City Council Monthly Work Session - Special Meeting   7/8/2026

Al will join us.

I call the July 8th Charlottesville City Council Special Meeting to order.

The purpose of this meeting is to discuss the Charlottesville City Schools Facilities Construction Program.

Councilor Fleisher?

Here.

Vice Mayor Oschrin?

Here.

Councilor Snook?

Here.

Here.

Absolutely.

Well, good afternoon, Mayor Wade, members of council, members of the school board.

My name is James Freese, deputy city manager.

And as noted this evening, we're going to be talking about the school construction program and in particular talking about

the recently passed local option sales tax.

So our intention this evening is to provide an overview of that referendum, the sales tax referendum process and the structure related to that, provide you all with an update of that school construction program.

You work your report last August during a joint meeting with the school board.

We provided an overview of our school facilities and their needs.

We're going to kind of update that information.

as work has been done on that.

And then we're going to look at what the potential proceeds might look like from the sales tax revenue and the implementations around that.

So three kind of major topics to cover, then we'll go over next steps.

And then we look forward to questions and your all's feedback.

I thought I was.

Those are our topics.

So as you all are aware, the recently enacted state budget includes authorization for the city to conduct a referendum that would impose a local general retail sales tax at a rate not to exceed 1%.

As you guys know, the revenue for that can only be used for school-related capital improvements, though it can be used to finance bonds or other loan financing costs for those projects.

The work, so as you know, also it's not an action by council alone.

It requires a referendum approved by the city's voters.

That referendum is initiated by council resolution.

We have at this point in time scheduled consideration of that resolution for July 20th, your meeting on July 20th.

The resolution itself must identify the proposed tax, state the expiration date for the tax and request that the circuit court order the referendum.

We're using

In that draft resolution that we are preparing, we're using an anticipated deadline of June 30th, 2046 based on the 20-year maximum that's built into the budget as it was passed by the General Assembly.

So the process as this moves forward, after the council adopts the resolution, we file a petition with the Charlottesville Circuit Court requesting entry of an order, placing the referendum on the ballot.

That referendum must be ordered by the court at least 81 days before the date for which the referendum election is called.

So November 3rd is the election date.

And so we're looking at August 14th as the deadline by which the court must act.

And then if the majority of voters approve the referendum, council must then adopt an ordinance to actually impose the tax and the tax goes into effect at least 120 days after the ordinance is adopted.

When you pass the resolution, that's when that 20-year clock begins, right?

Yeah.

So my question along those lines was referendum, election day, and then you've got the 120 days before you can start to receive monies from that tax.

So the way that the state law is set up, as this was set up by the state, the resolution is what starts the clock.

So we didn't have a choice.

All right.

I can follow up.

I think the way it's worded right now, we could start it or we could keep it running until July 20th of 2046.

What do you mean?

And do they start collecting, do they stop collecting the extra 1% midway through the month and midway through the reporting period?

All right, go ahead.

members of council, members of school board, Michael Gauter, Deputy Director of Public Works.

As James mentioned, I'm here to give you an update on some of our planning procedures since last time we updated you.

So in the interim, we've put together a school facilities working group and produced this facility needs report, or at least an overview of the report.

It will come out in a little more detail in the future,

We needed to rush something to you so you'd have a sense of what we've been working on.

The working group was composed of staff representing Public Works, Capital Development Division, Budget Office, the Sustainability Office, all city staff, and then city school staff as well.

So I want to give you a quick overview of sort of what the big moving items could be and are in our CIP.

So the reason that we're talking about a project that's basically complete at this point is because it is part of that CIP picture.

Because we could, if we wanted to, use some of these funds to pay down existing CIP costs that we've already incurred.

So Charlottesville Middle School, this project is finished.

It's got a certificate of occupancy now, so it is substantially complete in our parlance.

It was a $94 million commitment, more or less.

And so that's one of the big items in our funding picture.

We're also working on the Charlottesville Early Learning Center.

So no pretty pictures of the design process for this slide, but we do have some of that well underway.

We're working on the lower part of the Walker campus for the projects.

This is the Early Learning Center.

Approximately $55 million is what we think this will cost by the time we get it through construction.

There was 4 million, I believe, in 26.

There's 10 in 27 and 30 million in 28.

So, 46.

Excuse me, 36.

34.

I'll get in a second.

30.

That's 44.

44, yes.

So we don't know where this is going to land quite yet.

We're still pretty early in the design process.

We just landed back at our original site.

Plan C. Yeah, that's correct.

That was my question.

So just to clarify, of that $55 million, $11 million is currently unfunded and not programmed in the budget in any way.

That's correct.

Assuming the $11 million is the number which I think it will be that or less.

So I'm going to run through some of the ideas that our working group came up with.

This is more original information.

I was actually right.

I said the wrong number.

So let me clarify.

$4 million was budgeted in 26, $10 million in 27, and $20 million in 28, not 30, as I just said.

So it is, in fact, $34 million.

$20 million is budgeted in 28.

Yeah.

So we'll have more information as we get a little further down the road.

We're trying to eliminate costs on that project as much as possible, but the construction market right now is working against us in a lot of ways, and you'll hear a little bit more about that coming up.

So we set about putting together a list of the needs in the school system having to do with facilities, and we've got a rough idea of what those needs are now.

There will be some conversation about scope and scale, which building.

There will be cases where if one building gets a big project, another one doesn't need it and we could flip-flop those schools based on planning concerns that we don't fully understand at this point.

There's also the question of, you know, Charlottesville High School, is that the first thing we tackle it being the biggest fish or do we get to that at a later time?

These projects are sequenced essentially based on their value, so most expensive to least expensive, but that also is more or less the sequence that we were working with in our working group.

So I have a quick question on that.

Do we have, and I've missed a couple of meetings, plans for

No, there are no plans for any of what I'm going to talk about from here on down at this time.

That's why you're looking at that not so elegant picture of the front door of Charlottesville High School.

That's a next step is to flesh this stuff out.

And I do think that that's something that's worth maybe exploring a little bit as we move into, you know, putting this to a public referendum.

But as a president, no, these are ideas.

They're big picture, very high level.

Yeah, I mean, just to highlight two points that Michael's just made.

One, these are cost projections.

They are very rough estimates.

And second, as we, and Chrissy will go into this next, as we get into a much clearer understanding of what the actual revenue stream looks like coming out of this, we're going to have to match that to a project schedule as we're refining these costs.

May I ask a question before we get too much further into this?

For clarification, because I know it seems like it waffled a little bit.

I've heard counsel and Counselor Snook even speaking to it a little bit, just for clarifying purposes.

So this sales tax, these funds can be used for already dedicated or bonds that have already been put out, or is this future stuff?

I looked at that.

There is legislative history that says that is not allowed.

Well, we haven't issued 30 million of that.

So that could potentially be in the mix.

And I know we won't be able to answer tonight, but I would be in the future just interested in having a joint conversation to really get into these high school plans, because I know as a council as a whole, we've received the plans for the elementary school portfolio, but just haven't had that opportunity with the high school.

So I really don't know anything about it.

And I don't know, is it rooted in like wanting to increase the student capacity programming?

I do have a little bit of information on that that I can share and if you still have some questions after then we can attack those.

So the scope and scale of what's being proposed here is not a new high school.

I want to make that very clear.

A new high school I think off the top of my head would be something like a 300 million dollar project in the present market.

I know that sounds crazy, but I think that's right.

$150 million, what we're proposing here, would be an addition to the high school.

That addition is not really meant as a capacity-driven

It's more programmatic in nature.

And Kim might be able to speak to this a little bit, but there have been some needs brought forward having to do with workplace education type programs that might

might fit into CATEC if a student wanted to spend the part of the day that it takes to go to CATEC.

But if you only want to take a bite-sized piece, if you want to stay on your normal track, there are some educational programs that they could use some space for on the Charlottesville High School campus.

The other thing it does for us is it frees up each of the parts of the high school so that we can do an occupied renovation.

So if we wanted to just go into Charlottesville High School as it sits today and renovate the entire school, we would have to break that project into so many tiny parts that it would take the rest of our lives.

A better way to do it would be to take a third of the school, for instance, and renovate that while school continues.

You never have to empty out the school because there's no place in the city that those students could all go to be educated.

So the new volume becomes a swing space, a lot like what we did at the middle school, actually.

That was a test run for this type of project and it actually worked.

Well, depends on if you were a teacher in the school, how well it works, you can ask them, but I think it worked reasonably well.

And there was a lot of cooperation from the schools, but that's what we're proposing here is we build a new volume that has a specific need and purpose, but also in the meantime can be used as a swing space.

So this becomes basically a four-phase project.

It's phase one, new volume.

Phase two, three, and four are going through the school in one-third chunks, kind of like what we did with the roof replacement, because the school is kind of neatly carved into these three semi-equal.

So that's what we're proposing here and what the interior looks like.

So there's a new volume and then what in the schools?

Additional windows, interior, natural lighting has always been a complaint for the high school.

We've done a few pilot projects to demonstrate how we could improve that situation in the science labs.

I think that's very successful.

Also, if you've walked around over there, the ceilings and lighting are poor.

So some finishes should be replaced.

The only things I would add, what Mike shared, are when you talk about renovating the old spaces beyond the lack of natural light, the restroom piece, we've made a big impact with the initial restroom renovation in what we call the B Commons, but all the other restrooms really need to be addressed to

get them to current standards and the high school is the place, of course, our restrooms could use a lift in all of our vintage buildings.

We're tackling our first elementary project right now, Greenbrier, which is really exciting.

but operationally the impact on safety and student health and well-being and their comfort using restrooms, like getting all those restrooms converted is huge.

As we look to prioritize our next set of restrooms we're going to go after, it's really challenging knowing what may lie ahead to pick like what's the next area and how to do it because you don't want to make these big investments and not have your full plan baked out because you don't want to invest in something and then, oh, well, that's in the way.

for this bigger thing we need to do.

But the restroom renovation has the biggest operational and safety and just student wellbeing impact at the high school.

The other thing I would add is when students leave the middle school where they've got, where the classes are designed for collaborative learning and current instructional practices, when they go back to the high school, the classrooms are designed for traditional sit and get kind of learning.

They're not designed to accommodate breakout spaces and

where students go into small groups and can go into different areas and learn because the teachers just don't have the visibility and the spaces to accommodate that.

So that's another just reality of what we've got.

The middle school, UFORD, was no doubt our greatest need building, but that's just another feature beyond the CTEPC mentioned, which is the long-term vision for what that additional volume would allow.

students to access workplace readiness learning and not invest a whole half of their day at CATEC.

That's big and that's the long term.

So this is where, so I'm the operations gal in my counterpart who is the chief academic officer is at a conference right now.

And she sits in the same work group with me.

I know there are things in like the medical field, for example, and some of your just tech technology type jobs where it's not necessary to invest half your schedule for all the different programming that could be beneficial for those tracks.

but I better be careful.

I just, I know I won't do this.

I won't do this answer justice.

Oh, I think I'm sure that if Dr. Helts or Dr. Isley were here, they could just give you all the information about like the types of the classes that

really don't, what makes sense at KTEN versus what type of classes would make sense on a more typical, you know, class block and what that would look like.

So the next school we'll talk a little bit about is Jackson Via Elementary School.

It was built in 1968.

This is the era we talked about in our last meeting, the sort of twins of schools that we built across the system.

This is the era that I'm least fond of, I would say.

1968.

It's an interesting time in America.

So what we're proposing here is a new school construction.

Now, this is something that we could talk about and we'll talk about for sure.

So this is a little bit of a placeholder, but this is the site that it would be most easy to build a new school on, assuming that there's going to be the sort of changes in cohort size that could be driven by things like low-income housing projects and things like that that the city might take on.

and those are generators of large numbers of students.

So that's something that we would have to work with our friends in the planning department to sort of work through and make sure we're planning an appropriate size school for what's coming.

The other elements though that Jackson Viya is not great about is natural light.

Again, if you've been inside of that school, all the windows are about this wide and these floor to ceiling slits.

So natural light is really non-existent inside the school.

There are ways that we could work with that space if we needed to, but I think that given the fact that there probably will be a need in the not distant future for additional space in our schools, this is a good opportunity.

And this is the school that I think at least the folks from the school staff believe is most likely to want to be replaced.

Not eating, apparently.

I will say the design, I mean, if you're interested, the design was never to have walls at all for that school.

The school was originally designed to just be an open plan.

So the gathering space was everywhere.

You could gather everybody anywhere you wanted to because there were really no walls or doors.

That didn't last very long at all.

before they started calling what at the time was the maintenance folks to start building walls because the classroom noise was getting out of control.

But it was a common model during the period.

Greenbrier has the same problem.

Built in 1962, it also was built with no walls.

The reason I say it challenges Jackson Viya is because one, it's a less flexible building type to work with.

So it would be harder to sort of work with the shape of this building and the bones of it to make a new, better building.

And at present, there are a lot of classrooms in Greenbrier where you have to walk through one classroom to get to another.

So that's a challenge.

But I'll leave some of those

concerns and arguments to the folks who know more about the program and who work in the schools.

But this is another school that needs significant improvement, I would say.

We're proposing a $50 million project here.

That's a major interior upgrade and construction of a new entry vestibule.

If you've been following for a while, you'll know that we spent a lot of time and some capital to put better entry sequences into our schools for the sake of safety.

This is the one school that we have been really unable to come up with a good, easy solution for.

Just because of the way the entry is designed, it's really challenging to build a place to sequester people before they have access to the school.

They work around it.

It's safe for day-to-day operations, but it's not convenient at all.

So this plan would propose that we build something that's more of a permanent entry vestibular entry sequence to the school and then reconfigure some of those awkward classroom spaces.

There are also some finishes that desperately need to be replaced and this school has a particular problem with its plumbing system, specifically its waste removal.

and that sometimes it doesn't remove the way it ought to.

So that's something that we would like to address.

And again, this is the era, all the houses in the neighborhood have the same issue, I can say.

This is, I think, a pretty high priority school as well.

$50 million is about what we think it'll cost to address those issues.

And I don't think that that's a big new volume or any real change to what the school looks like from the outside, besides maybe a few more windows.

but it would take care of some of those structural issues.

Now we get into my favorite era of schools.

Summit Elementary School, previously called Clark.

This school is challenged because it's on a very small site.

It can't grow out really at all without impacting parking completely.

There's very little parking already.

The play space is already rather small for a school of its size.

What we're proposing here are interior reconfiguration and interior upgrades.

The entry sequence here is also not great.

We've worked with it, but it's not ideal.

And we also have a lot of very old finishes.

Now I will say that this school doesn't have the natural light problems that some of our other schools have.

Schools built during this era didn't anticipate having air conditioning necessarily, so big windows were necessary.

And consequently, we have high ceilings and good lights in the classrooms.

Now, that's not true of the entire school necessarily.

There was an addition put on in the 1950s, which I think is of much poorer quality.

And I never get tired of complaining about the fact that the floor plates don't line up, which you'll know why.

You've heard me say this before, but I think that there could be an argument made for, while we're looking at all of this, for removing that addition and building a new addition that would be a little taller, probably, that would have floor plates that align, that would be a little more programmatically appropriate for modern teaching, but wouldn't necessarily impact the footprint of the school site.

But that's something that

We'll work through, again, as we talk to the folks who know more about what's planned for future growth in the city.

It's certainly something we would want to do some growth projections and wouldn't want to do willy-nilly, but I do think that would be an option for this site.

But as it is, that's not what we're proposing.

Wait, sorry.

Addition to replace the existing addition.

Thanks.

Trailblazer Elementary, also one of the best sets of bones in the city.

1925 construction.

This is the oldest of our schools that are still in the system.

We're proposing a general interior renovation.

Classroom finishes.

Again, it has good windows, good natural light already.

There are some spaces that don't and we would like to remedy that.

But again, those are mostly addition spaces.

Yeah, this we've done a small project that we're working on this summer to create some more breakout spaces in this school, and that's really highlighting the need for more of that kind of small instructional space.

You'll see that throughout the system that that's something we don't have and would love to have.

So with this, I know that the auditorium needed to be improved, but I can't remember if that's already been done.

We did replace the seats.

Yeah.

Yeah, the only auditorium, I think, the only auditoria that have not had their seats replaced, Greenbrier's one, and it's still got the old wooden fold down seats that are very quaint.

And then Charlottesville High School, which we have coming up as part of our project plan already.

And then we get to Sunrise Elementary, 1958.

Not ideal, but not the worst.

Our classroom general interior renovations are what we're proposing here.

Generally, I think natural light is not ideal, but it's not terrible either.

This school could use some general interior renovations.

Some reconfiguration of space inside the office.

Front office sequence is not ideal.

It's workable, but it's not the best.

So we're proposing a general, a little bit lighter lift than some of the other schools, but a general uplift on this school.

And we think that'll cost around $25 million.

And you'll see these numbers are essentially rounded to the nearest $5 million, just to be honest.

At this level, at this point in time, we just don't have enough information to get too specific.

Tall Oaks Elementary, 1955, very similar.

This is a twin to Sunrise, sorry.

The name changes are in that one.

And it's a similar scale, similar scope.

Classrooms need to be adjusted a little bit.

Finishes need to be redone.

All the schools need better sealing treatments and things like that.

And of course, with all these projects, there's an HVAC element.

We'll have to look at the systems for all of the schools that we look at, make sure that they're up to current snup.

And there will probably be things that need to be adjusted and fixed and replaced.

But we are in a place where we're only a few schools away from having good roofs on all the schools.

We've just gone through the three-year program for CHS.

That roof is all new.

Obviously, CMS has a new roof.

The new school, the new Pre-K Center will have a new roof.

So, a lot of the exteriors and, you know, we keep up with the exterior maintenance of the building.

There is, yeah.

And we're currently working on that.

So both CHS and CMS are the first step for us.

We are looking and, you know,

should invite Crystal to one of these meetings so we can talk a little bit about the plans.

We are looking at all the new schools.

We plan to put solar on all the new roofs.

It's just how do we do it?

With PPAs, they have certain needs to be able to make it pay off for them in terms of the size and the generation.

In some cases, it's going to make sense to do a self-funded model.

In some cases, it'll make sense to do a PPA.

But we are seeing a very successful collaboration with the provider for our PPA, the high school and the middle school.

So I think that is really opening the door and allowing this to become more of an easy route for us to take to solve these problems.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

We do know what the HVAC situation is.

I don't know school by school off the top of my head because we do keep up with all of them.

You all did just provide additional funding for us to upgrade that.

So that has been a problem in the past where our HVAC systems were being held together kind of by duct tape and bailing wire.

But you all just approved some additional funding for FM staff to look at new projects that will help to, over time, get those things renovated and up to speed.

So they're not in dire condition.

I think they're

workable for now, but a catastrophic failure of the school HGAC system is a lot more impactful than it used to be because of the warmer weather generally and the increased summer programming in the schools and all that sort of thing.

So having it just not work is not really acceptable.

So yeah, in general, I think we're in okay shape.

So when, sorry, go ahead.

So a long time ago when we had the last work session about the elementary school portfolio, we were presented that a lot of the elementary schools would need full HVAC replacement because those over the summer repairs weren't working anymore or weren't really

sustainable?

I would say that it is less the case.

So it's the case today because we haven't started spending the money that has been approved for this fiscal budget that just started.

But I think I guess my my takeaway message would be, I think we're appropriately funded to get those systems up and up to moderate spec.

There may be cases, and I guess this was my point, is that there may be cases where we get into a school and it's like, oh, there's just an overwhelming challenge in this school that we're going to have to put some real capital funding into as part of a bigger project.

Or we do tend to like to, you know, if we do a large scale project, for instance, the middle school,

Pre-K Center.

We're planning on a geothermal system.

We're going weed with those projects.

So that's a horse of a different color.

And I think when you start to get into that, you're not trying to... For the most part, you don't wanna just stick that onto an existing system.

You wanna kind of refresh the whole system as a whole so that you've got one of a piece system that runs off the same geothermal wells, for instance, and all that sort of thing.

So

It's a complicated answer to a simple question, but it just depends, I guess is the simple way to put it.

We don't think we're in dire straits, but I would say that we may see situations where a more holistic approach to heating and cooling is appropriate.

So last item I've got on my list of to-dos is CATEC.

And this is more of an interior modernization.

We're thinking this is something like a 10 million dollar project.

This is the one that I can tell you the least about today.

I would say that this is more of a general common areas of fit is what I would be envisioning here.

A lot of the learning spaces in CATEC turn over kind of regularly and there's a lot of shifting and moving of those.

So really, I think more of the families will be thinking with this $10 million modernization project.

And this one, I mean, if I'm being honest, I think this is the one that I'm least sure is

necessary.

It's kind of why it's at the end, not only in terms of dollars, but in terms of timing.

I was reminded, Dr. Burling actually on text when I was fumbling my way through trying to explain the programming where we see holes in our current, okay, CTE programming.

And one that's sort of glaring, especially on what Michael's talking about.

So we have electrical and we have HVAC, but we do not have, and we don't have really space or capacity at CATEC for building trades, at least introduction to building trades, meaning the actual beyond the electrical and HVAC that all the other components of building trades.

And that's a really,

Hot Area with just the actual construction and things like that.

So again, even in smaller spaces, those type of introductory programs that we just don't have at all could be planned for in that additional space at the high school.

And again, you're not committing half your schedule, half your day to getting that introduction.

Is the renovation at CATEC something CATEC students could participate in?

Oh, sure.

I think at the middle school they did a great job of getting students involved.

That was a really fun part of the process.

We've even seen it with our elementary.

The original renovations that we went through, we had did this thing called FIPSE.

It started back in 2017, 2018, where we wanted to just give the community...

We wanted to give the community a taste for what it would look like to start lifting our vintage schools with these, like, they start out at a million dollars in the summer and I'll never forget the kids that, what was then Clark, they were involved with designing, like what the improvements would be to their classrooms.

And so we just worked with architect partners who really bring that.

And then at the solar project at CATEC, the students had different levels of involvement with that.

Yeah, I mean like actually physically participate.

Oh, to do the work.

Yeah.

That can get interesting because of the, you know, dealing with the contractors.

Yeah, exactly.

But certainly with design and just, and learning from it short of actually doing the work.

I mean, every project spins off.

It's like a hurricane.

Well, here's a great one.

The middle school, we have to reinstall the garden for the garden program there, which we're super excited about.

The students have been so active in designing that and the build out on the new garden space at the middle school is going to be exactly what you're asking, literally for everything from the garden areas, fencing, different things like that.

So to put a ribbon on all of this,

The program costs that we see overall for the system, with what I've just explained, we've already committed about $149,000, assuming that 55 million is the number for the Pre-K Center.

All of the other things I talked about amount to $395 million.

Yeah, that's right.

So just to throw out some risks that we see with this program.

So we're not the only people who now can do what we're trying to do with taxes.

What I see as a person in the construction industry is a danger of escalating costs.

So and we see this with VDOT pouring money into our transportation program.

We've gotten to the point where it's very challenging for us to deliver that program because we put a price on something, but everybody is just trying to get the same contractors at the same time.

So their profit margin goes way up and the cost of, you know, the pay for contractors goes way up and all of these things just, we're fighting with everybody else in the state at a certain point.

I don't see an option for anything we can do about that, but it's just something to keep an eye on because you're going to come back to me and say, you said this number, now it's this number.

And I'm going to say, I'm sorry.

um

Also, city project delivery.

I mean, we are what we are as a city.

We have the project management resources that we have.

I think they're adequate for what we're trying to do right at the moment.

But I do watch city council meetings.

I see that this isn't the only thing that city council gets the pleasure of deciding to try and spend money on and solve problems.

I'm sure that there are gonna be other things.

If all of those things also come to our project management team, that's a challenge for us.

So there are reasons why we might want to think about that on the front end and come up with a project pace that takes that as well as our financial income from the tax into consideration.

Thank you.

So how much revenue would the additional 1% generate?

I think just as a quick review, the current statewide sales tax rate is 5.3%.

1% of that is currently located to the localities and 4.3 goes to the Commonwealth.

Over the last decade, if you average out the city's sales tax revenue, we've averaged an annual growth of about two, just under 3%.

In FY25, we collected a little over 14 million.

FY26, our last projection was 15.6 million.

and our budget for 27 is projecting $16 million.

So per the legislation, as we've talked about, the additional 1% does not apply to food purchase for human consumption or essential personal hygiene products.

The state is actually not, our commissioner has reached out to the state.

This is not something that they routinely collect.

in terms of data.

So they are working through this process as well to change their forms.

They'll start collecting the data.

But based on what we know from localities that already have this permission to assess this additional tax, and just from looking at some of our data, we're currently estimating that this would require about a 20% haircut off of our total tax collection.

So for purposes of this conversation, we landed on about $12 million a year is what we're thinking would approximately be available as a result of this additional 1%.

So if you look at that, this slide sort of gives you a range.

If we were at 10 million, 12 million or 14 million,

If you were to assess all of that, keeping in mind that sales tax is very dependent on the economy and human behavior, as we saw from COVID,

has the ability to go up as well as down.

If we were to look at an annual tax revenue of about $12 million, that would, at max with spending every dollar, leverage about $125 million worth of debt.

And if you wanted to give yourself, depending on how much coverage you want to give yourself, you could go down to about $65 million.

By coverage, what do you mean?

So if you issued $65 million worth of debt,

That payment is roughly half of that.

It's a good question.

Definitely at least one.

But I don't know that there is, you know, I don't know.

Yields $125 million worth of bondable capacity.

So kind of to answer that question, if we were to look at this, $12 million over 20 years is roughly $240 million.

If we were to sell $125 million worth of bonds

With interest in everything, you're looking at about $184 million of total debt service.

So as the graph illustrates, the tan or gray, however this looks to you, is just like your mortgage.

When you start out in the beginning, you're paying.

Generally, our debt is equal annual principal amounts.

And so you're paying more principal, less interest.

And then as you go along, our debt payment will decrease and our cash or PAYGO increases over time.

So what happens is over the 20 years we would end up with about $55 million of cash that we would also be putting back into the program.

So over the 20 years, by the time you factor in the interest, you end up with about $180 million that's available for projects.

So one of the things that we have been looking at with our financial advisor is what does this look like?

What we do know is that the rating agencies will look at, does not look at this as a separate piece of our debt.

It is considered a part of our total debt.

It, you know, obviously it has a dedicated funding source, but it does become part of our total profile.

So just right now, without any of the extra things we've talked about today, as of June 30th, the city has $207 million of outstanding debt.

$149-ish of that is general obligation debt, which are all the things that are funded through the CIP.

And just over $58 million of that is what we know

are called the self-supporting utility debt from our utilities.

Annually, our debt service payment while budgeted for 27 will be $18.6 million or 6.7% of the general fund budget.

And we'll look at this in just a minute, but based on the current five-year plan that you have,

That is projected to increase to over 26 million or 8.4% of the, and I have the wrong date there, I apologize, over the next five years.

So to recap your current CIP plan, we have $147 million worth of bondable projects.

Chrissy, can I ask you, you mentioned there was a number there that was wrong.

The FY28.

It should have been 31.

Yeah.

Keeping in mind, we do have a debt policy that the debt service cannot exceed 10% of the general funds total expenditure budget and council as part of that policy imposed a target of 9%.

So this table, this chart is one that we look at and that we use.

We also present to the rating agencies.

It is the way that we sort of manage all these pieces and parts of our debt program.

We do manage the debt and meaning that while we have a CIP plan, as things fluctuate, interest rates, the economy, the general fund,

We are issuing the debt based on what we can afford and how it applies to our policy.

As we've been talking about for many years now, we're not reaching our target at 9% because our general fund continues to grow.

One of the issues that we have been speaking about on a regular basis is the affordability of our current plan.

As I mentioned,

the annual debt service as you see from the third column over on the planning side, we're going from 18 to 26 million within the next five years, which means that those dollars are additional dollars that have to come from the general fund.

We have been allocating 1% of, or the equivalent of 1% of meals tax

for many years now has been going into the debt service fund to build up a debt service fund balance.

So these increased debt service needs have been, we've been covering sort of on an ad hoc basis annually, either with debt service fund balance, the 1.4 million that you see there in FY26, the second column over from the right, that was actually the gain sharing that was returned from the schools that was put in to help offset some debt service.

But as you'll notice for 28 and on, we're looking at an increased contribution from the general fund of just over $2 million a year to keep up with the increased debt service needs of what we're going to call the baseline CIP, which is the current plan that was adopted with the 27 budget.

So when you layer all this in, as I said, the rating agencies will look at all of this debt combined.

If we have the school piece, if we were to issue $125 million, that's the blue line there on top of the baseline, which are the numbers that you see in that box along the bottom, we quickly exceed the target as well as our 10%

not to exceed number in every year for quite some time.

If we, the yellow line I'm gonna show you in just a second, which is the max number, which right now based on just these projected numbers, 35 million would be about the number that we would want to leverage for debt to keep at our target.

Just to clarify, because you're getting lingo-ey, it's okay, that's your job.

I just want to make sure that I'm keeping up.

If the max issuance is $35 million, that's annually, that means we're using some amount of the $12 million in revenue to increase our debt capacity by $35 million.

But we don't need all of that $12 million in order to do that.

I'm going to get to that in one second.

I'm just really glad I'm following along.

So if we, again, if you look at this the same way, again, $12 million a year gives you $240 million worth of cash.

If we were to bond $35 million, you can see that these gray lines or tan lines continue to decrease, but the amount of cash that you have each year is increasing.

Your debt service is a lot smaller.

It's 52 million.

That gives you 185 million for PAYGO.

Let me- Can you go back to the previous slide?

the next one, I mean that one.

So I understand our policies, so what happens

if we do, you know, it's 11, like 12% and then it goes down to like 11%, the blue line essentially.

So if we do go via policy, what that means is that we impact our credit rating and when we do borrow money for schools, then it'll be, or not just schools, but just, you know, projects in general, the cost will be higher.

It puts the city's credit at risk.

We have been talking to the rating agencies for the last few years that our current existing CIP is rather aggressive.

It builds on issuing more debt than we've ever issued in the past.

And so when you look at our debt per capita, it's getting up there and we score lower in those areas because of that.

One of the things that this exercise sort of proved to us and with PFM's help in looking at this is that it does sort of confirm that our policy is sort of where it needs to be, given our size, the 10%.

And so I think if we went to something, if you intentionally exceed your policy, number one, that speaks to management, which is a ding from a rating agency standpoint,

It also, as I mentioned, does put the city's credit at risk.

And so sort of to sort of summarize this, if we were to, so two things to summarize.

At some point, once you make a decision on what the overall plan is, we will come to you with a recommendation of some mix of debt versus some mix of cash.

If you were to assume that we would issue on the top graph, if we were to issue $125 million worth of debt, then the little teeny blue lines are sort of the available cash that you have.

Your debt ratio gets you almost to 12%.

You have a cash flow over those 20 years of $180 million to invest in your program.

If, in this scenario, if we were to issue a $35 million bond, you have about $185 million worth of PAYGO, so a total 20-year cash flow of $220 million.

Again, more money because you're paying less interest, and it does maintain the city's credit, and it does keep our ratio within the target that has been established.

Chrissy, how much of a change though?

I mean, the city's had a AAA credit rating since like the seventies and has a very strong, stable University of Virginia employer base.

I mean, what really

So I can't speak for the rating agencies.

There's a rather lengthy scorecard process that they go through.

They typically look at your financials,

your management, your economy, and all of those factors weigh in.

Some of it is a mathematical equation.

To have a policy and not follow it is a fairly serious thing on management.

Also, to exceed sort of financial matrix that are outside the norm of your AAA peers.

It is a pretty strong relief of our financial advisor that we would be putting our credit at risk.

In terms of what is the difference on percentage, quite frankly, it depends.

In a high interest environment, that could be significant dollars.

In a low interest environment, it's maybe not so much, but it is definitely more of sort of a status and a black eye

to lose a AAA indicates something's not going correct.

Yeah, I've only ever seen that change like a half to one percentage point, so I'm wondering.

You know, we're not talking about 5% difference.

We're talking about a half to a one.

What percentage point are you talking about?

Right, yeah.

But certainly 1% on $125 million is $12 million.

That's right.

It's worth $125.

Yeah.

Project.

Not to minimize the importance of the bond rating piece because that is very important.

I think the other thing that worries me even more, just not with this, but just overall in planning is the affordability piece when we factor in our collective bargaining units, both on schools end, but also our city end.

What's the point at which we have the cash flow to afford everything beyond even the rating?

Well, and it also speaks to your ability to do other things in the future.

Because this is just based on the current plan that's in front of you, the things that you know about.

You know, we've talked about a lot of other things related to CAT and transit and affordable housing and all those things.

You know, those are big numbers too.

And so when all of that's got to sort of fit in here.

And so it, you know, if you, that's sort of the slide about

Do you leverage at all for debt service?

Do you leverage, do some combination of the two?

Chrissy, as I'm trying to understand this graph, does this mean that if we were in the, for the example at the bottom, if we were to issue a 35

That's the cash.

So it's this screen here.

Your actual debt service payment goes down a little bit each year.

And so of the

I guess what I was conceiving of was the thought that

that we would issue a certain number of, let's say, 10 million dollars worth of bonds in year one, 10 million dollars worth of bonds in year two and always have more revenue coming in each year so that we end up issuing bonds of

Correct.

And we still have to comply with IRS regulations, which we have to spend the money in two years.

And so we would be issuing, you know, there's a lot of what ifs in this scenario.

First of all, it's not going to, $12 million is not going to stay static.

There's going to be some growth there.

and so interest rates are going to fluctuate.

So there is some timing aspect of it, but whatever debt you issue, just keep in mind it lasts 20 years.

If you sell tax exempt bonds, there's an IRS regulation.

Essentially, they don't want you to go sell bonds, put it in an account and draw interest off of it.

And so there is a requirement that you must spend all of those proceeds within 24 months.

and have to be spent all the way, not like allocated to a project that hasn't been paid out yet.

So now, you know, most of the time, that's why if you go back to, you know, this chart here, these numbers don't actually match.

If you were to go to the five-year CIP, like this year, I think the CIP has that our bonds will be 27 million.

We're actually only probably selling 20-ish.

That's an ignorant question.

So I think you've answered this before, but I just wanna double check.

That assignment to capital does not include anything like bus fleet.

That's not considered.

So the only thing that's in the CIP that would be included here related to buses would be school buses.

Yeah.

And that's our match, our

No, I'm sorry.

That is, I gotta have that backwards.

Okay, but the 1% cannot be, it can only be used for buildings, not, that's leaves.

Okay, construction or major renovations.

Okay, and then the

earnings from the 1% cannot be invested.

And actually, practically speaking, let's say we move forward, the referendum passes, council passes the ordinance, we're probably looking at a year or two.

before we're even gonna sell bonds related to that.

So there is nothing that prevents us from investing those funds.

And none of those numbers are factored in here for just fees.

Just looking ahead at your media calendar, as we've referenced, July 20th is when we've proposed to put the resolution in front of the council.

August 12th is an already scheduled joint city council and school board meeting for the purposes of talking about the school budget and as it relates to the city's overall budget.

August 14th is the last day to receive the order from the circuit court to place the referendum on the ballot.

And that's that 81 day rule we talked about earlier.

And then November 3rd is of course the general election.

Sometime following November 3rd, the council would adopt an ordinance to actually adopt the tax.

And then 120 days after that, the tax would go into effect.

So that's our chronology.

That's our timeline.

We, for today's purposes, we're going to go to about 5.45 to kind of flesh out questions and things like that.

So I know we've been asking questions as we've kind of been presenting.

So, but now we just kind of open it up to discussion and questions because you all finished your formal presentation.

I guess I'll

First off, thanks for the invitation.

It's nice to be here, appreciate that.

But in preparation for the August 12th meeting, and if we're gonna talk about this, I'm curious as to what point council makes a decision or what that looks like as far as which option you're gonna go with as far as the debt metrics, the debt service, how much, is that something you all have to vote on and decide?

And because it seems to me that, and correct me if I'm wrong, Mike, please, that that might impact what is being projected as far as projects and what those projects might look like.

Yeah, let me put that in the other direction.

Which way we go in terms of how that structure goes in terms of bonding versus cash depends on, as you say, it significantly influences how we structure the projects going forward, right?

If we rely more on the pay-as-you-go approach, if we're using more cash to pay for projects, that also says that we're going to, implies that we're going to focus more on

kind of the annualized set of funds and kind of multiple projects over time as opposed to one or two larger projects, right?

If we're bonding more, that means we're probably going to go towards an approach of a fewer number of larger projects, whereas that program of smaller projects might be ones that we can actually pay for mostly out of cash and over time it will involve.

It does make sense.

And I guess I lean into you all to kind of present the options to the school board and to council so that we can see what that looks like and then weighing the needs of the schools.

So the CRP that we

have now that I'm on the committee and we meet periodically at Public Works.

So the committee itself, we did talk and introduce this wish list or this new prioritization list the last time we met.

So I think

you know some of those things are but aren't necessarily showing up on the spreadsheet yet.

I think the work that was presented today is the staff working group that was composed of staff from both city's capital development side as well as school staff.

Sustainability and budget have also been involved in that and that working group would likely continue their work using this information with

Right.

So, Christian, if you can help me, if we're collecting, let's say, $10 million a year in additional taxes to fund projects, and let's say we choose

one of the projects that's, you know, $50 million.

And we can't, we have to use it within two years.

So how, how are we, because I'm, I'm picturing myself now trying to explain to this to someone like in the grocery store and the street, you know, to be able to do it.

Cause we're already starting to get, you know what I mean as well, emails, it's like, I'm already taxed, you know, enough.

So I'm just trying to understand like the,

Would it be helpful to use as an example the middle school project which was a 90, just over a 90 million dollar project?

I think we did too, but we only ended up issuing about 50 something million on the middle school because we got the state grants.

Schools also contributed some of their gain sharing to that project.

But to answer your question, we would time the bond sale for when the project was ready or shovel ready.

So I would offer that rather than trying to back into the numbers that you talk about the plan and what you want the construction plan to be, if looking at a $150 million high school renovation is where you want to be, then

That would be where we would start.

And then we know that we have some options for affordability.

We could come back to you with other plans.

Obviously, this 1% is not going to afford you that whole project either way.

But I think it's better to talk about what you want that plan to be.

And then we can make the financing work.

I don't want you to get hung up on we can only issue $35 million worth of bonds.

That's not what I'm saying.

This is based on details that we know today.

It's making a lot of assumptions about things that will or won't change.

And so I think that what is a good takeaway is that probably it's most effective to do some mix between bonds and PAYGO, but I think that depends on which projects you pick.

because if you're talking about $150 million project, that's probably it.

If you're talking about a $30 million project or even a $60 million project, you probably got multiples of those that you can do.

And so it's not that we have to spend the money within two years of collecting the tax, it's within two years of issuing the bond.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I would add to the conversation about the timing and all those nuances.

When you do a larger project like the high school, and we experienced this with the middle school and you especially will experience this in a highly competitive construction bid environment.

But we've even experienced this with our small summer renovations.

We were very good.

And I should say, we really need to give credit to Public Works and Mike's team.

at designing projects that have ad alternates, bid ads, and doing it in phases.

Because the fact is you have to prepare that on bid day you may be looking at bids that

are in alignment with what your financial plans are and so with something like the middle school to make it really concrete and that whole fine arts feast was up in the air until what felt like the 12th hour whether or not we were going to be able to do it but we knew that we had a plan where we could proceed with everything else whether that got to go or not

and when you're looking at a very what would likely be a very similar process for the high school where you're going to have to build a wing that you can move and use a swing space and then you're chunking that that large project into phases that allow you to not only deal with the nuances of how the financing works and the timing requirements and all that fun stuff that Chrissy gets to deal with but also it allows you to be responsive to whatever the realities are in the market and you actually might not.

Yeah, I think that's mostly accurate.

I think in the office I like to call them valves and some of you will remember that we came to you when we got bids in for the middle school and the question that we brought to council was do we open or close this valve?

Meaning do we do this additive bid item that we've got pricing for or do we trim the project down?

In that case, we chose to accept all the ad bids and do all the things that we had designed.

That was maybe a different fiscal situation than we're going to be in when we do some of these projects, but that is the flexibility we can add to the project.

And I do really like phasing large projects.

But we don't ever do anything like

We'll commit to half of the CHS project and two other elementary school projects like we'd like them to be.

Doesn't mean we couldn't.

I think it's really a question of, you know, if there was something at CHS that was just like, hypothetically, you love the new learning space idea, but the rest of the school seems fine.

So you would say, okay, we'll do the new learning space.

True, because defining a discrete project that you could end and be done.

Right.

I mean, don't tell my high school junior that I just said that.

I think we'll just take that off.

Yeah.

Try and leave as many options available.

So I had one more question, a clarification.

Lisa had, you know, I asked the question, Lisa was like, well, it depends on what

but I think we can maybe bring that back in August would be helpful.

Based on the committee, I mean, and based on what that list looks like right now, CHS has kind of jumped to the top of that list.

And there's some very important reasons.

And I think hearing again from Dr. Gurley and Dr. Isley, as far as the instructional piece, I think for those of you who have had the opportunity to walk through the middle school,

Incredible, right?

State of the art.

And if you haven't, we will set up an opportunity for you to do that.

But then if you go and walk to the high school, walk through the high school.

So I mean, that's kind of the why.

I mean, and there's more to it as far as why that has jumped.

Right.

And what we might be recommending.

But again, we are kind of the mercy of the funding.

And so having this conversation, and I think

The reason that I ask that is because we probably won't get into this until January, February, March, and really is it April or March is like when we have those weekly meetings.

I'm maybe going out on a limb a little bit, but I think we'll need to carry some of this conversation forward at your next meeting, the next joint meeting with Council.

I think the charge of that working group

was to put together a financially unconstrained plan for the modernization of our school facilities, kind of reasonable.

It wasn't, and you heard the choices that Mike described where they, we didn't go crazy, right?

It was reasonable, but it was still financially unconstrained.

And now the question is, now that we understand the financial constraints,

where do the priorities lie?

And that's a discussion that I think has to happen with both the school board and the city council, because those financial constraints as presented, as we understand them kind of say, you can do one, maybe two big projects, or you can do a multitude of smaller projects and the, the, and smaller being relative because we're still talking 25, 30 million for most of those smaller projects.

But, you know,

That's a prioritization exercise.

Which way do we want to go?

I do wonder, could there be some modeling in that August meeting with the preliminary draft plan to see if we do these smaller than this is what financial impact and bond impact looks like?

I'd also like to say, I don't have a card, but I'm Amanda Korman-Somolchik, I'm the Director of Community Relations for the schools.

And I know that for us, it's also important, obviously, in passing a referendum, this is about engaging

our voters to understand why this is such a good tool and why this is and what the significant needs are right so really bringing everybody on board to the needs portion and then we're already we're talking about solutions but I think that we're interested in a community engagement process that would include involving citizens in what are the solutions that are meaningful most meaningful to you and what do you want to see

while also sharing that this tool enables us to ask a lot less of citizens in the long term financially.

I know there's a piece of this referendum that we talk about sales taxes.

And I do thank you for bringing that up.

I mean, I wanted us to take a step back because we're talking

and hopefully this does pass, but to your point, Mayor Wave, you know, that you guys are getting emails already and people sharing concerns, asking questions.

And I think it is important that we as the school division and as the city, you know, are sensitive to the fact of what people are asking and just the times and the financial impacts or their worries or fears, but to understand

So Council

Do you think it would be beneficial for Amanda to work with Afton to kind of put together some talking points, or is everyone still comfortable with where we are?

I think we're not quite ready for the talking points yet, because I don't know what they would be.

I think we could have, I know Mr. Malchak's developing like a fact sheet,

for us, like just generally, like how did we get here?

And again, what are the needs?

What are the school facility needs that we know about?

Without presenting a plan for solving them that is fully baked, although we want to get to that point, that's certainly something that we have.

And just even bringing the resolution on July 20th, perhaps you'd like something to just have,

and you know there's already kind of a inertia towards one of these options but which is is this replacing anything or is it new funding?

Well that's a decision we have to make is do we lower something else to accommodate the fiscal stress on our community like it's like technically that is something that we have to determine in the next budget cycle is do we reduce something else in order to accommodate this

but then it's directed towards school planning especially.

So the inertia is that it's for new but that's something that we're going to have to confirm and that's a question that the public is going to ask and has been asking already is we're already spending this much, it cost me this much to go out to eat and now we have to add more.

When we do have the capacity, we do have the, technically we have the ability to reduce the level somewhere else.

So that's something we're going to need to make sure we're all on the same page about going forward.

I'm just bringing that up to clarify.

I don't want that to be a question that someone asks later.

Well, why didn't you guys talk about that?

I would think that it would be useful and whether it doesn't need to happen before August 12th, but perhaps if it could be developed before then might be good is to have a sense of

OK, the next project is Walker.

When is it going to start?

When is it going to be finished?

Here's the Gantt diagram of, OK, now we're doing this one and then we're doing this one and then we're doing this one.

Even if we don't necessarily know what all of those are gonna be, at least to be able to say, folks, we can tell you we've got a plan.

Walker is the first step.

And after that, for example, I had always assumed that the logical next step was to start working on elementary schools that have been revised because of what has happened with Walker and Charlottesville Middle School and so on.

I think the differences of that is TBD.

Like the order of things is TBD.

The things are all concrete items we would like to see.

It's in the

Packett for today.

I think it was the one on the line.

But that is selling people on the timeline instead of selling people on, these are the things we could do and we haven't determined the timeline yet.

I think some of that, yeah.

I guess to me, the big question is fully in support

Moving forward with the sales tax referendum this November, it's been a long journey to get here.

And no matter what we know, even with the sales tax, there's going to be more needs and there exists capacity to meet those needs.

So we might as well move forward with it.

But I guess the big question is just adding up the school projects.

are the elementary school projects without CATEC and including the unfunded part of Walker.

That's 255 million without TOS escalations that may occur.

So if we're talking about 150 and that's already above the sales tax revenue.

So if we're talking about 150 to 200 million above this new sales tax revenue, I just don't know if we're literally going to be able to afford that.

We've increased taxes.

Multiple times we have among the highest meals tax and lodging tax rates in the state.

We have room to not, we're still not among the highest on real estate tax, but that comes with legitimate trade-offs.

We still haven't incorporated the full costs of collective bargaining on the city or schools into our budget.

As you all very well know, you have very legitimate needs for unfunded positions that are also not incorporated into our budget.

We have staffing positions on our end we need.

So again, I just literally don't know if 150 to 200 million above the sales tax is possible.

So it may be a choice between, is it the elementary school portfolio or is it the high school in this 20 year period?

And just from our last discussion among all of council, my understanding was that the elementary portfolio made more sense as a higher priority just because at least at that time,

It sounded like a lot of the HVAC systems likely needed a full replacement, or it may be just a good idea to do a full replacement, as well as the fact it seemed like those were the schools that had the biggest deficiencies in terms of like no cafeteria, no school-wide meeting space.

They're the oldest.

Right.

And they're the oldest.

And those are the ages which are most critical for the achievement gap.

But that was the conversation at that time.

Admittedly, I haven't been part of any conversations about the high school.

So honestly, that's just my perspective from having heard the past conversation and nothing about the high school.

But again, that to me is the biggest outstanding question.

I have a couple other questions that are a little

One of the things listed on the packet was the Rose Hill entrance concept.

That was version B of the Charlottesville Early Learning Center concept.

So that was the terraced scheme.

Sorry, the Rose Hill is the new scheme.

That was the Gentry Lane scheme.

So that's version C, version A.

Okay, got it.

Thank you.

And the renovation of the Performing Arts Center at the high school, what's, what is the need for that?

And what does that look like?

Mostly it's carpet and seats.

There's also some lighting upgrades.

Some of the technical lighting stuff is a little, doesn't work great.

So replacing that, but the big cost item, the cost driver there is new seats.

And then do we have, this is separate from what we're talking about, but related.

Do we have a, any more idea of what the $43 million UVA has for an early learning centers going towards?

What does that look like?

That money is not allocated.

I know it's not going to us, but how is that going to affect what we're providing, what our needs are?

Is that going to pull certain kids out of our learning center?

Is that for just staff and it could be from anywhere?

Do we know how that's going to affect what we need to provide?

Yeah, so just how does that affect our landscape is really the question.

Okay, and then just because it feels like the conversation about the high school is kind of fresher to us than the rest of the things that we've been talking about.

Can we get a little more background on

who's asking for it, where did the ideas come from?

What's the plan?

The students are coming out of the middle school for the first time, the completed middle school for the first time next year.

So how, I mean, are we planning on collecting data for performance once they're in the, does it change from the new school, the shiny new school to the as is high school?

Is that actually gonna make a difference or not?

I think that's stuff we need to consider before

spending a lot of money on this.

I can say that.

I'm writing the question.

So when the people who lead instruction for our school division when

as they've spent more and more time and we've now lived with them in middle school for a year.

And just, I know this is gonna sound like a fuzzy answer, but the feeling that you get and understanding what they see with how instruction works in those spaces versus seeing and experiencing and living what is at the high school right now, it's just a very stark difference in reality that folks who actually need instruction should speak to

and they will, I'm sure.

So to your point, that's a question that Michael told us was sort of brewing around.

I would also say though, back to the old FIPSE thing, when we were just starting to try to get momentum with lifting our old facilities, when we started and we were like, okay, go into Summit, which was Clark back then, what would a current educational space look like, right?

We always had the guiding principle

that whatever class, if the project in a school was going to be to lift a grade level, because we knew we didn't have enough money or enough time to do more than one grade level in the summer, it had to be the fourth grade.

It had to be the highest grade level in that building, which was fourth at the time, because you didn't want kiddos going from, you know, a really great or, you know, a lot more light or different features in second or third grade and then going like the next year.

Wait a minute, this room isn't as nice as the one I was in before.

And so that's just like this fundamental guiding principle that we had all the way back into the 2017, 2018 timeframe when we started trying to do these little million dollar summer lifts.

There was just this idea that you don't want as people, and even for kids, just that feeling of like, oh, I'm stepping down because I was in this really great space and now I'm stepping back.

But much more important than that is,

the instructional piece and the talking about like collaborative learning versus what I'll call traditional sit and get classrooms, which is what our, the time period our high school was designed in.

There are some great spaces in our high school, but there are the atriums and the common areas.

That's where all the big windows are.

They have the cavernous feel like when you go into some of those rooms off the beauty center where there's just no light.

I'd like to just add to that that the pivot to thinking about CHS first also or it comes from the current Charlottesville City Schools strategic plan, one of the main pillars is about creating life ready graduates.

I think that you see a lot of, you know,

of shifting focus from just thinking about helping kids get to college to the acknowledgement that not all kids want to go to college and ensuring that we're strengthening the pathways for other routes and so Kim is referencing the interior upgrades of the rest of the building and then in terms of talking about the new addition that would support career and technical education

Another piece that we just haven't mentioned is that Dr. Gurley is interested in the creation of ROTC programs.

Those are two examples that really reflect how wanting to ensure that those students who aren't headed to a four-year college feel supported.

starting from 9th grade through 12th grade.

And the acquisition of CATEC and ensuring the success of CATEC for the future was a significant part of that, ensuring our students would continue to have access to that.

But as folks are saying, it's about 11 different trades that are served there and it requires students to be there for half of their school day.

And it requires them to want to choose to invest in one of those 11 pieces where we know there's a huge, much larger

uh he's future focus of students that doesn't include that isn't served by by those needs and and that that's what we envision for CHS is really you know and then I'll also you know because I'm a PR person I also just have to say that that we know that CHS is is a symbol of the city right that it's I think that it's where it's it's the pride of this city I think in many ways right that being a Black Knight is a pride of the city and I think that

So it's all legitimately and genuinely very important.

This is a little bit of a rabbit hole, but

Obviously literacy and numeracy is critical, not just for those who are going to college, but to be successful in the workforce, even if you don't go to a four year college or even associate's degree.

As we all know, you know, about 40% of black students pass statewide reading standards.

about 90% for white students.

The achievement gap is massive and those critical years are K through three.

And after the third grade, it really starts to compound and become harder to solve.

All of which is to say, do the existing elementary school facilities for those K through five grades, are they sufficient in terms of the ability to have programming that's best serving that kind of need?

So when we have the conversations in our work group about the programming piece, which again, my colleague Dr. Heisley leads a lot of that conversation.

When you hear us talk about the elementary schools, it's more about, yes, we want to lift all those restrooms, although we definitely need to prioritize all of the CHS restrooms over the remaining elementary restrooms.

It's about the lack of a security, visitor vestibule, lack of natural light, all those things.

I can honestly say that in those conversations, you don't hear the same level of concern or any level of concern necessarily about how our elementary instruction works in concert with the buildings.

It's not to say that there aren't areas for improvement.

Lack of natural light in some of the buildings, those 60s, 70s era things, that's a real thing.

It is definitely, as I listen to my colleagues who lead instruction, it's nowhere near, it's just not the same level of concern, if any concern about the instructional piece.

It's more about those specific things that we listed on those two buildings and it's just, that's where those conversations have been.

So you make a good point because those collaborative instruction breakouts does play more of a factor with the older students and you correctly are moving the fifth graders in.

So again, schools are going to get a little older, right?

So I would think, yes, with the fifth graders, we're living this right now.

So we took preschool out and put fifth grade in.

and we've moved the grade levels around within the buildings.

This is the summer of reconfiguration, a lot of moving parts.

How did the numbers work out?

So when we did the elementary rezoning that we did a little while back,

We factored in reconfiguration and we ensured that we have adequate space in all of our elementaries and all public schools right now are being helped by the declining birth rate, which is across the nation.

So we don't have capacity concerns this time.

The only one that I'm still keeping a close eye on is honestly Jackson Via with the South First Street opening.

I was surprised we didn't do that.

The consultant's work didn't reflect a need to do more.

moving there, but we also have some special needs programs there, the LEAP program, which we had some flexibility to move classrooms to other elementary schools to balance out capacity.

In all honesty, managing capacity across six elementary schools and 10 square miles is not for the faint of heart because there's a lot of movement going on in a small area and getting it to land right and maintain our neighborhood elementary schools is challenging.

But so far, you know, to maintain capacity is not really

a future of these conversations we're having either with this.

We have to keep, we clearly have to be mindful of it.

And if you followed our redistricting work from a year or so ago, really a lot of that's about the intensity of high density development around Summit, our school on a postage stamp, and then the domino effect that that sets into play across the city, because Summit simply cannot hold what is happening in relation to the affordable housing developments and other just housing developments

Jen, did you have any comments?

I mean, we're going to have another opportunity.

Oh, good.

You know, starting off point to get, you know, some idea of what what we're doing.

I know we have a timeline, but we just have a few more minutes for today.

And then we're going to talk about I don't think you heard this, Michael and Lloyd, maybe you did.

We're going to spend just a few minutes to talk about different projects.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I don't have anything else.

Oh, the questions I have are really about can we get more visibility on like the rubric of the prioritization for schools because I'm not sure I know what our goal is.

Is the goal to close an achievement gap or is it to

get more work-ready students in the next 20 years because we're thinking of this kind of in a vacuum.

Like we don't have any idea what AI impacts any of this algorithm.

We don't have a sense of what does, you know, what does an environmental diaspora look like?

We just don't, you know, there's so many unknowns at the moment.

So if we could get a sense of like, what are we aiming for with the redesign?

or with the priority list and what the rubric is for how things pop to the top, it would kind of help us.

I think it would help us understand what we're really aiming for.

And we may, because I think on a base level, investing full stop in elementary, as Michael's saying is like statistically your better achievement gap priority.

But if we're saying, that's not the goal of re doing these schools, it's a different goal, then it's easier to frame it that way.

I think both can be true.

Right?

One is about instruction.

One is about facilities.

And so can we continue to work on robust instructional goals and, you know, continue Dr. Gurley and his team to do that work?

Yes.

And we can also build state of the art facilities that reflect where we see a trend in better outcomes.

We are seeing

A trend in better outcomes if we go back and look at some of that data from last year in our younger grades.

So we are seeing the achievement gap.

Some changes in those K through three spaces, even up to fifth grade right now.

Yeah, and that's reassuring that it's a win-win when you're investing like this, right?

I think we're going to have to decide, but who goes first?

And so that piece of the rubric would be helpful to know.

Don't ask Theo Fisk.

He's going to tell you the high school because the floor drives him crazy.

But for real, it is hard to know.

We're gonna have to make a really tight decision based on the lack of cash and so anything that can help make an informed decision that way would be helpful knowing that we're gonna win no matter what we invest in because it will create those

Yeah.

So any last question here before we go into our

Recap of our different committees and things that we sit at.

I think we got some good questions started.

This dialogue, I think, will be prepared.

The joint meeting on August the 12th will be fruitful.

James, before we go, any other questions you'll have to wrap this up for me?

Yeah, Natalie reminded me, I did have one that was not with one of the other of you.

So most of my commissions took a summer recess for June or July.

And the one we did work on was the planning and development work group worked with the Stribling Avenue neighbors on their sidewalk project.

So we're working together to determine how to best meet their needs for safer streets and for all users and within the constraints of funding and limited resources.

I had the pleasure of joining Michael at the Fifeville Habitat for Humanity dedication.

Three families got homes in the neighborhood and they had a lovely ceremony at Fifeville Park.

I went on the neighborhood walk.

It was Locust Grove last month.

This weekend it's going to be

a meeting over at UVA and we're doing Lewis Mountain Neighborhood.

I met with Delegate Kallsen.

We talked about some state advocacy opportunities.

Went to the Planning and Development meeting with Counselor Fleisher to work on the Shriveling Project with those neighbors.

It's been a great partnership so far.

I attended the decarbonization study webinar and the meeting last night that C3 hosted in this room with the consultant to

provide opportunity for community feedback and updates on how that's going.

And then at MPO, we got smart scale and STARS project pipeline updates, as well as updates from both city and county staff on what's going on in our region.

And then had the pleasure of joining our mayor and some other folks at the Wai Wai Tenengo

events last week, the 50th downtown mall birthday party in the heat.

And then, um, it was great to see the civil spectacular fireworks.

Um, Roy?

Uh, well, the only meeting that I have a regular board of commission out of the pendant in the last few weeks was Rivanna water and sewer authority, where it was largely just sort of a check in on

on the kinds of things that they're doing.

And I'm not sure there's any great news that hasn't been out public in the world about the construction projects that are going on.

Another meeting that I was involved with that I'm on the Virginia Municipal League Legislative Committee.

and we had a statewide Zoom meeting on June 24th.

Unfortunately, it was almost entirely devoted to what the heck's the budget gonna be.

We were at that point still a day or two away from knowing whether there was even going to be a budget.

And so I was trying to wrack my brain to think was there anything that we actually talked about that's still a live issue today to report back on and not really.

I also enjoyed the 50th birthday party and the snakey thing that was going down the mall.

That was kind of cool.

I'm not quite sure I understood the light show at the end.

For boards in commissions, CRHA has obviously had very fun events recently, but

The CRHA board is interested in moving forward with creating a subcommittee to put out an RFP for an organizational assessment of CRHA, looking at other housing agencies, other housing authorities, what can they do to improve?

Where is customer service and administrative capacity lacking?

So

Hopefully that will be good.

Local Energy Alliance Program LEAP have also in fun times having new programs at the state level will be coming on later this year, but funding through bipartisan infrastructure law and inflation reduction act programs have been cut.

So they're still really trying to figure out basically how to get bridge capital between now and when those new programs will begin.

Finance committee met

In addition to the recent meeting we had about the inclusionary zoning tax revenue that will be coming in and possibly suspended, our most recent one was about potential financial impacts of collective bargaining on the city end, not all of which we've budgeted for yet and are going to be substantial going forward.

And it's a regional housing partnership meeting, nothing too substantive or new was discussed there, honestly.

Yeah, so it's a lot as well.

As you all were talking, I was remembering just different things just over the last few weeks.

Had a meeting with the Executive Director of the Center after a Tai Chi.

One of my Tai Chi classes helped me.

And had a meeting this week with the Climate Collaborative.

And you went to the dinner last night, or yeah.

Had meetings, I'm on a committee with the National League of Cities.

and also next week meeting with the Virginia Municipal League.

I'm on an infrastructure committee with them and we're meeting next week.

Of course met with Katrina.

Today I had a meeting with the Chamber of Policy meeting where we got an update from Katrina and Crete.

Had the Java meeting, big convention, Charlottesville Albemarle convention and tourism board meeting and had a great time with our friends from

Guatemala, and

They were at Hampton Inn that everything was pretty close, whether it was Carton Hall, Downtown Mall, or everything was close, except for when we went down to Scotchville.

so they got full Americana.

Had a city county meeting where we talked about the follow up for the chamber and chamber and chamber visit that we had to chapel here where we're looking at how we're going to follow up on those things.

And I think the public should know that Natalie and I meet with the Chair and the Vice Chair of the Albemarle County Board, the Supervisors, Ned and Fred, on a monthly basis where we talk about issues and so that we did that.

Yes.

I did a lot of them, but met with countless constituents.

But I think it's healthy that we do this so that people know that in addition to the two meetings that we have on Mondays and now this meeting, that it's tons of other things that we do where we really are getting down to the granular level.

Yes.

There'll be no other businesses.

Second.

All in favor please say yes.