Planning Commission Work Session   11/25/2025

So if we have a big plan coming that's up in the air, including very big questions about what entire buildings and campuses are used for,

That's not considered for Walker.

That's a near mark for the pre-K center.

Wherever it is.

Whether it happens at Walker, which is where it's scheduled to be today, or it'll get moved to Oak Lawn.

That's how we already got to that.

That assessment was already done and concluded that we were building a pre-K center.

And the only reason that Oklahoma is a part of the consideration is it just landed in our lap the way that it did this fall.

Is there any consideration to doing two?

I would say that that too would have been a part of the assessment work that was done previously.

I kind of inherited it.

It was done.

I asked questions like that myself.

But yeah, it was already determined that it would be at the Walker site.

Really, until the FEI site came into the conversation, it was done, Walker, period.

So facilities capital projects.

There is one new addition here.

The McGuffey roof does need to be replaced.

We've currently put that in as a placeholder in FY30.

In addition, as I mentioned, there is a commitment from the city manager.

Additional funds have been added for the HVAC replacement.

Yeah, so that is currently zero.

Those funds have been deployed to other projects such as Bypass and I think it helped with CATEC, I think.

So that too could be, would be something you would see more of, or we may go back to allocating specific project by project.

That has to be determined.

Correct.

Thank you.

Sorry.

Thank you.

I want to be clear of what the third point means.

Thank you.

So we've been investigating PPAs for a while now.

Is there, uh,

So I would say that we have done our due diligence from a financial standpoint in terms of

You know, can we do one?

How would we do one?

That kind of thing.

When we use tax-exempt bonds, that adds a whole additional wrinkle to what we can or cannot do with a private business.

And so we've done that piece.

We can give you more clarification.

I don't know the answer to that.

I do know there's things that have to be worked out with Dominion and other partners.

At the risk of angering the artists who I love, I don't see a connection to a comprehensive plan on this item.

And I was looking by two planners.

I mean, broadly, it's a city facility, right?

So it lives in the world of maintaining city facilities.

The roof needs to be replaced one way or the other.

So I think what Lyle's maybe driving at is, you know, we're renting this building for $30,000 a year.

If we have to replace the roof,

for $1.2 million.

It'll take 40 years to recoup just the roof cost in our rent.

We have a five-year lease that was signed in 2023.

That would be a policy decision for the council.

We're in a policy conversation now and you would need the council to make that determination because as it relates to the arrangements that we have, those leases are set in regards to one, yes, they're city facilities, but also the partnership and the opportunity for whatever is happening in that building for community enrichment or what have you.

So that will be part of their assessment as to

Do they feel comfortable replacing a roof on a building that's owned by the city being used in that manner for losing out that we target?

I hear you, but.

Any other questions on that?

Public safety.

Again, not a lot of changes here, except for the mobile data terminals.

And that's just basically a cost escalator, not additional computers.

Most of the accounts here, most of this equipment is very expensive.

And so rather than trying to do just the lump sums all at once, we do try to spread those out so that they're able to make small replacements during the year in a more cyclical manner than all at once.

So that's why you basically see these recurring amounts.

I just had a question on fire trucks yesterday.

Our fire trucks, the ones we purchase are custom, expensive, and it's a two-year lead time to get them.

It's a challenging market.

Physically, a lot of what we do in the city is limited by the very large fire trucks that we have difficulty purchasing and then fitting into our very old and small city.

So I do think that they might have more than this.

What little I know, we might have to get you some more information, but I do know that they are exploring other options there.

I believe there's different ways that everything doesn't necessarily have to be custom now.

And so I think there are some.

off the line trucks that you can buy at this point.

Yeah, so the focus has been on how do we cut down on the lead time, but the lead time is market driven.

That's just a matter of the various parts being available, getting to the suppliers to then do what needs to be done.

We're not looking at shrinking for our trucks.

That's not something that we've considered, I would say.

I think the reality is that we have been able to confirm that we have not found it impossible or impassable for any truck to get where we need to go, including my ride along this year.

I found our team doing things that was amazing for what they can do with a truck that big.

So I mean that's the constant issue of

with all the site plans is that Beyer shows up and says, actually, we can't do X in here.

And I think it's a combination.

But one of the issues that is, I mean, there's this sort of philosophy like, you know,

Roads?

Where we're going, we don't need roads.

They're so big.

I mean, you know, you draw, you know, sorry, your fence is gone, buddy, but the house door was burning down.

That's part of the process, but it has been, I get the sense that it's limiting in some of these places to that, particularly with the sub-lotting and the moving around of access to where we are, that the size of the truck and the design

and its relationship to the design manual is going to become more and more of a thing.

I wouldn't disagree that it won't get farther based on decisions that we're making and when we see our landscape change.

I'm just saying at this moment or this particular three-year window where you see the purchase of an apparatus.

So it's a little concerning to hear that FIRE is not at all looking at drinking trucks.

When I say booking, I mean not making a change to the order.

I mean, are they considering it?

I'm sure they are at this moment because I've complained about how much trucks cost and how long it takes to get them.

I wouldn't say that it hasn't occurred to them that they may need to come up with something at some point, but I'm just saying what's on the list to be acquired at this time is a normal size.

Do we know specifically

Whatever, there's no change.

So whatever we've been ordering, I'm not, I could have, I'd have to find that out for you.

I'm not aware of any change in model or brand.

Okay.

Yeah, we can find out.

Anything else on this section?

Okay.

Everybody's favorite slide.

Transportation is access.

Just over $11 million for 27, just under $51 million over the five years.

Again, there's substantially no change except for to add the fifth year in this section, except for the ones that are highlighted.

You will notice a pretty sizable increase in the new sidewalks.

And in your packet, we did provide you with a list of the plan for the sidewalks and the tiers of those to be replaced using those funds.

The CAT Transit Bus Replacement Plan, this is just their normal replacement plan.

These are revised costs of just the regular to replace their regular fleet.

Now, no changes in terms of

E.V.

or otherwise at this point.

The ITS, I believe, was just a slight increase.

And then their right-of-way appurtenance was an increase.

I think that was previously funded at $100,000 and that got bumped to $150,000.

And then the historic

The historic dollars in total, I think, went up slightly, but the timing basically changed to move that up to 27.

And then we added the Dominion poll remediation.

You said it's right away.

I'm sorry, who was speaking?

Carl.

Good.

My next question is going to be how many polls can be moved for 100,000?

I guess that doesn't apply.

So they do the new policies, but they won't buy the right-of-way?

And these are for their ADA violations?

You are going into an area that we could spend hours talking about and not get to a finish point.

Fair enough.

who can be allowed to come.

Well, and some of that agreement isn't ours.

It was Albemarle County's, and we bought South Belmont.

We pulled in South Belmont from that, too.

It's makes for interesting title work.

So sidewalk repair, I assume that we, this is about capacity at the moment.

They've already been working?

Some of them.

Some of this is tied to them.

Yeah, I wouldn't say that's all of it.

And that team is still largely forming.

So I had not noticed that side of our prepare was zeroed out this fiscal year between when we saw it and approval.

It's not on this slide, but it's for the current fiscal year.

Was that because there was so much?

I think there was a big balance.

And that was the past where the problem had allowed us to accumulate 1.5 million.

We couldn't spend it fast enough.

That's correct.

More plan questions.

Go ahead.

Citywide transportation plan and three notch trail plan.

Citywide transportation plan was funded via surplus dollars that was voted on in

I don't know, like a month ago.

And Three Notch Trail, I'm not sure that I've seen any cost estimate or anything.

So, I guess to

I recall a conversation recently that actually addressed exactly this point that

going to conspire with the reworking on the work that's slated for Cherry and West Main.

And this really is about, it's not necessarily new bicycle, it's accommodating pretty proper bicycle infrastructure in those areas, amongst other things.

Do I have that right?

We're planning on that?

After the rebuild of West Main and Cherry?

Yeah, so those, the improvements in those corridors we would want to add on to the existing work that's already going to happen there.

The funding that you're looking at in the Bicycle Infrastructure Fund, part of the reason that that's not going up is we have a current balance that we're spending down on projects like Fifth Street and we're also looking at Rose Hill Drive as part of that repaving.

We might need to have some additional funds

Fish Street right now we have a cost estimate of about $600,000.

We're hoping to work that down with using in house crews and

We're looking at West Main being, it's starting in FY26 for the utilities project, but we don't actually know when the end point of that is gonna be.

They're currently working through what the designs would be for that.

They've had to rework some of their designs and we'll have a better idea of what the end point will be, but we're expecting that at the end of that project, Public Service will come back and do a repaving through that corridor that will allow us to put in the final striking design for it.

That puts us at a timeframe of having a few years for us to go in and do that work.

I mean, you say a few years, but this budget goes through two years from now, right?

May 2027?

Yes, but we're looking at three to four years from when that needs to be done, so we have a little bit of buffer.

And that includes for the Central Waterline Project?

Yeah, Central Waterline Project I believe is like five years for both phases that are

going all the way across the city.

But they're repaving as they go, right?

Yeah.

So they're going to be doing patch repaving.

Most of their work is going to be along the parking lane.

So they'll be doing patch repaving as they go.

We're working with public service to see if there's going to need to be more thorough repaving once they're done in there, because once you disturb one part of the pavement, it sort of impacts what's happening on the rest of the street.

So, yeah, I get there are other priorities, and there were a few years out from the first phases of these being done.

OK.

So, on the bicycle infrastructure line item, we were funding this at $200,000 from at least fiscal year 2016, maybe earlier, that's as far back as I go, to fiscal year 2020.

If you adjust for inflation, that's $275,000 a year.

You know, that was accruing the balance because historically we were unable to spend any money.

Now it sounds like we're going to be able to spend more than $700,000 this year.

You know, these are bondable funds that we don't issue until we need them.

It seems to me that it would be appropriate to resume funding that at at least $200,000 if not inflation adjusted $275,000 so that we can begin to build up a balance in that fund for more of these larger

You know, corridor reconfiguration projects like we're doing on Fish Street and hopefully one day in the not too distant future on Cherry and on West Main.

You know, we've got East High eventually coming.

We've got Ivy.

We've got a number of other corridors that

Well, I mean, there's a difference between going years without spending any money at all or having any plans to spend any money at all or ability to spend any money at all.

And now we've built a bit of a balance.

That we have a pipeline of projects, even if it's a little longer.

Well, that we're finally funding it.

And what we used to do, which as I recall, there was oftentimes this very similar conversation about sidewalks at this table that we had a flat line and we said, we're going to come back and we're going to put together a specific plan of how much we're going to spend every year.

And we're going to tie that.

And that's what you're going to see in the CIP.

And that's the approach we're taking now.

And we're trying to move away from kind of squirreling away dollars in accounts and move towards

So we're getting away, so moving away from the layaway plan.

I mean, I think that's great for when we have more than two or three years of a project pipeline, right?

When we have a six-year planning process that we got OIP funds to do, instead of a parent decision that works, otherwise we

You know, we're going to have three years of projects that are using old funds.

And then we're going to have some new projects pop up that we haven't thought of yet.

And there's no placeholder for it in the CIP.

And I think that's how you end up with your tail years in your CIP having much lower funding amounts.

So that, so I,

That was prior practice, right?

So part of what you're speaking to is, it is about philosophy.

I'll give you that.

It's about philosophy.

And a lot of the conversation that I've had with this team was about this

appropriate of how we would tuck away in the CIP categories, one because we never believed that we could come back and get a yes from the budget team to get the money we needed to do a project.

I have worked very hard to eliminate that from the practice of what drives the conversation of believing that we can't come back with a solid plan and get it funded.

What you're seeing here, and as James alluded to with the new sidewalks plan, it was me standing before you a couple years back saying, please don't try to give me more money because I can't do anything with it.

I remember saying that.

And that was meant to really get your attention on there's the planning aspect of what needs to come before you with the ask for increased funds.

I think what we're saying to you in this bicycle infrastructure lane is we're working on it.

We're not there because we've been working on sidewalks and schools and other things, ADA transition plans as well.

Trying to get those numbers right so that what appears in the five-year plan is more accurate as to what we need money for and what we're going to actually get done.

See, that has not been really what has driven it.

I'm not saying that we didn't do it right before.

I'm just saying that I'm choosing to push for it to be done differently.

And that really is what this now reflects, is that the money is there.

I could simply take your request and go back and me and Chrissy could figure out what's a good number to plug in there.

Well, what I think what we're hearing is that there is a pipeline of projects that will be coming in 29 and 30.

He hasn't given me that list yet.

He's not there yet.

But what he knows is that he can give me a list now and get the funding that he needs because the new sidewalk line and a lot of other things came at those hands.

I think if we were just to start putting numbers in the boxes again, we're just putting numbers there that we don't know tied to a project list.

or even are possible for us to get done, that we would have an inability to spend that money that particular year because we need to take that line in proximity to everything else that we're trying to get done as well.

If there's a capacity issue that can interfere with our ability to spend, that's the reason why the thing to remember about this is this is a five-year plan and we revisit it every single year.

So we will be right back here next year probably, Ben, putting a number in one of these boxes for one of these years at least.

So I think that's really what I'm projecting and pushing forward is a different approach to

I'll say rush into putting a number in the box for a number to be in the box.

I want to make sure it's as close to the right number in the box associated with projects, which is why we share it with you, the list that you got this year for the sidewalks, because I wanted you to be able to see what sidewalks are actually going to get done because I've been waiting on that list too.

Does that help?

I agree.

I think it's great to have the funding numbers be tied to specific projects and our best estimate of them that we can get now.

I guess I'd say I hope that we can get at least placeholders for the projects that we know are in the pipeline by the time this is adopted in April.

Yeah, I was just going to add, I think, so what I'm hearing is that the reason why the bicycle line is what it is, is because there's not like a list of projects with cost estimates associated.

And I think the new sidewalk, it's really great to see specific projects in the plan because it's like tangible.

Yeah.

Hopefully next year we're looking at a list of like, here's what we're going to do with this bike money.

Yeah, as you mentioned, Commissioner Yoder just added, you know, we've received a number of emails just from the community who are like, $100,000 for bikes, what?

Like, you know, there's a lot of sort of head scratching, like, it doesn't seem like the budget lines up with sort of value systems.

And so I think a lot of this is the optics.

And I feel like the budget is what the community, it's a way to sort of tangible reflection of where our priorities are.

And I don't know if there's a way

Well, I think what I also want to just point out, and I think what I'm hearing is that we probably need to spend a little time just identifying where else is their bicycle infrastructure recurring that's not related to that particular line.

Maybe it's Maastricht's with a footnote, and maybe they're saying that there's already a surplus that's being tapped into just again, so that the general public feels that bicycles are a priority.

We need to help visualize what progress we're making while trying to get to a place of having a bigger number in these boxes that are tied to projects.

So yeah, on that note, we have now $150,000 a year in citywide traffic engineering improvements.

We're continuing to have $100,000 in neighborhood transportation improvements.

I think those are the funding sources we've historically used for things like our quick build program.

I think the goal of the quick build program would be that we validate that some things work, maybe some things don't work, and we change up and do a new thing.

And then we eventually lay some concrete and harden them.

When you get to hardening them, they have to move into one of these other lines.

Okay.

Okay.

And then I guess on the flip side, we have small area plan implementation still being funded at $200,000 a year.

This is the fund formerly known as SIA implementation, immediate implementation.

There's now $1.8 million in authorized but not issued funding in that pot.

We did manage to spend $200,000 a year or this year on that $200,000.

I don't know what we spent it on.

But I think maybe the bridge

over by Jordan Park or something?

That hasn't been done.

That's coming out of the 1.8.

All right.

Well, that's different.

That particular plan, the strategic investment area was a policy action.

That's different.

and had his own individual course of it receiving $200,000 a year.

The fact that it built up money over time is why we decided that we no longer wanted to make it just exclusively tied to the strategic investment area, but then available to implement small area plans.

So now the reality is for us to figure out how to spend it, which is why the implementation fund has at least two sizable earmarks.

to it right now.

So what you see is just what's sitting, but it's going to be spent.

And then the 200,000 a year is now just to make sure that we get moving into identifying projects.

We have not been doing that.

Yes.

That is why I can tell you this because it's on my target list.

I don't like squirreling money away for no specific reason.

I mean, that's also bondable, so.

And then street milling and paving.

We're starting to see this get really significantly untethered from the historical amount we've dedicated to it and the amount that we get from VDOT each year, which we do.

I think everyone forgets this.

That's not our budget for street milling and paving.

We get $5.6 million from VDOT every year for street milling and paving.

to $5 million this year, which is already up 25% over a few years ago.

And we're getting to $2 million in year four here.

Because we project that we're going to get more milling and paving done.

And that's because we're targeting a higher paving quality index.

We checked that to be sure.

I don't think it's that.

I mean, isn't a backlog, you know, a list of streets that are below our target pavement quality?

Or, you know, towards the bottom of the quality, right?

And then moving up our aggregate pavement quality.

I guess the question is, are we making a policy choice implicitly to increase our target pavement quality?

No, I don't believe that's the case.

And I think some of the backup is related to sidewalk work that needed to be done in advance, is it not?

I think our index will probably increase just as a matter of getting more done, but I think it's also because we need more done, and we have not been consistently doing that.

And that is part of the question that came when Public Works came before us to meet.

Question about ADA and equity.

ADA is our is our equity project that eats up the pie.

How long is that pie going?

That's not even close.

Okay.

That may be a nice slice, that five-year plan.

The result of the ADA transition plan was, I want to say, $150 million across the entire city for issues collectively.

That $2 million a year was a request that I made in putting the budget together to council to indicate that as best effort has been part of the conversation I've had with them.

for the concern that other communities have had the Department of Justice come in and you don't want that, I assure you.

Because what they do when they come in is simply tell you, now you must do what you already knew that you needed to do, and you do it on our schedule.

And when you do it on our schedule, it doesn't matter how much it costs.

So a lot of the things that we're talking about moving around, I would have to shift to a bigger number in that five-year plan to meet their settlement agreement because we will be signing one if they come because our issues are that significant and a community that's been around since 1762.

We've got a long list of issues, and it doesn't matter that you've been around that long.

It doesn't matter that the agreements that we signed were in the early 1900s.

None of that matters.

When the law was changed, we were supposed to start working on them, and we have not chosen to do that.

This is the beginning of doing that in a real substantive way.

And again, that's just a crack at it.

That's not what we need to do.

I will say to you that that number

Keep your head intact.

Yeah, I mean, what we have here, part of what I was looking for was an ability to indicate that if we were to allocate $2 million, I know you're thinking that's contradictory to what I said, but I knew that was going to have $150 million situation.

So $2 million a year, I got the plan covered.

But I think what we knew coming out of that scenario was we were going to have to figure out what our capacity needs were going to have to be to do more.

Part of the first year was to shift funds to Parks and Recreation and have them prioritize their projects that are barrier removal and access focused.

And they then check the ADA box as well as the Parkmaster Twin Box.

The size of the ADA bucket in terms of our overall equity spend makes me worry that there's other buckets that we're not spending on.

Well, I would say that that's not equity alone.

Our globally, the local government's work is supposed to be just conscious of equity improvements.

And because we have such a wide variety of things that appears in our CIP and in our budget for where we're spending money, I would argue that we are checking that equity box in significant ways.

Can we be a little bit more intentional and really get to some of the more

Harder to serve areas of our population, of our neighborhoods, absolutely.

I think that's part of where we get to prioritize more work in the transition plan to make sure that we go into areas that are, you know, the last ones that we might visit under normal circumstances.

It's part of the test for the paving and milling scenario.

Part of my question to the team will be, how do we know that we need to go there?

I know it's on the list, but why do we have to go in that order?

Why can't we go in this order instead?

And they don't really like when I do that, but that's okay.

That's part of my job too.

So I think from an equity standpoint, it is about the intentional work of making sure that we're not leaving anyone or any part of the community behind.

So I think a global look at this, I would say that we're checking most of our losses.

We could probably be checking some a little bit better.

The Dominion Pole Remediation, identifying that and acknowledging that with money being earmarked for pole removal is actually being a little more conscious of the problem that we knew existed.

And we know it because we walk on sidewalks ourselves.

And if two or three of us are walking together, we have to move.

And we're not in a wheelchair.

For ADA?

I got a question on the CAT transit bus replacement.

Is that, I know there's a couple different types of buses that are currently operating.

There's the kind of regular transit bus and then the smaller vehicles.

I'm curious, are we purchasing more transit buses or are we kind of going in the direction of the smaller vehicles?

The smaller vehicles are usually for field trips and special activities.

Got it.

And I saw in the kind of right up here that some of the buses may be alternatively fueled vehicles.

And I know I've read that there's been some pretty major disruption in the bus manufacturing world and battery electric buses have had a lot of significant issues.

So are we kind of sticking with the kind of tried and true buses or are we doing anything

So we have a commitment to convert our fleet.

That's Council action that's already been taken.

We have a period of time before we start actually acquiring, procuring those buses.

We have had an internal conversation about discussing that more with Council after Councilor Fleischer joins and then begin to take a look at what is the

Okay, so to recap on where we are, the CAT just submitted a no-low grant to the feds to improve their facilities on Avon to accommodate electric and hydrogen fueling.

If they get that

That will pay for the fixed costs of that, not the buses themselves.

Which we've been informed that we did not get.

There you go.

I mean, just to clarify, the council commitment was to pilot, to try both of those and then make a decision, right?

That's correct, right?

It's a commitment to try both.

But we do have to have facilities to repair both in order to do that.

All of that.

So that would mean a purchase of vehicles or we'd have some sort of lease arrangement for those?

I think it's everything is purchased.

And that was the reason for pilot.

One hydrogen or one electric bus and just run it until it dies.

Right.

So we're not done.

There was just one decline.

Got to keep looking.

At best, money is other people's money.

Did you know that?

We wanted to make sure everyone was aware since we never, like, all that stuff didn't go down.

I was going to switch topics to a different line.

Yeah, go for it.

I love copper.

I think copper works.

You connect the thing, it works.

It's great technology.

It's cheap.

It works.

If we were to step back and rethink, could we consider copper wire as an option?

for InMotion Charging.

Is that what you're going for?

InMotion Charging, yeah.

Trolley buses.

Trolley buses.

That wasn't really explored as part of our study.

It was described based on aesthetic concerns.

I love aesthetics.

I'm Mr. Aesthetics, clearly.

But, proper works.

I don't know.

We'll have to dig into that.

Not since I've been here.

So for the past four years, no.

Oops.

And then the historic district and entrance corridor, I think that was the design that got cut off.

Is that like, are we getting an updated design guidelines for $150,000 next fiscal year?

It's the big one, we know.

So there's a lot of yellow here, largely because we are still waiting on specific plans.

That is what we've termed this year callbacks to look at details and plans before we nail down numbers on both the master park plan, the downtown mall management tree plan, and also just downtown mall infrastructure repairs in general.

The city-county park maintenance, so that is a new request this year.

Typically what happens is for any of the jointly owned parks such as Dardan Town, Abbey Creek, if there's work that is planned, both the city and the county put 50% of that in their budget.

So is the tree management plan, the line item here,

I guess the question is, you know, council sort of approved or at least saw that plan.

Are we moving forward with phase one at some point in the course of this?

That's what that reflects.

And that was the schedule that they came back to us with.

And as that question, we're going to get an answer on that one.

Because my question is, do we need that to continue while we're replacing them?

The notion on that line is it's supposed to be responsive to large dead limbs and dead trees and stuff like that, which present a hazard.

And then Parks Master Plan implementation, we adopted a Parks Master Plan as part of the comp plan now.

It costs a lot of money.

A lot of the results of the plan came back as maintenance driven.

So there are a number of things that I would imagine that the first couple of years are going to be probably lower than what you see in the out years so that we can focus on the maintenance activities first, because there's probably a bigger bang that the public can actually appreciate if we focus there and then get to bigger projects, which is why they're going to come back to me for more.

Okay, and then the master plan is sort of split into stuff with parks and then this, at least budget-wise, the stuff happening with parks and then this like huge new paved trail network, which sort of complements our other sort of on-street, I guess, bike-ped facilities.

Is the

I think part of what the master plan is, it also includes trails, so I would imagine that they would either include those numbers in the parks master plan implementation line, or they may ask us to change the trails line if they can identify what acquisition work could be done and or what improvement work could be done.

One of the changes that is occurring with the trails management is we're shifting some responsibilities to the Capital Division within public works as well.

So there's some coordination that needs to happen between the two.

What do we get from the urban tree planting?

Is that five trees?

Is that 10 trees?

Do we get 120?

Yeah, it's a significant number.

This is probably way out there, but I mean, is there any point for the trees back in West Maine that we lost?

I think we lost over 10.

I think part of the scenario has been the tenor of the conversation about the West Main redevelopment project itself.

That's where the trees was anticipated being addressed.

And since that was taken off the table, it's a matter of it getting back on the table a bit.

To make sure that that gets done first.

Like the West Main streetscape could come back on the table?

I said... Well, silva cell plan.

That's a political decision.

Okay.

I mean, I'm not saying that bad.

I'm just don't know if we're getting another hundred million dollars for that private parts scale, because that's not going to happen.

I think there's an order to that particular process, and I would imagine that staff would come and ask me, do you want trees in all those holes, or would you want to confirm that we're not going to be doing more to the street first?

So I leave room for that question.

I get it.

Looks like you zeroed out the ash tree.

Is there a reason?

It was, I think, that was done last year as part of the plan.

And if I, we can follow up, but I think most of that work had been done, the immediate emergency work.

And we shifted the funding and increased it a little bit in one of the other lines.

I think it went to the urban pre-planning.

So all the dead ones are dead, but we're going to keep inoculating the ones we save.

Probably.

Other strategy?

And affordable housing.

Last year, during the CIP planning process, the Carlton Mobile Home Park was fairly new.

All right, I got, so presumably, and from the book and the CIP, and I've got sideline,

Three years ago, navigating that and getting the data on that was really awkward.

Last year, it got way better.

And this year, I think it's just a whole other level of smoothness on the budget book and the CIP and accessing things and figuring out what's where.

I think, you know, it was pretty good last year.

We got this is.

This upgraded platform is

Better.

Which brings me to Carleton Mobile Home Court.

We're paying principal and interest there at $19,000 a month, presumably.

Is that $4 million going to be bonded to pay that ballooning loan off?

It's a balloon.

So the financing is set with a balloon payment.

So we're basically paying interest in the four years that are here.

Interest payment.

and one principal payment in this current fiscal year and the rest is just basically interest.

It's not bondable.

It's not our loan.

I guess my follow-up was that if we're doing something like that, presumably we're creating an entity in which the city has a piece of the action.

You didn't get close to that, but we're not.

We're just

going to pay us something.

And so presumably, that could also have some sort of refinancing arrangement, too.

Potentially.

And then with specifics on unit count and AMI, yes.

And then on the SISREP, I noticed that we are taking a dive in the program itself, which I think is overdue.

OK.

I think it's overdue for a couple of reasons.

Some of them are way in the weeds because the present structure

was of how this is funded and works was worked out in the basement conference room when Mike was the acting city manager between him and me and Brenda Kelly yelling at us to stop talking so fast because she was trying to take notes on our call.

So, you know, that arrangement there has

The original thing was clunky.

Our fix to it wasn't quite right, but it was the best we could do with what we had.

So I'm glad to see that that's done.

I guess it's a policy decision if we start upping that number.

That also means how much... And changing the mechanics of it.

Yeah.

And can John have to manage the throughput with the current housing stock that we've got?

We're deep in that item and actually had a big conversation about it earlier.

Yeah.

And then I guess my other would be on the affordable housing fund.

I'm just going to be a broken record on this and the capacity piece, you know, it went from the department.

Now we're down to, you know,

Madeline being focused on that.

And, you know, I mean, unless you want putting anything else on her desk, it's just going to result in, as I said in the hackney, the scanners like explosion.

So we didn't lose the second position so we will begin recruiting at some point for the second position and have had conversations about expanding the staff to do it because I mean as we put I mean one of my concerns about the staffing of it is is that the less staff we have the fewer projects the bigger they get perhaps but it doesn't really

And it's not just the projects that we're doing ourselves, but also the things that we're investing in and then the responsibilities that come with tracking those.

It was just a matter of that catching up and the zoning ordinance being stuck for the moment that it was stuck.

Yeah, that's what it says, so essentially another million dollars.

Yeah, fundamental, yeah.

Fundamental would be in addition to this.

Low barrier shelter, is the Salvation Army item correct?

So that item is, that's a construct related to Cherry Avenue, that location exclusively.

And it's a matter of whether or not we would be able to have a facility in partnership with Salvation Army.

Our purchasing holiday drive technically eliminates that, but because I don't give up on things and try to continue to work on things, it's still there because we have other conversations going and there might be an opportunity to do something else.

That would still be in the service of the needs of Young House.

Is there a holiday drive item that will appear?

It will eventually, but we're not sure that we're going to need to do it out of CIP because the intention was that we would not pay into the improvements of the building because our philanthropic friends in the community had offered to step in.

We were going to spend that much to acquire something.

Land Bank.

We took all the money from the Land Bank.

Did we put the money back in?

Will we put the money back in?

So we, I guess the Land Bank conversation has been moving.

I think we're now looking at the revolving loan fund through the Economic Development Authority as a more viable option.

What would happen is any funds that we had earmarked for the Land Bank could go to that to support that being bigger.

But I think there's still, as far as I can appreciate, there's still a couple more questions and conversations to have to make that more viable as the option and then that would be a question for the city to take a look at.

At present.

We may recall that the University of Virginia bought some property and is leasing it for affordable housing.

And we talked about possibly us doing a model similar to that where we use bondable funds to purchase land and then lease it out for affordable housing so that we can use the credit card.

That's the structure of the 10th Street and Fontaine projects, their affordable housing projects, is that they own the land.

I can think of some land we've bought.

We do own a piece of land that is vacant and could be used in that manner, but we're not there yet.

For other acquisitions, not in the cards at this moment, but I think it's because we're carrying quite a load already.

So we're not seeing that yet.

Thank you.

Last one.

The CAF, in theory, my understanding, generally, we wanted to have the CAF big and run projects through the CAF.

We generally don't do that.

But hey, FY31, look at all that space.

It's unlikely that it'll stay that small.

I agree.

I think is what we know.

I would say that is it possible?

At this point, we've got a capacity problem.

What we've discussed in the past is that specific projects tend to end up on this table sort of out of the blue to us in a sense.

Without a cost-benefit analysis or a competitive process comparing projects, we have a table with two providers when we know there are more providers out there.

Perhaps beyond the projects we've already committed to, we could and should have some sort of rigorous defined process to decide what gets these large allocations.

I think the RFIs we've started to do are a start.

The results, the responses to those, I mean, I could FOIA them, but they're not public.

They will be.

Yeah, who has that discussion?

Right, and so part of the affordable housing plan was this idea that we should have oversight structures that became the CAF committee.

That wasn't HAC, because HAC was populated by people requesting funds.

But that became the CAF committee, but then only a tiny subset of money actually goes to CAF and goes through the CAF committee.

And maybe we need

And I think you and I both said last year and the year before that we need some sort of implementation system for this.

The RFL process, the request for investment process, was what was established to make it not blind that individuals would have to meet a deadline.

It was listed as a part of our notice of funding availability that goes out.

in the fall and then each subsequent month there's a deadline for a pot of funds that are available and then the RFI round is the open period that any developer can submit where they're asking us to consider investment.

We have now followed that process for I think two years.

We will be bringing those to council in the budget brief on the

On the 15th of August, so that will be brought to them.

They will be in the public light, but we can share with you the three summary proposals that were received.

Make sure that that happens.

That is the planned process for going forward so that they are considered by council as giving a reaction to what was requested and therefore giving me the indication that they want it to fit into the CIP.

That's what I'm looking

I think maybe if the CAF committee isn't working, we should fix the CAF committee.

That is their purview too.

I hear you, but that's not true.

I've already tried.

I guess the question is, are CRHA projects included in this?

Were they intended to respond to the RFI or did they?

So their projects, really, up until now, the 28, which is the last year for West Haven redevelopment, was all, I wasn't a part of the initial conversation, but that was all coordinated through council commitments and action for that to appear up to FY28.

They did recently request, through the fundamental process, since they're now on that list,

I can't remember what did Taylor tell us today, 200 and some odd thousand as a part of a development project that is being shifted to the RFI process.

Okay.

So that'll mean four.

Six street phase two?

I don't, I don't think so.

Yeah.

So of CRHA projects that I have on my list that I haven't seen any funding anywhere for six street phase two scattered sites, and then there's

I guess the question was mainly just where does that eventual request go?

Does that go through this RFI process?

All of them?

Okay.

Yeah, I have three questions.

Two are on specific projects, and then I'll get to that.

Friendship Court Phase 4, we still have committed funding for.

Have we seen a plan for Friendship Court Phase 4?

Because last I checked, it was Phase 4 TBD.

I would say we're working on, even today, having a conversation about that specific phase.

501 Cherry did not get 9% Lytex.

Now IC has applied for 4% Lytex.

Our funding commitment hasn't changed.

We can consider it at this time as well.

But not reapply for 9% next year.

I'm not sure.

Okay.

I think these are the sorts of things that I feel should be public, particularly when we're committing millions of dollars to these projects.

I would also argue that we should request and require that we see Project Proformas as a part of these funding commitments.

So anyway, that brings me to my last question that everyone's waiting for.

$11 million in cash.

We can plan to get it, right?

We are planning to get it.

OK.

I hope so.

I want it to be a little bit closer to our hands.

Have we gotten an indication from the bloom of whether they're going to choose on-site units or in-loop payments?

I think that's part of why we went away.

Because it's or.

And it could be anywhere in between that based on any changes or mixed changes.

And exactly when it's still fuzzy, too.

Gotcha.

But in the next year or so.

So we're excited knowing that it's coming, but we would love to know when we're going to see it.

OK.

Certificate of items.

That's pretty amazing.

And then the exact amount, because it's set as a multiple of the old inclusionary zoning in lieu requirement under 3412, which is per square foot in excess of 1.0 FAR at a certain dollar amount that then gets adjusted for inflation, which I'm sure we've been keeping up those spreadsheets, right?

Also why we want to wait.

I agree.

are all three, actually.

Which is why we remain excited that the money is coming.

We know it's coming.

When our council makes that determination.

OK.

OK.

Just want to make sure we spend it within the statutorily required period before we have to give it back.

It's my job.

We will do that.

And then, are there other cash proffers that we're aware of on the horizon?

OK, so Valley Road or Grocery Ascended is the other one that I know we've accepted in my time.

Obviously, I haven't received yet.

So make sure we keep track of all of them.

Thank you.

But don't go on my horizon now.

I got it.

You ready?

Anything else here?

The technology infrastructure, the communication, the first one, the $40,000, that's basically funded through PEG fees that are collected and have to be spent on public access.

The citywide IT infrastructure, this is an account that we use to help with infrastructure, technology infrastructure that has happened during the year.

Most recently, we've used the funds in that account to help

to help get implementation underway for asset management.

We also used it for an upgrade to our procurement system at one point.

And then our voting equipment is due for replacement, and this was funded over two years, and that will be taken care of in 2017.

So what's next is we've had the work session tonight.

You all have a public joint public hearing with council on the ninth.

Again, that's when you will frame sort of your formal recommendation to the city manager for consideration with his proposed budget that will be released to council on March 2nd.

And then finally, you've already mentioned this, but just to let you know, we have the Budget Explorer tool.

Part of that, if you scroll down, there is also a new CIP quarterly report.

Sure.

What's up with that $74?

What's up with that $74?

The Darryl Fund, pizza party for the crew.

For those who haven't seen it, we have, as was referenced, there's a CIP quarterly report.

You'll see in there projects that are underway.

with updates as to what the status is of them.

There's information about each project with pictures and so on.

It's one of the reasons we're also moving away from lump sums to specific projects, because we can more readily report on specific projects, right?

And so, I mean, this is intended to be a public

asset really for folks to understand the work that's happening and the time frame under which it's happening.

The document is highly sortable, navigable, so if you haven't seen it, please check it out.

And I should note, we're building it out over time.

It's because the same staff that are actually managing these projects are responsible for providing those updates and getting more and more of them into the system.

And then just this just a reminder of important dates that are coming up again.

You can join us every Thursday in March for our budget work sessions with council.

I should have looked this up, but I don't recall.

I think the CIP work session is the 26th, if I'm not mistaken.

We will have two public hearings, March 16th, April 7th.

We're going to have a community budget forum on March 19th, and then council will formally adopt the budget on April 9th.

There also will be a few city manager budget forums.

There'll be more information coming out for that as well.

Good job.

Good job.

Well, I have planned additional comments, but I think they've all come out based on the questions that you all posed.

So I will just simply say that

You'll see that you're seeing that there's significant cash that's being used in the CIP.

There's CIP contingency that's being used, and there's a hefty amount of debt service that is supporting all of this.

Balancing all of that is really the task at hand.

There's no desire to push back and hold off.

It's really about just trying to make sure that our numbers are accurate, that the CIP is tight, and a sense of what's in there should be in there for getting something done.

not just the D.C.

Yes, very long time.

Back to you, Jim Tolar.

Jim Tolar, the person who's the staff commissioner.

I've been a two-time new commissioner and I've been in my leadership.

Thank you.

Today is the 125th birthday of Ricardo Montblanc.

and I noted as we as I thought about that and by the way it's also Jeffrey Hunter's birthday which is a really super deep Star Trek cut but going back to Ricardo Montalban and I do not propose that we go back into this right now but I noticed that there was no line to reupholster

and the City Council Seating with Rich Corinthian Levim, to which I'm just going to state my objection and then ask that we adjourn.

I'm Corinthian Levim.

Oh, ow.