City Council Retreat Day 1, 9am-5pm   8/15/2025

Alright, if I can get everybody to take a seat please, we're going to go ahead and get started.

All right, so good morning.

Good morning.

Good morning.

All right, come on.

I just want to welcome you all to the Wolvac area.

I've been here before and done things.

But welcome to your council retreat.

Yes, I'll call the shout-outs for the city council.

Special meeting for retreat to order.

We have a roll.

Everyone is here and counted for, Madam Clerk.

So we're good to go.

So today is August 15th.

I've been thinking about this day for a long time so I'm so glad that it's here and I can't wait for August 17th when I move it all.

But just again wanted to thank you for patience and your cooperation and coordination for getting to this day.

I think this is an important moment for council and being able to talk about priorities and strategizing together.

It's important for us to do that as we move into a transition as we start the new year and I think it's just a good opportunity for us to just check in and see that we're on the same page and where we may not be, we can try to get back to the same page.

Our peanut gallery in the back made up of staff members from various positions that are here.

One won't even see what y'all talk about, help if they can.

but also just interested in seeing how we're doing some of the conversations that we're doing right now and moving the city organization forward.

I engaged an individual who we'll be working with to help me work in the city manager's office and he came in about four months ago, I think it was, and he's been helping us to focus on us, the team that is the city manager's office team, top of the organization, working with council,

It has been quite a ride.

It has been extremely informative.

It has been challenging.

And it has been all the things that I probably could not have thought of at one time is what I found in the experience that we've been able to have.

And what I also did was ask him, can you come and bring that to council and let them feel what that is and work with us to help us set ourselves on a path that we can deliver more of what it is that we're trying to deliver in service to our larger community.

So he agreed to do that.

And the goal will be that we continue to find ways to integrate them into conversations that we have with staff so that then it gets down through the workforce and we are implementing with this larger vision of human centered first because that's what he's going to talk about a lot.

Human centered is about the people.

Process is important.

It comes, and y'all know that's not me.

I'm on process all the time.

People first, and then you get into the process world.

So I'm going to invite Josh to join us.

Josh is the head of the Spill Team.

He is a ball of energy, as you can see, and he is here to help us.

And he's helping us by challenging us to think and to consider and not today to decide or tomorrow to decide.

but to help inform the decision and how you even make the decision.

How y'all doing?

Great.

Good?

All right.

I'm excited to hear you.

Thank you for that, Sam.

I was like, was it heartwarming?

Was it big?

I don't really know which one it was.

It was probably a good mixture of both.

But I'm Josh Bell.

I'm part of the Spill Team.

I kind of want to talk about a little bit of who we are, and that is going to play a big part in how we function, actually.

So who we are and what we do should go hand in hand at all times.

So as a group of designers, we're a group of speakers, strategists, facilitators, and workshop designers.

It is a lot going into designing your experience for the next day and a half.

Raise your hand if you're a part of that.

It is a lot of work to design the space, the conversation, the content, everything matters.

But design sometimes can be an over-sexy youth word.

It literally speaks to create something.

Like to create the strategies, to create the conversation, to create the tools that we'll use today.

So that's kind of what we do.

What's Human Centered Design?

It is people first and process second.

The best way I can explain it is a little bit of shifting the way that we think and you can either create a process and stuff people into it.

or you can learn enough about people who create a process around them.

One is faster, one is easier, but those people most likely at the end of the day say, I don't feel like this was created.

It wasn't tailored in any particular way.

That is a good creative process, but most likely just stuff people into it.

And we got compliance versus commitment.

I think we're wanting commitment.

I think we can all agree to that.

So here's a process to actually create commitment.

Just like mom's favorite recipe, she has the actual process for doing that favorite recipe.

If we shortcut it, it does not taste like mom's, no matter how far we move on.

This is a process for you.

So you're probably like, what does that even mean?

Let me ask you, if I usually introduce you this way, if I were to say that I do something for you, what comes to mind?

If I do it for you, like, if I do it for you, what comes to mind?

Look what I do for you.

It's a favor.

Favor, okay.

Thank you.

Thank you, okay.

What comes to mind?

A gift.

A gift, they look like a gift for you, absolutely.

What else, what comes to mind?

I need something for you.

It could be obligation.

Okay, okay, absolutely.

Obligation, thank you, a gift.

Those are great words, kind of like, you were in my mind, you were in my heart, you were maybe referenced, all very good intentions.

Like, look what I did for you.

Like, look what I did for you.

Look what I did for you.

I thought about you.

Look what I did for you.

Man, that's super gone.

Thank you.

I think you said thank you, right?

All right, let me ask you another question.

Partner?

Together.

Together?

Cooperation.

Cooperation?

Friendship.

Friendship?

What else?

What else comes to mind?

Anyone else?

What do you think?

I'm always running the panel.

What do you think?

If I come, if I do it with you, if we do it with each other, what words come to mind?

Well, I mean, I think

What others said, together, joint effort?

Yeah, joint effort.

Yeah, absolutely.

You're alongside in collaboration, shared, contributing to your partner.

Those are completely different words, right?

I mean, they're your words.

Your words are absolutely completely different.

You didn't use these words to describe before.

You were there.

You were involved.

You were part of the actual process.

Are we at least clear on the difference between doing something for someone and doing something with someone?

Yeah.

Right?

Per your words, right?

It basically means bring the people in the room.

That's kind of why you're here.

And also believing that one size does not fit all.

It has to be done with individual.

If I change the people you do it with, we have to learn about them.

One size does not fit all, right?

So if the value and influence of the right people in the right room ensure me in the right way, and the right people is something I want to really double stamp on, it is you just can't bring people in the room to bring people in the room.

That doesn't really work.

What are you trying to achieve?

Why am I trying to achieve it?

Where are we trying to go?

Then you select your people that do that.

What the right people mean with the right knowledge, skills, and abilities.

If you've seen anything so far, it's kind of why you're in the room.

Like, you're the right people for today.

Human-centered design also makes sure that what we create doesn't collect dust.

Why?

Because you contributed.

You were a part of it.

We did it alongside.

So accountability looks a little different because if something doesn't happen, I was like, hey, we built that.

I think already you heard me tell you there were your words that you used with versus for.

That's already accountability.

You describe it this way.

Here are your words.

So accountability looks different when we look at things sitting on the shelf or not.

So wick comes with a deep level of pressure as well because you're like, I do have to contribute.

I do need to be a part of it.

I actually am part of the building of the actual thing.

So with, that's what it means.

But you have to be good at navigating, facilitating, cultivating people's experiences.

It's all you learn, think, and do.

That's actually how you're skilled at with.

But human-centered design is a way of thinking, value, working, that challenge is doing for someone versus with them.

You get any completely different words than what that meant, right?

But I want to break it down for you for a moment.

If I moved

your ability to have a deep understanding.

This is a little bit of the process of human centered design.

Let's just say I put a challenge in front of you and I put something for you to solve and I removed your ability to have a deep understanding.

And so I was like, explore some ideas and materialize and bring them to life.

But I removed your ability to have a deep understanding.

Floundering.

It wouldn't be sustainable, floundering.

I removed your ability to have a deep understanding.

We're exploring ideas, we're bringing to life.

Exploring ideas, bringing to life.

Let's play with something else.

What if I removed your ability to explore multiple ideas?

So you got your deep understanding and you just land on an idea and you bring that to life.

And I removed your ability to explore multiple perspectives, multiple ideas, creative solutions.

So, got a deep understanding, let me land on my idea and bring it to life.

I'm right bias, right?

Naturally.

I would agree.

Yeah.

Yeah.

First thing we thought of.

First idea.

Yep.

What else?

Leaving people out.

Right.

Yeah.

Who's not here?

Right.

Asking the question.

Yeah.

What else?

What would you say?

You might get something that didn't work.

Yeah.

Let's play with another idea.

You have deep understanding and you've been able to explore multiple creative solutions, multiple creative ideas, but we're not really materializing anything.

We're not really bringing anything to life.

What's the outcome?

Great understanding and deep multiple perspectives and multiple creative ideas, but we've not implemented or materialized.

So we're round and around and around.

The Belmont Bridge.

So we have examples apparently, okay, okay.

But at the end of the day, they play a big part.

What I have a deep understanding about allows me to explore multiple ideas.

Those ideas allow me to materialize something, and what I materialize is checked to and against what I understand.

That's a cycle.

Cool?

It kind of looks like this is a deeper level of it, but I'm going to ask you all to just hang out with me in the space of

Confusion.

No, I'm kidding.

But I actually want you to hang out with me in the space up here.

Just understand, explore, materialize.

For the next day and a half, that's where we're going to live.

We're going to live in exploring, understanding, materializing.

OK?

And I'm going to un-plutter it.

It's not about what we build, create, or solve.

Human-centered design will stress on how, which increases sustainability.

And you just explained to me why it's important to have a deep understanding.

Then explore multiple ideas.

You just explained how we should go about solving a problem.

And if we didn't go about it that way, you explained,

also some potential hiccups and some actual projects and examples that you have.

So just hang out here in these three with me for the next day and a half.

Cool?

With me?

Yep.

Yep.

Cool.

So how are we doing?

It looks like this.

How we implement, what is this?

Anybody know what this is?

Workshop.

It's a workshop.

What happens in a workshop?

Anybody have a dad, uncle, aunt, mom, whatever had a workshop?

Anybody?

Yeah, okay.

What happens inside the workshop?

It's sort of like the curse words where you hear someone yelling, like, doing something.

What happens?

You hit your thumb sometimes.

Problem solving.

Problem solving?

Repair?

Hurt yourself sometimes?

Breaking stuff?

Yeah.

Ideas?

Thoughts?

Creativity, sometimes dad wants to go away or mom wants to go away into the workshop.

A workshop is how we strategize.

All the things you just mentioned is how we're going to actually strategize.

And so we're gonna learn, think, and do all at the same time in that space.

That's what happens in the workshop space.

There's learning, thinking, and doing.

It kinda looks like this.

Actually looks like this.

You might see some of your hometown heroes in here.

There's some cool people we've been able to work with throughout the years.

We've been in this community for well over 11 years.

And so we've been able to work with some pretty cool people locally, internationally, and be able to do some fun stuff, host some really, really great conversations in this community, specifically with leadership.

But it's been a good time.

You might even see some people that, you know, kind of go Christmas there, right?

It's a baby picture.

Chris, I think I saw you, you know, 15 years ago.

But, yeah, we've been able to do a really good work.

This impact, this conversation we've already started having has been pretty fun.

It's usually, at the end, it's going to be a good time.

There's smiles at times, I promise.

I will even do this pose for you when we're done, I promise.

But I am asking this, while we're in the room together, we're going to shift the way that we think about some things.

Hopefully, in this conversation alone, you've already experienced that a little bit.

that you're like, man, I can see where this is going.

And Sam, does the window unlock because I want to bail?

Or I see where this is going and this is probably going to do this in our time.

Anytime we work with a group, there's usually a challenge, a question that we ask.

And so what would it look like if the city council used human-centered design to better inform and direct the city manager's office towards strategic impact?

This is the question I hope to solve by the end of our time together.

Cool?

With me?

Yeah.

Isn't that a big question?

Everybody's like, that's a big question, dude.

Like, I don't even know.

That's a huge question.

But this is what we're going after for the next day and a half.

Cool?

I have this up on the wall.

So we will be able to stare at it and remember why we're here.

So we're going to stare at this pre-designed question about the next day and a half just so we can remember what we're solving for.

So by the chance you find yourself detouring, getting off track a little bit, this is our North Star.

We are going to solve for this question.

At the end of the day, it's about direction setting to help inform decision making.

I want to kind of explain what that is and so thank you for hanging out with me because we're setting the tone for the next like day and a half and then we're going to rock and roll.

So direction is around you understanding where it is.

You're going to hear a lot of its.

You're going to hear about budget.

You're going to hear about the community.

You're going to hear about strategic priorities.

I'd like to know where it is.

It is all about current place and the status of those things.

I really, really, really highly encourage, I think I ask them to tell you three things.

Comfortable shoes and a sweater and paper and pen.

Like, take notes.

Take notes, capture your notes, categorize your notes.

It's gonna be really important.

I promise you, as you understand where it is, we're gonna use that on day two, okay?

Remember everything's connected, understand, explore, materialize, it's all actually connected.

What you understand will be used, I promise.

So take notes.

And you're also going to get to explore what is and what could be within those categories as well.

So we're going to understand where it is and then we're going to explore what is and what could be.

Cool?

And that is about opportunity and possibility.

All right, here's what we're going to get into today.

First, it's a jam-packed day.

I promise you, it's a pretty high-intensity day.

You're going to understand where it is.

Chief priorities, community survey, financial budget.

We're going to do a reflection and design exercise, so I'm going to actually reflect on that information, which is why it's important to capture notes.

We're going to have lunch about 12.15ish.

We're going to talk about some top priorities as well.

We're going to have another reflection exercise.

And then we're out about 440-ish.

Is that okay?

Yep.

Make sense?

That's what we're going to accomplish.

While still pursuing this beautiful North Star here.

All right, so the way we're going to use human-centered design to accomplish this is we're going to understand where it is, day one.

Remember, we are heading, this is what we're going for, direction setting, right?

That's kind of like to inform and to direct.

Directions that we're going to try to materialize.

We're going to start with day one around understanding where it is.

And then, what is and what could be to help with direction setting.

Cool?

All right.

So I want to talk about bookends for a second.

If you're a dog person, you have these bookends.

If you're a cat person, you probably have these bookends.

But I want to talk about bookends for a moment.

The direction to help inform decision making is around where we're going.

This is the actual direction setting as a whole.

It's where we're going, getting there, and how we know.

We surround focus, strategy, execution, and measuring.

So, why I said bookends is because it isn't.

These might be bookends, but it is important to understand this.

These are the bookends to that whole process.

Where we're going and how we know.

Measuring.

Strategy and execution is a CMO's job.

Their goal is to figure out how.

How we're going to make this happen, the strategy, that's where you see all those other conversations.

But direction setting, you were the North Star.

You set the direction where we're headed and how we know we got there.

With that direction, we hand that off past the baton to the individuals responsible for strategy and execution.

So you are direction setting.

With me?

Cool?

Awesome.

All right.

And that's why we're going to hand all this in between stuff to the CMO's office.

Unless you all want that, let me know.

We've got strategy documents we can hand you, but I think for the most part, I see most of you all just like, hand me the book hands for us, please, and we will do the strategy and the execution.

Where are we going, council, and how do we know we got there?

Cool?

Awesome.

Alright, direction said uniform decision making.

As long as we agree, we're on the same page, we're good to go.

We're gonna see this a million times.

We'll use the ground rules for workshopping.

What is the purpose of a retreat?

Yes.

Do we get like snaps or poetry?

Yeah, to get away.

I was like, there was a breath in there, like, to get away.

Retreat is supposed to be commish, supposed to be some planning and some strategy that kind of go in it.

So I want to kind of talk about some of the benefits.

So you get to basically retreat from the demands and chaos of the everyday, absolutely.

Virtual high five for that.

Especially if you plan to plan and strategize.

I think it's really impossible to do that in the middle of chaos.

to think clearly, to set direction.

I think that's super impossible.

If I played a lot of noise right now and I tried to talk to you and give you instruction, you would say, I can't hear you.

Can't hear what?

I can't hear instruction.

I can't hear direction.

I can't think about what you're saying, Josh, so I can't even absorb it.

Why?

Because it's noisy.

There's a lot going on.

So this retreat is to, yes, get away, and to be able to affirm the demands and chaos of our beginning.

Retreat is a place where direction and decisions are made.

See what I did there?

See what I did there, where direction and decisions are made?

It's to assist in closing the gaps between who we are and who we want to be, the ability to sit and think of those things, who we are and where we want to be.

Let's go retreat and think about that and plan around that and strategize around that.

Retreat should be a first response and not a last resort.

When there is chaos and when there is something big, you should be able to say, hold on a second.

I need to go think, plan, get into the calm where I can hear, and strategize.

It should be a first response and not a last resort.

And a retreat, a successful retreat, needs both hope and discipline to be focused.

So, hope, where we're going, and focus, let's get there, let's focus on that.

So, where it is, is around current placement status, I wanna remind you of that.

I wanna talk to you really quick about some of the ground rules.

When we start talking about where it is, you're gonna hear a lot of historic things, you're gonna hear a lot of past tense, you're gonna hear a lot of things that have occurred, or where something is.

I want you to know that if you hear that, and it's not the easiest thing,

This is called the rubber band effect.

A rubber band, you know, you pull it back to shoot it further faster.

So if by any chance you were pulled back to remember something or you were pulled back to experience something, the purpose of that, reason for that in any presentation today or even tomorrow is to shoot you further faster.

Okay?

We're not pulling something back to stay there.

That's called being stuck in a moment.

This is going to be huge, huge, especially in day one.

Understand, listen, take notes.

Please, please, please take notes.

I don't know.

I'm going to hear you say that a lot, probably.

Write notes.

Not these types of notes.

This is like, call me, slide across the thing.

But you ever took notes before and you ever took notes and you went back and looked at it and you're like, what about right there?

What in the world?

So please take organized notes.

Please take notes in a way that you can reflect on them and know what you have.

Literally, I'm giving you heads up.

I'm going to ask you to reflect on your notes.

to pull out some answers.

Hold loosely what you know.

I think what you said at the very beginning that if I don't get it out to you to explore, then I land on the first thing, me.

Hold loosely what you know.

Hold it, but hold it loosely.

We are going to share out, at times, there are moments where we're going to hear each other.

And that's going to require a level of respect, this type of respect, the only person that sang it the best.

But we're going to talk about respect in the room in a sense of when we're hearing each other as well, and sharing out.

What could be is obviously day two, and that's where we're going to workshop.

That's where it's going to look like this.

In day two, you're also going to see a lot of working together alone.

What that means is collectively that we're independent but not independent of one another.

There are going to be moments where we're actually doing some independent work.

That independent work, I promise you, is connected to the whole.

Human-centered design does not live here.

It was in a circle.

It was understand, explore, materialize, and keep going.

So if I ask you to do something, please, please understand it is connected to something else.

That's why I came here to take notes, because it is connected to a bunch of other things as well.

OK?

We're going to idea dump.

I'm going to ask you to do that.

We're going to ask you to go with some ideas.

Any overthinkers?

Anyone openly admit that they're an overthinker?

Right, okay, so you hear like the tapping, like that's like someone kind of overthinking a little bit, just like, you got this, you got this.

So encourage the overthinkers.

We're going to go deep and wide as well.

There's an ability to think and participate in a process that allows you to go deep in thought and also cover a lot of ground as well.

So we're going to go deep and wide.

We are going to decide quickly.

There's a visual timer and I'm going to have that going on.

There's something to be said around visual time.

It's saying I have that much time to show up.

with my idea, my strategy, whatever it may be.

So we're going to decide quickly.

I'm going to ask you to stick those ideas.

Tomorrow we're going to move around the room.

I'm going to ask you to put them in certain places.

Anyone nervous?

I don't think we should be nervous because you I think are the right people to be in the room.

I think you have the right knowledge, skills, and abilities to do this work with me and with each other.

So I wouldn't be nervous.

You're the right people.

We're going to finish strong.

I promise you all.

Here's my participation and expectations.

One, my promise to you and my ask of you.

I am going to give you everything I have in a day and a half.

To the point where you're like, dude, you gave it, you laid it all out on the board, all out on the wooden floor.

I'm going to give you everything I have in a day and a half, just to save you.

That's it.

I'm going to give you everything that I have in just to save you.

Show up.

Show it for me.

Show it for you.

I'm gonna show it for me and I'm gonna absolutely show it for you.

I think I was thinking about you before you all entered the room.

I had a lot of outlets dedicated to thinking about you before you came in the room.

I'm going to give you everything that I have.

Okay?

Tech on the table.

I think you're taking notes and that's your way, so super cool.

But keep your devices out, only if you have this laptop.

If you have this laptop, keep it out.

I wanna see it and we all wanna take pictures with you and with it.

It's an ancient artifact.

And from a phone perspective, use your phone only if you have this phone because I also want to, like, document you and post you and say, like, this person has this phone still working.

But just be respectful with it.

We're going to have breaks where you can actually take breaks, restrooms here, be able to go out and take a phone call, email, things like that.

I'm going to actually try to honor that break as well and preserve your brain power.

But at the end of the day, I'm actually going to lean in.

Trust fall, absolutely.

This guy, hopefully he's got the strength to be able to do that.

I'm gonna be this guy, okay?

I'm gonna be the person that uses all creativity and strategy and my hope is that you lean in and you trust fall with me, okay?

That's the only way this will work, absolutely.

So he's gonna be a superhero at the end of all this.

But lean in, basically, and be curious, be aware, and be attentive.

I'm actually gonna do those things in the room with me today.

Cool?

All right, when you get breaks, I'm going to ask you to be present when you're present, and I'm going to ask you to take a break when it's time to take a break.

We, everyone in the camera as well, will say we're taking a break and then go work.

It's not taking a break.

Taking a break is being able to put your brain on pause.

Retreating, so to speak.

You're going to want to retreat from the retreat at a moment.

Take your break.

on your break.

Don't put your brain to work here and then go out and take a break and put your brain to work there.

Breathe, walk, sit, relax, enjoy, laugh with someone as well, okay?

Try to at least, please.

And just a reminder, this is what we're gonna be working through.

All right, where it is.

First thing you're going to hear about where it is is around the strategic priority refresher.

You're going to hear from Sam.

He's going to walk through.

So please, if you're taking notes or you're taking a header of anything, say, I'm about to hear where the strategic priorities are, or at least a refresher on them, and then take some notes underneath that.

Each item on the table, I'll tell you what to do with, so we'll have an experience with those.

But from a note perspective, please categorize your notes.

This section of where it is is around the strategic priority refresher.

Got some notes.

This section, where we're around the community survey, take some notes.

This section, where we're around the financial update, categorize it.

Take some notes.

It's really, really important for you to know where your notes are.

I'm going to ask you to look at those.

Cool?

So throughout the moment, you say, I told you, it's going to be a lot.

A lot going on.

Myself, James, and Ashley will be participating through this retreat.

And Josh put me in a very tight spot and said, sit down and be quiet.

So I'm practicing too.

My section is just to remind you of what are the strategic priorities that you set.

You have nine priorities and a commitment.

And I'm going to remind you of what those are.

And I chose to do it in a way that I'm just giving you your words back.

So that's the refresher part of it.

The goal is to just take you back to where you were in 2023 when we had you approve the strategic framework.

All of that I'm going to throw back at you, but I've done it in what I consider to be a creative way, and I did not leave you out because I know you weren't here when that was done.

So just to remind you, the council's vision is to be a place where everyone thrives.

We are saying that.

Often we are saying it everywhere.

We're putting it up in the building so that people can gravitate to it, that they can appreciate it because you set up that as a vision for the city organization and for the city of Charlottesville.

Here are your nine strategic outcome areas with your commitment.

Just to remind you of what you said were important things that you wanted to make sure that when we put a budget together, we don't lose sight of this.

When we're working on projects, we don't lose sight of this.

When we're thinking about what is it that will help us understand if this city organization is doing its job, it's in the frame of working through these strategic outcome areas.

That is what the conversation internally has been about.

That is what I have tried to make sure that I stress and impress upon the team, the leadership team at the top to hear.

This is where we focus because this is what council has asked us to focus on.

These are the things that we need to do to help our community.

So I'm going to give you quotes.

from you to me.

I decided not to do a whole lot of work.

I just went back into my notes.

When in fact, Josh says take notes, notes are important.

I found notes.

Because when we were doing the work of strategic outcome areas, I made sure that I found in each of the conversations where we asked you, what is your priority on that subject?

over and over and over.

You might be able to remember some of those moments where I was asking you that.

I kept all of it.

I didn't know why I was keeping all of it until he gave me this assignment.

So I'm just going to run through these.

I'm not going to read all of them to you, but they're going to pop up on the screen just so that you can see.

This is what you said is why these became the strategic outcome areas.

And Natalie, I Googled through your campaign

As you were speaking to the public as to why they should elect you, and I matched you into some of these so that you could be reflected in this just the same.

Cool, thank you.

So, you went into the archive.

I went into the archive and brought it out, so hopefully you don't regret what you said.

So, climate action, value innovative positions on climate.

I think we know that you all appreciate innovative positions because we're having conversations like that.

Common impacts on the city and the region.

I love the region word because we have to remember that it's bigger than us.

We're just a small piece in this big overall system.

Economic prosperity.

Chances for people who are from here to stay here.

We hear this a lot from our community at large.

You hear it every time you go knock on the door, I'm sure.

It's hard.

That's why I reflect on the idea as to why we make economic prosperity.

And everyone wants better than they have had.

Organizational excellence, I have swallowed these two words and I have probably made everyone tired of those two words because I use it all the time.

I love these two words.

So those two words, not only is it now my Northern Star for inside the city manager's office, we're trying to help the team appreciate why you chose that.

I know you chose it because you want this to be a strong organization capable of meeting the needs of citizens of this community.

That's what organizational excellence means.

We fix things, we make it better.

That's everybody's expectation.

It's hard.

What I also like about it is that we fix things.

It doesn't say we fix everything.

We can't be everything to everyone, so we have to remember that, and that's all part of prioritizing.

And we all know that this is a community worth living.

I think we have done a lot to show that, and I think that's what we have to remember.

But I also know that this is here.

Because some of you are on this council because you were worried about this.

And in the worry about that, you decided to join and help reset that.

And I've been speaking to you as much as I can about how we're doing that.

And I have another presentation for you on Monday to demonstrate how we are.

Partnerships.

We should talk even when you disagree.

You don't get anywhere if you don't talk it through.

Even if you're fighting about it, you're still getting it out because you're expressing whatever you feel.

Hopefully, things work out.

We should be willing to give a hand up.

I think that comes out loud and clear in the choices that we make and what we want to prioritize and talk about.

Public safety.

Modern government supports in every way.

I think what we're trying to say here is we don't do policing like everywhere else.

We want to be modern in our approach.

We put people first.

That's why we do community walks.

That's why we're changing how we approach various things.

Is it perfect?

No.

What is?

We're trying to get there.

And we're doing things differently.

And we have tournaments around.

It's just a reminder that's working.

So when you say public safety, we start there.

But it's bigger than that.

For me, it's really here.

2017 is no longer the barometer.

We were better than that then and can be better than that for good.

It's a moment, something that happened.

It doesn't have to be who we are, but there are a lot of people who still talk like this as who we are.

It's incumbent upon all of us to change that.

I think that's why public safety is there, because there was a big conversation about it.

Recreation, arts, and culture.

We want to be welcoming, not exclusionary, but we want to be what the magazines actually say we are.

We're winning awards left and right.

Chris Angle loves giving me the list of what we just got right in Nashville.

What I hear in that statement is that, yeah, we want to actually live that out in every way that we can.

We met a set of criteria to get selected for that, but aren't we really that all the time?

I think that's really why recreation arts and culture matters.

Housing consumes the conversation.

There's a lot going on there.

These are the things that you said about housing.

I actually didn't limit to just three.

I had to put five on there because it was a lot.

But a home and a place that all residents will love and cherish.

We know that's what we're striving to make possible.

But we must maintain focus on those who are struggling, which is why we're not just simply producing housing but also preserving housing opportunities.

And a variety of housing choice.

Because what we know about people is they don't want the same thing, and they don't need the same thing.

I recognize some of those.

Transportation.

I hope everybody does.

We can be innovative.

Yes, we can, and we are.

See if it was on the journey.

That's an understatement.

But that's transportation in that more strategic visionary way.

Connecting sidewalks, protecting bike lanes, improving bus frequency will bring Charlottesville into a more just and sustainable future.

It's not focused on one thing.

It's focused on multiple things.

And that then also becomes, and how do you do all of it?

How much can you do?

Education via vegan choices.

One of the opportunities for high school age and beyond is preparing them for what comes after.

So we've got to make sure that we take care of them when they're in the school and that includes the building in which they learn.

Today, your top tier is housing, transportation and education.

Our focus today, in this conversation today and tomorrow is housing, transportation and education.

Sam, is that top tier in these three things?

Because that is what you spend the most money on, that is what we're talking the most about, and that is what has just risen to the top.

So we're going to focus there because these three right now appear to be driving everything else.

You're going to hear a lot more about those a little later as well.

One thing I want to make sure of is that you appreciate that, that it is landing with you the way it lands with us.

This is what it feels like on our side, that it's these three topics.

And what we're wanting to remind you is that there are nine on the list plus the commitments, so therefore there are 10 things to invest, strategize, and work on, but these three are where we are.

Your commitment to justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion right now is under attack.

This gets us noticed by the individuals in Washington D.C.

today.

The question is do we care to stay noticed or do we just want to focus on the work?

So my challenge in this particular moment is to ask you

Does this say those four words, or does it say more than those four words?

That's the question I have on this.

Senator, that everyone can and this government should see this at all times.

No one is disposable.

Harmony among your residents.

We always do better, but we all do better.

Those are your words.

Things that you said as to why you set the commitment.

What I'm asking is, I'm telling you, this is what I hear.

This is what we've been working on.

This is what you've been accepting at this point as to what a commitment really is for the City of Charlottesville.

So that I'm asking you, could we just live with the idea of a commitment to community prosperity and then we can take the lens of what the feds and others are looking at, put that aside, because that's about words.

This is about action.

Can we live with these actions?

Can we live with this focus?

Can we live with this as a true series of commitments that we will spend our time and energy on?

So that's the question.

I'm not asking for a decision today.

I'm going to talk to you a little bit about it on Monday and show you what it actually looks like, because I'm assuming that you agree with me.

We don't need to play in being targeted.

We got work to do.

We got people's lives to shape and change, and we don't need to lose the resources

And that's really what I want to ask.

Can I ask a question?

Yes.

So accessibility, that's not the strict sense of wheelchairs and so on.

No.

I wonder if a different word might be access.

Yeah.

To prevent that.

Yeah.

I think we don't have to go too far down this road.

I would be interested, again we don't have to do it today or tomorrow even, I'd be interested in a conversation with you that actually one-on-one, two-on-one, whatever.

I completely agree we don't need to get distracted with words and those words were picked at some point because they had meaning right now that's become a target and a lot of that's just silly and I agree with this notion that you have here I just would like a little more time to sit with things that were the intent that went behind those ideas particularly after 2017 right

And I think that what you've got here... You want to see what's under each of these.

I do.

Yep, I do.

Again, my presentation Monday night is my work plan for 2026.

I'm working on this retreat with him because he gave me the assignment.

I'm already working on living this out because I know you're going to have questions.

So I'm going to show you more of what that looks like.

Sure.

Absolutely.

I told you every time you see this workshop, I think I'm going to ask you to work.

So hopefully you've taken some notes.

Again, I'm just going to reiterate there will be moments about today, and I promise two days' notes, I'm going to ask you to bring them into tomorrow as well.

But do me a favor.

In front of you, you have a bit of a note card.

You have something like this.

Grab one of those.

My favorite pen.

And what I'd like you to do is, this is basically, it's called the ERV interview, and it's around a self-interview around understand, respect, and value.

What I'd like you to do in the middle of that, where you see that box, write strategic refresher, like strategic priority refresher, just in the middle of that small little box.

Write strategic plan refresher, or strategic priority refresher, I'm sorry.

OK, I want to give you a few minutes to look at your notes that you wrote and reflect on what you just heard.

And I want you to ask yourself these three questions.

And I want to write one thing.

Write one thing in each of those.

Like, what do I understand about what I just heard?

Overall, high level.

What do I respect about what I just heard?

And what do I value about what I just heard?

I'm going to ask you this, like where it is.

You just kind of heard high level strategic priority refresher.

Look back at your notes and write in one of the, just turn them, turn them.

Beautiful card.

But write one thing that I understand about what I just heard.

One thing that I respect about what I just heard.

And one thing I value.

Respect doesn't have to be agree with.

It's a level of respect and value about what I just heard.

Contribution, impact.

Go ahead and write that.

Respect and value.

All right, let's talk about it.

I want to ask, regarding understanding, I'm kind of working my way around the room, why don't you start us off.

So something that's really clear in those comments that we gave Sam and we said is that the history of this community plays a lot on

What we do and where we spend our money, the history, not just from 2017 and 2020, but particularly, you know, with Vinegar Hill, it plays a big role in everything that we do and decisions that we make here.

That's what something to me is.

I guess my thing that came to mind was that we do have a good plan.

It was a good plan two years ago.

It's time for it to be updated, which is what we hear, but I just wanted to emphasize that it has been a good plan, it is a good plan, and also understanding that we've made a lot of progress along it.

That's in conversations with people last spring, and it was like, what are y'all doing?

Yeah, so to have those conversations and see this up here, you've been able to connect some of the... Correct.

Lloyd, something you understand about what you just heard?

Yeah, okay, that's a deep understanding.

Yeah, absolutely.

One of the messages that I received from the presentation is 9 or 10 things is too many things, but there is a lot of overlap.

Well, what I wrote down was just very high level, just clearly understanding the intent of the past strategic plan and kind of the purpose of it.

What Juan said made me think something else, that these priorities look different to different people in the community, especially depending on how much money you have.

That's great.

What about respect?

Something that you respect about what you just heard.

It's different in understanding.

Understanding is like information and knowledge and respect may not have to be a group when you pay homage to that thing because you understand it's important.

Want, something that you

So what I heard is that, you know, from those comments is that council, we value everyone.

You know, we talked about this is a place where everyone thrives.

But what I heard from our comments is we particularly want to value those who are most vulnerable in our community.

Yeah.

And respect that we, that as a council, we want to do it.

Yeah.

The work that's gone into

I've been executing against that over the course of the last couple of years and also the fact that we've been given updates every quarter by the city manager tracking that with respect.

The interconnectedness of what we're trying to do in our future problem areas.

The hearts and minds are in the right place.

People generally want others to have what they need which covers a lot of different levels and like Michael was saying about the spectrum of what those needs look like are different for different people with different backgrounds or amounts of resources and so we all generally are

What I also hear in that is that the characters, right?

And what that looks like is still different for all of us, but we're all generally going in the same direction.

Love it.

Well, both from the plan and its implementation, since it was developed a few years ago, it's just very clear that for the staff and in the document that there's a clear level of care for the community and care about trying to positively impact people's lives.

All right, last one.

What is something, the strategic part of your refresher, what is something you value?

So what I got is that we as a council and as a community really value people and the environment and the second part is something that I really had to come closer to when I ran for council that

For some people in the community, the environment is not as strong, it's not as a high priority, but others it's really strong, the climate and the environment.

People?

Yeah.

You saw that through and saw it in the quotes and in the refresher and then you saw people all the way through it, yeah.

What I would like to add, and it actually has nothing to do with what Sam said, but he was speaking to you.

It was the insight that jumped out.

That what I value about this particular group, but I mean the counselors and city central staff, and for that matter basically everybody that I have met and have some sense of,

is that I think we all have trust in each other's good faith.

Which makes it so much easier to get to decisions.

I've been around for more than 11 years.

I would agree to all of that.

Absolutely.

So two of my biggest issues are transportation and housing.

Those are crucial drivers of this conversation.

And so I'm happy to see that they are of value to the conversation and the list and everybody else.

Because that is kind of, I would argue that those two are at the basis of kind of everything else.

We're going to have some hard conversations by the way.

We're going to dive in together.

We're going to roll our sleeves up and live in that value with them.

Because the thing why something is valuable is because it's important and it's important content.

It's got a lot of potential impact and things like that as well.

I would say that all this can lead to actual policy changes that positively impact people's lives.

It's not just words on paper, it's driving change.

And then also being able to

Measure the impact on people's lives because intent isn't enough.

Just because the city thinks it's doing the right thing doesn't mean that it turns out it actually harmed people.

So how do we measure that impact?

I often say intention and execution are two different things.

So I would agree with you on that.

Absolutely.

Awesome.

Look, thank you all for reflecting and sharing on that.

I want you to take a break.

So remember, honor your break.

And then when we get into what is, we're going to talk about the community survey next.

So please, go ahead and take a break.

We're going to probably land on about 10 minutes.

Hello everyone.

Thank you all for coming back, enjoying your break, taking a break.

I was very excited to see people talking and not scrolling, so good job.

I am very pleased to be able to present to you all, as additional information during this time of your reflection and thought process, the latest administration of the National Community Survey.

We have with us Grace Arneson from POLCO, who is the organization that administers the survey.

The city has done this survey for several years, so I'm also very excited.

She's going to show you data that builds upon itself.

So we've got some really good longitudinal data.

I want to encourage you all to please take notes.

You will be able to also ask questions as well.

Everyone should have a copy in front of them for you to mark up, scribble, dog ear as we go through.

And there also is a larger document as well that we will be making available not only to the public, but to you all as well.

But Grace, if we can just test you coming off mute to make sure that everyone can hear you.

Yes, test.

How's the volume?

That works wonderfully.

Thank you so much, Ashley.

Hi, everyone.

My name is Grace.

I've been a project manager here at Polko for about four years now, and I've worked with hundreds of jurisdictions across the US.

So I'm happy to be here to present the findings of the Charlottesville National Community Survey.

And before I want to begin, I do want to thank Ashley Marshall.

She was our primary contact throughout the survey process, and she provided really thoughtful feedback every step of the way and helped to organize this presentation.

So thank you so much, Ashley.

As she mentioned, this presentation will be about 25 minutes long with 15 minutes at the end for questions.

All right, so before we dive into your results, I'd like to share a little bit about POLCO.

POLCO is an online community engagement platform providing local governments with resident and employee feedback.

The acquired data can be used for budgeting, strategic planning, and empowering resident voices.

So you may have heard of NRC or Nashville Research Center.

Hulco merged with them back in 2019 and NRC has been around since 1994.

They're best known for developing the NCS survey along with the National Employee Survey, the Community Assessment for Older Agiles among others.

We also partner closely with ICMA and NLC along with many other local government and academic leaders.

So before we dive into results, I want to emphasize that there are a variety of ways that these can be used.

So most commonly, the folks we work with use their survey data to monitor trends, which Ashley mentioned, you have amazing trend data to look at here.

This monitors trends in resident opinion and informs budgeting and strategic plans.

Our results also allow you to benchmark your community's specific characteristics against all of the communities in our benchmark database, which I'll cover in just a few slides here.

So we hope that these findings will spark ideas of where you may want to explore further.

So a little bit about the NCS instrument.

It is a standardized five page survey that measures resident opinion about community and local government.

It focuses on these 10 facets of livability shown here.

These are all related to overall quality of life and they often align with municipal departments as well.

so that it's easier for staff to find results most relevant to their work.

So you'll see these here.

We have a few additional questions in addition to these 10 facets, including demographic questions and a couple of participation questions like have you voted, have you campaigned, have you carpooled.

So the survey primarily focuses on these 10 facets here.

And with that, we'll dive into Charlottesville's specific results.

This is where I really want to spend a lot of time.

So we're covering the methodology here.

And this was Charlottesville's sixth time conducting the NCS with the previous survey iteration in 2022.

So you'll see throughout the report some trend data.

That trend data is all referencing between 2022 and 2025.

You can look back in the full report at those old trends, but today we'll primarily be focusing on the most recent trend.

So to sample, we

We purchased a household list based on updated USPS listings from Charlottesville zip codes and from that list we used city provided GIS files to remove any addresses that were not within Charlottesville and then from the remaining list 3,000 addresses were selected to receive survey invites.

So during the survey administration, mailings began about April 15th, and the survey remained open for six weeks.

So that first mailing was a postcard.

This included instructions to take the survey, a QR code, and a link to the survey, and it also let folks know that a paper survey was on the way.

So the second mailing was a survey packet.

This contained a cover letter, postage, paper chart, envelope, and paper survey so that everyone had the chance to apply via paper.

Both mailings did include a web link to complete the survey online, so that was an option as well.

And the survey was available in English and Spanish, and all of those letters and postcards had bilingual instructions.

So from our process, we received 386 completed surveys for a 14% response rate and margin of error of plus or minus 5%.

Responses were also weighted to map Charlottesville's demographic makeup, and that was based on data from the census and ACS's data.

We also, during our data collection period, conducted an open participation survey.

So this was a link that Charlottesville shared.

It was open from May 13th to 17th.

And this was an opportunity for all community members to participate, even those who haven't received an invite.

So 664 responses were received there.

However, this presentation and the report are based on the 386 random sample responses since those were gathered using scientific methods.

So open participation results are provided to you in the full report if that interests you, but will be focused on the random sample today.

So I mentioned our benchmark database earlier, and one of the big advantages of participating in our community surveys is the opportunity to compare ratings given by your residents to those from communities across the nation.

So our benchmark database is the largest of its kind.

It currently has over 500 communities, and that represents over 50 million voices.

We were one of the first to develop this benchmark database and we're very proud of it and you'll see these benchmark ratings throughout your report and this presentation.

So overview of survey results, we will dive into some general results and then go into a look at some areas where it might dig a little bit deeper.

So to start off here, in the survey we have two questions asked directly about those 10 facets of community livability that I mentioned earlier.

So the first asks residents to rate their quality in each, and you can see the resulting comparison to the national benchmark and the shading on this chart.

So you'll notice here, education, arts, and culture is highest in quality and higher than the national benchmark, followed closely by natural environment, arts and recreation, and health and wellness.

Some notable lower scores, safety and community design did fall below that national benchmark and mobility was the lowest in quality.

We also asked about those same facets of mobility, but we asked a question centered on how important did residents think it is for the community to focus on these certain facets over the coming two years.

So, as you can tell, importance is, you know, importance to residents.

So, we have higher ratings here.

Everything for the most part is similar to the benchmark with the exception of utilities.

Economy being the most important topic for residents, followed closely by mobility, natural environment, safety,

and at Community Design, the lower score was health and wellness here.

This data is very helpful, but it's even more helpful when you put it together with those quality assessments, which is this gap chart, and this is included in your report.

So this is comparing the quality and importance of those overall factors a little bit.

So this chart is one of many ways to interpret your data and can be used to help you determine focus areas or areas where you might allocate some additional resources.

Yeah, absolutely.

So community design is the overall design of the community.

So looking at new development, growth, residential areas, I don't believe it's in the presentation, but it is in the report.

And I can dive into that a bit deeper towards the end.

I can pull up that report and show you what the community design section looks like.

But mainly, yes, just development, overall design of the neighborhoods, of the commercial areas, and also preservation of the historical elements of the community as well, with a few others in there.

So compared to the national benchmarks of the 123 survey items for which residents provided ratings, four received ratings that were higher than the national benchmark.

97 were similar to the benchmark, and 22 received lower ratings.

So these ratings are considered similar if they're within 10 points of the national average and higher or lower if they are more than 10 points different from the average.

However, trend data adds some additional context here.

So when comparing Charlottesville's NCS results in 2022 to the 2025 results, 23 received ratings that were higher than the 2022 results, 86 were similar to those results, and 14 received over-readings.

Moving now into the highlights of our five games, I just want to point out here that these are things that we as survey researchers found interesting, but there is a lot of additional data in the full report that we will cover today.

So we'll focus on a few key areas we found to be most noteworthy, but please do if you have a chance read through that full report because there is much more robust data in there.

So our first key finding here, most residents experience a high quality of life in Charlottesville.

So about 7 in 7 residents gave excellent or good readings to Charlottesville as a place to live, the overall image or reputation of the city, and the overall quality of life in the city.

In addition, 7 in 10 residents indicated that they planned to remain in Charlottesville for the next five years and would recommend living in Charlottesville to someone who asked.

All right.

Readings for Charlottesville local government also increased since 2022.

So we asked residents about the local government performance in Charlottesville and results across all ratings were similar to the national benchmark.

But as you see here, we had many notable improvements since 2022.

Actually, all of the ratings on this slide were statistically significant increases from 2022 results.

So in looking here, about 56% of residents rated the city treating residents with respect as excellent or good, followed by 51% for the city's efforts to welcome residents, and 49% for being honest.

Just under half positively rated the general performance in the best interest of the community at about 48%, communication about issues, transparency, and overall confidence in local governments.

The lowest rating was for treating all residents fairly, yet this too has increased since 2022.

Safety also continues to be rated positively, maintaining strong levels of satisfaction.

So in terms of community safety, about 88% of residents indicated that they feel safe in their neighborhood during the day, and 86% feel safe from flood, fire, or other natural disaster.

Just over 8 to 10, about 82%, report feeling safe in the downtown or commercial area during the day.

And perceptions of safety dropped a little bit when it comes to crime.

So about 64% feel safe from property crime and 63% feel safe from violent crime.

Safety from violent crime was rated lower than the national benchmark here.

So scores for safety services tended to be a bit more positive, and a few items did increase since 2022.

So fire services received the highest rating, with almost all residents 95%, rating them as excellent or good, followed closely by ambulance and emergency medical services at 90%.

Fire prevention and education also scored well with 82% satisfaction.

And although a little bit lower than other safety services, police services and crime prevention both saw an increase since 2022 results.

Police services experienced a nine point increase and crime prevention experienced an eight point increase here.

Affordability remains a concern for many residents in the city.

So the economy has a lot to cover, so hang in there with me.

But when we asked about the local economy, about 84% of respondents rated the city positively as a place to visit, and 72% were satisfied with the overall quality of businesses and service establishments.

It's worth noting here that the overall quality of business and service establishments did decrease slightly since 2022 results.

Greetings for Charlottesville as a place to work.

The variety of service and business establishments and the vibrancy of the downtown and commercial areas are also in line with the national averages here.

We had a few items fall below the national average including the availability of affordable quality at child care and preschool, the availability of affordable quality housing, cost of living, and we also asked a question on the survey, what impact do you think the economy will have on your family over the next six months?

Only 8% felt that that would be very or somewhat positive.

However, these downward trends are certainly not unique to Charlottesville.

We've been seeing this across many, many reports.

And so we wanted to include this national unique year for context.

And the data used to create this chart comes from our national benchmark database.

As you can see here, some items like the availability of affordable quality housing, which is our pink line here, that has been declining for some time, but others like the cost of living, the availability of affordable quality food and childcare, those have shown large declines in the post-pandemic economy, especially as we've been navigating very high inflationary times.

combined with increasing interest rates and relatively lower consumer sentiment about the overall health of the economy.

So although we do see deep lines in some of these ratings related to the past survey effort of 2022, many of them relate to these broader national trends.

And this isn't to say that the city should or shouldn't do something to address these issues, but hopefully this helps to place them in a broader context by taking into account the other jurisdictions we've worked with over the past decade.

Our fifth key finding here, residents identify mobility as an important area of focus.

So mobility was rated the second most important facet by residents.

If you remember one of the first slides, we asked residents, how important is it for the city to focus on these over the next two years?

And mobility was the second most important there.

So that was the

I believe biggest or second biggest gap as well in our quality and importance chart.

But looking here at the results, the highest rated aspect related to mobility was ease of walking at 55% excellent or good, followed by ease of travel by car.

So ease of travel by car, ease of public parking, and ease of travel by bicycle

were falling below the national benchmark this year, and ease of travel by car experienced a statistically significant decline since 2022.

The ease of travel by public transportation was also a little bit lower here, so we had 27% rate that as excellent or good, and that was on par with 2022 results.

Traffic flow on major streets was similar to the benchmark at 31%, which doesn't surprise me too much.

So I just had a clarification from the previous slide.

Yes, so 51% rated the ease of travel by car as excellent or good.

Most of the fact that it's a decline is a good thing.

In terms of mobility services, some didn't see improvement since the last survey iteration in 2022.

So again, this is percent excellent or good here.

You'll see that 61% rated street cleaning as excellent or good, followed closely by street lighting at 59%.

Silver removal at 56% and both of those experienced statistically significant increases since 2022.

Traffic enforcement fallen closely at 48% positive and about 41% appreciated the requests for transit services.

This was also increasing significantly since 2022.

So all categories here did perform on par with the national benchmark and we had quite a few improvements which is a contrast against the overall mobility.

It's obvious that the mobility services are doing their best to correct some of these potential focus areas.

So last and not least, educational and digital opportunities are being highly valued in Charlottesville.

So, in terms of education, arts, and culture, we asked residents to rate each of these items on a scale of excellent goods and airport, and we have 88% appreciating the public library services.

This was the highest rated item in this facet, and that was Albemarle with the National Benchmark.

Community support for the arts policy will be at 80%, along with opportunities to attend cultural arts and music festivals.

Both of those items will require the national benchmark here.

Opportunities to attend special events and festivals and adult educational opportunities along with K-12 education were a little bit lower but still relatively high comparison to all of the ratings throughout the report and all of these were on par with the national benchmark as well.

We didn't have any trends to note here so these were also stable with 2022 results giving you consistent satisfaction.

So additional special topics, in addition to these theater guides by Page Survey Instrument, we have a little bit of space left to include some custom questions that were unique to Charlottesville.

So this is our question here.

I know it might be a little bit hard to read, but we'll have it more clearly on the next slide.

So for this custom question, we asked residents whether the city's current service level should be increased, kept the same, or decreased for various services.

And looking at this chart here, it has a ton of data for your review, but about 60% would like to see increased efforts in both bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure and traffic system improvements.

Well, about 34% and 37% respectively support maintaining current service levels in those areas.

So just looking at those first two items there, you'll see traffic system improvements, about 60% wanted to increase.

Well, about 37% said that we could keep the immediate current service and only 3% there said that they would decrease the service.

So looking forward here to street and sidewalk repair.

Just over half of residents support increasing levels of street and sidewalk maintenance and repairs, about 51%.

And a nearly equal share would like to maintain the current levels.

So about 48% were happy with the current level.

Communication about city programs, services, and activities also received also more investment with about 50% favoring an increase and 45% preferring to keep service levels the same.

So each of the remaining items here, once we move past the communication about city program services and activities, had fewer than 50% of respondents saying that services should be increased.

However, for a vast majority of these, over 50% did want to maintain the current service level with only downtown parking management, police patrol and investigative services, and support for non-profits seeing double-digit totals for those hoping to decrease the service levels.

Of the items here, which could be compared to the 2022 survey, three saw statistically significant increases with more residents saying that the service should remain the same or be increased in 2025.

And those who are communicating with residents about the city programs, services, and activities, that saw a seven point increase in terms of either increase in the service or keeping the same service.

Providing competitive grant funding to local non-profits saw a walking 17% increase in terms of increasing or keeping taxes the same and police control and investigative services saw a 10.2% increase there.

So a quick summary of conclusions here.

Most residents experience a high quality of life.

The local government ratings increased since 2022.

Safety continues to be rated positively, maintaining strong levels of satisfaction.

Affordability remains a concern for many residents in the city.

Residents identify mobility as an important area of focus, and educational and cultural opportunities remain highly valued in Charlotte.

With that, I know that was a lot of information at once, so I'd like to thank you all for your time and open up the room for questions.

Grace, I have one question I had about your methodology.

You had said on the page, talking about the 386 total responses received, 664 responses to the open participation survey, which you said, if I interpreted you correctly, that you did not factor in those responses into the data we saw right at the end there.

Yeah, great question.

Well, it does provide some interesting context.

So a lot of jurisdictions will look at their open participation and random sample results side by side, and they'll see, okay, so we have 664 residents respond to the open participation survey.

Those are likely very engaged and local residents, and you're able to see, are they feeling

So that is one way.

Another benefit of this is we have the opportunity to reach out to people who have signed up on POLCO to conduct additional outreach.

So during future open participation surveys,

We can invite those who have participated in the past and provided their email address to participate in those growing your online panel for future surveys.

So there are a couple of benefits.

And the third, I think I left the best for last.

It's just giving the opportunity to everyone in the community to participate.

Okay, I'm just wondering, is there anything that

You know, I haven't looked into that personally, but we certainly could.

Let me follow up on that and compare those open participation and random sample results.

I'm not asking you to try to pull out something that isn't a valid conclusion.

For example, if it turns out that the 664 responses are largely the same as the 386, okay, that's fine.

If we know that we have very different results out of the 664,

I agree.

Thank you for asking that.

That was one of my questions as well.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, no, I just said that Lloyd's question was one of my questions as well.

But also, you mentioned having the survey sent out in English and Spanish.

Charlottesville is known for having a very diverse language population.

And I'm wondering if, is there a way to get more languages out there, or is that nationwide the only two languages that you have available?

No, our list of languages is ever growing.

So I think last time I checked we were at either 15 or 20 languages.

So those are programmed on Polko.

So we can do the online survey in many languages.

We can also provide a paper survey in a different language as well.

That gets pretty expensive because the printing costs are high.

So I would recommend doing those online translations

Thanks for watching!

One thing that's worth mentioning, too, is a lot of folks who don't speak English primarily at home, they use an extension on their browser to translate that, and Polko is compatible with that Google Chrome extension.

We're not able to track that on our side, but we have a really strong suspicion that a lot of folks are using that to translate the survey and respond in their own language.

So I don't know what the problem solver that is, but it's something to keep in mind, especially for Charlottesville, is we might be missing some data there.

There are some options too outside of translating the survey online.

We could even just include a note in different languages that the survey is compatible with that translation feature as well.

And Grace, I was going to share part of the reason why we've selected for the second year in a row to make sure it was available in Spanish.

is previously it was not presented even as bilingual.

And so this helped me to get trends and all of my data shows that while we do have a large variety of languages, if I am looking at the prevalence of a foreign language at this point, it still was Spanish.

I think that that is a wonderful opportunity for us to expand into that, but I also wanted the city manager to be able to have two years of us even introducing it in Spanish

to see if that made a difference at all.

Because again, previously, we did not introduce this as being compatible or having any other language in the statistically significant survey.

In the open survey, we did know that people can use that Google Translate button if they so desire to be able to engage, but that's some reflection and recommendations we can make for the next administration.

But it was honestly a bit of a test to see where we are and then

OK, thanks.

And then my last note is, on this page here, the number one point, most residents experience high quality blood in Charlottesville, was the question about the respondents, or was it about how you perceive people in the community?

Yes.

So it's about their own experience in the community.

OK.

I can scroll back to that slide here.

I believe the question is included.

Oh, it is not.

But I can also re-stop my share here.

Well the reason why, if I could, the reason why I ask that is because I would rephrase that to say most respondents experience a high quality of life in Charlottesville and that's something that changes the

kind of value of that bullet point I think it becomes a little more accurate because we know there are people who have challenges and those are probably going to be the hardest people to get to respond and so residence feels like it encompasses more than might actually be

represented even if it is statistically significant.

And then in line with that, the seven out of ten respondents who said they would remain for the next five years and recommend it, one of the follow-ups, I don't know if this is captured in the study, but one of my questions was how long have they lived here already?

Yeah, so if you can actually dig into that in the report too, Ashley, do I have time for a two-minute demo there?

How much time do we have?

Yeah, I wanted to get everyone's questions because we have to move on, so I don't think we have time.

Yeah, I will follow up on that with you.

There is a way to compare length of residency against the answers supplied.

Not right now, please.

I'll try to be quick.

Similar to other questions, I'm sure the people who actually respond to this survey are very different from the self-selected.

Either they're more engaged with local government already, maybe they're just psychologically even different.

Yes, so our reading, we actually wait both surveys.

So we wait both the random sample and the open participation survey to make sure that that is self-representative of the population.

And we tend to see older women who respond at a higher rate.

If I can help, they weigh all of it, looking at multiple demographics from age, Hispanic origin, housing, tenure, housing type, race and Hispanic origin, sex and sex and age in various groups.

And so I have that larger data for you.

But remember, this is more of a snapshot.

I love that you all want to be walking.

I love it.

No, I mean it's definitely useful data for sure still.

And then just quick thoughts.

One, it jumps out to me that our parks are maybe the only area of government that it seems like people like to praise rather than just criticize and that kind of jumped out in the responses.

Not shocking, but that we're 20 points lower than national average for availability of affordable housing, cost of living, affordable childcare jumped out.

We're substantially lower than national average.

And then the lack of access to affordable childcare jumped out at me because so much of our population growth has been driven by older residents.

Our school population over the past 20 years only increased by 17 students.

Brian?

No.

I just had a couple of comments.

Is the 14%, is that within, is that okay that responded?

Yeah, that is a great response today.

And do we know, and I assume that when you mail the

The paper surveyed that it included a self-esteem envelope to send it back.

And my last question is, do we know of the people that responded, the demographic breakdown of them?

Roughly how many African Americans responded?

Yes, sir.

We do have that information.

If you have it at your fingertips, I'm trying to find it, but I also will share that part of the reason why we look at the Statistically Significant Survey is we are also able to weigh how they deploy those 3,000 original invitations.

So we look at communities that maybe have lower responses, maybe it's socio-economic or various other options that we can find that in census data and they can push a few more surveys to that group to give more people an opportunity to answer

then in a section of a community where they are very apt to answer questions and like love filling out the Nielsen survey, right?

Okay, I got it.

So it was factored in.

Yes, sir.

So we're going to get a second to reflect together, but is there any more questions, actual questions?

If you have any questions, please send it my way.

But I look forward to hearing how you all utilize these results and thank you so much for your time today.

We actually have Jason's email.

It's grace.poco.us.

So just replace Jason Neumeier with Grace.

Thanks.

Thank you so much for putting that up.

Thank you.

All right.

Hang tight with me for two seconds, Ruth.

All right, do me a favor, grab your other herb if you could.

I'd like you to grab one inside the middle of that if you can write community survey, that would be great.

Everything you just heard, high level.

What do you expect?

What is they value?

All right.

Well, would you start us off?

This time, what we need to do is go through it all.

Yes, so what I understand is that I believe that we're headed in the right direction as a council, as a city, but we still have a lot of work to do.

What I respect is I respect council and staff for their service because what we saw was a lot of that was, whether it's the police, the library, whatever, was the efforts of staff working.

And what

What I value is that our efforts for increasing mobility, that is having an impact on residents and our commitment and our love of library and books in this community is phenomenal.

I don't mean this in any way to be discouraging or anything like that, but just it generally reaffirms my skepticism of surveys.

Not that I don't

This is a strong word.

I know enough math and I've seen enough people at their front door, but I feel like surveys, particularly when she was going through all the various numbers, it gives you a sense of precision that doesn't reflect reality.

And even if 400 people in the city somehow turns out to be

Statistically representative of the whole city.

I mean, I just find that hard to believe.

I'm sorry, it's a tool, right?

I mean, I get it.

I took statistics in college a long, long time ago, but... The thing that I respect was just...

I guess is the time and attention to detail that went into it and I respected it from a professional perspective.

There's a world of surveys and I'm sure they know even though they've struggled with political artistications lately.

The thing that I value frankly is what we actually hear from our residents.

Again I wonder, I've always wondered

When I knocked on doors versus what people fuss at us with over email or whatever, Heather Hill always talked about the difference between the signal and the noise.

For the first thing I took away from the various poll results, even recognizing the difficulties with trying to draw too many broad conclusions out of what is still essentially meager data, that I was glad to see that the respondents and city government are largely aligned in our perceptions of what the problem areas are.

I understand that a lot of weight is being put on 386 people.

I respect that the survey tries to get at important questions.

It's a tall order to try and assess the community.

But yeah, in the context of designing surveys, this seems like it was covering the bases as intended and well.

And then even though it's a small sample and I can't pick and choose the responses I like and give them more weight, I acknowledge that.

I still am gratified to see that the bug pet infrastructure demands are going up and ease of travel is going down.

Both of those are good signs.

Ease of car travel is going down.

Well, I agree with others.

Broader point, like I feel like community engagement is really hard for the city.

It reminds me of like the Cherry Avenue small area plan where when it started the city expected people to come to us and it didn't work at all and we had to go to people, knock on their door, meet them where they're at.

So it just made me think of that.

But from the responses, I understand it was not surprising that Charlottesville is very hard to afford and particularly hard for people to afford to start a family in.

What do I respect?

That trust in local government and the functioning of local government reached a very, very low point, you know, sometime after 2017.

And I think

A lot of rebuilding is happening and there's an increase in trust, but that takes a lot of time.

It takes time for the narrative to change and to rebuild.

What do I value?

That what was in the survey that people cared most about, the city is taking very substantial action on.

Some of that will take a while to materialize or maybe people don't know everything that's happening, but all of it is

Thank you for that.

I appreciate you all sharing.

What I'm attempting to do is build you a toolbox of understanding as well as we go through this information because, again, I'm sure you'll hear me say it and probably get tired by saying it.

I'm going to ask you to reflect on your notes for tomorrow.

So please continue to just take your thoughts and beautiful insights and the things you write down and just kind of hold it.

I'm going to ask you to leave it here as well because we are tomorrow.

I'm going to actually dip into that toolbox you built today.

So thank you.

Do me a favor.

If you don't want to take a break, take a five minute break.

I want to get a little bit of us some time back.

But do me a favor.

Take a five minute break.

Try to take a real break.

Grab someone to drink.

Well, it's obviously not too hot.

Breathe for a second.

We'll see you back in five minutes.

And we're going to talk about the financial conditions.

Again, where it is.

So far, where it is regarding strategic priorities, where it is regarding community, and then we will look at where it is regarding the financial condition and economic context.

Cool?

All right, take five minutes.

All right, so we are back.

And Josh focused on the idea that we were talking about where it is.

So we started with your priority areas, why you selected the priority areas.

I went through what you have said about them, why you picked them.

And now you've heard a little bit about how some members of the community is actually reflecting on them.

Hopefully helping you see that you're on the right targets, might not be hitting all the targets, might be missing some of the targets.

That's kind of the point of what the survey is supposed to do.

You let it inform and then you move on from it and get back to work.

So in order for us to do that, we had to always check in on the money side, and if my friend Chrissy Hannah was here, who is on the beach right now, and Joe and herself are stressed out that we're having a conversation about money without her, if Chrissy were here, she would be sitting up in her chair now and watching all of you as you start to talk about spending the money.

So what we decided we would do is make sure that we gave you a financial checkup,

And Vianne Leung is with PFM.

They're our financial advisor.

Vianne has been instrumental in helping us get through collective bargaining.

Y'all don't always get to see the sauce we're making and the behind-the-scenes stuff.

There was a moment when I was on a cliff ready to jump, and it was Vianne who said, I got you.

We'll figure this out.

We've done it before.

And Christy and I both took a sigh of relief and said, OK, Vianne, let's go.

So we were able to get through that process and come to appreciate how she has done analysis work.

Well, good morning, everyone.

Thank you for inviting me and being here.

It's a pleasure.

So, as saying with views, I am part of PFM, Public Financial Management.

It's not clear what we do.

That's who we are.

And I've been working at PFM for 12 years, and I started my career actually working on the city government side.

I was a budget analyst.

This was my first job, but then came over to the government.

I'm consulting today.

So what I'm going to do today is a three-part presentation.

One is step back a little bit and say, okay, where are we economically in the current economic context?

I know that we see the news every day, more data is coming out every day.

But step back a little bit and say where we are economically.

But then kind of hold it a little bit in terms of what that step means for Charlottesville.

on the revenue side and on the expenditure side, and then wrap up with the next steps in terms of how you take that information in and help you with the rest of your decision-making process for the rest of the day and tomorrow.

So with this, let me start with the first section, which is the economic context.

I know this is a little small, but hang in there with me.

So when we talk about, when we look at the headlines and look at the recession from this, you know, there are a lot of numbers out there, a lot of data that we look at, and one of the figures that I have always looked at, at least one of the data points, is the leading economic indicator released by the Congress Board.

So when we talk about the economy and what does that mean, oftentimes they're what they call the leading economic indicators,

which are kind of all these data points that tell us is a recession going to come.

And a bunch of data points, you know, I think nine or 10.

And so what the conference group does, where they do economic forecasts every quarter, is that they combine all these data points into one single leading economic indicator.

For me, it kind of consolidates a little bit.

And so what we see here is the blue line there is a leading economic index, essentially telling you what the data points are.

That includes stuff like the stock market, interest rates,

building permits, new orders, those kind of leading economic indicators.

And that is a blue line.

The black line up there is a coincident economic indicator and those include things like personal income, employment, right?

Those are kind of like the, you know, if a recession happens, that black line is going to come down.

So if you look at kind of the past couple of recessions here, which is a gray-shaded area, you see the blue line usually comes before the black line.

So what the blue line does is that it essentially is a leading economic indicator, right?

It should tell you at least when something's coming.

And if you look at today, here, right here, you can see kind of those disclosure points, which is why we don't know whether or not we're in a recession right now.

That has not been any announcement.

But you can see the blue line, the leading economic indicator coming down.

And if you look at this chart, I'm not an economist, but if you look at this chart here, the red line is essentially what they've calculated as a recession signal.

What that tells us is that even though, as of today, I think our star portfolio is still doing okay, there's just that much economic uncertainty today.

And what is interesting about this is that you have to remember that this shaded gray area was decided later on.

We don't know if we're in a recession as of today.

One, we just don't know it yet.

That is a tricky thing about the economic situation right now.

All that is to say, and I think we all know here, that there's a lot of recession risks as of today and more to become.

When we talk about recession, you google that word.

The top is usually the GDP falls from two successive quarters, although the actual definition of that is a little bit more nuanced than that.

If you remember COVID, the recession was only two months.

Clearly, a recession can be a shorter than two successive quarters.

But essentially, a recession is a job of GDP.

And as of today, we are in a very unusual territory.

Why do I say that?

I remember giving this presentation back before COVID.

If you look at the 2008 recession, that was the longest, deepest recession that we have ever had.

And then the next recession here is the deepest, the shortest recession we have.

So whenever clients ask me, well, if I were to model a recession scenario, what would that look like?

Well, it's really hard to model that right now because there's no normal.

The last recession was the COVID recession, which is unprecedented, and the one before that was a great recession, and really, so the last normal chronic cold recession was back in the early 2000s, and that is kind of why it's so hard to predict right now.

But, you know, if you look at Charlottesville, and I look back at the numbers back in the last two recessions,

You were actually doing pretty well.

We'll talk a little bit about your strengths and your risks of your profile.

But you actually did pretty well in both of these researches, in part because you established a downturn reserve back in 2008.

And because you made certain decisions like collecting your capital spending in the COVID era, you did pretty well the last two recessions.

But those you did really well in part because of the planning and the thoughtfulness and the actions that were taken back then.

We want to make sure that you

are well positioned for the next one.

This is a lot of numbers, so let me walk you through this.

But remember when I said that we're in an unusual territory, you know, this is the historic recessions showing the expansion duration and the contraction duration.

So if you look at this 18 month onto the way to the right column, that was the longest recession that the U.S.

had.

That was a great recession.

That was the longest recession that the U.S.

had ever.

And then after that came the longest expansion period of 128 months.

And again, I said, you know, I remember it was a similar situation back then, saying like, whoa, this is the longest expansion period, why researchers are not driven just by time, just know that you have to be prepared.

And of course, the next day COVID hit.

and that became the shortest contraction ever.

So anyway, nerds like me probably like this chart but this is just again to reiterate the point that we are in a very unusual time right now.

You know, there's no roadmap, there's no kind of status quo, there's nothing unusual about what we're experiencing right now.

I made an earlier point that we don't know if we're in a recession today and I just kind of want to comment on that point a little bit.

Well, this is the next slide.

So this is fascinating.

This was, this chart is the survey professional forecasters released by the Philadelphia Federal Reserve and they essentially, you know, surveyed different economists and said, well what do you think GDP will grow next year?

How much do you think GDP will grow?

And at the time that they surveyed them, you can see this bell curve, at the time when they surveyed them, most of them were thinking between two to three percent in 2009.

Now this survey was released in February of 2008.

And guess what?

At that time and point,

When the economists responded to this survey, we were already in the 2008 recession.

And that's how when they were saying it would be plus 2.8%, the actual number was negative 2.6%.

And again, I found this fascinating because even the economists didn't know, right, that they were already in the recession.

Simple story here, this is the last three recession timeline.

If you hold that, you know what I just talked about, right?

In December 2007, we entered a recession.

February of 2008, they were still projected almost 3% in GDP, but that year, we had a negative 2.6%.

Now the period is important to note that like the National Bureau of Economic Research, they announce this late because they want enough data.

They say there is a recession.

So sometimes a recession could have ended before they announced that there was one.

and that was the COVID one.

The COVID recession was only two months long and they actually announced it in June when the recession ended to try to pay for it.

Similar thing happened in the early 2000 recession.

The U.S.

ended the recession in March 2001.

They actually announced it much later than November.

So that's why I said earlier that we could be in one right now but we just don't know about it.

That's

highlights the importance of planning and that what you're doing today is that we all need to anticipate where we are economically before the data is actually out.

Okay, so what does that mean for Charlottesville?

Obviously the economic activity, the economic context that we're in has a lot of impact on the revenue side of things.

So I'm going to step back a little bit and say, okay, you know, I just gave you an overview of the economic context.

What does that mean for Charlottesville on the revenue side of the financial equation?

This is a fascinating chart.

This is not you.

This is the National Cities.

This is a release into 2022 by the National League of Cities showing all their sort of national cities.

And I want to show this slide because I keep on saying we're unprecedented times from an economic perspective, but also from a local government financial perspective.

The orange line here is expenditures and the blue line here is the revenue and what you see here is, I haven't seen this before, is this diversion of the line where the expenditure goes up and the revenue goes down.

Now what is that difference?

Much of that is import-driven by the ARPA money, the COVID Cares Act money, all of that, right?

That is what is import-driven before we wind up.

Yes?

Can I ask just a picky question?

So this is something I just haven't seen before.

I mean, look at the chart before, right?

You have seen the line diverging, kind of not lining up, but this is something that happened to me as a person.

When was the last time, you know, local governments got the kind of money that we got from our red chairs and all that stuff, right?

So this is truly a positive benefit.

And I say when I look at this, you know, if all cities and counties, if you're not paying attention today, you really need to start right now.

This is not good.

Okay, that was national cities.

Like I said, let's look at Virginia.

So this is all Virginia.

Counties is blue.

City is yellow and all is white.

What you're seeing, this is the local revenue average year over year growth from a percentage perspective.

What you're seeing is, you know, it was going up and down, up and down, and of course COVID hit.

And look at what happened after COVID.

It really shot up from a percentage growth perspective.

But then in FY 2024, across all of the governments, the revenue growth was slowing down.

And I want to be clear, this is revenue growth.

So revenue was still growing, but it was growing at a lower rate in FY 2024 across all Virginia counties and cities alike.

And I think you see some of that during the FY 2026 budget process, where you see a lot more jurisdictions, even in Virginia jurisdictions, increasing tax rates, making tax rate adjustments, in part because the growth is slowing down again across all Virginia cities.

Let's talk about Charlottesville now.

You have all the kind of national landscape.

We're talking about Virginia.

Let's hone in on the city itself.

You also experienced some of that, right?

We've previously included Charlottesville in there.

What you see here, and this is back, you know, all the way back to 2016, so this is a decade-long flood.

And what you see here is, you know, from F1 2016 to kind of COVID, your revenue was growing moderately at about 4% each year.

And then the post-COVID era, like the 2020-2023, those revenue growth was growing by 10%.

And you see that revenue growth moderating the last two years to between 9% and 6%.

So that chart that will come down tells us that we'll also experience that.

Again, it's not negative growth, it's not positive growth, but the growth has come down significantly.

You know, this is the typical kind of your general fun pie chart and I want to show it now because, you know, all of you know this but this to me really highlights Charlottesville's strengths and risks.

So, if you look at your revenue makeup, right?

Half of that is your property has including a small size of personal property, but half of that is your property has another about 20% is a combination of meals, sales, and other taxes, and the rest is what I would call other, which includes what I would call fees, charges, and so on.

Slice.

This 50% property tax is your biggest strength.

Property taxes generally viewed as the most stabilized, non-volatile revenue.

And the fact that you have 50% of your revenue that comes from this very stable source, even in economic recession, that is your biggest strength.

You also have diversity, right?

This whole thing is not all just property, because we also have diversity, and that's good.

Revenue diversity is a good thing, and you have some diversity here that represents about 20%.

But when you think about Charlottesville and that whole revenue, you know, the way I think about it is almost three-quarters is from taxes, and the rest is from the other.

And we'll talk a little bit about how these tax bases are behaving, because that, at the end of the day, drives it all to the top.

So I said that the half of your tax base is good, it's a real estate tax base that's non-volatile, it's one of your most stable stores of revenue and this shows you the taxes and the values.

Now remember the earlier revenue line, you know, slow growth, and then high growth, and then longer growth, same thing.

You know, if you look at the three, kind of back in 2007, 2017, that was growing about 3.4%, and then the growth was a little bit steeper, it grew back from 7%, and then it's a 10% growth.

See, that was definitely almost exactly the same as your revenue growth.

And then what we're seeing is that the growth is starting longer.

The good news here is it didn't drop, right?

It never dropped over the last however many years this has shown.

What I'm scared of is what if this growth starts coming back down to what you sort of experience back in the days at a 30% level.

If this growth starts slowing down and leveling, that has a significant meaning because remember this is half your normal revenue.

So that's the strength of your risk is that your strength is at half this your property tax is by growing very robustly, but what if it comes down?

Let's talk a little bit about your other kind of non-primary tax revenue.

And this is good news and bad news as well.

Remember I said that it's a good thing that you have a diversified revenue portfolio.

But of course, the flip side of the coin, the double-edged sword here, is that these revenues are economically low.

and they don't grow very much.

So these are your meals hash, your sales hash, your log impacts.

These just don't grow very much and you can see it flattening already.

The final 25 numbers are still not out yet, but you can see that little bump.

So that is your risk portfolio right there.

I want to step back a little bit and spend a couple of slides just talking about your tax rates and your competitive

So Charlottesville, right, when we look at the city, we have to think about the regional competition from a tax base and tax rate perspective.

So this is comparing the city of Wilkin County in terms of, let's look at this part pretty quickly first.

This is a pre-cabinet, Zest Valley, and then of course your tax base.

And it's a little bit, on a per-cabinet basis, a little bit bigger than the county, but not that much.

You can see it's just kind of a hair in Wilkin County.

But of course your tax rate is higher.

And that is always going to be the case.

Any city that we look at, it's always going to be the tax base is a weaker, the tax rate is higher just because of the major cities.

So you're not out of the norm here, but just know that.

You're always competing against that kind of surrounding county.

You're always competing against that competitiveness nature of the city versus county competition there.

Another perspective on tax rate is I prepared your tax rate to live in rural Virginia.

This is the, you know, instead of kind of showing you all the places of different tax rates, this is the weighted average of all of Northern Virginia.

What you can see is that your median household income is about half of the Northern Virginia jurisdictions.

No, no.

Correct, yeah.

And this is a general, general, I don't even, like, I just pulled the numbers and then it says it's zero.

Yes, correct, yeah.

And I understand that student population was certainly a scaleless number.

But this would also include places like Loughborough County, which has 170,000 median household income.

So this is including all of the rural Virginia counties, which generally has a much higher, wealthier demographic profile.

But you can see that Charlottesville's median household income, let's say, is about half of that.

But its tax rate is, if you look at the real property tax rate, it's a hair lower.

It is lower, but a hair lower at 4.1%.

personal property tax, and this is like the vehicle tax rates, that's a little bit higher, almost 1%.

And your meals tax rate is a bit more than double, actually, than the Northern Virginia.

So why do I show this slide?

I'm saying, you know, oftentimes, if your revenue comes down, you always need to adjust, maybe look at the tax rates to bring more revenue, and given the expenditure side of the equation here.

But there is some room, not to say you don't have any room, but the room is limited in order to keep your competitiveness, especially in relation to Albemarle County.

Even to Northern Virginia jurisdictions, you have limited room to increase your tax rates while remaining competitive, and that's probably where the whole privatization conversation comes in, is that you don't have a lot of room on the rate side in order to increase your revenues.

There's another way to look at tax burden, you know, we just talk about tax rates.

But the Virginia Company, local government of the CFG, they also released data on revenue efforts, and it's probably a more precise way to look at kind of burden.

Because the revenue effort figure, what that does is it basically shows you how much juice you can squeeze out of the orange.

Because what it does is it looks a little bit at your kind of base as well.

capacity, how much can you get from your tax base, right?

If your median household income is higher, there's more juice to be squeezed.

If your median household income is lower, there's just less juice to be squeezed out of it.

So it shows you the revenue effort, and they kind of do this computation.

And what you see is, among Virginia cities, the revenue effort on average is 1.27%.

and shows us a hair higher at 1.35.

And you can see, again, compared to the Northern Virginia cities that we're talking about, you're higher there.

And that kind of, you know, basically illustrates the point that, again, you may have some room on the race side to play with that, but there's not that much room if you want to remain competitive.

Just a couple more benchmarking issues.

I do think that as a whole Charlottesville is positioned well.

Why do I say that?

Your fiscal commission on local government, they do this competition and basically release this figure called fiscal stress index.

And what it does is basically saying, you know, they're going to look at median household income, revenue capacity, kind of the base, and the revenue effort, which is the tax burden.

They will at least three factors and say, what is the fiscal stress at that?

So if you want to imagine, you know, a place that has very low median household income and very high revenue efforts, that is going to have a lot of fiscal stress, right?

That's what we think of about, think of about, you know, the kind of population declining cities, low tax base, but has a high tax rate.

that's what this is essentially measuring.

And what it shows is that, you know, I'm not surprised that the Charlottesville fiscal stress is higher than Albemarle County.

Again, that's not surprising.

And if I flip to the next chart, you will see here Charlottesville is actually pretty good.

Why did I say that?

So what I'm showing here is green is low fiscal stress and then red is high fiscal stress.

Charlottesville is right here.

And I say it's pretty good because if you, you know, you can't see this, it's way too small.

But if you look at this side of it, it's really all counties.

on Northern Virginia.

If you think Virginia cities are not the Northern Virginia, they're all kind of down here.

So if you're looking at your population, it is pretty good.

You can see that Richmond is definitely lower.

Paris and Paris is lower.

A lot of places are lower than yours.

So you are, from a kind of broad perspective, and you push your pathos to compare yourself with.

You do it pretty well even though you're still considered above average fiscal stress.

Again, because much of the yellow and the green, most of them are counties, most of them are northern Virginia.

So again, all I'm saying is, you know, Charlottesville, as a city, you have the identity, you have the student population, you have the high property rates.

and all those things.

But charitable speaking, you've been able to manage it.

And that's what I'm trying to do.

Let you know at this point that you have been able to manage it to this point.

And the next step is going to be when revenue comes down, what actions do you take to make sure that you remain competitive compared to your neighbors and compared to the region as a whole?

One more thing here.

I feel like because of the ARPA money, because of the post-COVID,

Strong revenue growth.

I feel like a lot of places haven't been focused on the underlying trend.

Population at the end of the day is the true economic drive.

Places with declining population have usually a higher fiscal stress rate.

Your tax base is not there.

And just one thing to note here on the population side, depending on what source you use, your population trend is basically flat.

and so just something to remind yourself of as you think about kind of the economic engine at the end of the day is your population and it is flat right now and to continue to manage it so that you don't start to see that line declining.

So that's on the revenue side.

Let me now talk about the expenditure side too.

On the expenditure side, you know, when I think about Charlottesville, I have a bit of, kind of, three slices.

The first slice is personal costs, and that would include, you know, salaries, benefits, pension.

The second slice is a school's contribution, and the third slice is kind of all of them.

So if you think about, kind of, a bank represent area, right, your revenue is mostly taxed, two-thirds of that is tax revenue, two-thirds of that is personal expense.

That's how we think about it.

And if you look at the schools just for the second year, as you know, the school's contribution has been increasing at a higher rate in the last two years for a smaller degree of return.

I think when it comes to schools, and a lot of Virginia clientesses' question is, like, how are we going to sustain that?

And it'd be very special to be able to recommend a picture that we're talking about.

One thing I did want to show is, this is from the one that we were

numbers is that your enrollment rate is actually projected to come down a little bit.

And I, you know, I would advance with you.

But I would say here is I think it's important to consider the return on investments.

It's important to consider kind of, you know, what does enrollment trends mean for your contribution.

And I know that your contribution has been increasing in part because of the ESL population and the author.

So this is one trend to know, and again, this is because this is one third of the pie.

It's a big drive for people not spending.

Personal costs, let's see, all were kind of one third of the pie here.

And I'm gonna ask you to not focus on so much on kind of the words there.

But what I'm trying to highlight here is this is a budget number.

And what you see here is FY20 actuals of 2025, but right there was a significant increase.

And I know that your actual numbers is not gonna be the 80 for one time.

I believe you have a base of savings and all those things that should bring the number down.

But coincidentally, your FY26 budget actually is the exact same number.

What I'm trying to tell you is that it's just that much less room, less budgetary buffer in your FRC-6 budget.

Because FRC-5 budget, this might be able to hit probably somewhere around here because of vacancy savings.

I don't think you're going to have that much savings in that part.

So again, on the personal cost front, as Sam said, I've been working a lot on the collective bargaining front.

There's a lot of good investments there, but over time you do have to manage that role in the personal cost, and I want to talk a little bit about this just because it's that important.

You know, this is a 20-year difference.

This is across the states.

This is released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

You know, across the U.S.

what you see is that the compensation portfolio has changed significantly.

If you look back 20 years ago, wages and salaries represent about 70% of the total personnel cost.

The remaining 30% is on benefits.

Look at it today, the wage and salary number has dropped to close to 60%, because these slices have grown at a much higher rate over the last four years, and these are essentially taking over the compensation portfolio.

So when you talk about personal costs, it's important to not just think about salaries, but think about how these other slices have really driven overall personnel costs well over time.

And this has been reflected in your budget as well.

I mean, this is your health care fund,

The red number just means the deficit.

Your funds still have a positive balance impact.

It has a good 30% reserve in there.

But just know that because of the reserve, you have been able to, on your project, compare on the load of it, and eventually it's going to happen.

You're in a good shape right now.

It's still 30%.

It's in good shape, but eventually what you're going to see is that it will have that much of a pressure on the general fund side eventually you'll start defunding it, at least leveling it, if not going back.

On the pension side, that's even more than a prime rate.

If you look at the last 10 years, your pension contribution has doubled from almost $7 million to almost $14 million.

Your pension contributions have doubled as a percentage of payroll has gone from 20 to 30 percent.

And yet, as you know, you're still not fully funded, you're still in the 70% range, and I understand the goal is to get 80%, and you should never let up that goal.

Getting to that 80% goal is a good thing.

It's a good thing because when you don't fully fund your pension, what happens is that you have to pay it back over time.

I mean this is a pretty staggering chart in the sense that 80% of your pension contribution is to pay off your unfunded liability and only this will shrink over time as you get your funded level higher so that you don't have to pay back your unfunded liability but that's a consequence of not having a fully funded liability

And that's okay.

80% is a good goal to have.

You can still get there.

But just know that, you know, when you think about personal costs as a salary, so let's say, you know, increased salaries by, let's say, 5%, just hypothetically.

Your health care cost is probably going by about 7%.

That's kind of the national expense here.

And your pension cost is going by, what, 13% a year, based on the double cost.

So you can see how these costs back up, and that explains this particular chart here.

The different growth rates of these higher benefits cost is really what drove the change of this chart all this time.

Again, this is not you only, this is national trends.

This is what local government has to struggle with, right?

If a big piece of that pie is a person of cause, that's what they can do.

The last piece of expenditures I want to talk about is debt service.

You know, from a debt perspective, you haven't maintained it at about 5-6% of full and general fund spending, and that's a good thing.

But just know that every new infrastructure that you put in is another thing to maintain, and that will be reflected in these kind of debt sort of spending at the end of the day.

So kind of, you know, thinking about it all, you know, if I think about your, again, three parts of your pie, the personal costs, right, growing, even if you maintain your head kind of flat, that's what it grows significantly because of the pension, because of the healthcare.

The school's contribution, like I said, that's been going pretty at about eight and a half percent, and that's something you would have to manage, and the rest of the pie is the other, and a big piece of that is your debt service, your capital investments,

So even at a status quo kind of perspective, you still have to fund all of those growing costs all the time.

And you know, in the last couple years, you had the benefit of the ARPA dollars, you know, back in 2020 and 2020, you had the CARES Act $1 million.

And we also have a year-end surplus numbers that you were able to take and dedicate it to.

I think because of the revenue trend that we just talked about, the revenue growth coming down, the year-end surplus number is going to go away at some point, and at some point you will have to think about how to manage the inherent balance between revenues and expenditures.

If you can think back to the property tax chart, if that

Instead of value, it's only growing over a long-term frame between 5 and 7 percent, but yet your pension is growing by 15 percent, your healthcare is growing by 8 percent.

You can see that inherent imbalance there, and that is the struggle of local government these days.

It's not you, like I said, in your well-positioned, I think, but that's just the reality of the struggle of local government.

So with that, you know, I talked a lot about these themes, but I want to highlight this one last bullet point here is that as we think about this current, going back to the first part of this presentation, as we think about the recession that is maybe here, that may be coming, sort of rolling back the growth, it's slowing down across the border, across all Virginia cities and counties, you know, as you think about these kind of growing costs from the different highs of the expenditure pie chart,

I do think the next five years, not just you again, across all local communities, will be about conservation and privatization.

Unfortunately, that market dollar is not coming back, right?

Unfortunately, the revenue growth is slowing down, and unfortunately, the pension costs

We didn't even talk about collective bargaining where those contracts will be in place.

You will be committed to provide those wage increases under those agreements regardless of your economic conditions.

So the next couple of years will be about conservation and prioritization.

And I sometimes joke that local government is kind of like the Amazon Prime Day.

You want to buy everything, but all of us can't buy everything.

And so we have to find a way to prioritize our resources accordingly, again, given the economic condition and given the framework that we are in right now.

So how do I move forward from that?

What I just said to you over the last half a minute, the rating agencies are sustained.

You are, by the way, a AAA community.

You are selling your bonds next week, August 19th.

I have the date marked on my calendar.

You are strong from the rating agency's perspective.

You have a AAA credit rating, but some of the risks I highlighted here, they are also quite significant.

You know, they are credited to you, as I am today, for your strong budgetary practices, for the way you have approached government finances, but they also highlight some of the risks, underlying risks that you also need to pay attention to.

So again, some of these themes are highlighted in the rating agency, also highlighted in their comments and their reports.

You know, if I step back, and I hope I didn't scare you for the last hour, if I step back, there's a lot of strength there.

Think about the revenue pie you just showed earlier.

Property taxes, the most stable revenue source you can have, is half of your revenue picture.

You know, Annette, when I think about in this country as of today, you know, one of the reasons Virginia cities, counties, and the Commonwealth as a whole is actually relatively okay today versus Maryland and DC is in part because Virginia is not funded by income tax.

If you look at Maryland's jurisdictions, a lot of the revenues are funded by income tax.

DC's budget is also a big portion of that is income tax.

And that's much more volatile in this DNA.

So from a Virginia perspective, you're in a good place, or as good as it can be, given this economic condition, because of your revenue makeup.

This is also why, by the way, credit rating agencies have inferred the Commonwealth rating, but they have downgraded DC.

So, you know, you do have a lot of strength there, but you do also have some of the underlying risks, right?

I wouldn't be surprised, for instance, if we are in the event of accepting their meals, tax sales, and then watching traffic coming down.

I wouldn't be surprised if your population continue to flood no more time, and that will be a challenging risk to manage.

You know, I wouldn't be surprised if, say, you would have trouble with the capital improvement plan, because you have so much to maintain as a city government.

But you have a lot of strengths, and the key here is to play to your strengths.

So what are the next steps here?

Some of that is already in motion.

I think it's important to number one, stress test your general fund, meaning what is the best case scenario and can you weather it?

And that analysis already shows that I think because of the strong budgetary

practices because of your fund balance, your rating industry, and acknowledge that you are in a good position to weather the storm that is coming.

But the second piece here, and I think it's a micro today and tomorrow, is to establish spending parameters.

Like I said, on the school side, for instance, understanding what enrollment projections mean for your future contributions.

For your personal costs, a lot of work is done on the collective bargaining side, but understand how benefits spending, for instance, is driving your overall picture.

On the debt service side, understanding how much you're investing in just maintaining your existing infrastructure, and how much is actually added to it, and what is that trade-off there.

And I think prioritization is probably one word that I'll bring throughout this presentation and today and tomorrow is how do you prioritize your resources given that the rest of you have slowed down significantly?

How do you prioritize the resources while achieving your strategic goals?

And look, I get it.

You would not be here today

if you didn't want to invest in the strategic priorities.

No one wants to join city government because they want to balance the budget.

That's not for anyone.

That is the most incestuous thing ever, right?

No one wants to be part of government because they want to balance the budget.

But part of the role, part of my role is to make sure that you have the resources when you need it and that you can maintain that kind of triple labor, that kind of budgetary straw, budgetary practices that I've been talking about.

Wow.

So we got about 15 minutes for questions, and this was a lot of information.

So Mike, I'll start with you.

We will reflect in a little bit.

I guess my questions are just related around UVA, and if we take that into account, how this analysis changes.

I'd be curious, you take out the student population, what our median income would be and how that would change where we are.

That Harrisonburg was so low, I wonder if that relates to them also being a university town.

Yeah, I mean, I don't have any answer to that necessarily.

I think about, you're probably right, it does impact even household income and all of those factors.

The tax exam property is also probably another factor here, right?

I was in New York earlier this week and I was walking around Central Park and was thinking, what if all this is taxable?

What does that do to the tax face?

But the fact is, it certainly has some of the negative factors, but also it's part of the strengths as well, right?

This is in part why you have your regional attraction.

Some of your sales tax, meals tax, lodging tax also comes with that.

Just like anything really, it's a double-edged sword and you just have to manage it.

You said the five-year fiscal plan would focus on conservation prioritization if everything stays status quo.

And then you said that there's limited room to raise tax rates to increase revenues.

Housing supply.

Yeah, so by increasing housing supply, you would aim to increase your taxable base, your taxable assessed values.

And, you know, there are places that have a lot of green land that when they build houses, I'm thinking of like, you know, Brown and County, for instance, right?

Like when they build a lot of housing, that was significant.

I think that the bottom line that we haven't done the analysis on that, we certainly can.

The bottom line is how much would that increase?

Do it in taxable ways.

How much of that is taxable?

How much of that and how would that from the needle in the taxable sense of what it looks like?

and I haven't done the analysis on that but I think, you know, part of it is also like, you know, your tax base has been growing by 5-7% in the last few years so in order to, you know, grow it, you're looking to grow it beyond the 7%, you have to grow it beyond the base that is already growing so you're looking at, okay, can that actually add 3% to my tax base

Sort of continuing on some of these other notions.

I guess one of the things that I've always been trying to puzzle out is, like Michael raised the question about the effect of university students, we know that there are plans underway to house a couple thousand more university students in apartments right around the university, which will be in the city, perhaps drawing from people

University students who are living in the county, but those students aren't contributing.

On the one hand, they're not typically costing us more beds or more desks in schools, but they're also not contributing the same amount of taxable value as if it's a family moving into a half a million dollar home that's new.

How do we figure out

What's actually likely to happen with that kind of influx?

There's certainly a way.

I mean, if you really want to know the answer, there's certainly, we do this too, because when we do our studies, we figure out, okay, if you build a new apartment building here, what is the economic effect of that?

And how much actually is the economic effect, and how much of that actually affects what we cover for revenue, because they're not exactly the same thing.