City Council Monthly Work Session   4/28/2020

All right, thank you.

I called this meeting to order for the Charlottesville City Council.

I hope you all are doing as well as possible and it's good to see your faces even from a distance.

I'll just start by saying that

On behalf of council, we appreciate all the work that you all are doing attempting to keep the city stable in these very uncertain times.

And I sincerely appreciate each and every one of your efforts by trying to help sustain the workforce while also taking care of yourselves and your family.

And I hope that your families are doing well.

And I hope that we,

even though you're not seeing us, that you know that we are here and that we are attempting to do our best by you all.

And I look forward to hearing and hope that the citizens feel a little bit more comfort with hearing what you all have been working on and planning and what future plans look like.

I know with so much uncertainty and fear, everyone is just looking for any else with stability

that they can kind of grab and hold on to.

So I appreciate you all for being that stability for them at time.

I'm going to ask Clerk of Counsel to just do a quick roll call for counsel since we're not on, and I'll turn it over to Dr. Richardson.

OK.

Tina, can you hear me?

I am here.

I'm going to call the roll in the normal seating arrangement for council chamber.

Ms.

Walker?

Magill?

Here.

Ms.

Hill?

Here.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, members of the council and the public.

What we do have here today is basically a discussion to talk about COVID-19 and the work that we have been doing since we declared the emergency.

We have been trying to provide a community with as much information as possible through various means.

We also have been providing the public with information through Seaville 360, which has been a great addition

in terms of our ability to provide the public with information and today is just to further that.

I know that we've had a lot of discussions over the last few weeks in terms of what we're doing and many questions have been asked not only from the council but also from the public and I know we share a lot of information with the council but this is a great opportunity for us to provide

the public with additional information from our various directors who will be presenting today and to talk about what they're doing within their departments.

What we've done for today is divided into two groups.

And once we're done with one group, the next group will come on and present information.

And council, if you have any questions about the duration of each presentation,

We welcome the questions that you may have.

So I'm going to turn it over and get it started.

Thank you, Dr. Richardson.

Good afternoon, counselors.

Yes.

Good afternoon, Alex.

Good.

Well, today, I just want to let everybody know that NDS is well and alive.

And we are doing everything we're supposed to be, with the exception of new submissions in accordance with the emergency order.

We are reviewing all pending developments received on or before March 12, 2020.

Those include the site plans.

Platz, initial reviews, resubmissions, stormwater management, and erosion and sedimentation control plans.

We are also receiving and also reviewing building permits and applications and doing inspections.

Property maintenance staff are also hard at work inspecting and taking actions regarding New Zealand's abatement

Likewise, our zoning administrator, we have a lot of zoning activities going on at this point in time, sending out letters, verification letters and violation letters, including a renewal of Airbnb or homestay renewals.

And we are also following up with ADA, review of street and sidewalk closures, and also following up on the complaints.

and then responding to our daily inquiries.

We'd also like to report out that the comprehensive plan process is also going on according to our schedule.

The steering committee is meeting.

We had a few weeks ago virtual steering committee meetings.

There were about 40 people participating in that particular virtual meetings.

The Star Hill vision plan, the updated draft has been submitted.

And we have distributed that to appropriate city departments for review.

Likewise, the Cherry Avenue.

A couple of months ago, the Planning Commission had a work session on Cherry Avenue small area plan.

The comments from that Planning Commission work session has been compiled and resubmitted to the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission.

So they can take that into consideration in terms of updating the plan.

The Rivanna Project corridor plan, which is being undertaken by Thomas Jefferson MPO, it's also going on at this point in time.

And NDS is also providing the necessary support for the HUD-mandated action plan and the supplemental funding of $246,000 that we received from HUD.

In terms of staffing, currently we have two or three staff at NDS.

And of those, 17 of our staff are telecommuting.

In essence, they are working from home.

Four of the staff have a combination of working at home and then coming into the office.

Twice a week, front desk staff are here.

going through applications and emails and the checks received for permit process.

And on a daily basis, we have two full-time staff here, myself and our plan examiner.

The other staff do stop by the office from time to time.

However, we have a tight control of staff stopping

stopping at the office during the regular hours, because we don't want to have more than four or three employees at one time in the office due to the compactness of our office.

We are very worried about that.

So the staff movement, in terms of people stopping by the office to pick up something or print something or scan something, it's heavily regulated.

Again, at any given point in time, we have a policy, internal policy, that requires no more than four staff

on the NDA surface.

The next steps, things we are looking at doing here, next steps is beginning this Friday, May 1st, from 10 a.m.

to 12, we are looking at implementing a drop-off to increase the number of submissions and also provide the expanded opportunity for applicants to fast-track submission of their applications to us.

It will be for two hours on Friday, every Friday from 10 o'clock to 12 p.m.

We are also working with public works, public utilities, fire department in terms of accelerating the acquisition of the development review software and permit tracking.

Hopefully the funding will continue to be here, to be there so we can be able to implement that as quickly as possible.

The other consideration that we are looking at doing, it's the new submissions, because the emergency order prohibits submission of new SUP and rezoning applications.

So how to deal with that going forward needs to be considered.

And also the virtual planning commission meeting, so that those applications, when we can accept them, the planning commission, we

you're able to hear them either virtually or one way or the other.

Some of the changes NDSC has put in place in order to enable us to continue to do our job has included when I'm doing a virtual pre-construction review process, we are using the Zoom and their teams for interdepartmental meetings and their meetings with the public.

And we also participated in the severe 360 as a means of providing information to the public in terms of our operations.

Interdepartmental review process using the teams of applications we received.

And there is a very innovative and a shout out to our building inspections.

We are doing a remote building inspection process right now.

put on site remotely.

In essence, our building inspectors, they engage the contractors and the builders who are zooming what's going on on site to them, and they can make a decision in the comfort of their homes.

So we have experimented that.

It's working, and our inspectors are using it, so kudos goes out to our inspectors.

We have also modified the plot signing.

Usually, the chair of the planning commission signs the final plot, which is coordinated from the city attorney's office.

But we have asked the chair of the planning commission to grant the planning director the authorization to sign the plot so we don't have to wait for the planning commission.

We've put that in place.

And again, like I said, we've submitted

We've proposed to implement a drop-off this Friday.

I have a few statistics that I would like to share with the City Council.

For me, it was surprising that, to me and my staff, in the first quarter of 2019, we had 511 permits, total permits issued by NDS.

On the first quarter of 2020, we had 434 permits issued, which is down by about 15%.

The building permits on its own, 2020 first quarter, 140 permits.

And in 2009, 123 permits was issued in 2009.

So the permits remains pretty high compared to last year.

It's up by 14%.

which is good.

And in terms of the total value of the construction project based on the permit issued by NDS, in 2019 fourth quarter was $62.3 million.

In 2020 first quarter where the total value was $65.3 million, an increase of 4.8%, which is good.

The building inspections in the first quarter of 2019 was 1,344.

And in 2020, we have 1,421 building inspections, which is up by 4.7%.

The revenue, I'm sure the city council would be interested in this and the city manager as well.

The revenues in 2019, first quarter, which is the first three months of the year, the revenue for 2019 was $302,000.

In 2020, first quarter, we had $325,123, which is up by 7.5%.

I can email this to Council later on.

So that was a surprise to us.

Essentially, what it indicates is that

Our inspectors, the building permits, is still coming in at least as of March.

The way it was coming in in the first quarter of last year now, between now and the end of the fiscal year, which is June 30th, right now we are not sure what's going to happen.

But as far as we are concerned, the construction industries, the building permit, the revenue from the permit

have stayed relatively the same, or if not, increased compared to first quarter of last year.

So that's where we are.

And our staff has been doing a fantastic job in terms of the planning staff, doing their review remotely, the building inspectors, figuring out a much better way to make sure that the deadlines are met and they provide the type of response that

construction industry is going to need us to provide.

And we have some challenges.

As everybody knows, this is a new way of doing things for now, that we are walking through those challenges.

And one of the things that is to be considered later on is improving the way payments are being made so that they will have a more effective

and responsive electronic payments using the credit card and what have you.

So again, that's where we are.

Thank you.

Yes, first of all, thank you and really want to echo the thanks to staff for all they're doing to work in this environment.

My question is around, council's going to discuss at the end of this meeting what broadening we may have in terms of the types of meetings that might go virtual because there has been some flexibility provided from Richmond on how much can be happening remotely.

And so let's just say hypothetically that planning commission is determined to be a priority so that we can continue to have some of those things moving forward.

We are waiting for council.

We've started discussing how that's going to take place.

Of course, it will be a virtual meeting.

We're working with the communication director.

I think other communities are beginning to implement that.

I just want to point out, every Friday, the Virginia planning directors, we have a

Roundtable Conference on how each jurisdiction is doing, how everybody's handling this situation.

And once the city attorney makes determination how we intend to comply with, I believe, House Bill 29 or 30 regarding a virtual meeting by the Planning Commission, we take it from there.

We've started discussing that particular process, how it's going to work,

how we are going to implement that.

I think it's going to be a challenge at the beginning, but we have to find a way to move forward in terms of that.

And then like City Attorney suggested, you know, we may have to begin accepting the applications right now.

We may not necessarily meet the timeline, you know, like SUV or rezoning, but at least we start preparing them.

just in case the city opens for business in a normal way.

We haven't thought about that.

That is not going to be the regular

Time right now that we are using.

Right now, we are meeting the timeline.

Our timeline, we are getting things done in accordance with the statutory timeline.

But going forward, if we continue to operate under the COVID-19 situation, in terms of new submission, dealing with the Planning Commission and stuff like that, we may not be able to meet that plan.

We do whatever we can to make sure that things get done.

However, I just want to point out one of the challenges in terms of planning commission meeting virtually is going to be an issue of equity, whether the grassroots population, the people who live in neighborhood, whether they will have the means to actually being able to provide their comments in terms of a given application.

Yeah, so that's an important piece and also making sure that whatever changes are made that I would hope that we are structuring them around the staff's safety and well-being.

So those timelines need, I would hope that we are

always considering their health physically and mentally in those timelines.

And I think if we're just upfront with the public about what we think they'll be, then that'll help everyone just know what they are.

It'll be a slower process, but that we're making sure that people are safe.

I have a question about, I know the LIHTC credit applications were coming to you right before everything kind of blew up.

What happened?

No, I think we did what we had to do to enable them to submit the application.

The city did its part.

The Planning Commission took action.

I believe there is a form the city was supposed to sign.

that is submitted along with the LIHTC application, that form was signed.

So I think everything is in order unless the state rejects the application.

But at this point, I think the application was submitted on schedule.

Yeah, I think the site plans are done for like phase one and also Friendship Court.

And thank you very much for that and also for your staff.

I will.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you, Alex.

Thank you, Mr. Manager, Members of Council.

I'm just going to give you a pretty high-level update on the Fire Department community and Emergency Operations Center

operations in the COVID-19 environment.

So three things we're going to talk about, operations in the pandemic environment, the city COVID-19 incident management team, and then our regional emergency operations center.

For CFD, since the declaration more than a month ago, all of our fire stations are closed to the public.

and they're also close to family members of our on-duty members if they want to talk to them.

They do it by cell phone in the parking lot.

We're doing temperature checks when our folks arrive for duty and they have to complete a health affirmation just as a screening process to make sure the workforce stays healthy.

We canceled many weeks ago all leave for all of our chief officers.

We've got only five civilian staff in our department and four of those five are teleworking.

The fifth is our civilian fire mechanic who continues to work to maintain our heavy duty fleet, our fire trucks.

and other equipment and maintenance issues as well.

And then we have one assistant fire marshal, Alex reference plans review, who's conducting the fire component of plans review remotely and then is also doing a small number of required inspections and checks remotely as well through video link with building owners and property owners.

In terms of our emergency operations, that all begins with a 911 call, as everyone is aware.

We've been doing various levels of call screening through the questions, the queries that our communications officers at our regional ECC go through.

We're not trying to diagnose COVID on the 911 line.

We're just trying to give our responders an initial sense of whether or not this is a high or medium or low risk response.

We also suspended a number of weeks ago our basic life support first response and so folks understand what that means.

When there are no ambulances available to the system volume we will send a fire engine just to make sure somebody gets there.

Those are generally low acuity calls so we stopped doing that five or six weeks ago just to reduce the risk to our responders as well.

On all of our incidents now, we do what we refer to as a scout model, where we send in one of our firefighter EMTs or firefighter medics into the scene to do an initial assessment.

It's essentially the same approach we would take on a hazardous materials call.

We also, through the ECC, ask callers if they can safely do so to come outside or at least to come to the door.

That's also critically important when we're responding to licensed care facilities, nursing homes, assisted living facilities.

And then that initial provider, that initial firefighter or EMT or paramedic makes a very quick assessment about the level of personal protective equipment that's required

and what kind of resources that they need.

We still send the same resources to the call that we were sending before, but then we just make sure that there's a little bit more intention at the front end with who needs to actually be in there.

All of our protocols in terms of dispatch and response are the same for Charlottesville Fire, Charlottesville Albemarle Rescue Squad, and all of the agencies that fall under the Albemarle County Fire Rescue umbrella as well.

In terms of PPE, we've been keeping up our practices with the CDC guidance, which has changed over time, initially driven by understanding of the disease plus also transmissibility, and then finally the hard cold fact of the availability of PPE.

All of that is done to try and create a balance between risk to our firefighters and our EMTs and our medics and our other first responders and still being able to provide that level of service that our community expects and deserves.

In terms of PPE, we have adequate stock right now for all of our folks.

We are seeing some indication of some level of recovery in various components of the supply chain, but I would describe it as consistently inconsistent at this point.

But we are in a better position than we were, say, 14 days ago in terms of PPE.

We do have contingency plans in place and have for a couple of months now should we get to a really dire condition in terms of PPE and that involves what we call powered air purifying respirators or PAPRs which we already have or if need be self-contained breathing apparatus and we've been in contact with some departments around the country who've had to take those steps before so we're comfortable if we needed to move in that direction.

The other thing I wanted to share about PPE is through a great relationship that we've developed in our all the time we spent together in the Emergency Operations Center with the county and the University of Virginia, UVA has agreed to fold in to their new UV light sterilization process

Thank you so much for having me.

All of our folks receive a weekly, very detailed operations briefing.

We have a common set of protocols that I mentioned, which includes a very robust post-exposure protocol, which has again changed over time as we've learned more and more about coronavirus and COVID-19.

We've worked very closely every day with our long-term care facilities in the region.

As people would know from just from watching the news, that's been one of the highest risk consequence groups in the US and around the world is folks that are in licensed care facilities, and we've seen a couple of those locally.

Fortunately, they have not had the type of extreme outcomes that we've seen down in the Richmond area, but it's something we're spending a lot of time planning for and coordinating for.

We've worked very closely again with the university on our EMS hospital transfer process to balance, again, really good patient care with protecting our providers and minimizing the use of PPE and making sure that we can decontaminate our equipment, our personnel, and our units and reduce the amount of time that they're out of service.

So certainly a change in how we've historically done business.

In terms of the city's incident management team, we're working on a seven-day operational period now.

We have an incident action plan that gets pushed out every seven days.

Our strategic goals, which if you've been watching Steveville 360, folks will be familiar with these, providing essential services, protecting our vulnerable populations, protecting our first response community, and all of our essential workers, and sustaining the healthcare system.

Within that incident management team, we have four major branches, each of which has their own set of incident objectives, human services, public safety, logistics, and finance and administration.

One of the areas of focus that our IMT has really pivoted towards in the last two weeks is recovery and transition planning.

You've seen probably information from the federal level.

There's a report out from the Governor's Association in the US.

We started that process several weeks ago to build a model for how to think about and then plan for

but recovery and transition.

So we're right now in a mitigation phase and then we project forward three different phases of recovery and transition.

So some of the things that we're trying to make sure that we do and one of our deputy chiefs, Deputy Chief Joe Powers with the fire department is working with every department in the city to work through a facilitated process.

It's very structured.

We collect a lot of data and information.

And what we're trying to do is capture some of what Alex talked about.

Some of the processes that we're doing now in this environment are very efficient and might be things that we want to keep doing moving forward.

So we're really trying to capture those and make sure that we don't miss an opportunity here, right?

So every crisis is an opportunity.

But also we want to make sure that the space when we do reopen, to Mayor Walker's point about the safety and health of our workforce, that we're taking the correct steps in terms of engineering the spaces so that the work can take place in a safe environment for both our employees and for our residents and our citizens and our customers.

That process is ongoing and will likely be ongoing for the foreseeable future as we learn, as we apply these various strategies and tactics to a recovery and transition phase and learn what works and what doesn't.

Another important, critically important point in terms of the strategy for recovery and transition

is we recognize that based on experience in other communities in the US and around the world that we need to plan for going back to more restrictions.

So if there were to be another bloom of the disease, we'd want to make sure that we had that nailed down in terms of our protocols and our policies and our procedures so we can do that as efficiently as possible.

In terms of our regional focus, we, as folks probably are aware, also won the emergency declaration.

It's declared at the local level that activates our regional emergency operations plan, which is the city, the university, and the county.

We share that EOP.

We've been working under a unified command since that day, and that includes representative from the Thomas Jefferson Health District,

representatives from the city, the university, and the county.

And in all pandemics, the health department is the lead agency, so we are there to support the health department and all of their efforts, and they are there to inform us about what we need to know to operate safely in this environment.

At the regional level, we are also operating on a seven-day operational period, and we have an incident action plan that is really fed by the IAPs that are developed by the city and the county, so they're all aligned.

Some of the areas of focus in the regional EOC, we stood up a JIC or a Joint Information Center when this got started, and they are highly functional.

I referenced earlier the focus on our long-term care facilities.

We had the National Guard in for the last several days assisting staff at those facilities with N95 fit testing.

And so that's a critical component.

If you can get the N95, that's great, but if they haven't been fit tested, so that's an important logistical consideration.

That partnership with our regional EOC, the Virginia Department of Emergency Management, and the National Guard, that's exactly how that's supposed to work.

Again, at the regional level, focus on our vulnerable populations.

Over the last weekend, we moved a number of our homeless population that were particularly high risk into hotels, and that has relieved some of the pressure on the shelters that we had set up initially and allows them to be safer and healthier and maintain social distancing within those environments.

We continue to coordinate on a regular basis between the health system and our EMS system to make sure that we're really in lockstep in terms of our understanding of the risk and our procedures.

A lot of the grassroots volunteer and donation efforts that began wonderfully just within the community organically

have been folded into a little bit more structured environment through the Emergency Operations Center, what we call ESF 17, which manages volunteers and donations.

That seems to be working well.

We've also worked very closely with area funeral homes on decedent affairs, which is not a topic that people want to talk about.

But it's very, very important in this environment.

We've talked about that before in various forums, how people struggle when they lose a loved one.

They want to come together and have a funeral, as we all would, but that's a risky proposition in this environment.

So we're trying to work with people to make sure that they understand the risks and

and have all the protocols and policies in place and the relationships to make that as smooth as it can be.

And our current roles in the EOC include as a unified command.

CFD has supplied also a deputy operations section chief and a fire and EMS branch director and a number of other personnel as well.

Thank you for the update.

My first question is just the seven day operation period.

Sure it's a good question.

So one of the roles of the planning section chief in any incident like this really at any level is to determine the appropriate length of an operational period.

When we started this process we were thinking about it in 24-hour chunks

and because we were ramping up so quickly.

And then we went to a 72 hour and then several weeks ago we went to the seven day.

Basically one of the things that would require us to move to a much shorter period rapidly would be a sudden catastrophic event, for example.

Sometimes we refer to that as an incident within an incident.

So if we had something else happen that was very high risk that might not have anything to do with COVID,

if we had a major fire or a plane crash or a train crash or an MCI or a secondary outbreak where we would have to regroup and analyze our strategy and our incident objectives very, very quickly to potentially redeploy all these resources.

That's one of the things that would trigger sort of a retraction to a much shorter operational period.

In the other direction, if we are meeting once a week to review our IAP and we realize that nothing has changed in the last week or the last two weeks, then we probably don't need to continue to meet at that pace, right?

So it's really more of an art than a science.

And in our world, we'd much rather be accused of having spent too much time planning

I just had a question around the process that's being followed to engage with the departments and what kind of the ramp up looks like.

And then you mentioned the thing none of us want to talk about, but if we have to find ourselves re-engaging in this again, obviously we've learned a lot of lessons from that.

Can you kind of just go over where you are in terms of documenting that?

Sure, so we sat down several weeks ago and sort of had a brainstorming session about this topic and did some research, have since formed a partnership with some folks at the Batten School to really be intentional about looking around the world for communities that have gone through this process already and they're reporting back to us at the end of this week, but we found some documents

online and through various sources that provided some information about what the triggers are for those phases.

And then we created essentially spreadsheets that Deputy Chief Powers goes and speaks with all the departments about to identify essentially what were you doing, what were your services before this happened,

What are you doing now?

And in phase one, based on those criteria, so for example, if what you want to do next involves groups of 50 people and phase one is only limiting you to 10 people, well, then you're not going to be able to do that activity, right?

But phase two, you could.

And then what would it take you from today to ramp up to that?

And that looks different in every department.

So Alex mentioned some changes they're going to need to make to the physical space in NDS and moving to an electronic system, a digital system for some of the work that they do.

That's going to be very different than a summer camp for kids.

That's going to be very different.

then perhaps how CPD will go about changing back to some of their practices in terms of a traffic stop or something like that.

I would ask because I just think that we are obviously getting questions from the community around like what the next X number of time looks like and I just think as background information it's just helpful to kind of understand what is that forecast looking like so that we can start to manage our expectations.

I mean you mentioned summer camps which is something I know that both private and public camps are going to be hearing from parents about and wondering how it's going to be handled.

And there's this type of activity going on.

And I think Chris Engle can probably speak to what's happening in the Chamber of Commerce.

They've got their own project set up, which is region wide, as I understand it.

And we've got at least one of our members participating in that as well.

And we're driving the train and laying the track at the same time.

And in terms of the

Could you discuss more around the, is there still an expectation of a local peak?

What does that look like?

Are we following the same guidelines that the governor laid out for phase one of reopening?

Yes, our planning, our intention would be to as we've tried to do all along is to tie our operations in the fire side of things and EMS and all that and in terms of this city-wide recovery planning

to CDC, VDH, or any other valid source that we can find understanding that a lot of this is new.

But yes, in terms of the transition, I think there's a common understanding now that the 14-day period of a consistent reduction in new cases is really the most

is an appropriate way to think about moving to the next phase.

That said, I think everyone understands that if testing is still limited, as it is today, that there's a degree of risk associated with that.

So I think that's why myself and many, many other, a lot of smarter people than I am have said that the key here moving forward in the medium term and the long term is the availability of testing, accurate testing.

Yes, actually one of the primary areas of focus initially with the Emergency Operations Center was to make sure that regionally we had the plans in place in terms of logistics and the actual plans themselves to set up a community-based testing.

So those have been ready to go for several weeks now.

The limiting factor simply has been the availability of tests.

You're starting to see more of that in the community.

There was one in Fluvanna last week.

I understand that Martha Jefferson is working with some folks in the city to do one at 500 South First Street.

And those are all terrific, but they are, in terms of scale, those are all incredibly small scale compared to the overall population, just even of Charlottesville.

So hopefully some, I know there's a lot of

A lot of great work going on trying to increase that testing capacity.

Yeah, Martha Jefferson originally offered 50 tests, and we were able to talk them into considering 150, and now we're about at 100, and then if there are more people that show up, they'll do that, you know, to the best of their ability.

Sure.

And I should say, in terms of having worked with them very closely for these last couple of months, both the health department and the health systems and hospitals have been, with a limited number of tests, they've been trying to use them, husband them for the people that are the sickest.

And that is going to drive the care that they receive.

And I think that makes sense.

But as I said, the ultimate solution is that we don't have to compete in any way, shape, or form for testing.

And one more for me that you know in terms of talking about any challenges Mr. Iacofuna talked about that within his department what are and that was one of my questions so I didn't have to ask you before but in terms of challenges not just

So one of the advantages that we have in the fire service, we really are a family.

We spend a third of our working lives together in a very communal environment.

We go to the grocery store together, we eat meals together, we work out together.

And every once in a while, we risk our lives together.

So it's a very tight group, and that gives us an incredible strength in this type of environment.

That said, everyone here, as you said when we started talking, not just concerned about

doing their job, which they're doing superbly every day, but they're also concerned about their families and their loved ones.

My concern in terms of our workforce and our firefighters and all the first response community is sustainability.

We talked in the IMT about

A couple of months ago, I was saying this is a marathon, not a sprint.

Well, the reality is this is an ultra marathon and we're not even a water stop.

And so we've got to think about, you know, I mentioned canceling leave.

We canceled leave for our chief officers and above, but we didn't do that for captains and firefighters.

and that's intentional.

It's probably costing us a little more money over time to be honest but I think it's important that our folks can cycle out when they need to and decompress and take care of their families because we're going to be in this for the long haul and we do recognize also that

Those of us, particularly in public safety, are really part of the infrastructure of the community.

So we can't not be here.

We can't not be really good at what we do.

That's not an option.

So good question.

Thank you for asking the question.

And really the long-term sustainability is the most important thing.

We have a very robust behavioral health strategy.

We have an internal peer support team.

Albemarle County Fire Rescue has a peer support team.

The mental health community in the greater Charlottesville area has been incredibly supportive, particularly since 2017.

We have relationships with clinicians.

We get fed.

So yeah, we'll just try and focus on the same things that we tell the community, right?

and so that was something that I had flipped the page, but I had highlighted.

So counsel and leave, I just assume that there's no one, even if you are home, you are not on vacation, right?

And people are not really traveling unless they have to take care of family that no one else can take care of is what.

So could you talk a little bit about what that

So the bulk of our workforce are at the rank of firefighter and captain.

So their vacations and holidays are essentially unchanged.

And if they need time off, they take time off.

For our battalion chiefs and above, battalion chiefs, deputy chief, fire chief, we're just now beginning to say, okay, it's time to think about taking some time off.

We've had or I know we've had the two to one budget discussions and I know that it's still something that's being processed at that level but I've stated and I know other counselors that we do acknowledge that there's you know people within the city that are doing work that other people are not doing and that are risking their safety and their family safety in a way that other people are not doing.

And so we acknowledge that, and it will be a top priority whenever we are stable to make sure that that is acknowledged in some kind of compensation form.

And so that will be a discussion that I will continue to have.

And I just hope that you all know that and understand that we

Thank you.

I'm sure our firefighters will appreciate hearing that from you.

Thank you.

I have two questions.

One with the PPE.

Is there any sense at the moment about whether right now there is sufficient PPE to cover not just some of the first responders and healthcare workers, but essential workers like bus drivers, grocery store workers, etc., as well as, you know, we haven't really had

significant community spread here yet, like a lot of other localities have?

And is there any sense, if we do see rapid, more large-scale community spread, that that would start to potentially strain our supply of PPE?

And then, the second question is – it's talked a little bit, but let's say we go through a transition period and

You know, the economy's opened up a little bit in Virginia, but a year from now, we see like a second wave come back.

So on the PPE question,

I think we're not in a position yet to say that the supply chain is robust enough to wear some of those sort of, I would say, secondary and tertiary, if you will, folks that are out in the community providing a level of service, and I don't mean that in a negative way at all, but that's why that guidance right now is for cloth masks.

I can envision a time when a grocery store chain will, as part of their business, supply all of their staff with a surgical mask.

But the supply system right now simply could not sustain that.

And correctly, businesses and business owners are, at least in my experience, following the guideline of that's the appropriate place for a cloth mask.

And remember there's different purposes for the masks, right?

So when we're talking about PPE in our environment, we're talking about not just protecting the patient, but protecting the providers.

And that's where the actual respirator comes into play.

The purpose of the cloth mask and even the surgical mask for people out in the community for the most part is to protect them from infecting other people by containing their droplets.

I can see that happening, but we're not at that point yet.

And in terms of, is there something coming down the pike potentially that could really strain and stress our current stocks of PPE and ability to replenish?

Absolutely.

That's why I'm pretty cautious about saying I'm comfortable right now, but something could happen.

In terms of a second wave,

I think our response to the second time something happens will be more efficient if it happens.

And it's one of the reasons we really wanted to do this recovery transition planning with some serious focus and some serious intention to capture what works well in all of the phases

so that going in the other direction shouldn't be that much of a challenge.

The other thing I would suggest about whether another wave in six months or 12 months, think about what we knew 30 days ago or 60 days ago, right?

And project that forward sort of logarithmically into the future.

Testing will be different in six months.

There's no question about that, right?

In 12 months, 18 months, maybe there's a vaccine that provides some coverage.

In six months, we should have a much clearer understanding of whether or not exposure confers immunity, which is a game changer in terms of how we react to, plan for and react to a second wave if that were to occur.

The other thing about waves is timing, right?

So if another wave happens during a peak of a traditional influenza season, that's a potential

a series of risks there.

The good thing about that is that we now know, I think, in a way that those of us in the health professions have been shouting from the mountaintop for many, many years.

We know what prevents transmission of these diseases, right?

And social distancing, hand hygiene, cough etiquette, vaccination, healthy habits, those are gonna be the strategies regardless.

OK.

Well, thank you.

We appreciate the work that you and your team are doing.

Thank you, Chief Baxter.

All right.

Thank you, Dr. Richardson.

Can everybody hear me?

Well, greetings from the Office of Economic Development.

It's good to see everybody.

It's been a while.

I want to walk you through some of the updates that we've encountered, activities that we've been involved in over the last 45 days that have been a little different than our normal activities, but we're adapting and we're doing well.

I want to tell you that the first thing we did along about the middle of March was we reactivated what we used to do on a regular basis which was an email blast to business owners that we have in our list.

We have kind of gotten away from that with the advent of social media and

absence a significant crisis, people don't always want to hear from us as often as they might when things change.

So we reactivated that email blast list, about 650 folks are on that, and we started doing regular communications to them just to let them know that we were here, started to provide them lists of resources, links, links to webinars, how-to videos, things of that nature.

primarily focused at the business community that was starting to feel this even in the first week or two.

And those messages, we've done over 10 of those now, 12 of those actually to be exact.

And the open rates are above 50% on almost all of them.

The click-through rates are in the high 20s.

And these are numbers that we're not typically used to seeing in a normal time we would get.

actually bothering to open a message.

So it sent a signal to us that people were hungry for information and they wanted to know that we were available for assistance, that we would answer the phone, that we would answer an email.

and so that's been a good, that was a good first step that we did in the week, the first week of the emergency.

We now maintain an extensive business resource page on our home web page for the Office of Economic Development.

That's kind of a running list of access, federal, state, local resources and that's updated daily and people are visiting that for good information.

We also did real quickly in that first week, this is going to seem like a small item that probably shouldn't even be mentioned, but it did mean a lot to a number of retail and restaurant businesses that transitioned quickly from in-house to curbside pickup delivery pickout options.

And what we did was the grab-and-go curbside pickup signage that you all have seen.

We did this in a 48 hour period from idea to implementation which was rather rapid and we had some support from some design support from a local company and a printer support as well to get those in place.

There are 20 of those around town now and we have received countless comments, positive comments in terms of what that meant to those businesses just to have

that sign put in place.

There's actually no enforcement that comes with that sign but the community has been respectful of them nonetheless.

Thank the city manager and the traffic engineer for quickly agreeing to support us in that effort as the Office of Economic Development has no authority or ability to put up signs around town but they were supportive of that we were able to do that quickly.

So moving on to some of the more significant items that we

have put in place.

Our Economic Development Authority met in an emergency session in late March, and we had crafted some tweaks to existing programs and a couple of new programs as well that they were willing to support with some reserve funds.

And we quickly launched those.

First of April, we launched the first one, which is called the BRACE grant.

and BRACE stands for Building Resiliency Among Charlottesville Entrepreneurs.

It's a takeoff on an existing program, which is known as the ACE program, which is Advancing Charlottesville Entrepreneurs.

So we tweaked it to focus on building resiliency and encourage folks to apply that had a specific desire to pivot their business given the situation and they needed some help with that.

Realizing the severity of the situation, we also allowed some of those funds to be used for what would be traditional fixed costs, which would normally be outside of the purview of an ACE program.

So we allowed a kind of a 50-50 split for folks to apply there.

We were overwhelmed with applications.

In 48 hours, we had 150 applications.

We've been through those.

We've processed 70 awards, and that most

90% of that money is out the door now.

The average grant was $1,200.

Some examples include a local company actually joined in the production of PPE using some of their equipment to cut face shields.

They needed the materials to do that.

The grant paid for those materials and the delivery of those materials.

restaurants that transition to online or retail that transition to online were using point of sale systems that they needed some assistance with.

So other examples, some folks bought equipment that was in limbo given the situation and they were able to continue forward with those purchases.

And that was a

And moving on to the second one, which was the Business Equity Fund.

This was established about a year ago by council with a contribution to the Community Investment Collaborative.

It's a loan involving loan fund for

So it has a bit of a track record, we knew it was working well and we simply added some capital to that and tweaked some of the parameters around which loans could be made there.

We changed the amount, lowered the interest, created a longer payback period, and allowed six months to have no payback for the first six months.

So we added some funds to that, and CIC

is managing that for us.

We've made 13 referrals.

They've made eight approvals and funds are flowing to those eight.

There's several more that are kind of in the review process.

And imperative to this process was a quick turnaround.

And unlike the usual process that CIC engages in, as well as what we typically engage in, which is

In person interviews, conversations, getting to know folks.

This all had to be done quickly and had to be done online.

So there's an online application for this.

There's an online referral process, and that has been worked out fairly smoothly.

Average turnaround is about a week on those applications.

So the next item was the existing program called GoHire.

And one of our growing opportunities programs in GoHire was a program that helped hire an individual to a company and helped with a wage subsidy for the first six, eight weeks, or helped with a training component for an incumbent worker.

We tweaked the program to allow not only a new hire or a training component, but to allow a rehire or to retain an existing employee.

This kind of goes hand in hand with the federal programs that are trying to provide funds to allow companies to maintain their staff and not lay them off.

So we re-initiated this program on the 14th of April.

We've since closed that.

We've had 50 apps and we're in the process of making awards.

We've got 30 awards that are being made, and those average $3,300 on average.

And those are in the process.

This is a reimbursement-based grant, so reimbursement materials have to be provided to prove that they've incurred the cost and we're in the process of processing those grants as those documentation documents are received.

And so we've had

A great response to that one as well and a variety of different business types around town, taking advantage of that.

So another example of one of our programs.

The final one is the newest one and the one that was released most recently on April the 24th and that's what is called the Business Recovery Fund.

This is a partnership with the county of Albemarle, who has heretofore never done anything of this nature.

As we've been building a relationship between our office and the Office of Economic Development in the county, we have tried to explore opportunities to do things together more often.

And this is one where there was some synergy right out of the gate.

And of course, partnering with CIC to administer this program as well.

It's a loan program.

that has flexible terms similar to the BEF, but a broader range of applicants can apply.

Any city or county business can apply.

It has flexible repayment terms.

So six months, no payments, two to three year payback periods and a low interest rate.

And like I said, that opened on the 24th.

There's a two week application period.

In the first three days, there were 78 applications that came through the online portal.

The most promising item for this, in addition to the funds that the EDA put forward and the county put forward, is the potential for private dollars to come alongside these funds and amplify, leverage them.

And can't announce that yet, but we're hopeful within the next week that there's an announcement of significant additional dollars joining the Business Recovery Fund.

So we'll transition quickly into update on some of our workforce development initiatives during this period.

We have transitioned to virtual learning for two of our training programs, both the Go Cook program and the Trade Builders program were in process in the middle of March.

So they were partially through their six or eight week training period.

We took a brief pause to kind of collect ourselves and figure out what to do and how to do it.

but now both of those have transitioned into an online learning environment which has been a bit of a transition but both are moving forward smoothly now.

As you know our downtown job center located in the library

was closed along with everything else, and that is a very hands-on, high-touch personal engagement process that we have with people to provide them assistance there.

We've had to now transition that completely to virtual and using Teams or Zoom meetings to engage with folks.

We are doing that with some success.

We are creating lists of employers that are actually hiring.

And there are some in our community that continue to hire.

We're making connections to people that are out of work and that need access to that.

And we're doing that virtually now.

We are exploring our typical job fair, community job fair happens in May, obviously won't happen this year, but we are exploring through some software.

opportunities to do a virtual job fair on a large scale.

Our community job fair typically has over a hundred employers and over a thousand attendees held at the John Paul Jones Arena.

So we're going to try this out.

We're going to start on a smaller scale with a business expo first, which is, we use the same software, but at a much smaller level.

And then hopefully if that goes well, transition to a,

a community job fair later in the year probably June or July as opposed to the typical time frame which is May.

We're working with people on their resumes remotely and online and we've been able to do that fairly effectively so far.

We are also working with employers and doing online Facebook live interviews

once or twice a week with those employers that are continuing to hire and allowing, recording those, posting those, allowing people to access those at their leisure to learn a little bit more about the company and about the opportunity that might be available and then make a connection from there.

Transition to our Home to Hope program which came under our management earlier this year and we've been transitioning with those folks.

as well.

Everybody's working well remotely and occasionally in the office as needed.

You all have probably heard that there's been an effort to decrease the number of individuals that are incarcerated during this time to decrease the opportunity for the spread of the virus, and so state officials have been moving towards more home electronic monitoring.

As such, the peer navigators with Home to Hope are seeing an increase in

and demand for those services to kind of help with supportive services as people transition back into or out of incarceration back into this community.

So we've seen a 25% increase in the last month in folks coming through that portal.

And they have 102 active clients that they're working with at the moment.

One of the initial things that the Home to Hope folks participated in was for clients and others in need.

And those were put together and distributed at the downtown transit center.

Within the first week or two, there was two days when that happened.

We're also increasing the online presence with continued communication about Home to Hope services, and that happens every Friday with a Facebook Live.

Those have been happening over the last month and have been well received.

That goes for about an hour every Friday.

Also this week, starting virtual peer support groups, which will be a new thing in the virtual environment, but those will be starting tomorrow.

We also had the peer navigators taking calls on the community hotline, which is managed through human services.

And so they were having calls directed to their cell phone and they were engaging in the assistance that was provided through that network early on.

We'll transition quickly to another aspect of our operations, which is parking, and let you all know that all our facilities are open and operational.

24-7, and they are seeing some use.

With respect to staff, our operator, which is a private operator that we manage, we've instructed them to avoid layoffs and they have done so.

Some shifts in hours have been tweaked to meet the demand, but no one has been taken below 30 hours per week, which allows them to keep benefits intact.

You are probably also aware that we allowed folks with monthly parking to suspend their permits if they were not using them, and many have.

That continues.

It happened in April, it will happen in May as well, and we take that on a month-to-month basis.

We're taking the opportunity with fewer cars in the facilities to do some deep cleaning not only on the elevators and rails and things of that nature but also the actual decks and with that cleaning we're doing in-house re-striping of all the spaces and some other stair repairs and contractor repairs that are safety related are also being done during this time.

Chief Baxter mentioned and I'll close with

with this final mention of Project Rebound, which is a regional initiative led by the chamber with support by the city, economic development, the county economic developments, and the university's economic development efforts.

And Project Rebound is essentially an effort to gather folks to consider how we recover, how we restart, how we do that safely, how we do that efficiently.

and the approach is to gather around seven subject matter sectors, if you will, and gather people with insights and experience in each of those areas to participate in some meetings.

There will also be some public sessions whereby folks can engage as they will from the general public in addition to the more structured meetings.

with the idea that in early June that a blueprint or a guidebook will be presented to the community that has significant input from business owners and operators throughout the area that will hopefully be a guide for the community as it restarts.

Don't know what that's going to look like coming out of the other end.

We've got a lot of positive feedback on it since it's been announced.

It was announced last week.

We've had over 130 people sign up to be part of one of the different committees at this point.

So we're getting some good engagement so far.

We're getting some facilitation resources from the university to help facilitate all these meetings in a professional manner.

And we're hopeful that early June there will be a document that

will be useful to the community as we start to recover.

Um, you know, the chief made a reference to an ultra marathon and that this is an ultra marathon, not a marathon.

And having participated in a couple ultra marathons myself, I don't appreciate that reference because I know the pain that, that, um, comes towards the end.

And, um, you know, we're going to experience that as this continues forward, there's no doubt in my mind.

This started as a public health crisis and certainly still is, but it will end as an economic crisis of significant proportions that this community hasn't seen probably ever.

So we're starting to prepare for that in the long term nature of that recovery.

It's going to be with us for a while.

So I'll end there in answering questions that you might have.

So I was disconnected from the call for about five minutes, so I missed a chunk of that.

So if I ask anything or if I email you later, I'll just check in with the council members and see if I missed any

anything that I really, but when I came back in, you were talking about staff numbers and a reduction and no one dropping below 30.

Hello.

Folks that work in the parking facility that are third-party contractors.

All of our staff, the 13 people that are part of the Office of Economic Development, which includes the 4 Home to Hope program peer navigators, are continuing to work mostly remotely.

No changes to hours or pay for any of us.

On the linear parking side, there has been

The facilities are open and they are staffed and nobody's hours has been reduced below 30.

We just kind of shifted some positions to better make use of time and talent given the circumstances.

And they were working 40 hours before or is that a 10 hour a week reduction?

And are they paid through the parking enterprise?

Well, they're paid by their employer, which is Lanier Parking.

We have a question.

Chris, as you were talking through some of the workforce development initiatives,

What are you hearing about people who are not able to collect unemployment?

Can you give me a sense of the types of jobs that are out there that people who are being laid off or whatever can't collect unemployment from?

And therefore, it's even more of a priority for them to make sure they find new opportunities.

I'm just curious of what kind of patterns you're seeing with that.

Because it seems like right now the federal plan is a lot more flexible, what we've seen historically relative to unemployment.

This is a question I'm going to ask at the end of this whole thing anyway.

I don't know that we've heard of anybody that's not been able to get unemployment insurance at this point.

The guidelines have been broadened to allow 1099 and contractors self-employed

which is a significant change.

There's been an additional benefit, the pandemic unemployment assistance at the federal level and actually won't go into too many details but one of the challenges that we are seeing is that some businesses are thinking and planning for rehiring, they want to rehire but the benefits associated with the usual state level

Unemployment benefits plus the pandemic unemployment assistance, the PAU, are such that some people are better off not to go back to their job, which kind of creates a conundrum.

If businesses want to open and they can't get the workforce back because the workforce is being paid more handsomely,

with the benefit package at the moment, that's a temporary thing.

It won't last forever.

In fact, July is the time frame when the PAU sun sets.

So that will work itself out.

It may be tweaked in the near term to allow that to happen.

There's also some interpretation about are you eligible to continue to receive it if you are offered your position back.

I think that's being looked at.

And I'd heard that too.

And the other thing I've heard that's making it complicated is for their PPP loans, they have to have a certain percentage of people on payroll during that certain length of time in order to even get that loan to be something that they can acquire.

Yes, I would agree with some unintended consequences of some good intentions, I think.

But you're right.

The PPP dollars, which we have heard of successful local companies receiving those, are predicated on keeping or using at least 75% of those funds towards keeping your current staff.

So if folks accept those dollars, they need to then

use them for staffing purposes.

Otherwise, they risk what could be a grant turning into an actual loan that requires repayment.

So that's a bit of a challenge.

I did want to mention, since you brought up the unemployment claims, we keep track on these numbers.

And in March, the end of March 14, the week ending March 14, there were 17 unemployment claims.

The week ending March the 4th there were 985.

So it went up and up and up.

So it went from 17 to like 500 to 600 to 985 and

One piece of good news is the most recent week for which we have data went back down to 600 or so.

And I think, you know, just to add to that conversation, you know, some of the concerns are,

The amount of time that it takes, and that's a question that I have for you at the end about the small business loan, is that process going more smoothly now?

I know there were some hiccups there.

But in terms of unemployment, people had to be laid off to apply in the first place.

That time between application and receiving funds, luckily we have the emergency assistance fund that people were able to tap into, but that

did not assist with all of the needs.

And so the fear there is this tug of war with when you need me, you bring me back.

When you don't need me, I'm dropped.

That is the fear that people have.

And so I would just be interested in what that conversation is, what conversation is having,

Yeah, agreed.

They did tweak some of the rules.

There used to be a one-week waiting period for unemployment insurance.

They reduced that to a day.

So that did help.

There still was a backlog with VEC.

The online application they wanted everybody to do was painful and took some time.

The phone lines were jammed.

That's probably getting a little better, but it's still probably a challenge.

for folks to navigate that, but those dollars are flowing quicker than they ever have before.

On the SBA Economic Injury Disaster Loan, commonly referred to as the EIDL loan or grant, that one's probably been the most frustrating to folks and you've certainly read about that locally and nationally.

This was a program

that typically in a year I think would do 14,000 loans and in a month they were asked to do 1.4 million.

So their system was completely unprepared.

They've gone through two new server setup systems to handle the online apps.

We still have not heard very much good news about the EIDL grant for a loan.

It is set up to be partially a grant and then partially a loan.

And we were encouraging folks to apply for the loan and take the grant piece, which was a $10,000 advance.

We have not heard of very many.

We've heard of a few very many folks being terribly successful with that.

It's been, frankly, frustrating for them to kind of go through that process.

The Small Business Development Center is our lead local agency on that.

They've been doing a great job guiding people through that process.

They are kind of a subsidiary of the SBA, but they are supported locally and operate locally.

And in terms of BRACE, is there consideration to the numbers that you gave?

You said that 90% of those funds have been allocated to businesses.

Is that right?

I had that note somewhere.

Yes.

Yeah, so that was the first one we did.

So we've gone through that.

So that's also reimbursement based.

So they need to provide proof of whatever they bought to us.

And so the 10% that is remaining there, we're just waiting on the documentation to come in.

And then we'll push the rest out.

So the businesses have to spend the money and then they are being reimbursed for it?

And we can get a check in a week.

OK, I think I have some more questions.

We've heard, anecdotally, about a few.

in the city.

I don't know that there's a list, I'm sure there's really not, but some folks have told us and most I would say they're probably small to medium sized businesses across a couple of industries.

What we've heard about the PPP, which is much better news than the idle, is that

You know, there's more funds attributed to it, especially with the second round.

And they're a little more accessible.

But you had to have an existing relationship with an existing bank.

So you could not be a new customer and sign up to do business with that bank to have access to their portion of however they allocated that through the SBA.

So having an existing relationship with a bank was critical there.

But even that doesn't do the trick.

There are many people that are still waiting.

The new money just came in a couple of days ago.

But the pipeline is really full.

And I'm not sure how the SBA has worked with their lending partners to try to allocate that across the country.

And then the final question I have, at least for the moment, is just you said the Home to Hope has seen a 25% increase in folks going through it because the jail system is releasing more people because of COVID-19.

Is there any sense of whether there are any challenges connecting the new people going through the program with resources?

I don't know.

Yeah, it's probably a good question that I'm not prepared to answer, as I'm not as close to that as some others.

But I can try and find out.

I would imagine the biggest challenge is that everything's being done virtually, and you can't send somebody to an address to get assistance.

So everybody's probably adapting to that new

new environment and having to do things either by video or on telephone.

But I do know that the community hotline has some significant resources.

The community foundation has some additional significant resources.

So there are resources that are available.

It's just a matter of making those connections and getting people on the right path.

And one question that I have in looking at BRACE and the resources that were put into the business equity fund, since one is a grant and one is a loan, are you all tracking

And I said just an equity lens over the brace grant.

I have a few, actually.

While we were talking, I was trying to get on the website to see the list of things so I could put it up on Facebook, and I can't get to it.

Sure.

Yeah, so the city's new website just launched yesterday, but if you go to that, the easiest way is just to look at the departmental dropdown and click on economic development.

And that page has, that's what I refer to as our landing page.

That has all the resources related to, you'll see a big kind of COVID-19 business resource banner at the top.

And that's where you'll find it.

Just when you Google it, all the links that come up don't work.

I think I had the chat here in a minute.

Okay.

All right.

Are there any other questions?

All right.

Thank you.

We appreciate your time.

Thank you, Mr. Ingle.

If we would, we'll move on now to Social Services, Ms.

Hello, everybody.

I'm in the second floor of conference room here on City Hall.

And some of this may be stuff you heard in the email I sent last week.

So you may be hearing it again.

But as our offices closed to the public on March 17th, it took us a while to get people prepared to work from home.

But by the following week, we had most people working from home.

At this point in time,

There are a number of people that have to come into the office for certain reasons that aren't staying very long.

And I would say at any given time between our four floors and City Hall Annex, we have approximately 10 to 12 employees at any given time in the office.

And the remainder are working at home or out in the community.

So,

All of our programs are continuing to operate.

And as to be expected, our benefit programs have seen a huge increase in applications, new applications that have come in.

So I'm going to concentrate on that to begin with.

And these were numbers that I had given and were reported in the Daily Progress too for March.

So for our SNAP applications, new applications in 2019,

We had 119 new applications for SNAP benefits.

And in this March, this past March, we had 256 new applicants.

So that was 115% increase since last year.

And of course, most of that increase came in the last few months of March due to people losing their jobs or getting their hours cut.

Similarly, in TANF, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, in March of last year, our new applications were 18.

And this year, March 2020, we had 45 new TANF applications.

So that was 150% increase from 2019.

Now, anecdotally, at this point in time, because we don't have the state numbers yet totaled for us,

At this point in time, I would say we're going to have even a greater percentage of increase in both of those programs for the month of April.

And we won't know those numbers until after the first week of May.

So there's been this huge surge in new applications, which is a lot of work.

However, there are some good news things that have come down from the feds and the state as far as our benefit programs.

One is, prior to the pandemic, SNAP benefits were based on two things.

If you qualified, it was based on what your current income, household income was, what assets you had, and how many people lived in your household.

So a household with three people in it, they could both qualify for SNAP benefits, but the one with lower income may get more SNAP benefits than the one with

a higher income.

At this point in time, every single household that qualifies for SNAP benefits, including the people that were not new applicants, every single SNAP household is getting the maximum amount of SNAP benefits for the number of people in their household.

So they may have three people in the household, and because of income in the past, they were only receiving

$100 of SNAP benefits, they now receive the maximum for three people in the household.

And the maximum is based on zero income.

So that's a benefit for our families at this point in time.

The other additional benefit right now is we are not required to do any renewals for people.

So when people qualify for benefits, they don't qualify forever.

They have to go through a review process after six months, nine months, 12 months.

So right now, no renewals are being done.

Anybody who qualified for benefits when this all started

We're not looking at renewals that came due in March or renewals that are coming due in April or renewals that will be coming through in May.

Everybody is remaining on their benefits at this point in time.

So that is helping us not only keep people in the community on their benefits, but it's helping us process the new applications quickly so that people that are applying now are getting their applications processed very quickly.

Additionally, all of our staff are reaching out to our TANF caseload right now by phone or email or checking in with them as they can.

And there's something that's called TANF emergency assistance.

So when staff check in with our TANF clients, they are able to offer assistance if they need it with other expenditures, such as rent,

car insurance, utility bills that they still may have to pay, diapers, wipes, things like that.

And that comes under TANF emergency assistance.

So we are making sure staff are trying to check in with all of our TANF clients to see if they need any of that emergency assistance.

So benefit programs, again, most of our workers can work at home.

They have state laptops that are at home with them.

They can get onto the state system.

Our front desk staff, our social services assistants, they are the ones that are rotating in and out of the office because we do have our main line that anybody can call for assistance or how to get assistance.

They can also call to check on

where their application is in the process.

And again, they're getting processed very quickly, but some people are desperate for that day.

And so they can find that information out.

We also have our front desk people are taking all the paper applications that come in.

Now people can apply online, they can apply to the federal system, but our paper applications that come in are all being scanned by our front desk people.

And so our benefit workers at home then do not have to come into the office.

They can process those applications right from their laptops, their desk, their state laptops that they have at home.

So that's working well so far.

Our family services programs, adult protective services and child protective services, both the numbers of new reports are significantly down.

That's to be expected with our CPS reports as we always get the largest number of CPS reports from schools and from the medical community.

and the medical community is not doing a lot of regular checkups right now with folks and our schools of course have been closed now for over a month.

We still are getting some reports and all reports are, they're not all investigated, they all go through the state scale of whether it's a valid report or not a valid report.

valid reports.

We try to see if the reporter has any information about the health of the people they're reporting on, the family they're reporting on, or the children they're reporting on, so that we know what we may expect when we go out to investigate.

And when we go out, we do have our staff going out with protective gear.

So they have goggles, they have face masks, and they also have gloves.

We try to meet with the people outside their home and not go into the home environment.

We also have masks if need be, children size masks if we need to transport children at all in our vehicles.

And we are doing the best we can to keep children within their homes and just as usual, if not find kinship placements for them.

but all of Child Protective Services continues to be happening.

Our children that are on prevention and family foster care prevention cases, our workers are still doing monthly visits.

A lot of those are happening the same way this meeting is happening.

A lot of them are happening on social media, are happening on Zoom or other webinar-based programs.

And

They are approved ways and methods of meeting the monthly visitation at this point in time.

The same thing is happening with children in foster care placements.

And as always, if we have removed any children in the past month and a half, we do our best to find a kinship placement for those children.

The Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court is still open and

Most of our cases, not all, but most are heard on Wednesdays and social workers still need to be in court.

We are still processing adoptions.

In fact, I signed two adoptions last week, kinship placement adoptions for children.

Our workers are mainly able to work at home.

Of course, they do have to come into the office, especially if they have court coming up.

They've got to get documents ready.

They have to come into the office to do renewals on adoption funding, which I have to sign off on.

They have to be notarized.

But most of our family services specialists, if they come into the office, they don't need to be in the office for more than a few hours during the week.

and they always check because again I have to sign off on everything for those family services course documents and other agreement documents.

Our adult service team has assigned certain workers to different neighborhoods in the city.

So an example is we have an adult worker assigned specifically to Crescent Halls and

He is currently working with Martha Jefferson to get COVID testing for every person living in Crescent Halls.

And he's doing work and trying to get residents to understand the need for this and agree to it.

And then we have our other adult service workers are assigned to other neighborhoods in the city.

We've also been checking with

not just for adult services, but we have social workers checking in with the property managers of public housing and seeing what needs are out there, how we can assist with anything for them.

We also have two of our workers, one from benefits, a benefit supervisor, benefit program supervisor, and

Family Services Specialist Senior are both working with the West Haven Nurses Clinic in coordinating some outreach to the West Haven neighborhood also.

And then we have a few staff members who are also answering calls from the resource center, the community resource

Hotline at the Emergency Operations Center.

And my assistant director is also at the Emergency Operations Center.

And that is what she's doing full time also at the Emergency Operations Center, working with Human Services Division of the Emergency Operations Center.

So people are really, really busy.

They are doing a good job of only coming into the office when they need to be in the office, social distancing, washing their hands, trying to be as safe as possible when they are in the office space.

And I just want to say that many of them, as we've already mentioned, they're juggling their own family responsibilities.

They're weighing their health risks and they're continuing to understand the needs in our community of, if anything, just increased during this pandemic.

And we are, you know, I just, I can't say enough about what a great job they're all doing.

At this point in time, we're also, I'm coordinating with Melissa and the voter registers office as we are

Getting ready for absentee voting to begin in the next few weeks and trying to make sure that we limit the amount of space that the voters can keep their distance in and get into voter registrar in order to do absentee validating, but keep the rest of our office space and city hall annex blocked off.

So we're coordinating on that, and that should be coming to fruition very well.

Well, first, thank you.

You know, your staff are all that they're doing.

I made the statement earlier, and I really want to make sure that every department understands that we know that there are some employees who are having to work in this space very differently than others.

And while we haven't been able to figure out a way to acknowledge that to date, that is a conversation that

I've brought up during every budget meeting and that other counselors, I'm not on the two-to-ones with them.

So I won't say for certain, but I know that the conversations I've had with them and what was expressed at the budget meetings, that those conversations are happening amongst them too.

And so I just would like to make sure that you know that and that you

and that your staff understands that we understand that some of them are having to risk their safety in the ways that others are not.

I do have a question around the front desk.

staff.

Are there more than one staff member at a time?

And did you all consider, and Dr. Richardson, if that's even a possibility of transferring phone lines to those individuals so that if there are more than one at a time, I know how that structure is set up.

In the front desk area itself, there is only one person there.

There are other people that are opening mail in a separate place and

and distributing mail and faxing applications, or I should say scanning applications into the state system.

So they're not all in the same space.

I know they're not all in our front desk space, but they're all considered on our front desk team.

So they could cover any of those duties, but they're not all in one space.

Thank you.

I just wanted to check.

They can get help filling out an application by calling our front desk.

And we also, I want to say EBT cards are how SNAP benefits are, an electronic benefit transfer card like a credit card.

That's how people get their benefits for SNAP benefits.

And those cards

We can mail them to people or they can schedule a time to come pick up and we will deliver it to their vehicle.

You know, that's a hard thing to judge.

People that are out in the community are concerned.

you know concerned they may carry something back to their own families but they know they're supposed to be meeting with people with protective gear PPEs and you know it it's anxious for a lot of people and certainly for our staff that are going out and having to meet with families or adults

I received some calls early on about the

And the only comment and question I mean we've just been answered but just my thoughts are really on you know the

PPE is one thing because you can see it, but just the mental impact this has on making sure that we're all supporting each other.

And as one of the other department heads said earlier, just how are we making sure that people are getting the right balance in their own lives because they're not going to be effective to this community if they don't have that kind of rejuvenation time.

And it's certainly especially of interest in this department where it's, from my point of view, it's challenging work every day.

And obviously this is now just even heightening that.

Well, and one other thing we have done is we used to, I mean used to, in normal times we have one.

is a social worker who is on call during the week.

And so they're on call for a seven-day period, 24 hours.

Well, not 24, not that the hours were open in the office regularly, but we no longer have one social worker doing that for a full week.

They are doing it for a day or two, and then it transfers to another social worker that week so that they don't have to

worry about having to do a full seven-day period of going out for emergency calls.

The question that's come through from someone who's participating is that once things open up again and anticipating an increase

and CPS reporting from pediatrics, medical folks and schools.

Do you anticipate being able to handle the volume that potentially will hit you?

We are looking, trying to figure out how we are going to handle that because it is going to be difficult.

And we are assuming an influx once we have, once schools are back and hopefully that will be in August.

Once schools are back in session and once

Children are being seen by others in the community more than they are now.

Yes, we are concerned about that.

We will be working on trying to develop a plan for that.

And I think it's critical to make sure, and I expressed this to Dr. Richardson when one of his updates came out, you know, through the email about the departments that we're doing everything we can to, you know, help families with stability at this time.

and that we're always thinking about that from a community standpoint with those messages.

So that there isn't this timeframe where we are fearful that kids are being abused and that no one knows.

But that we are helping decrease the amount of stress

and family in their lives so that mental and physical and spiritual and emotional well-being are considered in everything we do as a city because that will prevent, you know, for some people we can't eliminate and we know as long as we've been doing this work that there hasn't been an elimination of those issues, but it definitely can help

you know families make it through and that is one thing that I expressed to Dr. Richardson that I hope we were considering.

what messaging and campaigns could we put out to the community to help families during this time and not just wait in anticipation for those numbers to increase with the full understanding that there are some things that we just will not be able to.

And I know some social workers are putting out both their prevention cases and other

other families that they've had contact with, putting out some of the good online.

Now, not everybody has access to online things, but putting out activities that they've seen online and ways to help your children deal with.

Because children are going through stress too over the COVID-19 stuff, not just the adults and the families.

And trying to keep, again, it has to do with

not just their physical health, but their mental health.

And I know that our prevention cases, our social workers are working really, really diligently trying to assist those families.

And hopefully some of the financial assistance that is not just our benefit programs, but the other ways we have for financial assistance with many of these families is taking a little bit of the stress off at this time.

But we are trying to keep with the families.

We don't go out searching for families or children that we need to receive reports.

And just one final point for me, and I know we have to move on, but to piggyback off of Heather's comments, I think we need to just make sure that all of the directors understand that no matter what department you are in, this is a really challenging time for almost everybody.

And whatever those needs that staff members have,

to be able to get up the next day or if it takes the two day, whatever that zone looks like that they need some space from their regular routine.

I hope that we are having those discussions and attempting to figure out how to make sure that we are taking care of the staff.

and acknowledging that they have families and that they are trying to make sure that their families are safe and secure and continue the work and that we understand that balance.

Someone just put a question in the chat.

Depending upon their income, they should apply.

Okay, are there any other questions?

Well thank you and we appreciate you and your team and all that you are doing and thank you for the update.

Next up we do have Mr. Garland Williams from CAT.

I know many questions were asked pertaining to the services that are being provided by CAT throughout

this crisis.

Yes, sir, I'm here.

So thank you, Dr. Richardson.

So I'm going to give you a kind of a timeline of how CAT has prepared for activities surrounding COVID-19.

So we started our activities in providing a small level of PPE to our drivers on May 9th.

That was three days before that.

Council authorized the state of emergency for Charlottesville.

So we started giving gloves and antibacterial wipes to allow them to clean high-touch areas.

The day that the emergency was issued, the 12th week switched our cleaning products.

We bought a new product called AirX, which is a hospital-grade cleaning product that allowed us to not only clean but disinfect high-touch areas.

and also allows us to actually spray it on our seats, which are cloth.

It dries overnight and disinfects and kills all bacterias.

On Friday, March 13th,

We also stepped up our midday cleaning efforts.

So our cleaning staff, which is only four, we changed their schedule so that we could reach the bus at sometime midday between the hours of noon and two to do a walkthrough and wipe down all the high touch areas, the posts, the rails, the tops of the seats, the seats if they have enough time, the buses in there for a long enough time.

So we added another level of cleaning.

Wednesday, March the 18th, we asked the city manager to allow us to go fare-free.

So part of his powers, he authorized us to go fare-free with a couple of things for us.

We stopped collecting money and touching passes, which was a high area of potential activity for transportation.

in the COVID virus, so going fare-free, allowing folks to enter from the rear.

That also prevented, allowed us to do the extension of six feet of distance from our drivers, so they were really concerned about having that activity so close to the public.

I hired a professional cleaning company that came in on the weekends to do professional deep cleaning.

That was a big thing that we really needed to do.

It also allowed us to I think provide a level of service to the community that

It reassures them that we are doing everything we can to keep them safe, our drivers safe, and keep our buses as clean as possible.

We take off the front of the bus also.

That will prevent the exposure from the driver to the public.

We also implemented a voluntary face mask

protocol at that point in time.

Because at that time, CDC was still recommending that you didn't necessarily need face masks.

And we were actively trying to get surgical face masks and then the N95 face masks.

So we were working through that model.

On the 18th also, we limited the hours of our downtown transit station.

We reduced the hours from 8 a.m.

to 5 p.m.

and closed it on the weekends.

Since we weren't collecting any fares, there was no need for anyone to go in to buy fare.

So this was a way for us to limit the exposure in the building here to the 10 person rule.

On the next day, the 19th, we started looking at and having discussions with the state about our high risk list, compiled what we consider our employee high risk list, got those individuals, put on administrative leave as soon as we possibly can,

based on recommendations from the CDC, the FDA, and the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation.

So we were trying to keep those individuals safe and still actually continue to pay them.

There was funding that was provided to us by Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation initially.

That was about $221,000 that allowed us to do that.

We've subsequently gotten additional money from the feds

and their response was called the CARES Act.

That's a significant amount of funding for this region.

Collectively, it's over $7 million, but specifically to CAT, it's exactly $5.3 million.

So we're working through that model, and we're working on it and to actually have that money spent,

with Quit related activities.

On Saturday, the 21st of March, we introduced reduced service hours.

We basically cut off all of our Sunday service.

That was dedicated for the cleaning of all of our chemicals and keeping the professional cleaners that we brought on board, getting them to deep clean all of our vehicles.

a necessary component for us.

We also reduced our hours from till 6 a.m.

to 9 p.m.

We basically cut off three hours between 11 and 12, considering that we started seeing our ridership drop off and basically after 9 o'clock it was almost non-existent.

The governor on March 30th issued a stay at home order.

And also at that same day, the Department of Rail and Transportation issued what's called a transit guidance.

And they suggested some of the items that Cat had heard, like eliminate front loading, only use rear loading, go fare free if you could, rope off the front, have your driver

on Tuesday, March 31st.

CAT made it mandatory that all of our drivers wear face masks.

We started issuing them face masks and actually made sure that they have two sets of gloves as opposed to one a day still using the wipes.

But also now we've actually stepped up and actually they can have two face masks supplied by CAT.

April the 3rd

We took the lead based on what the guidance was from the transit, from VDRPT on transit guidance and limited our numbers to 10, 10 passengers on a vehicle that's in compliance with what the governor suggested, no groups bigger than 10.

We also took some additional measures to have overcrowding on some of the issues.

We can also address those.

We've actually some behind the scenes planning to do that also.

April the 11th, which was Saturday, we changed our service model to what's considered a offline service.

We basically reduced, we made sure every single one of our bus lines continue, but running on

60 Minutes Service.

There are others that we noted before during the AM because it connected to medical facilities, the 2, the 5, the 7, and the free trolley, which already had greater than 60 minutes service, would continue to do so because they also connected with medical facilities and hospitals.

That is also working on PSAs.

We've actually worked on the first one.

We thank our drivers and all of the essential workers and first responders.

We're working on a second line to ask the public to wear face masks on our vehicles.

We're using face masks to protect you, and if you'll use a face mask to protect us, we'll get through this thing together.

So that's the second PSA that we're working on.

We have an internal communication document that we also share with, that basically is done every two weeks to make sure all of our operators and staff are up to speed on what's going on here.

One of the things I wanted to bring to everyone's attention is that we've seen in the newspaper that our ridership has declined.

It was supposed to.

One of the things that the stay at home order was supposed to do is supposed to stay at home unless you're taking essential trips.

So we have seen what we regard as about a 57.7% reduction in our ridership that was anticipated.

So the third quarter of this year versus the third quarter of last year,

We're down approximately 178,000 riders, but that was once again anticipated based on what's going on with the pandemic.

So those are the highlights.

I know it's for time.

And thank you for highlighting that at the end.

But I'm grateful that there's a decline in ridership.

And as long as we can keep your employees and the community safe, that's the goal.

And so I hope that that's the common goal and that no one viewed that as a negative.

Are you in any challenges?

Yeah, I would say morale is good.

One of the things that I was able to do as a part of the Final Lifeline reduction in service model was reduce their schedules to no one's more than eight and a half hours.

Also reduce the number of days that they work.

to try to make sure that we take care of not just the physical but the mental side of this.

A lot of them are extremely stressed, as you can imagine.

We're concerned about how many individuals they come in contact with on a daily basis.

So we are really monitoring that and making sure that we're providing as much support and services as we possibly can for those individuals.

I like to say that we're essential.

Many of us, I've never seen a market where transit has become such a vital component in an emergency situation like this.

From the moment they leave our base, they're coming in contact with potentially hundreds of folks every single day.

I just wanted to thank everyone on the team as well as I shared the the PSA video on social media I thought that was really well done and I think not just for bus drivers but all essential city employees I hope

We can at least discuss thanking them, not just in words, but with hazard pay, the ability to collectively bargain and unionize.

I know those might be longer-term discussions.

It's easier said than done.

But I think across our economy, that's what thanking them has to look like.

One question, what kind of hit has

There will be no unmet need.

So one of the things that we are very fortunate and that Congress did in supplying funding at this crucial point is in the CARES Act, we can use the money for personnel.

We can use money for capital.

I can use money to put people on administrative leave.

I can use the money for any revenue gaps.

So, shortfalls of revenue that are anticipated because we're running free are covered by the CARES Act money.

So, we will behold, we do not have to worry about potentially laying off anybody or reducing anyone's hours.

The hazard pay requirement that you talked about earlier, we're not able to technically give them hazard pay.

that would be unfair to the rest of the city's employees.

But what we have done is been able to reduce their hours, but still continue to pay them for their full salary.

The question came up on asking if there are any

Sure.

So there are, of course, challenges.

But what we have doing, we have tried not to advertise this, but it's come up.

And we've gotten questions about that, not just from city council but from others.

We actually stage a couple of buses around every single morning, every single afternoon with extra board operators.

We call them EB's or relief drivers.

In case the driver gets to a stop and you have more than 10 individuals who want to use the bus, we actually are transitioning so we can get another bus into service to take care of those individuals.

Like I said, we're trying not to advertise that because that would encourage folks to ride it.

We're really trying to preserve the service for essential services.

Thank you.

Are there any other questions?

So again, thank you.

I think this is the point where the next group is supposed to come in and I'm not sure if you all are staying on or if they've been on, but we appreciate everyone's time.

Thanks for the information.

I know the community appreciates having the information also.

I definitely appreciate the information that you just gave us.

Mr. Williams and hope that we are able to explore that a little bit more on Friday during the budget meetings because that's one of the discussions that is important for us to have about the whole organization about what's our safety net, what would trigger furloughs and layoffs, and I know with UVA,

Medical Center announcing furloughs today that there are a lot of people who are concerned about that.

And that is information that we would want to give as many people as possible about what their safety net is so that their families will not have those concerns.

So it's good to hear that at least one department for now

would be okay, and I'm interested, Dr. Richardson, in how that fits into the overall equation for the organization, and how does that help increase safety nets in other departments?

I appreciate the model of you taking care of the employees, as we've heard from all the directors.

I look forward to giving them that information.

Okay, sorry.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Members of the city council, we need to take a short break so the folks who are the panelists now, they can log

Well I just have a question in case that they are for you.

That will be some of the information but I wanted to talk to you a little bit more about that as we were going to discuss earlier.

about our 221s for Friday.

Okay.

All right.

So we'll take a 15-minute break.

Okay.

Okay.

Well, um, thank you.

And I'll call this meeting back to order.

I was steady talking, and I was muted.

But anyway, welcome back.

We now have our second group.

And I will not waste any time.

We'll move right into it.

Hi, everybody.

I am delighted to give you all an update on what's going on with the Department of Human Services.

41 of the 43 human services employees are teleworking with some occasional forays into the world to meet people face to face occasionally from a safe distance, of course, for the most part, and also to connect with our community partners as necessary.

I have been amazed and impressed by the flexibility, resilience, and stamina

of the staff of the Department of Human Services.

They have pivoted so quickly to this new way of getting stuff done and so far more creatively than I ever could have imagined.

We have been doing foster family training using Zoom.

We have nine families who are being trained to foster families at the moment, which is astonishing.

And we have been doing front porch conversations with families at safe distance, including getting

Pieces of paper signed as necessary so one person approaches the table at a time on the front porch.

We do occasionally have to do electronic home monitoring hookups for young people who have been released from the juvenile detention center.

and we do wear full PPE protection and go to the homes with two staff to get that done.

It is the most sort of high risk activity that we are engaging in, the only time we're actually touching people.

But for the most part, people are using Zoom and WebEx and other online tools, including our Teens Give service delivery program or service learning program, which is usually a program in which young people do community service projects

pre-brief and debrief afterwards as a way to sort of examine and build empathy and awareness of other people.

And so that's, that posed a pretty significant challenge to that team and they pivoted so quickly to ask the young people to identify a service project they could actually do at home for their parents.

And what that has yielded has been tremendously improved relationships with parents,

great opportunities for conversation pre and post at a time in which it's fairly stressful for parents right now.

When we think about recovery and we think about the kinds of adaptations or tools that we've engaged in during this crisis that we want to hold onto, that component might be one of those things we hold onto.

As you all know, Zoom, WebEx, telephones, they take longer.

They take much more energy.

And so,

Our staff are tired and so we're encouraging them to take good care of themselves, understanding that this is sadly the ultra marathon that both Chris and Andrew mentioned earlier.

Another way in which the staff have pivoted is to really expand the community resource hotline in partnership with the Community Foundation, United Way, Congregate Cares,

and Albemarle County.

We have 12 Department of Human Services staff who are responding to the community resource line together with five Home to Hope folks, including their newest intern, a staff person from Human Rights, four people from Albemarle County, from Charlottesville DSS, and 10 people from UVA.

The UVA folks are mostly providing interpretation services for us so that we can be responsive in as many languages as possible.

They are both receiving phone calls and also returning phone calls back and now almost half of the phone calls we're receiving through the Community Resource Hotline are actually status checks because the volume has overwhelmed the system on many levels and so it's taken longer for people to get their applications in and also to get their money than we previously expected and so

We're working diligently to get through as many of those as we can every day and most of those folks are taking three or four shifts a week on the hotline.

We also are coordinating and staffing a community resource task force with staff from both the county and the city to provide practical assistance to those folks who are unable to get their needs met through mutual aid infrastructure that we have in the community like support Seville or Seville Cares.

folks who might fall through the cracks and we have five staff who are now dedicated to answering the help happens here mental health helpline so we are really trying to incorporate additional sort of crisis response services on top of the services we're providing through sort of the new telework universe that we all work in now.

I've been coordinating frequently with my county

colleagues and health department colleagues through working at the EOC.

We've been reaching out to providers of vulnerable populations to see what they need, whether that's PPE or whether that's information, whether that's practical support.

Most often people really just need information about what's current, what's the right thing to do.

And the last week I've distributed 6,000 cloth masks to community agencies.

1600 to Charlottesville Redevelopment Housing Authority, 2000 to Piedmont Housing Alliance, 500 to Region 10, 200 to The Haven, and 500 today to the IRC.

Best practice guidance now says you should have three cloth masks, one that's on you, one that's being cleaned, and one that's a backup.

And so there's probably no such thing as duplicating an effort in terms of getting masks out.

We need to get as many masks in the hands of the people as we possibly can.

but we'll continue to work on that effort to spend a considerable amount of time working on homelessness, the sort of focus on the most vulnerable folks who are the most exposed to COVID with a known set of underlying health concerns and that the homeless population falls into the sort of ticks all the boxes for the most vulnerable that we have.

Right now, Dr. Richardson gave us permission to use Key Rec Center as a temporary shelter for PACHA men, which was a really tremendous assistance.

Really, the churches began to feel in early March really uneasy about doing the hosting.

And so this really eased the burden pretty considerably.

We really appreciate council easing the special use permit for the Haven to allow women to sleep in the sanctuary.

And so the first month or so, we had men at Key Rec and women

at the sanctuary.

We also, through the Thomas Riff Scenario Coalition for the Homeless, purchased a block of rooms at the Staybridge as an opportunity for a quarantine or isolation site for anyone who tested positive or was symptomatic.

We had five folks who spent some time in those rooms, though none of them actually ended up testing positive, thankfully.

Recently, the Emergency Operations Center agreed that it was best to move as many people out of those congregate sleeping settings as possible.

And so another block of rooms was purchased at La Quinta.

And now we have 17

men who were identified at particularly high risk who are now sleeping at La Quinta and seven women who are sleeping at La Quinta.

So there's no longer women sleeping at the Haven and we only have 16 men at Key Rec, which really allows for much more sort of free flow and allowing people to keep the kind of recommended social distancing we have in play.

There are 45 people at the Salvation Army, and the Salvation Army has sufficient services to be able to offer both high-risk isolation sites and quarantine sites within the property, though thankfully they've not had to use any of those spots.

There are about 10 people staying with Shelter for Help and Emergency, and they also have the opportunity to have some tiered settings

for folks there and to have people as separated as possible so each with their own room and access to a bathroom that's pretty dedicated.

We continue to sort of try to anticipate how long we'll need to have these sort of three tiered systems of housing for people who are experiencing homelessness and we're taking it sort of 30 days at a time.

As you all know, we don't know how long we'll be in this particular contraction sort of phase and what it means for the homeless who would be the last sort of group

to have eased social distancing expectations.

We're in a conversation today with Region 10, who has graciously offered the use of the Women's Center, the Women's Treatment Center as a possible quarantine site so that we can move the folks or stop contracting with the Staybridge, which is quite a distance away from the city and be closer into town in a more comfortable setting should we need that.

I'm pleased that the

COVID clinic has agreed to provide rapid access testing for folks in the homeless system of care should they become symptomatic and UVA social work has been a pleasure to work with in terms of facilitating that potential access point and also exit point if someone leaves the hospital and needs a place to stay with us.

So we are continuing to reach out to anybody who we think is particularly vulnerable and try to make sure that we can serve their needs.

I can't say enough good stuff about the resilient and smarty pants and creative human services staff.

Wow.

I'll just say thank you.

I'll probably work more closely with you during this time than anyone, so most of my questions are answered.

and I know the work that you and your team are doing and I hope that they know as we told the other directors that we appreciate all the efforts that you all are putting into helping to stabilize the community at this time and I'm glad to hear as I would expect the commitment to the

self and employer employee care of the people who work with you.

So I appreciate hearing that.

And in terms of the, I'm glad most of the staff are able to telework, but also the same thing that I've said to every director, just, I,

letting your staff know that we understand that there are people who are having to risk their safety in ways that others are not.

Question about, is there sort of a timeline for individuals who are staying at the hotels?

Is there sort of a timeline of how that's being funded where that could run out and additional funding might be necessary to sustain that?

And then in addition, is there sort of even a rough timeline for how long the ability to use

Kyrek is possible or planned for?

I'll tackle the key rec piece first.

We initially, like everybody, sort of tackled this in a two-week chunk, thinking we're not sure how long this is going to last, how long are we going to have to do this, and so we did tackle that in a smaller chunk initially.

Now we are planning through, particularly now that the election has been postponed, that we'll

that key rec will be available to those folks through a stay at home order and then we'll reassess.

At that point, we may have actually identified alternative resources in other places and successfully sort of transitioned most folks out of there by then anyway.

That is our hope where people will be safest when they're in their own room with their own access to a bathroom.

And so we'll continue to see that as a standard.

and we are tackling this at sort of 30 day chunks.

The first chunk we have some emergency funding working through the Department of Housing and Community Development and actually a private donor supported TJAC as well for that first purchase.

The Emergency Operations Center agreed for the second purchase of rooms for La Quinta to use emergency of the ECC funds to pay for that for that month.

for whatever we end up with potentially working with Region 10.

It may be that the city through our contract with both Region 10 and TJAC sort of up front those expenses.

At this point, like many other departments, we anticipate that there's money coming from both dedicated FEMA funds coming through the Department of Housing and Community Development that are based on a reimbursement basis.

but also additional dollars to come through HUD as well that will be dedicated towards resolving the housing needs, emergency housing needs of people experiencing homelessness and on a call on Friday we heard that there's actually potentially substantial funds to actually address permanent supportive housing needs for people experiencing homelessness right now too.

That's a really exciting opportunity.

I think the idea that people would be transitioned to a hotel and then

at some point when we feel more comfortable in the community with our sort of health conditions that they've been released to the space doesn't quite feel right appropriately.

And so I think that the idea of additional dollars that would help support that transition actually into private housing would be fantastic.

But at this point, there's multiple streams of funds that are coming in multiple ways, most of which are reimbursement, some of which are not, but none of which are actually on the ground yet.

And so it's possible that the city up fronts that through our existing contracts and then gets reimbursed through the Department of Housing and Community Development.

But on Friday, we heard pretty clearly that there's going to be money for this.

Another question.

The Pathways Fund is nearly tapped out.

The last time we looked at the set of data, we have not gotten a data report from the Community Foundation in a little bit more than a week.

And so we're assuming that we're pretty close to the edge of our pathways, our emergency funding from the city.

The county is also very close to the end of their investment.

the community foundation that the last time we looked at data there had been just a little bit more than 3,000 calls and 1,700 applications and they had released already $1.4 million.

And so there also was an announcement in the last 10 days of two separate $1 million contributions to that fund and so it continues.

So I don't think that they're necessarily at the end of their pool.

but there's also a tremendous number of applications that are sort of already in line in the hopper.

The volume has just overwhelmed almost every system that's been set up including a new online application which should ease the access both for folks who are applying online and for folks who are calling on the phone.

I just had a quick question about staying at Key Rec.

No, so because the Haven is open, they're moving.

So they move as a group, get up in the morning and go to the Haven and spend the day there.

There's more showers there.

There's more services there.

I think it's frankly, it's attention-easer to be able to have a locational change twice a day rather than for many of us who have been home for a long time when we relish the opportunity to go someplace else for eight or ten hours.

and I do think that as long as there's a safe place for them to be that they're not being sort of cut loose into the street to find their own wherewithal for 12 to 14 hours but we're actually saying please go to the haven and there's a little march down to the haven and so like only a couple blocks I feel comfortable with that arrangement.

So there have been inside all of these spaces and sometimes in the immediate outside, there's been a lot of guidance.

There's been a lot of giving away of masks and there's hand washing stations now, multiple places on the outside of the Haven and lots of hand sanitizer on the inside.

They're wiping down every surface almost every two hours in that space.

And so they're really paying very close attention to trying to have this be as mitigated as possible.

But once folks are sort of outside gathering around, it's harder and harder to maintain that.

And so there's guidance and advice given, some cajoling.

And then around the outside of key rec, there's been some paint that's been put down, and there's more monitoring during the intake to make sure that there's no sort of clustering.

But it's pretty hard.

And I hear a couple times a week from somebody who's concerned after seeing a group of folks

that are making a choice for themselves.

It's not for lack of information.

It's also not for lack of resource in that context.

Also, I mean, I know Pacham must be overseeing the night time at key rec.

And I know Pacham's used to closing down already almost a month ago now.

Are we looking to assist them any?

Is this within their budget?

I'm certain that Jason would want me to say no, it's not within their budget.

All of these folks are having unexpected, you know, expenses and costs associated with managing this particularly vulnerable population.

I do believe that the money that's coming through, we have emergency shelter money that's coming through the Department of Housing and Community Development will also support the expanded service costs for PACHA.

And that would help me get that, have that information also when we're considering budget and just for the conversation we are having in the

in the community, I know the conversation that I had with UVA about the furloughs today that they are going to add additional funds to their emergency fund, too, to help provide some funding for their employees.

But we know that.

Like all of you, we're scrambling to keep track of all of the sort of new sources or the eligibility for the sources that come out.

But we'll try to do our best to try to gather that stuff.

It may not all be available for our conversation on Friday, but hopefully, certainly by mid-May, we'll be able to share information about the kinds of federal and state resources that are coming to support most of our departmental functions to be able to share where the gaps are at the very least or whether the money is

is promised but not likely to land locally, which is the other thing that sometimes happens.

OK.

Thank you.

Are there any other questions?

I'm set.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Thank you, Kaki.

Moving on, we do have Lauren here answering your questions and then to talk a little bit more about the utility and some of the things that we've been able to do with the utility and also to helping our customers as we move through this crisis.

Thank you, Brian.

Sorry about that.

Mayor and Councillors, I'm happy to talk to you about our essential operations that we continue to provide to our customers regarding utilities, especially during this stay at home order.

A little bit about the water system and what we're still providing.

It's regulated by the Virginia Department of Health.

We're continuing to install water meters and encoder transmitters that we are able to then read and make sure that the meters are functioning properly.

We're also responding to water meter and ERT failure responses.

We are continuing to support the local construction activities that are ongoing in our community by providing water taps and water valve operations for construction projects We also respond to water quality inquiries and the necessary required investigation and mitigation that's necessary We also are providing fire flow test information that's requested for development We are continuing to read meters

We are continuing to respond to customer requests through move-in and move-outs based on their facilities.

We are continuing to have management oversight of our water pump station to make sure that people in the Dairy Road, Rugby Road area maintain their water.

We also respond to emergency response to water leaks during the day and after hours.

Regarding moving on to wastewater, which is regulated by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, we are responding to sewer main blockage responses and providing repairs as needed.

We also respond to right-of-way sinkhole investigations that are associated with our sewer lines.

and we are investigating sewer overflows that may happen, providing the necessary mitigation and mandatory reporting to the regulatory agencies and we have after hours emergency response related to our wastewater services as well.

Regarding essential operations associated with gas, we are still continuing to respond to inside gas leaks.

We get, surprisingly, quite a number of these call-ins where people smell gas inside their homes.

We estimate we have about a call and a half a day that we respond to.

We also are responding to outside gas leaks, carbon monoxide leak response investigation.

Again, customer move-in and move-outs.

And I might go over a little more detail about our move-in and move-out response, because this is where we've got gas service technicians that actually have to go in homes to light the necessary gas appliances.

We don't rely on customers to do this.

So early on, we set up protocol to make sure these people ask the right questions.

And this was being advised by the American Public Gas Association, which provided us a lot of detail on what we needed to do pretty early on.

And we find out whether anybody's COVID positive in the household, whether symptomatic,

We try to maintain the people are polite and try to explain that we want to maintain social distancing.

They may want to be in another room while we go in and service their appliances.

But we really had some concern about people continuing to go in people's houses and interact with customers.

So we tried to have some means to make sure those employees still remain safe.

We also continue to respond to gas meter regulator responses.

and we provide leak survey detection based on gas leaks.

We've continued that program.

This is where we go around residential areas every three years and businesses once a year and they grade leaks and if a grade one leak is detected then it needs an immediate repair by a gas service crew.

We also continue to do cathodic protection readings.

This is readings to make sure that our steel gas mains are in the proper order.

We have system over-perfertilization protection we continue to provide.

We also are providing new construction installations for service lines in Albemarle County and within the city limits for new services and business startups.

We also have, as related to misutility, and we have not seen the construction community slow down with any of the Patel based on the

9-1-1 responses, not 9-1-1, 8-1-1 responses to misutility calls.

We've noticed that those calls have remained pretty steady with our locating ability.

And if someone is working directly in close proximity to our gas steel mains, it's called a code safety response, where we have to have someone on site all the time to inspect that work

while they're working in close proximity to our critical utility facilities.

We continue to also do meter reading for gas.

We have odorant readings that we take at the outer reaches to make sure that we've got the proper odorant.

So, you know, when Flicker tells you what's the rotten egg smell, we make sure those odorant readings are still maintained within that system.

We have not slowed down as far as rerouting gas lines associated with construction.

We just finished up a request two weeks ago from UVA.

We recently received finished up a request from VDOT on Dominion Drive where we had to relocate gas lines associated with construction that they had going on and we've got some other construction reroutes pending based on private development.

We also have responded to third party excavation damages to our facilities.

And we respond to difficult to locate lines in order to make sure that our lines are located properly associated with construction.

As far as the administration personnel that support the ongoing essential services out in the field, we have a 24-7 call center that takes in calls based on water leaks, gas leaks, anything people are concerned about, they can call 970-3800 and get someone immediately and we will respond.

Administration and that's maintained by five dispatchers that have rotating shifts.

We also have budget review and consumption management that we've maintained, personnel management.

We run a citywide drug testing program for federal guidelines to support our operations.

We have asset management oversight, public awareness community outreach continues, regulatory compliance management continues, site plan reviews.

Capital improvement program management oversight has also continued because our contractors continue to work to improve our facilities.

We have safety program management and oversight as well.

and we also were updating our system GIS mapping for compliance requirements.

We have certain compliance requirements that require that new facilities are put in.

We are required to update our mapping within 14 days of that installation.

And we also are providing construction inspection for our capital improvement program as well as the oversight for local development construction.

We currently have 21 professional administration staff working, six of which are teleworking full-time at home offices.

And it's seamless.

They have their phone numbers sent to their cell phones, and people don't know they're necessarily working from home.

We also have six employees teleworking that come into the office as necessary to gather papers or do inspections out in the field.

and do what's needed to support the essential operations.

And we also have nine employees in this group that were working from the office.

This includes the five rotating dispatchers.

And then we have four other employees that are supporting, mostly management roles, supporting the staff.

Back on March 23rd, we just made a decision in order to minimize the social interaction among our operations staff.

We split the gas operations staff in half and the water wastewater group in half, and we have them working one week on and one week off.

And that was to make sure that we didn't have everybody in the lunchroom at the same time, everybody at roll call at the same time.

and also to make sure that we keep our employees safe.

And this is not unheard of.

If you look at what the country's doing from utility perspective, they are also – it's very common that they are rotating their staffs in order to maximize the essential services they continue to provide.

Just some additional changes we've made in order to continue to do our business.

Those people that are one week on or one week off, if they're off that week, they recognize that they could be called in for utility emergencies or extra duties if needed.

I'll give you an example today.

We almost called people back in because we were simultaneously working at Waterleak, and we then had two sewer backups we were working, all at the same time this morning.

So it all hit at one time and we contemplated calling people back in because we needed them.

But we were able to figure out what we needed to do with the people we had on staff.

We've also staggered lunchroom hours and we've staggered utilizing additional workspaces to minimize the number of people in one workspace for roll call.

We've tried to minimize our PPE usage for

daily operations by thinking outside the box, by buying rubber gloves, by buying things that can be washed, that they can reuse in order to make sure that our city PPE uses doesn't go down quickly.

We're doing regular cleaning of workspaces and vehicles.

We've minimized the number of staff and vehicles in any one time.

It wouldn't be unheard of during normal operations.

We'd have four people in a crew cab because those extended crew cabs, because we're trying to minimize the vehicles out on site.

But now we're not doing that.

We also are continuing construction meetings and design engineering meetings via teleconference.

We have weekly staff check-in meetings via teleconference.

We have postponed some of our programs.

And I mentioned earlier the gas service technicians that have to go in houses.

So we were trying to minimize what wasn't necessary to get.

to keep gas service technicians out of houses.

And we have our gas meter.

I'll give you an example.

Our gas meter replacement program, where we replace meters every 20 years.

Every residential meter is replaced every 20 years.

And that program, we ceased because we figured we could postpone that program and not have people interacting with people inside their houses.

We also have established questions for people to ask when they interact with customers out in the field just to make sure that we keep our employees safe.

I mentioned that we have gotten input from the American Public Gas Association associated with how we're operating.

There are roundtable discussions that happen biweekly with agencies all across this country.

And they're public agencies, so they're just like us.

And the input is very important to us.

And we recognize that our reaction to things is not any different than what anybody else is doing across this country.

I also have regular update meetings with Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority and Albemarle County Service Authority and just to see what's happening as far as what they're doing in reaction to the COVID-19 situation.

We also, with Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority and Albemarle County Services Authority, we also had discussions very early on on what we were going to do as far as our budgets moving forward in our rate setting because we realized pretty quickly when this started that we couldn't have a rate increase.

So everybody had, the three agencies had to be on board

because we couldn't have one agency.

As you know, with Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority, they make up 50% of our water and sewer rates generally.

We couldn't have them looking at increases and the city not looking at increases, or we'd have to absorb their increase.

So we all agreed that we would postpone our rate setting with no rate increases for the next fiscal year, utility budget,

utilities are monitoring revenues and customer water and usage.

Initial usages indicate that residential usage is up a little bit because people are at home, but our commercial usage and UVA usage is pretty down.

But we're only about three weeks into reading this.

So we have some data, but we need about a month's worth of data to draw any conclusions, which we're continuing to look at.

Just to summarize a little bit and what I wanted to emphasize, we have focused on utility staff health and safety and made some adjustments while continuing to provide essential utility services.

We haven't seen any changes to regulatory compliance regulations.

We have to continue to get our consumer competence report.

It has to be out by the end of June, and that is on schedule.

to be released in a few weeks to the public.

This contains input into the water quality standards and things that we have to provide to our customers.

And we haven't seen any relaxation of inspections related to State Corporation Commission.

They continue to inspect our crews out in the field, which can provide some undue stress,

We have to continue to comply with regulatory regulations.

We've got all of our staff working, providing over 50 essential tasks, and we continue to support the development construction area as well as continue our capital improvement plan work with inspection services.

Well thank you for the update.

We really appreciate that.

I have a couple questions to start.

Just in around employee safety, well first a statement about the one week on, one week off.

I really appreciate hearing that and I'm glad that you all have been allowed the flexibility.

to ensure that whatever works best within your individual departments that you are able to do to meet the needs of your employees.

And I'm glad it worked out that the other half of the team didn't have to be called back in.

But do have some questions around when

I've seen the crews a lot out and how full those trucks used to be.

And so even now, they're still very close contact by people who are not in the same family member any more than one person is in a truck at a time.

So what's the protocol that's been put in place while they are riding in the truck?

Are they wearing

For interaction with customers, we make sure that they have customer masks.

But we try to minimize the number in the truck to a maximum of two people.

So we don't have the four or five people in a truck anymore.

But most of the time, it's probably, I would say, 80%, maybe 85% of the staff, though.

I need to check that.

We're not really requiring them to do during the rides.

We are requiring them, though, per our policies, that they have to make sure that everything is sanitized in the truck before and after they get in.

We are looking at providing some additional cloth masks as they come in.

FEMA is providing water and wastewater operators and gas operators masks, and they are supposed to be in this league.

OK.

And I can imagine that it's difficult.

And I've seen people out working on sewer lines.

And I've had them close to my house.

I know how close contact they come with each other.

And I know that it would be hard at times to keep those distancing, especially if you're fixing something and something else breaks and you need more hands to contain it.

And I've had family members work

you know, in that field.

So I know, you know, I've heard those stories.

Thank you, Lauren.

In terms of the rate setting, you're saying that there will not be any, it'll just kind of, that process won't happen this year.

Yes, that's correct.

At this point, so per city code, the existing rates stay in place until you adjust them.

So we just won't make that adjustment.

Sorry.

Thanks.

OK.

OK.

Well, thank you.

Thank you.

The next individual is Marty Seelman.

We have a lot of movement in our public works department and he keeps it going and I'm not going to delay his introduction but you know there's a lot of work that continues on a day-to-day basis with our public works department throughout the city.

Thank you very much, Dr. Richardson.

Good evening, everybody.

Again, my name is Marty Selmon with Public Works.

I'm just going to start by giving a general overview of what we've done within the department as a whole, and then I'll kind of break into some of the division-specific efforts that we've implemented or searches that we've changed as a result of the COVID-19

Just some high level stats just for information purposes regarding our staff.

We have a total of 56 staff that are still coming into work every day.

A total of 43 staff are teleworking, and we've got around 20 staff or so that are in a resting reserve slash available state.

And that number fluctuates depending on needs that arise from day to day, depending on what may come up in the streets.

You know, if there's a pothole or something like that that needs to be filled.

There's approximately 10 staff members that are directly assigned to positions within the city's critical incident management team under Chief Baxter that is working on COVID-19 efforts and that's in addition to their daily jobs and so a lot of our folks are pretty well tapped between their normal day-to-day activities and also in support of COVID efforts.

And there's a lot more than those 10 that are directly assigned to specific positions that are providing support within the operations section, the logistics section, and the infection control section.

And so, you know, just across public works in its entirety, there's a lot of efforts being exerted on COVID to support the CIMT in addition to their normal day-to-day activities.

Those folks that are working are using PPE if their environment warrants it and they're showing the exercise and any guidances from the CDC.

We're doing the self-monitoring as required by city policy.

We actually had one of our systems analysts create an electronic process for staff that's working remotely to report their daily temperatures so they can get up in the morning and take their temperatures, log into the app and then kind of report their temperatures and it all stays confidential with our

coordinator that does the self-monitoring.

The Public Works Admin Desk is currently closed to the public at this time, but we're still monitoring phone calls, emails, massive reports, et cetera.

And we're still able to respond to and address issues that arise, such as street light outages, potholes, nickels, things like that.

Most of Public Works services are still intact, with only operational efforts being minimized, since many of those efforts involve crew work that

they're unable to do while performing social distancing that takes with separation.

So things like our concrete crews, for example, aren't currently doing any sidewall repairs, for example, but for the most part, a lot of our services are still being provided.

And a lot of the public works services are considered essential as they have a direct impact on the condition of our infrastructure, being the buildings, the roads, the environment, where they provide a needed service to community, for example, trash, traffic operations, inspections.

Public Works has also been working closely with the budget team and the city manager's office on CIP and budgetary impacts.

I won't go into detail on that one, but there's been a lot of meetings, a lot of conversations, a lot of time invested on looking at our revenues, our expenses, some of the ongoing projects that we have going on, what could be put on hold, what has to move forward, etc.

As far as our division specific efforts, the first one I'll touch on is our engineering division.

All of our inspectors are still working full-time four or five days a week depending what their normal schedule calls for.

They're having some modifications to their work approach.

For example, they're largely just working directly from their vehicle.

They can do their inspection reports and things like that.

They're using PPE.

When interacting with contractors maintaining six foot separation and following CDC guidelines, they have hand sanitizer wipes and things like that to keep the vehicles clean.

But largely kind of very independent with what they do normally, which I know sometimes gets kind of tough.

I've had a lot of conversations over the last several weeks with inspectors and just want to talk sometimes.

So it's always good to hear from them.

The majority of engineering staff, project managers, and the program administrators are teleworking.

There's a lot of Zoom meetings, as many people have mentioned.

They're still communicating with consultants and customers.

A lot of virtual pre-construction meetings, plan reviews are still going on.

A lot of the engineering functions are being done just remotely.

For our Environmental and Facilities Development Division, most of those folks are, actually a lot of those folks are teleworking at this point, but as with a lot of the professional staff that have, you know, office jobs, for example, there's the Zoom meetings and the web activities, of course, the normal, you know.

The facilities development folks are making the occasional site visit as necessary for any projects that are underway.

They are pricing the CDC guideline when they do that.

And the facilities development folks also worked with the infection control section of the CIMT to develop SOP to give guidance to contractors working in and on city facilities.

So I know that's one of the new SOPs that was created and our FD folks had a heavy role in that.

Facilities maintenance, a lot of credit needs to go to facilities maintenance.

They've probably within all of public works have had probably one of the biggest

Most active roles during this pandemic you know custodial staff for example you know they continue to work under pre-covid schedules to support ongoing city operations they actually increased a lot of their cleaning and sanitation efforts back i think in late february early march before any state of emergency was called for they started looking at ordering additional sanitizing materials and equipment and bleaches and things like that to sort of assist with what we kind of thought was going to become a number two and also just take a minute to

Really thank those custodial staff.

I've heard a lot of good things from folks throughout the city about the hard work and their dedication to this whole effort.

Maintenance and repair teams and within city facilities are operating with a skeleton crew on a rotating schedule so as with a lot of folks

We're trying to limit the employee interaction among staff and kind of rotate folks in and out and give people time to rest and kind of recover.

As many of you know, there's been some contracts procured for facility cleaning.

This is just in a situation if it is needed.

And then we're working with the voter registration office, other departments to install things like plexiglass screens to protect staff if there's any public interaction and things

and then there's the handful of folks within facilities maintenance that are teleworking as well.

With the Fleet Division, operations are largely the same except the technicians have been divided up into two shifts.

Again, to just kind of limit that exposure to one another and prevent spread.

And the priorities have been adjusted to focus on, there's been direct support of COVID efforts by police vehicles

and public service.

A few folks work in teleworking.

Our maintenance crews are operating with the skeleton crew again on a rotating schedule.

We're still responding to issues that arise in the right-of-way.

Like I mentioned earlier, potholes, sinkholes, trash issues, dead animal reporting, things like that.

There have been some changes in service delivery.

We did as a result of the city hall being closed, we had to develop a mail-in process for folks to get trash stickers and decals and that seems to be working pretty well.

The large item pickup program was initially suspended for a couple of weeks but that's now occurring every other week instead of every week and what we've done with that is typically has two people in the truck

and so we have one person driving the what they call the call truck or the boom truck and then the spotter is riding behind them in a separate vehicle to keep them from getting too close to one another and we're monitoring the number of pickups that we're performing and if the calls or the need warrants that we go back every week we're able to accommodate that.

Street sweeping is currently on hold but we hope to be bringing that back in the next week or two just to prevent the heavy accumulation of debris on the roadways

and that's the task that we've evaluated and we've decided we can easily perform that task and keep the employees safe and maintain social distancing following TDC guidelines.

Routine scheduled maintenance work is currently on hold as it typically involves a five to seven person crew working within a six foot radius of one another.

And so at this point, we're just responding to immediate needs, like I mentioned before, potholes, pavement patches, clogged storm drains, things like that.

We're also still trying to stay ahead of the weather

and if there's a significant storm event that's coming, we're trying to get some folks out there to kind of clean those storm drains in advance of that.

Our admin team, our entire admin team is pretty much directly supporting the CIMT, most of them within the logistics section, but beyond that, you know, just teleworking and there's no reductions for the public.

Looking forward, Public Works will continue to work with the participants to the management team with the city and follow the state and local situation to ensure our efforts align with the region.

We'll likely continue to maintain staggered schedules to limit employee contact until the situation warrants otherwise.

We'll continue to coordinate with the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority and Albemarle County on joint projects and budgets.

We'll continue to analyze work processes to bring back services and operations with increased efforts to limit spread and incorporate the CDC guidelines.

And as I mentioned earlier, we hope to restart street sweeping in the next week or two.

So you'll see this cruise around in the morning.

Okay.

Thank you for that.

Update.

And Dr. Richardson, just one point that I won't lose that thought is, as someone who's called the facility maintenance in the early morning hours to hear that they are still at kind of their pre-COVID schedules,

They would also, I know we would consider this for everyone, but when we're looking at front lines, even though they may be in buildings, primarily alone or in spaces where it may not be considered, because that team would not be maybe offered the flexibility that some of the other teams have been offered, I would just want us to keep track of that so that we

could have that conversation in the future, too, when we're talking about whenever in the future we can talk about hazardous pay or bonuses or whatever.

So I just didn't want to lose that point.

But, Mari, thank you for the update there.

And it's good to hear the safety.

protocols that you all are putting in place.

That's the main focus, the safety, and then making sure that those staff members that you can offer those staggered schedules and that flexibility that they are able to get some time to care for themselves and their families.

So that would be the only comments I have at this time.

Thank you, Marty.

I just was curious.

You laid out a lot of things relative to how much things are working forward in this environment.

You mentioned the street cleaning is one of the things that hasn't been happening.

Certainly.

So the street sweeping, like I mentioned, we're going to try to bring that back in a week or in the next week or so.

That's something that we can easily do because those guys, folks, for the most part, they work, you know, kind of in a siloed scenario where they come in the mornings, they get in their sweeper.

They typically come in for some breaks periodically.

We can have them break, you know, elsewhere so they don't, you know, come into contact with other folks who may be in the office.

Some of the other services that right now are suspended.

We have folks out there doing a lot of pavement work, a lot of concrete work, some pavement remarketing, for example, for installing new crosswalks, things like that.

There's a lot of usually work that kind of precedes the repaving schedule.

A lot of those have been temporarily suspended or only doing those as

The situation is absolutely worn.

For example, if there's a bad pothole that's a traffic hazard, for example, we'll bring in a crew to address that.

But because a lot of those crews, they work five to seven people all within very close proximity to each other, we're more concerned about the safety of our employees right now.

If we defer some of this maintenance for a couple months, it's not the best approach.

We see the same kind of applies to sidewalk repair as well.

You mentioned that earlier.

Sidewalk repair is not currently happening right now.

Again, because in order to do that, you've got a five to seven person crew that's working.

If there is a situation where there's an extremely hazardous, you know, break in the sidewalk or heave or something like that, we can bring somebody in to respond to it.

I had a question.

I know I think we've all received a number of emails and communications about people asking about temporarily expanding pedestrian and bike opportunities, particularly with reference to other cities that, because of the decrease in traffic from the stay-at-home order, have been able to temporarily close roads or streets in order to make it easier for people to do social distancing while walking or biking.

Just curious if

I know that's been explored a little bit.

Certainly.

So yes, we are actually actively looking into what opportunities may exist.

One of the things that we've seen is that a lot of the localities that have done this are larger metropolitan areas where the population is a lot denser.

So I think it's a little bit more pertinent for those kinds of localities.

There's a number of things to consider.

The interaction with vehicles and pedestrians can be obviously very dangerous.

And so we have limited traffic control equipment to really

You know, adequately separate a pedestrian from a vehicle.

For example, you know, typically pedestrians have the protection of the six inch concrete curbs.

They're on the sidewalks.

There's a very clear delineation between the pedestrian area and the vehicular area.

But we are looking to some options.

We've got a couple ideas of locations we'll be able to just close completely.

Of course, there's a lot of coordination that has to happen, even if we find identified streets where we think we can make this work.

There's a lot of coordination that has to happen with emergency services, because obviously that affects how they get from point A to point B. Again, the safety aspect is going to be our pretty much primary concern in making sure that the users of those areas will be safe from vehicles.

Our traffic control equipment, again, we're a small community.

We have many traffic control equipment.

And to do long pull doors, the closures, for example, require a lot of equipment, essentially, whether it be cones or barriers.

and so we're also looking at other localities that have done this and trying to figure out what some of the parameters of any of the decisions were, in particular as it relates to the safety of the bikes and the pegs that would be kind of in that runway.

So I guess the short answer is yes, we're definitely looking into it.

I've been working with the traffic engineering team pretty much daily.

There's been a lot of correspondence going around.

I know there's some folks who've been

We're doing it correctly Are there any other questions Again want to say thank you to your team and for everything that they're doing I know so much of what their work is

Yes, and we appreciate it.

And the same thing that I've said to every director, we know that there are people who are having to risk their safety.

And by doing that, they risk the safety of their family by coming to work and performing these essential duties.

We are aware, and as soon as that we can figure out a solution to that, we will.

But we understand that includes a lot of people from your department, too.

And so just you can convey that we understand that and that we are having those discussions.

Thank you.

We have two more presenters.

The next up is Chief Brackney.

Good afternoon or actually good evening now.

So thank you for hosting us Dr. Richardson and Mayor Walker and the rest of council.

And I also just want to acknowledge that the work that around COVID-19 may not be immediately evident to a lot of our persons because it is a behind the scenes work.

We continue at Charlottesville Police Department to serve this community.

We also are serving the city and staff and our regional partners in very different ways.

and I just wanted to start from the beginning saying how proud I am of our team and the work they perform under very extraordinary circumstances.

So the first things I would like to update you on is just our operations.

All of our personnel are deemed essential personnel so they don't have the opportunity to telework from home.

That doesn't exist for us so we've had to be very creative

and the way that we have attempted to alter their work schedules so that they are not overlapping with each other and then possibly

exposing each other to contaminants.

We've been extremely creative and created basically cohorts and how they respond to different calls.

The station has been closed to the public and we actually did this very early on on the advice of reaching out to chiefs in the west coast who are experiencing

COVID-19 exposure is our first one in Seattle, working very closely with the Chief of Police in Seattle and what measures she put into place early so that we could start to protect our staff from exposures.

With the exception of mandatory warrant services and fingerprinting,

Our front desk window is closed.

However, the public can still walk in and request assistance.

We do have a doorbell option where they can request that, and we also have cameras so that we can see.

Our recruits were pulled from the academy that we're currently in the academy, which we were relying on very much so to be able to support our officers.

We've been down a lot.

However, what we've done is become very creative instead of

putting those officers off and not being able to work.

We've actually put them through some very rigorous field training so they now can support and were certified and were sworn in last week to be able to go out into the streets.

We will have another set of six so that we can also maintain never having more than 10 in a room at a time.

That will be sworn in this Friday as well.

That gives our other officers opportunities to rest, but it also keeps our recruits very viable and able to serve the community at a time when they're needed.

So you look for that.

We switched to virtual roll calls.

Those occur either through email, through Teams, or for Zoom so that we can get out that information that needs to be disseminated among all of our teams.

We've expanded our online reporting options where our citizens now can report crimes online.

And then we've also expanded our telephone reporting in case a person does not have access to internet or the forms, they can call our non-emergency number and then speak with an officer who will take the report over the telephone.

We are screening the type of calls that we respond to through ECC.

That's our Emergency Communications Center, where there are a list of questions that they will ask of the 911 caller.

As soon as they can get that information, it is safe to do so.

And we are asking about any persons who may be sick in the home.

Although that is not, as we know, the best indicator of possible exposures, it is one of the things that we're doing.

We're asking individuals to step out of their homes and engage us if it's safe to do so, so that it's less likely that we introduce our officers into a household where there may be infections or exposures.

we have our we've changed our enforcement options and when officers are coming to homes we know it is important that we support the executive orders 53 and 55 that have come out from the governor's options office but we also know that it's much more important to educate our communities so that we are all socially responsible

and that we do that in a way that benefits our community and doesn't criminalize behaviors that we have always encouraged throughout society around physical distancing.

We now have limited access to our gyms and our locker rooms and that is something that is a

challenge for us that we may need support for as our officers are limited to three persons in a locker room at a time so that we can continue to distance.

But also physical fitness is very much a part of their routines and activities.

And our personal gym that we have here is very small.

So we now have to have online sign ups for them to use the gym and no more than three persons in it as well with constant decontamination

and that is in effect.

We have limited our sharing of vehicles.

So the vehicles are assigned to that person so that they can guarantee that we don't cross contaminate.

All of our vehicles are decontaminated at the beginning and the end of the shifts by the officers.

And then if we have a transport, they are decons according to CDC standards so that we can decon each and every one of our vehicles.

We take our temperatures prior to entering the building, and that's recorded and logged at all times.

In addition, we have mandated that our officers wear their personal protective equipment at all times.

So you'll see them out on the streets with their mask on and their gloves, because the opportunity to put those on during a crisis does not necessarily exist.

Unfortunately, because of the way that we are moving, discretionary time is reviewed on a case by case basis, but we are allowing officers to use that so that they have the opportunity to rest and recuperate.

The additional step that we're taking now is not only just to protect our officers, but to protect those that we come into contact with.

And that includes officers carrying additional masks so that when they have to arrest an individual or bring someone into custody, that we supply them with a mask immediately for their protection, as well as that of our officers.

And I'll talk about a little bit later how that may be impacting our personal protective equipment

and what our burn rates are as the Charlottesville Police Department has taken on the responsibility for not only just the department but the entire city to obtain PPE, track burn rates and things of that nature.

Our infectious disease and exposure protocols are extremely robust and we've been able to just recently leverage some of our relationships to have our officers tested.

As you know, like everyone else, we were not able to have access to testing and instead we're having to put our officers off on quarantine

assignments, and they were self-monitoring.

We have been able to be pushed in front of the lines if our officers believe they have been exposed.

It's documented and that they're getting tested very quickly.

So we appreciate the relationships that we've been able to do as a result of that.

Unfortunately, we started out behind the curve because ECC requirements when it came to exposures and possible exposure of our officers, the Department of Health was not able to share if there were exposures in a household, if there was someone they were tracking.

So any first responders or emergency responders

or DSS who might have been coming into a home to provide services were not being provided with that information.

There is now mandates that that is provided so that we are aware not if someone has COVID-19 but if there is a high risk

and we're being told to what type of protective equipment we should be utilizing when we're responding to those calls in those homes.

So there are protections for the community so that no one knows what it is but we are being afforded the opportunity to know that there may be an infectious environment there and to make sure that we put on protective equipment.

We are currently leading the efforts

Right now for the city to make sure that we have face masks, face coverings, gloves, the Tyvek suits, the booties, decontamination.

And when I say booties, I mean the ones that you put on your feet.

Decontamination supplies for all of our workforce and even our regional partners.

We are currently have taken on the responsibility in addition to their other ones of tracking what is our burn rates and why that's going to be important.

But when we run out of equipment, the surgical masks, gloves, not just for the department, but throughout the entire city, who are we requiring to wear those

those equipments.

Charlottesville Police Department was also tasked and we worked very closely with Kathy Demick and her team for what does alternative housing and shelter look like for our vulnerable populations, our unsheltered populations, but also for our workforce, the city's workforce.

If there's the possibility of exhaustion from having to work shifts and not able to return home,

Could we shelter individuals here closer to the workspaces?

But also if there was contamination or exposures and we didn't want officers or city personnel returning back to their home, what kind of support could we provide for them?

We've been very supportive in our community, drop off initiatives and efforts so that we can coordinate resources that may have to be distributed back out into the community.

And we've taken the lead on messaging actually locally, regionally, and nationally on how do you protect your citizens and with our efforts to manage the stay-at-home orders, which are very controversial across the nation and of course in this region.

One of the things I'm extremely proud of is that we've been partnering with our local community groups, particularly Brave Souls on Fire, 100 Black Women of Charlottesville, and City of Promise to assist with the distribution of masks, anxiety and stress relief kits, which I understand that grant was approved today so that we could help with that, and essential goods that people need in their homes.

And then one of the things I really want to talk about is our mental health efforts for our officers.

We are not talking a lot about mental health and how we can support our staff.

So I have taken the initiative and we have a contract with a police psychologist

to now have four virtual roll call sessions in which our officers can zoom in as to what services can be provided both individually as well as within group sessions, what are some coping techniques

that our first responders can use to manage for themselves.

What are those signs of stress that we may be missing because they're used to operating under stress at another level or at a level, but then what happens is they're operating on even more severe conditions than they are because they're worried about taking exposures home to their families, infecting or possibly exposing other persons to that

And then what is that support that we even have for family members of our essential personnel, or as I call them, our mission critical personnel?

All of our personnel are essential.

Well, what are those mission critical ones that address this?

And if the city could even think about what does that mental health look like for

those persons who are staying at home and performing their functions, right, that there starts to be additional stressors about not being able to leave your home, your work environment feels like it's possibly closing in, you feel socially isolated and as well, so we want to think about that.

We have some

pretty serious challenges that I'm concerned about when it comes to our staff and even the city staff as well as there's no real ability to disconnect from this so either when you're working at home in your space

or when you go home, you still have the shelter in place, you know, stay at home orders.

There's no ability to disconnect.

This has impacted our service delivery models.

More importantly, what types of cases that we now have the ability to investigate.

and we want to be really thoughtful and intentional about that.

There are types of calls that we are no longer responding to in person that really have been a benchmark of our services, like accidents in which no one is injured and you're just exchanging information.