top... So, great.

Yes.

Great question.

How should we interpret this?

Counselor option.

Great question.

Yeah.

The charts are the same.

We just added the ridership totals a few hours ago.

So the charts on the top, when you talk about 6 a.m., 7 a.m., 8 a.m., that's when service is being operated.

That means the bus comes at every 23 minutes.

The bus is operating on a 23-minute headway.

Yes, sorry, that's what I was trying to say.

Okay, thank you.

But it helped to see it all at once.

That's a lot.

So will you be my plus one to the IMPACT and EMI conference we got to go to or will you be my plus one?

I'm being silly.

So I am going to talk about the investment that we've made so that we can show up where we are before we move forward.

600,000, and I missed one of them.

I know collective bargaining and new maintenance positions.

Replacing the federal funds.

That's right.

Particularly so that we can continue to offer service fare-free, which was subsidized by feds previously.

Sorry, thank you.

I could complicate it a little, I guess.

So, I can never remember this.

CHICON had three plans, a shorter term one, and this is very important context that I forget to be nuanced about, that it's not just returning to pre-pandemic service, there's optimizations going on that have happened that have actually already made it more efficient and better.

So I appreciate that we always need to like

Council will be putting that forward.

But there was that short-term plan that was with those optimizations sort of getting a little bit as the baseline like pre-pandemic plus the optimizations.

Then there was like a medium-term one and then there was the longer-term like big vision plan with the constrained vision of the regional transit vision plan.

Great.

So, Councilor Payne, there's really two studies.

And the two studies where first CAT did its own study was the optimization study.

That optimization study looked at kind of phasing in enhancements to increase our ridership without having to do a wholesale rework of our network.

That plan looked at a couple of options.

There was a preferred option that allowed us to get past pre-pandemic, but also add more 30-minute routes, provide more service on Saturdays, and a much more robust system on Sunday.

That number of operators needed is 82.

That was the original plan.

There's also in that plan,

That was by Nelson Notgard.

A number of 101 drivers.

That gets us to 30 minute service with really robust service on the Saturday and the Sunday.

We're looking at a lot of the routes on Saturday and Sunday also being 30 minutes by having 101 drivers.

That is where we have, that's the numbers that we have looked at.

No one has looked at the numbers for how many drivers or buses are needed for the regional plan, which has a constraint and an unconstrained.

The constrained numbers, I believe the TJPDC is looking at potentially getting a grant, a technical assistance grant from BDRPT to do exactly that.

Look at

Right.

I obviously got to walk before we start being in the Olympic sprinting, unconstrained and constrained regional transit vision plan.

Great question.

So I had Chrissy's assistance and HR took a look at

In FY20, when I first got here, there were 45 full-time operators.

The rest of the drivers about, we can't confirm the exact number, but it was like between 50 and 60 temporaries.

Over time we've... So between 5 and 15 more there were... 5 and 15 more.

That's correct.

But they weren't full time.

And what I mean by that is when you look at the roles that were given to us, you had a driver who would maybe work three hours a week.

They were still left on the road because they were there active.

and they would come in every couple weeks and work three hours or work four hours so they would continue to get a paycheck, right?

So there was a lot of when COVID hit and a lot of those individuals did not have

Healthcare benefits, a lot of them left because they were concerned that if they got sick, it would insult the injury and there would be a high cost for their healthcare, right?

So we lost, I remember, between 16 and 20 drivers from that pool.

immediately.

And then others kind of wearied off as we went to a slower model in healthcare to protect our drivers during the pandemic.

So we went to kind of a three-day schedule, which eliminated us having to do a lot of the temporaries.

Coming out of that though, a lot of those individuals, remember this is the same group that has the CDL, they were in high demand.

They were being

courted by UTS, by our public on the pupil side and the county's pupil side.

And then every other transit agency in the Commonwealth was also looking for CDL drivers.

A lot of them went to other places.

We've made an aggressive approach.

We needed to change some of our routes.

We got into a kind of a back and forth for trying to entice folks to come to us.

We looked at incentivizing them by giving them healthcare.

That worked for a couple years and then there was an issue that when we were about to pull it off that we were going to lose every single driver that had that.

Roll forward, we got to the process of getting into a collective bargaining agreement.

That helped quiet a lot of the tension, and that's where we are now.

We have 66 drivers.

I think we're making the most improvements that we possibly can with the 66 based on knowing that.

We need more drivers to really bring back a robust Sunday service as opposed to just putting one or two routes out there.

And you're always going to have five to six openings?

Hopefully not that many on a regular basis is what he's trying to say.

Yes, I'm hoping that we can get that number down.

But we are also very cognizant of the fact that we have a number of older drivers that are at the end of, you know, 35, 40 years and we're also planning for potentially losing them within the next one or two years.

Not losing them, but retiring.

Yes, just retiring.

And some come back as temporaries and others do not.

But I think to me it sounds like the bottom line which is

comes down to counsel's decisions.

You have and are always going to be as efficient as humanly possible with the amount of drivers we fund you to have.

So we will always get that outcome.

What the community, I think, probably expect requires at least 80-some drivers, maybe even 101.

And that's helpful to start to talk about the specific outcomes we're looking for, but I just wanted to make sure we also note that when we're talking about 82 drivers and adding additional service, that also means that we're talking about up to 12 mechanics.

Am I getting that number right?

because the more the buses are running, the more maintenance work, both the preventative maintenance and the actual, I want to say injury, but breakdowns, thank you.

Injury to the buses.

And then the staff that clean the buses and then there's the customer service and other support staff.

So which kind of gets us to the next part of what I wanted to talk about, which is that we have a lot of big goals for our transit system.

We got a lot of ambitious goals, which is positive and a good thing.

Like these are all the things we want to be going forward with around both the operations side, which we've talked about, and around the idea of alternative fuels, because we did an alternative fuel study.

And what we are starting to understand is those represent a lot of big costs.

And so one of the things that we have been talking about collectively

is setting up a series of meetings with both council and with our regional partner, the county, and our funding partner, the county, to do a deep dive on all of these things.

Do a deep dive on what we were just talking about on those operational costs and a deep dive on the facilities and the bus costs to achieve these goals.

Facilities expansion, right?

The actual facility out at Avon Street.

so that we can so that well basically so that you and the county collectively and through CARTA which we just established this just recently you haven't have can have that context and that deep dive in order to make decisions about how we make improvements in the coming years particularly these short-term improvements that we want to make to start moving service

Sorry, this is backing up just a bit.

I didn't get a chance to chime in about the positions.

You mentioned that some still come back as temporary drivers.

Great question.

So when they come back, they come back as a returning retiree.

There's a limit on the amount of hours.

They can only work 1,000 hours a year.

Right now, we have, I think, in the numbers, 10 authorized positions.

The part-time model has not worked here.

We actually had 10 that were authorized two years ago.

No one put in an application for any of them.

How many years ago?

Two.

Two years ago.

And I think the reason is because it's

One, those folks are in high demand and they can go somewhere else and get full-time benefits.

What does the part-time schedule look like for them?

Is it just like, hey, we call you when you need you or like, hey, we need you for four hours every Friday?

It can be both.

So normally what happens is once, twice a year, we do what's called run bid.

Once we develop the pieces of work for everyone, the pieces that are left are divided into 20 hour blocks for part-timers.

and then that means they have a set schedule.

Now there are some retirees who do not want a set schedule.

They'll say that they want to come in and just sign up every other week or a couple of days and they have the ability to do that.

I'm just wondering about you know

the amount of staff that you mentioned we had pre-pandemic.

I'm gonna choose my words very carefully here.

The model that we were employing when it was pre-pandemic and we had a high number of temporary folks and we were working them, allowing them to work, not working them, allowing them to work 40, 50, sometimes 60 hours

without benefits went against the city's policy and making sure we treated everybody equally and fairly.

We started making that transition.

I don't remember whether it was which human resources director started that process, but we looked at the amount of hours our part-timers were having and there was a concern about overworking them.

We've started making that change and it's now allowed for them to work more than, I can't remember, it's 1,500 hours now?

For a temporary, which is more than a retiree, but much less than a full-time employee.

And the only model that we have right now where part-timers get benefits is on the pupil side of the house.

I'll just say, I think the approach you laid out in terms of setting up those future work sessions or meetings I think makes a ton of sense.

Obviously this will not get resolved.

This budget cycle, I think the bottom line is the cost.

of transportation has gone up, the cost of drivers has gone up, we've increased in two or three years, I think five million on an annual basis.

If I'm remembering from looking at the budget right, something in that area, maybe that's off, and then this year around like a million or so has gone up.

But I think the community is still, I think it's completely understandable that what they understand our transit goal is to be, in terms of city council, just flat out require at least 80 drivers, probably really 100, and we just have to have meetings to figure out, given the cost increase, what is that dollar amount for us as the city, and then just figure out how do we work backwards to plan to fund it.

Yeah, and to the point earlier about CARTA, I mean, I think that is, you're exactly right.

We need to get clear on what we need in terms of money and then make the pitch to the General Assembly, hopefully with a more favorable review that we're getting recently.

and get the money to do that.

But I think you're right.

And I was just going to add, part of the reason for this deep, I mean the core reason for this deep dive into these topics over the course of really the next several months into the summer with both us and the county and CARTA

And we'll get to it in those conversations, but I think it will also be important just to confront, in terms of the zero-emission buses plans, that was in a context where the only thing that made it financially feasible in any way is federal funding, which completely changes the local cost-benefit analysis.

Those being gone are going to be a big discussion of... Worth a revisit.

The priority is, from what I understand and have conversations with counsel, is that we want to try to get to a 30-minute model first.

So that is what you are seeing in the progression of the frequency.

So we are making changes to the system to try to get to a 30 minute model first before we give anyone 15 minute service or better.

And we have, we don't want to have situations where we are causing a disparate impact on some communities because we have

We just got to be careful.

There's some analysis that we do when we make these changes.

It's a Title VI analysis we have to get done.

We don't want the federal government to come in and take a look at our system and say we are causing issues with communities where you have low-income individuals and you're not providing them a decent amount of service.

The approach that I've taken with the team and what we're starting to see here is we're going to give everybody a decent amount of service, meaning a 30 minute model.

Then we can have really robust conversations about a five or a seven who is worthy of having high frequency.

Okay, yeah, because that's kind of why it would be useful to have the per route ridership so we know who's getting them.

Right, come on, make it.

Two charts anyway.

The frequency chart and then the ridership chart are two different things.

It would be, I don't even know how to display both of them together.

Is that what you're saying?

I think so, yeah.

That information's available through the data portal as well, yeah.

And I just want to note that these are all kinds of things that we want to dig deep into so there's clear understanding and then the opportunity to also

All right, thank you.

Yes, yes.

So I'm Sam, but in preparation for April the 8th when we have to talk to

Faith Commuter, thank you.

It's nice to have like all these positions filled.

Isn't it?

Wait.

Is there any, Kina, do you have anyone to sign that?

So, is that, is that?

Got one more?

Yeah, we have, maybe we can do this quickly.

This, this slide summarizes the follow-up conversation from last Thursday night, where you all were given the opportunity to consider spending the 1 million

$2,001 that have been identified as a council discretionary fund, which incorporates your current strategic initiatives fund, which in the budget I proposed increasing to $500,000.

That $1 million then was shared with you at the same time that we gave you the results of the Vibrant Community Fund and HOPPS results.

And the indication that I was making to you at that time was that if you would do your first review of Vibrant Community and confirm that you were satisfied with the breakdown of the recommendations,

than any adjustments that you would like to make being increasing and or funding those that had no funds as well as adding any groups that were not even being considered at that time by using this particular fund.

Through that robust conversation that you had last week, we were able to conclude that follow-up conversation led to this list that you see, starting with $250,000 to BRAC, our continuum of care, to replace a lost grant for homeless services.

$162,000 to PHA for the replacement of funds lost for an eviction prevention program and those funds would support staff salaries $50,000 for PHA and eviction prevention direct cash assistance adding $43,150 to Boys and Girls Club making their VCF allocation $116,000 or their city allocation $116,000

$28,800 to Lighthouse Studios, which funds two programs for a total of $40,000.

Adding $6,000 to Loaves and Fishes, increasing their total funding to $50,000.

Adding $1,200 to Piedmont Casa, total funding $10,000.

$6,600 at Live Arts, total funding $16,000.

$7,100 additional to Legal Aid Justice Center to make their total $40,000 and $1,500 to Sarah, increasing their total funding to $25,000, which is $556,350,000.

We also had identified in the CIP $104,261 that was not to the results of prior work done, project completed, and that was a balance.

and that was indicated by you all as of interest in using to fund your redirection of funds to the Dogwood Veterans Memorial to indicate the support for the project that they are working to raise funds and ultimately construct.

Therefore, you would have spent $660,611 of the $1,002,001.

leaving you with a balance of $341,390 which means you successfully met the request that I made to you to please not spend all the money because you're going to get other requests over the course of FY26 which does not begin until July 1st and that would allow you the flexibility of being able to consider any request at that time using that fund because as the budget closes it gets harder to identify things that are spontaneous.

and then additional notes is that you all indicated in the meeting last week removing $4,200 that have been recommended for funding to Fralin Museum and to redistribute those funds over arts and event sponsorships which I would do and we identified for you that there was a calculation error for bridge line which meant that we shorted the recommendation so we would be adding $37,040 to make their total allocation of funds $56,780

and also through your conversations this week there appeared to be enough support for adding $137,000 for CRHA's resident services.

You would leave the the Fralin $4,200 we would address through taking those funds and doing whatever and I have to add the $37,000 and $137,000 as additional funds needed to address.

I didn't take that out of your money because I would have then dropped your number lower.

So that means I

You still have $341,000.

I'm only indicating that because those are changes to what came to your recommendations.

Chrissy and I will find the $137,000 plus $37,000 to make those two things happen.

We anticipate that we're going to be bringing you additional funds because we have one more check-in on revenue projections.

Great.

I guess that answers my question but you know I was curious if anyone was interested in you know removing you know $50,000 for PHA eviction prevention cash assistance as part of covering that just because as I understand it that's not operational and obviously they would like it but can do the program about it.

Yeah, I mean, I would just say to you that we are confident and this is always a process.

There's always one last revenue projection update before the budget closes.

So we know that that will happen and it will identify some funds and we feel confident it will be at least that.

So there's not a question.

It's not a trade-off request that we're making to you.

I know we've been talking about the Dogwood Memorial today.

Were we talking about actually $100,000 or were we talking about $104,000?

Well there's $104,000.

If we don't put the $4,261 that means I have an account with $4,261 sitting that would annoy me.

It wouldn't go back into the $341 balance to make that $345?

It would but that because it's a different source out of the CIP it's really not worth it to maintain that for you because then you are limited to only a CIP eligible activity.

Yes, we've been hearing from nonprofits regularly at this point.

So, again, I need an indication from you, because this is just my summation of what I read through your messages.

Okay.

Okay.

I'm supportive of it.

I think he keeps giving the holy hands up.

and just one final note we do not have a work session next week there's neighborhood leaders meeting on Thursday night so we will not get back we'll have a public hearing on April 7th which is on the tax rate you'll also see the budget ordinance or resolution for the first time it will not include any of these amendments that we've talked about it will just be the proposed budget you said the 14th right

on the 7th.

That's an irregular council meeting.

That'll be that public hearing.

And then we'll have a final work session where we'll bring out the spreadsheet and do the tallies on April 10.

That'll be our wrap up.

That's it?

Second?

Second.