City Council   12/3/2018

I'm

you you

you you

Good evening.

Dr. Bellamy.

Present.

Mr. Signer.

Here.

On the consent agenda, item A, minutes from November 19th and November 26th, item B in appropriation, urban construction initiative annual meeting, $2,064.02, second of two readings.

Item C in appropriation, Special Nutrition Program Food Grant, $32,000, second of two readings.

Item D in appropriation, Community Forest Grant for Land Acquisition at Ragged Mountain, $600,000, second of two readings.

Item E in appropriation, City Schools Check and Connect Student Engagement Grant,

for $62,691, second of two readings.

Item F, an appropriation, Drug Treatment Court Administration Grant, $293,745, second of two readings.

Item G, an appropriation, Runaway Emergency Shelter Program Grant, $209,444, second of two readings.

And then we have two appropriations related to the Charlottesville Affordable Housing Fund.

The first is a repayment of a substantial rehab loan in the amount of $28,282, second of two readings.

And item I, the second item, repayment of a substantial rehab loan in the amount of $23,478.94, second of two readings.

Item J in appropriation, Water Street parking garage, supplemental appropriation, $977,155, second of two readings.

Item K in appropriation, VDOT recreational access grant for the McIntyre Park bicycle and pedestrian bridge, $125,000, first of two readings.

Item L in appropriation, the 2018

Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant, $26,044, first of two readings.

Item M, an appropriation, 2019 Aid to Localities Funding for Fire Programs, $150,480, first of two readings.

Item N, a resolution, East High Streetscape Concept, first of one reading.

And then items O, P, and Q are all quitclaim gas easements.

The first in the North Berkshire Road to VDOT, second of two readings.

Item P, Dunloris subdivision to VDOT, second of two readings.

Is there a motion?

Is there a second?

Second.

Any questions or comments?

Anyone from the public?

All right, and it carries five to zero.

no madam so we don't have any city manager response items to the public and so madam I do want to let everyone know the change to our agenda oh so when we get there we will not be

Item 6 on the agenda, the amendment to the Charles Albemarle Convention and Visitor Bureau operating agreement.

That will be back on the agenda in January.

So we are removing it from tonight.

No, ma'am.

OK. All right.

Thank you.

All right, so that moves us right into

probably the fastest community matters ever.

All right.

Yeah.

Mayor Walker, city councilors.

My name is Bill Emory.

Good evening.

Live at 1604 East Market Street.

Item five this evening is a dilemma.

You're damned if you approve the rezoning as is, and you're damned if the housing isn't built.

The Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program, known by the acronym LIHTC, pronounced LIHTC, was brought online during Ronald Reagan's presidency to get rich people involved.

providing financing for affordable housing for their low-income brothers and sisters.

There are hundreds of LIHTC units in the city of Charlottesville.

Who represents the residents of LIHTC?

They don't have a residence group like FAR.

All they have is you, city council.

What do the residents need?

They haven't spoken up about this item this evening.

But meanwhile, use approximations of statements collected by FAR and their community engagement.

The Positive Vision for Redevelopment is your guide to things that can occur in the 154 unit, Carlton Avenue, LIHTC, PUD.

Preserve and improve green and open space.

Children need better play areas located in central areas in the neighborhoods.

Maximize yard and porch spaces.

Community gardens provide healthy food.

Community centers and playgrounds need to be constructed to help build community in the center of sites easily visible.

With good design, all these things are possible.

With 154 households and carbon views, hit the pause button.

Take some deep breaths, defer.

Vote on the matter in January when it's ready for prime time.

I want to quote from one of the planning commissioners, November 13, it's Jody LaHendron.

I hate to see the precedent set, but if it's an affordable housing development, then it doesn't deserve good community planning.

End of quote.

We need planning specific to this area.

Is Hogwiler a target area where the city locates affordable housing?

If so, this is a tough place to live.

It's a food and services desert we need to plan for the residents.

These developers have revised their narrative and plan many times.

For instance, in October of 2014, when you all were preparing to pony up close to a million dollars for Carlton V is One, Kathy McHugh reported

It is believed this, Carlton Views I, will primarily benefit users of the PACE Center.

Most of the units will be for seniors with a disability.

There are only three current residents of Carlton Views that use the PACE Center.

So the third, there's a middle way, a path that isn't there as well.

Thanks.

Mary Carey.

Mark Cabot, 400 Altamont Street.

I can get my phone here working.

Earlier this evening, Council and many others have sent an email from Kimber Hockley that she and I put together to address this concern of the proposed development for Nassau Street.

I trust you will take the time to examine the documents, including the 1971 Army Corps of Engineers report that basically recommended no development in this area that we commonly refer to as Hogwall or Nassau Street.

It's a very in-depth biography.

and it will take some time but I hope that you all at least look at some of the main points of it.

It also has been sent out, will be sent out tomorrow to a lot of the media people in town in addition.

I wanted to address the Carlton View complex.

Earlier today I sent out a email to one of the council members and I'm going to hand these out and ask that they be handed out to everybody.

I'm going to leave off what I'm going to read the first two sentences, but the opportunity was missed to make this a good PUD.

The Planning Commission last May did not approve the PUD as it did not meet the requirements of the PUD.

Last month, a new and inexperienced Planning Commission made a political decision to basically use the same plan that was presented in May, not a land use plan.

There were many items that a PUD is supposed to contain.

This plan that was approved does not contain many of them.

The developers should have been required to buy them.

I would recommend that you reread Bill's email that I know that he sent you earlier.

because we do not want this to be merely a warehouse where we store people.

We must provide anemones.

I recommend that this really should be sent back to the Planning Commission and basically do what the Planning Commission wanted to do and see back when they first saw this in May at that time.

Thank you.

Hello, Michael Payne, city resident.

I would just like to speak on the Carleton Views apartment complex that is on the agenda tonight and I would like to speak emphatically in support of the project.

I live right by this and

These are the kind of projects the city needs to support and engage in if we actually are serious about meeting the affordable housing need and constructing more units that are affordable for people in the city.

This is a project that includes units for people at 40% of AMI and below.

It would be part of a mixed income neighborhood.

It is a project that fits with neighborhood character.

It's a project that living right by here I can say emphatically that yes, I do want it in my backyard.

I think this is exactly the kind of projects we need to support.

And if we don't, I just don't see how the city is actually serious about meeting our affordable housing shortfall and reaching that number of over 3,000 affordable housing units.

Our zoning that is restrictive and that doesn't only allow single family homes, that doesn't allow duplexes and triplexes and apartment complex is rooted in racist policy that was meant to exclude working families and non-white people from living in neighborhoods in the city.

and we really have to think deeply about how we're going to reform our zoning to allow higher density, to allow duplexes and triplexes and apartment complex to make sure that people can afford to live in the city and particularly a project like this with units for people at 40% of AMI and below in a neighborhood like this.

I think is just really low hanging fruit we have to go for.

And I would also say in the proffer, it says that they're offering to build a public transportation stop if the city advises it.

I would really encourage the city to go along with that, especially for a project like this near a lot of people who are older residents with disabilities.

That's something that's really valuable.

There's no public transportation stop in the area that even has a cover it over it currently.

And I know

Anytime these projects tend to come up, the people who come to you tend to say, we don't want it, we don't want more density.

But think different, think bigger, because if you don't, the truth is you are not going to get to 3,000 new affordable housing units ever.

Louis Schultz.

My name's Rob Woodside.

I'm a lifelong city resident, born and raised.

My parents met right after UVA, and I'm a graduate of the Charlottesville High School.

Go Black Knights.

I know what it's like to have a job that's underappreciated and under-thanked and I just want to take a few minutes to thank each one of you specifically and personally.

So, Mayor Walker, thank you so much for being a voice of the under and unappreciated in this town.

Vice Mayor Hill, thank you for your systematic and grounded approach to governing.

Councilor Bellamy, thank you so much for being

taking up the problem of affordable housing in this city, as we've already heard, and going literally all around the country to find solutions for this.

Thank you.

Councilor Galvin, thank you for your almost 30 years of public service and over a decade, or eight years on this council, if that's correct.

I'm sure a tenure that long in public service is hard and long and weighs heavy on you.

So thank you very much.

and Counselor Signer.

Thank you for connecting our city with other localities.

Knowing what works and what doesn't is important in governments, especially in running a town, personally.

Thank you.

Hello.

Hello.

Good evening.

I'm not going to be here too long, but Mr. Murphy, I'm going to come back to you again.

Still two years of some change later.

And you told me that what I asked for was done.

And it's still not done.

And it's still bent up at Main Street and 8th Street.

It's not been taken care of.

And I told you it wasn't done.

I was going to take a picture and bring it.

Mr. Bellamy and Miss Galvin, it's been a month.

The last conversation we had was the end of November.

So what are we going to do about these plaques?

I did speak to Andrea Douglas, who was the person that worked with me on the whole resolution to get the court square redesigned, and that included the slave block.

And so she and I will be getting together with her to figure out how we can move forward on that, because it was all part of this whole bigger plan.

But now that the courts have slowed down the whole process, we're going to have to rethink how we do that.

All right.

Mark Briggs.

Good evening.

Good evening.

Good evening, Mark.

Mark Briggs.

1337 Carlton views.

It's where I basically almost lost my life.

due to the damages.

I do have pictures of some of the damages.

They had Carlton views.

The damages consist of cracked foundations, mold, water damage, mildew, pipes busting, plumbing bad, no maintenance for a year or two.

You got babies and kids over there.

You got elderly over there.

I tried talking to management over there.

They gave me a hard time.

I haven't done anything wrong.

I've been trying to talk to them in a positive manner.

I'm just praying that the place can get fixed.

They not actually trying to fix the place.

There's a lot of other things going on over there also, but I think the main important thing is to try to come together and try to resolve the matter and fixing the place.

But I think it's going to take a lot of work.

If not, then they need to either get the people out of there, put them somewhere, fix the place, and move them back.

So I'm praying that something like that comes available, sooner or later.

That place is a mass, especially when people are almost losing their lives.

I've been living like this.

This is my fourth move.

I moved there praying that I wouldn't have to move again.

It was a brand new facility.

That's why I moved there.

And I really liked my apartment.

Like I said, the management over there, they're giving me a hard time.

I've been homeless over, what, two months now?

They didn't even put me in a hotel room.

I didn't deserve that.

So I'm praying that something can be resolved in a positive way.

And you are out of your apartment because they are repairing?

I'm out of the apartment because I'm under doctor's care.

I'm a cancer patient and I can't live in there.

I almost died.

The mold, right?

The mold, the water damage, the mildew.

Right.

Right.

I mean, this is something that, you know, you know, Walker and I have discussed on different occasions.

I know you and I have communicated several times.

and I know we're going to have a further discussion about it later on tonight, Carleton View specifically, but I think it's important for when our constituents in the community as a whole say that, well, we want more affordable housing and this is what needs to happen.

We need to move forward with more apartments like Carleton View's.

We have people who live there who have been telling us for months and even when we go and visit that essentially by some people's standards,

the building is absent of management.

The landlords have essentially just removed themselves from the situation.

Now they're under new management now, but still we have people like yourself, Mark, who are living there, who are continuously having these issues.

So I think, again, for the community, before we jump to conclusions and say, like, let's move forward, let's get more housing, this looks like a perfect plan, let's talk to the people who live there because

Everything on the surface isn't always how it seems on the inside.

And that's important you know you want people deserve quality housing.

They deserve housing that doesn't and we know this from what the discussions that when we're having them about other public housing sites too where you know kids are dealing with asthma issues because of you know the mold like West Haven that's been a constant complaint and we know from the Health Department reports that that's that's an issue so

It's important to build, but I remember something that has stayed on my mind since our CIP meeting is our finance director talking about Venable and basically how we haven't had to spend many dollars.

since it's been built to maintain it.

And those are the kind of buildings that we need to build.

It may cost more upfront.

Quality construction, everyone deserves that.

And so it's not just throwing some buildings up and putting people in it, which is why I didn't support the funding, the allocation of the $1.4 million.

But it's important not only to build affordable housing, but affordable housing that people can be

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, Mayor, Council.

I've lived in or around Charlottesville for my whole life.

Last time I came to a council meeting was in 2012.

A group of activists and myself encouraged council to pass a resolution that would ask the General Assembly to re-examine marijuana penalties.

In 2017, they actually repealed a law that required anyone who was arrested with marijuana to have their license suspended.

There was some talk then that wasn't the kind of thing council should be focused on, but I want to say thank you.

It might have been part of what made a difference there.

The reason I'm here today is to talk about harm reduction.

Harm reduction is the philosophy that despite our best efforts, people continue to struggle with addiction.

And it's a community's responsibility to do what it can to minimize the harm drug addiction will cause.

Typically, this is a two-pronged approach, providing access to naloxone, which reverses an opiate overdose, and providing access to sterile syringes.

This year, some friends and I co-founded Jefferson Area Harm Reduction.

We've been working with the Charlottesville Health Department to distribute naloxone to users, and I can say for myself that naloxone has personally saved my life.

The impact we've been able to have is limited because addicts don't tend to want to advertise themselves.

Some people have reached out to us and they've expressed some fear in doing so.

So there's a little bit of access to naloxone.

I think once a month they do a training so new patients can come in there.

But Charlottesville currently has no mechanism to provide people with access to sterile syringes.

Users, because of this, will inevitably end up sharing syringes.

I've seen people try to sterilize them themselves.

This is a terrible health practice and obviously it leads to increased transmission rates for hepatitis and HIV.

I'm speaking from personal experience here.

I contracted hepatitis myself and I had it for three years.

I've always wanted to do a harm reduction, but I was scared when I was a user because I didn't want to put myself in public scrutiny knowing that it would draw attention to myself.

UVA, their financial assistance program accepted me and they gave me a treatment for hepatitis.

I cleared it, no longer have it.

That was a $90,000 treatment and that money came from somewhere I don't know where.

The city of Richmond recently opened the state's first syringe exchange and they also provide naloxone.

I can safely dispose of used syringes, provide access to clean syringes, and obviously naloxone, which Charlottesville does have limited access to naloxone but none to clean syringes.

A lot of you might think that Charlottesville is not like Richmond, but anecdotally I can say that that's wrong.

I've had three friends that are from the area overdose and die.

I myself have been resuscitated and naloxone saved my life.

There was some concern about the marijuana resolution that it sent a bad message to kids that it would endorse drug use somehow.

I'm worried that there might be concern about that in this case, but I think that creation of a harm reduction program would just show our kids and community that we care for the least among us.

My friend came with me in 2012 to talk about the marijuana resolution.

We were both nervous.

We didn't want to do it, but we felt like we had to.

I know he would be here with me today, but he has died from an overdose, so he can't make it.

That's a great idea, Mayor Walker.

And also, coincidentally, the first of the reviews of the MAP report begin tomorrow.

And so, since I'll be with lots of public health officials tomorrow morning at 8.30, I will raise this.

issue with those folks.

I know that there has been discussion in the Mental Health and Wellness Coalition in the past and differences in philosophy over time from the Community Service Board and other providers about whether substance abuse treatment was best done through abstinence or harm reduction.

But I think it's

So, Mayor Walker, we talked about this two and a half years ago.

I know when I first got on council, we were even having round table discussions and just talks about not only syringe exchanges, but harm reduced

policies or different methods that we could take and that wasn't necessarily the political appetite for going that route.

I hope that after hearing this testimony and we've seen an increase in the amount of activity or even just the amount of activity that we currently have in our community, I hope that we can revisit this during one of our work sessions.

I, for one, would be very open to us looking at different ways in which we

can have a syringe exchange program here within our community.

The whole notion in regards to that this may send the wrong message to children as was the discussion when we were talking about marijuana.

And even with the initial conversation around heroin and other drugs, to me I think is a fallacy.

And if we want to be serious about helping the least of these, at the very minimum we need to do is the syringe exchange program.

There's other communities across the country.

who have different zones, Ithaca, New York, they have the Ithaca Plain, Seattle has a specific zone in which they allow individuals to come in their supervised, they have supervised injection sites to ensure that people don't overdose and there's no one there to be with them, but they also give them treatment on the spot, different counseling to kind of help them weigh their way off of the drugs.

These are conversations I think we need to have and I will be in full support.

And I just want to tell you, man, your comments tonight mean a whole lot.

Continue to stay strong.

and you've changed a whole lot of people's minds who are watching and elsewhere.

So you're brave and a hero.

Yeah, and I agree.

I'll say, you know, a lot of people, you know, they have an idea of what addiction looks like, right, even when it's sitting, you know, right beside them.

You know, they still can blank out the reality of it if it's their family member or their kids, even if you're talking about individuals who have

you know the privilege of you know even wealth you know and not being targeted by law enforcement as you know like the you know black and Latino community during the crack cocaine you know epidemic but it's very you know when I worked at Region 10 as a substance abuse clinician for five years you see

People, you get to know them.

They are amazing.

People talk about it being a choice and most people don't understand it may have been a choice your first time or maybe even your second time but at some point very closely after that for a lot of people it is no longer a choice and people miss that.

I've had a family member pass away from liver cancer

because of hepatitis.

So I totally understand what not having access to that treatment.

And it doesn't promote drug use.

It gives people the opportunity to let them know that the community cares to give them

you know the space for them to keep trying until they get it right and you know most people don't know how to support people through that time and even if you don't want the help at that moment or not open at that moment it's not because you're not open and that's what I think people

you know just miss that you just need the space to stay healthy and tell you can make a different decision so I totally support it I've seen it we've needed for every aspect and even when we talk about not just the you know what you're talking about today like

the syringe exchanges but we need to talk about you know while you know we are still prosecuting people for low-level marijuana offenses while we're still you know giving people the you know instead of giving them assistance with DUIs there's there's a whole host of you know things that we are still doing in this community that we need to police and prosecute very differently than we are so

Excuse me, Mayor Walker, I have a question for Mr. Murphy.

Mr. Murphy, at the behavioral work session, would it be possible to have model ordinances and resolutions that we would need to enact an action on this topic for both the syringe exchange as well as the naloxone?

I think we already have the former, the latter, but I want to make sure that we're prepared to have the tools in place

That's a total of only nine days away.

And it's not a conversation just amongst us.

We have to make sure that our police department is on board because that, you know, even if we create these, you know, areas, if people don't feel safe, they won't go to them, right?

And if the police are policing those areas or finding out who's there and following or whatever, that creates an issue too.

So we just need to make sure that as a community,

Just to add on to my colleagues' comments, I want to thank you for your bravery also.

I think that there has been, as Mayor Walker pointed out, a tremendous amount of discrimination in the policies that we've had, but

Addiction and mental illness don't discriminate and they apply throughout humanity.

And at least in this area you have seen some progress toward introducing therapeutic models within our system.

So the drug docket that we have and the mental health docket, we just graduated I think the first recipient of the mental health docket last week.

That is a real good thing that we've done here and

Regardless of how the problem is humanized, and I think Mayor Walker pointed out rightly, there's been a ton of discrimination in that.

It is good to humanize it across everyone and to introduce more understanding in the way that we deal with what have been regarded as crimes.

And all of our families have been touched by addiction.

I mean, everybody, mine has deeply.

And so we can all relate to the stories that we hear.

So thank you.

I'm sorry, one more thing, Mayor Walker.

So, Mr. Murphy, I know that the coalition has already done a great deal of preliminary work.

If maybe, I mean, because the work session is indeed nine days out, is it possible to possibly add them to the agenda in some regards to figure out

Yeah.

So, um, the behavioral health work session has been designed very much like the council work session on second chance cities.

So I know that while there was, um, maybe some energy initially behind this, uh, after some,

discussion about the Community Services Board.

They are one of many presenters that night, including the coalition and some peer resources.

And so I think that we have the right folks in the room, and there is a real blend of different sizes and types of behavioral health resources.

Thank you.

Morgan Hopkins.

I'm Morgan, and I live out in Scottsville, but I've been familiar with the community around here.

I'm the co-founder of the Jefferson Area Harm Reduction.

We've been able to provide limited amounts of naloxone, but have not been able to fulfill the needs of users who need sterile syringes.

I'm clean now, but contracted hep C when I was still using.

UVA cured me for free.

but the 90 gram was pretty expensive and it came from somewhere.

Could have been avoided if I had clean syringes as well.

My sister was a user and as a result, she passed away two years ago from an overdose and I think it could have been prevented with naloxone.

Thank you.

Yeah, as I recall, and I'd need to double check with Chief Brackney, but the approach last we spoke about this was that EMS and police were corresponding so often that we felt like that being with fire and ambulances was adequate, and we weren't going to equip and train all police officers with the drug.

I would be interested, I know and I've traveled to NLC, National League of Cities conferences, there's been discussions as well as breakout sessions in regards to NALOC and all kinds of different resuscitation methods to be able to help individuals and there's a variety of different grants throughout the nation to be able to help localities

purchase these resuscitation methods.

So I would be interested in knowing how much it would cost for us to train all of our officers and equip them all with the necessary tools to be able to help individuals in need upon arrival.

Thank you.

Thank you for sharing your story as well, young lady.

Good evening.

I have two quick things for you guys tonight.

Both of them are thank yous.

First of all, I want to thank you and the Board of Supervisors for the arrangement that I've heard about with respect to the courthouse.

Can we talk about that?

Yeah, so that's a really, really big deal.

That's a good deal for the environment.

It preserves both the rural areas of the county as well as the historic character of Charlottesville.

It's a shared win for the city and the county.

After all, we're just one community and we live together.

This should be shared as well.

And most of all, this is very good for the fair administration of justice.

So thank you.

Bravo.

It's really good news.

We're so happy to hear about this.

I'd also like to thank the City of Charlottesville as well as UVA School of Architecture, the CACF, the Planning District, the Move to Health Coalition, MPC's members for supporting the visit of Charles Brown last week.

We had nearly 200 people take part in very honest discussions over the course of two days, both

at the Jefferson School, at the Boys and Girls Club, and actually in the community about what it takes to have a safe, healthy, and equitable community.

We talked about root causes and hidden histories.

We talked about displacement, which is not always an economic question, often is, but it also can be about being welcome or not welcome in one's own community.

We talked about designing spaces for those who will use them and really listening to those people.

Among many other things, we talked about this, but most of all it was about meeting people where they are and finding out what they need and then working as advocates to deliver it to them.

Lots more to dig into there, and it would take more than three minutes.

I also think it's important to recognize that Charles learned a lot from our residents and our community.

And I might go so far as to say that he was actually changed by many of the things that he's heard and grown as a human being.

And that's what it's all about, right, is growing together.

We're not done with Charles.

The dialogue and the conversations will continue.

We'll figure out some kind of way to bring him back or keep it going somehow.

But I wanted to just say right away, thank you.

Good job last week.

Good evening.

My name is Nancy Carpenter.

I don't have any specific asks for this particular three minutes, but just some observations.

I do support what previous speakers have said in reference to the Carleton Views PUD rezoning that you'll be looking at later.

I think that it is very important to understand that you speak for other low-income tenants that do not have

I think it's very important that some of the folks that have lived there have come and spoke to you about some of the issues with the current building and also the fact that

You've been sold a pig in a poke before when it comes to, oh, maybe a 5,000 square foot grocery store.

I seem to have heard of similar ideas on the structures that were built on West Main Street with their street level entrances and none of that really came about.

The other things that I want to say is we have a situation where someone is being held accountable

for his actions last summer a couple of blocks away.

And I think there's a lot of accountability here on this council that also needs to be reminded that I understand that not many council members have sat in support of those individuals who are recounting testimony.

Witness testimony to me is more powerful than what I've seen in a documentary where other people are making money.

off other people's pain here in this community or anything else that has been going on and to know that you all made a decision, not everybody on this sitting council, but there was a decision made that resulted in the fact that three people are no longer walking on this side of earth and that everything that the activists came and spoke about and said that was in

you know social media is exactly the type of information that's being

shared in the Commonwealth's prosecution.

So I'm really just upset and sad that as of now none of you all have gone to sit with survivors and other support.

You could at least do that.

I don't think you all adequately apologized to the community last year and I think that right now I feel like there's a tone deafness of what's going on.

You know, I think the most, all the testimony has been impactful, but I think when I hear someone say over and over again, I just didn't get out of the way fast enough, I just, that person got out of the way fast enough because that person is still here to be with their family.

And I just hope that you all will see fit at some point to, even if it's just 30 minutes,

to go and sit with those folks that took it upon themselves, that knew what kind of bastards were coming to this community and stood up and protected us, whether it was the clergy or whether it was other folks from out of town who knew.

Thank you.

I think I can, that I don't plan on going.

I haven't been.

I didn't go to the screening.

I only made it through about 15 minutes of it in my house by myself.

I don't need a reminder because I was there.

And it's something, and I've said it in every interview that people have attempted to get me to discuss it, that it's not something that I fully processed yet.

All right.

I talk to Marissa, Courtney, Marcus, often.

Honestly.

being in the courtroom.

It's not about it being hard, Katrina.

I'm telling you from a personal stand, I would have been right in front.

I was on 4th Street before anyone else was on 4th Street.

I'm telling you for me, it is not something that I can deal with.

And I'm just saying it openly.

I understand we're different people so we, okay, and I understand and for people who

What a rich evening of community events in Twining.

Mayor Walker and Council, it's so interesting because tonight I was going to come and I was going to represent some clients of mine that I've been working with in Carlton Views who don't have access and weren't able to come for their public health and their health.

And interestingly enough, when I did a house visit for somebody who's really dealing with addiction,

and didn't feel safe to come to the facility I was working at or others.

So made a house call.

So I just think it's really interesting how it's all dovetailing.

And while I was in there, I noticed one of the reasons the family members were so ill was the black mold.

And so I started asking neighbors and looking around and realizing what

this gentleman has said that this area is really rife with public health issues so since that's been already addressed you know my favorite song is about zoning and it's moving away from traffic and more towards the environment and public health and the environment and so I know that people are realizing you all are taking this really seriously

you're starting to look at zoning, you're starting to be very conscious of how this city moves forward and therefore there's this plethora of special use permits and changing zoning is coming in front of you and

Belmont right now at the Methodist Church, they're trying to appeal to the neighborhood to change zoning from residential.

And so it's kind of hard, it's not real popular to be against special needs housing, but it's really another condominium, it's another apartment complex in many ways.

So what my plea would be, looking at this housing, of course we need affordable housing,

but to also as a council there's wisdom on a council and to go forward with vision, going slow, really looking at the bids that are coming in for the affordable housing are these buildings of integrity.

have they gone through everything that needs to happen for these people to have a really healthy home because it's just adding to obviously the needs and greater services of the community.

So I really ask that all these people that are coming forward asking for rezoning

we wait and we see the impact of all the buy right developments that are about to take hold of this city and so that we put a freeze in a way on any changing to zoning because it was made before your times in a very, the depression was 2008, it was how are we gonna increase development so that we deal with buy right and we sit with it and that we really take our time before going forward.

Mayor Walker, Members of Council, thanks for the chance to speak tonight.

How is everyone?

I hope everyone's good.

I too want to acknowledge the fact that we're only about 18 months out of a major tragedy in this city and that there are people in this city right now as a result of this trial in town who are having to relive that pain and that suffering.

Heather's mother is having to relive it.

The folks that were hurt and maimed by the car are having to relive it.

and I think collectively as a community we're having to relive it and I just want to acknowledge that it's a really painful time for I think all of you sitting up there and for folks sitting behind me and folks in the city and yet after 18 months we're still left with the question oftentimes of like what did it mean and where do we go from here and I think when I ask myself that question almost every day now and

It always comes back to one thing.

To me it seemed like the entire event and the episode was about us challenging white supremacy and uprooting institutional racism in our city as an example for the rest of the country.

And I'm just hoping that at 18 months out, we're not, and in the rear view, we're not losing that perspective about what our role is here for the country and for our city, both outside and inside the city.

And along those lines, I think about

how to translate that into policy and I do want to commend the council.

I went to the work session on affordable housing and I do have to say that the commitment that you all have made to affordable housing in this city is tremendous.

What I saw at that meeting was a tremendous commitment of intention.

to address what we went through in terms of institutional racism and white supremacy in a very concrete way.

That and contributions like from the Dave Matthews Band and Corin Capshaw are an indication that folks in this city are starting to take seriously their responsibility for challenging white supremacy and institutional racism in this town.

So I do want to commend you for that commitment and I hope to see that commitment come to fruition in this city.

The mayor said at that meeting something that I thought was really, really important.

There's a lot of asks being made right now in terms of affordable housing.

There's going to be a lot of prioritizing that's going to have to come as a result of it.

It's clear.

And I just want to reiterate and ask you to think about prioritizing those at 30% of the average mean income in Charlottesville as your first priority for the way that you prioritize spending money, raising money, and spending money on this.

It's those folks who are in the greatest need in our community.

And it's those folks, if you can serve, I think will be a very, very important signal to the rest of the country.

Thank you.

I'm Joan Fenton.

I live in the county.

I'm chair of the Downtown Business Association.

I'm going to try to speak quickly because during this meeting there's several things that have occurred to me.

I wholeheartedly support the needle exchange, but there's also something that you may not be aware of.

There's an association called NADA that works to train emergency responders to do ear acupuncture, which can

get you through withdrawal.

So they're a national organization that's working with people who are in jails, first responders to train them on how to get somebody.

So besides just giving them medication and counseling, this also alleviates the withdrawal symptoms.

And I believe there has to be enabling legislation through the state to get that to happen.

But I have all the contact info.

Is the health department still doing it?

The Ear Acupuncture.

Yeah, but this is to make sure that everybody gets trained.

So when somebody's going through withdrawal, even if you don't do it, it's the idea is that even

that you don't consider it acupuncture so therefore you don't have to be a licensed acupuncturist to do it.

Second thing I wanted to mention is DBAC has put together a coat drive for kids in the city and county schools so we're collecting coats at the city garages and at the Violet Crown and also at my pop-up store but if anybody has new or gently used coats we would love to have them donated.

Kids can't go to recess without the coats if they're not warm.

And then

Finally, I really did want to thank you for the money that you gave for the marketing downtown.

I know that it was controversial.

It was difficult.

But I think we had a great success with it.

And as a result of the city partnering with us, one of the things that's happened is we were able to raise money to put the lights on the entire mall.

And if you remember last year, it was totally dark, except for at the Christmas tree.

and then DBAC put up some money to just put some lights on some poles.

This year we were able to light the entire mall and I think because the city supported us in our marketing campaign, because we had the new website and all of that, we then could say to people who were waiting for the city to take a lead that now we can do something and we're hoping to

get lighting on the mall year-round, but this is for the holidays.

But if you haven't been out and walked the mall, it's spectacular.

It's a whole lot different from what it's ever been.

The tree is great, it's beautiful, but we think it's something that everybody can enjoy.

And that's all I wanted to say.

Thanks.

Mary Carey is still not here.

My name is Louis Schultz.

I live at 1809 East Market Street.

There's been a lot of talk among counselors and the public lately about the Dillon Rule and the limits it places on counsel's power to do some of what it would like to do.

In a nutshell, the Dillon Rule means that if the General Assembly hasn't specifically granted a power to a locality, the locality does not have and therefore can't exercise that power.

Power can be granted to localities in two ways, either through special laws like charters, which apply to a single locality, or through widely applicable general laws.

Later this evening, a public hearing is scheduled on the city's charter precisely because of those limitations.

It is 100% clear that council and its attorneys acknowledge that council has no power to do certain things.

In addition to grants of power, the General Assembly can also use either general laws or special laws to explicitly restrict localities from taking certain actions.

One example of a specific limitation is subsection A of section 15.2-1503 of the Code of Virginia, which says, and I'm quoting, all appointments of officers and hiring of other employees by locality shall be without definite term unless for temporary services not to exceed one year.

It should be self-evident that a clear restriction of counsel's authority carries even more weight than a mere lack of authority does.

Section 1-248 of the Code of Virginia makes that explicit by saying that anything a governing body does shall not be inconsistent with the laws of the Commonwealth.

The question to consider, Knight, is what to do when counsel knows it has done something that is forbidden by law from doing.

The employment agreement that the city has with the chief of police, Rochelle Bragney,

is for a definite term that ends on December 31, 2023, a period that clearly exceeds one year.

That can't possibly be a valid contract since the city is prohibited by law from entering into employment contracts for definite terms of more than one year.

The current 18 month employment contract that the city has with former chief Al Thomas is even more problematic.

It violates section 15.2-1503 and

The city has refused to release that employment contract even though 2.2-3705.1.1 of Virginia's Freedom of Information Act explicitly states that the city can't do that.

Mike Murphy's contract appoints him as interim city manager for a term of one year and one day and also makes it impossible to fire him for a definite term of several years after that despite council having no power to agree to either.

Compounding the problems with Mr. Murphy's employment agreement is the fact that Maurice Jones' contract doesn't end until December 6th.

Council never agreed to its early termination.

I can say with 100% certainty that, like Council, City Attorney John Blair is aware of all of these issues, so I'd like to know what he personally has done to address them.

Also, Mayor Walker said on the shilling show on October 3rd, she now knows that the severance payments made to Maurice Jones were made in error.

Thank you.

Okay.

And so we have three slots remaining.

Hello City Council, my name is Brad Slocum, I'm a city resident.

I'd just like to follow up on the lengthy discussions on climate change and the city's reaction to that from the previous meeting.

Not many people stayed until later in the evening for the actual report from city officials whose

Jobs, it is to work on these climate issues and present to the city.

Although the presented timeline for city action on drawing up a plan and what are meeting our commitments to the global compacts that we're parts of,

you know was pretty straightforward nothing was at least as far as I could tell definitely described as to our vulnerability assessment so the timeline seemed focused on greenhouse gas emission reductions

which is very critical.

But additionally, as other people have mentioned, we're basically baked in already for significant disasters around the world and based on my review of the regional hazard mitigation plan,

and Thomas Jefferson Planning District.

Alarmist kind of stuff definitely gets old but I haven't heard from the city how we're going to deal with the increasing amounts of natural natural disasters that are going to affect us and also how those disasters are going to affect our society.

I just read today that the World Bank expects that by 2050 there will be a hundred forty million

More refugees around the world.

And we know that we have vulnerable coastal regions.

You know, Hampton Roads, those areas flood all the time now.

It's just going to get worse.

So I'd really like you to continue to give attention to the vulnerability and risk assessment portion of our climate plan and not just greenhouse gas reduction.

Hello, everybody.

Good evening.

Now, I wasn't going to speak, but something's been on my mind.

And because, you know, I look at the news, I keep up with everything.

I try to anyway.

They were talking about, I might be wrong, but y'all correct me, about expanding Garrett Square, well, Friendship Court.

Redevelopment.

Redevelopment.

No.

I didn't hear all of it when I got to it.

It was some things I already said.

And what about the garden?

I think there are some plans to still have some areas and maybe rooftops.

Yes, Mayor Wark, if I may.

So thank you for bringing that up.

And the reason why the redevelopment plan has to build on the current garden, the green space, is because a priority for the residents was no displacement.

So if you think of it, it's like a checkerboard, right?

They've got to build on one corner of the land, and then they'll move residents into the new building.

and then they'll keep moving that way, but they're going to be keeping green, like a strip of green space, all on top of the underground culvert, which is concealing Pollock's branch.

And then in the center, just like Mayor Walker said, there's going to be a large park about this size, at least the size of what is now East Market Park, where the

Lee statue is, to give you a sense of the size.

And that there's going to be children's play areas, and there's a real drive to have garden space.

Whether it's on the ground or whether it's on the roof, it remains to be seen, but the residents are committed to keeping the garden space.

The fresh food is really important.

Now, one more thing.

I've been always brainstorming about making money for the city.

My son lives in Ohio.

They took an old building, big building, and made an arcade.

It was beautiful.

And that week I was there, in the summer, it stayed full.

Now, because we don't really have a lot for these children to do.

Now you can only go swimming a couple months out of a year.

So we got to be thinking about all these children coming here, they need to do something.

I mean, they took the skating rink, ice skating rink.

I thought that was an awesome idea.

Ice Gate, but the kids loved it.

So when these buildings come up, can't you kind of think about it?

I'll show you some pictures if you want to know what it looks like in Ohio.

They took a big building, and they made some money.

They're making money.

I mean, on special weekends, and school is out.

We definitely need activities for, yeah, we do.

Hello, my name is Ben Baker.

I'm a current UVA student and have lived in Charlottesville my entire life.

It's no secret that one of the biggest challenges facing the city is figuring out our growth.

I've been fascinated by the question, as Charlottesville expands not in just the next few years, but in the next several decades, what kind of city do we want to be?

And I know that your vision is the same as mine.

We want to be a city where people can live prosperously.

In order for that to happen, though, Charlottesville needs to be a city where people can afford to live at all.

How can we consider ourselves progressive and welcoming if low-income residents, people of color, students, and the middle class can't afford housing in this city?

In the coming months, as Charlottesville modifies and affirms the draft of the comprehensive plan,

I hope the council members think seriously about all of the issues that affect this central question.

You've been entrusted with a powerful tool of setting the region's housing and zoning policy.

I hope that to the best and most daring of your ability, you use these tools for progress.

The housing needs assessment clearly shows that the pathway to lowering the pricing of housing

Thank you for having me.

If our housing does not include a missing middle, there will be no mystery when there is a missing middle class.

Cities across the country have been following this exact model.

They've been upzoning, removing parking requirements, and funneling millions into restoring the African American communities that have been so historically and intentionally harmed by our housing policies.

We do not want to be behind the curve on such a central issue.

We do not want political safety to get in the way of what is morally necessary.

I'm not an expert.

I'm not presenting you with ideas that you haven't already been ruminating with for years or decades.

However, they're experts I hope you listen to.

The City Planning Commission is staffed with excellent, thoughtful people, and I want to express my gratitude for the work that they've done.

Not only is their technical knowledge impressive and their moral clarity admirable, they have been steadfast in their commitment to gather as much community input as possible.

As you frame the city's budget to align with the comprehensive plan, I urge you to take their advice seriously, to take this need seriously.

I'm speaking today simply to add my voice for those calling to not just tweak the zoning laws of the city, but to entirely rethink the way it goes about zoning.

We can't add new streets, but we can use the streets we have more productively.

We can't add more blocks, but we can use those blocks more effectively.

We as a city have an enormous opportunity to change the answer of who can live and participate in the Charlottesville community.

It may be years before we have as great an opportunity again.

There will be resistance, but anything worth doing is always difficult.

I urge you not to view this issue as a trade-off between competing parties.

It is not the suburbs versus the urbanites, not the existing residents versus future residents, not business owners versus tourists.

When we allow Charlottesville to build, we create a city that is better for everyone.

Charlottesville is a bold city.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

There was a robust discussion at your last meeting concerning a charter change that the mayor had made part of the council's legislative packet.

After that discussion, there was

consensus not to try to tie council members' salaries in this charter proposal to the city manager's salary.

However, there was still a desire among the councilors and the mayor to still look at a way forward to

present a charter amendment to the General Assembly that would allow the city council and the mayor to earn a salary that's higher than what is currently established in state law.

The proposal before you, part of it is modeled on the city of Alexandria and I would direct your attention to the section five that's in your packet and

In effect, what this says is that the counselors shall set their salary by ordinance.

And that's modeled on Alexandria because when you look at other city charters throughout the Commonwealth, they have verbiage that says to the effect of the council will set its salary pursuant to the provisions of general law or state law, which in effect still ties them to the limits provided for in the Code of Virginia.

This proposal allows you to set your salary.

It does not include a provision that ties it to state law.

I would also note that it states no salary increase for the mayor or councilor shall take effect until the first day of January following the next regularly scheduled general election of councilors.

As explained in your memo,

Council, in effect, approved a salary increase in August of 2019.

The increase would not become effective until January 1st of 2020 because there's an intervening city council election.

However, if the council approved a salary increase in March of 2020, the salary increase would not become effective until January 1st, 2022.

because there would need to still be another election for city councilors after the vote to increase the salary.

Are there any questions from the council?

We have three individuals signed up and then I'll ask if there's anyone else here to speak after.

Mayor Walker and members of the City Council, my name is Paul Long.

I live at 100 Ridge Street here in the city.

And I want the Council to know that I'm totally opposed to the proposal for a pay increase right now.

And I'm opposed for several reasons.

What I would like the City Council to do if they want to go to the General Assembly to change the charter is to work in terms of changing how the city is governed.

I believe that in the last two and a half years the city has become dysfunctional.

I think the events that happened in July and August of 2017 showed that the city manager was completely ineffective as well as the chief of police and the members of the council who were serving at the time.

I would like to propose that we elect our mayor

and with all deference to Mr. Murphy, do away with the city manager position and have a strong mayor who operates the city government on a day-to-day basis, prepares the city budget and appoints all the department heads who serve at his or her pleasure.

I would also like to see the city council expand from five members to seven and I would like the city to be divided into five wards with five city council members elected from each ward

and two city council members elected at Norwich.

And the reason I'm saying that is that in a five wards, you'd have approximately 6,000 to 6,500 voters in each ward.

And it's a lot easier to campaign amongst 6,000 to 6,500 than it is to conduct a citywide election effort.

We have to be, and it would also be much more affordable

I think one of the big obstacles for people who are either working class or have limited financial means to serving in council is not necessarily the salary, but the absorbent amounts of money that you have to raise to run for city council.

In 2015, and the three members of city council were elected then, former mayor Signer, Ms. Galvin, and Mr. Bellamy,

raised a total of $77,000 for that campaign.

I protested against that figure at the time.

And Mayor Walker, you yourself raised $26,000.

And I want to congratulate you for not accepting corporate money and for even in your ethical decision

when you were given that $10,000 donation to check out the donor first to make sure that you weren't committing any conflict of interest.

I think that was fortunate that it gave you the opportunity of doing television advertising in the campaign and perhaps helped lead to your election, which I supported.

So that's basically it.

And I'm also opposed to the way the city council, and not just this city council, but previous city councils as well, waste money.

And I'm mentioning former police chief Al Thomas is getting $150,000 being paid for 18 months when he resigned.

And the $80,000 loan, it was forgiven with

former city manager Maurice Jones.

I wish the city council would give me $80,000, you know, or give me $150,000.

And I know that's not going to happen, but I know you have to be very, very careful how you spend money.

I've been advocating for public transportation system for the last nine years, and I'm constantly being told

that the city doesn't have the money.

And I see the figures that are being thrown around here and for the, and that's the money for outside consultants and the funds that are being paid for them.

The city has the money to do that.

It just wants to spend it in other areas.

But thanks a lot.

And if they do adopt my form of what I'm suggesting, I would definitely endorse you, Mayor Walker, to be a strong mayor and have you run the day-to-day operations of the city.

from Marsha Geyer.

Mayor Walker, City Council.

Good evening.

So I'm Marsha Guyer with a frog in my throat.

I live on Pear Tree Lane in Charlottesville.

It's really important that y'all salaries compensate you for your hard work.

and it's not happening yet, compensate you in a reasonable way.

So what is reasonable?

I looked up the average salary in Charlottesville.

The most recent data for employees of the city from August to 2018 shows an average salary of $57,000.

That's at payscale.com.

Another source from the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank shows for the whole Charlottesville MSA average income of 49,570.

That's also in May of this year.

So I would suggest that this range from 49,500 to 57,000 should be the floor

or the bottom the council considers for equitable salaries for itself and that salaries be indexed to inflation when you do this so you don't have to keep coming back and have it be a controversial issue.

I suggest that even if you have the staff you need,

Counselors will not cut your workload in half, as Counselor Galvin suggested.

It takes time to review and think about what staff prepares for you.

Even with more staff, if you got to 30 hours a week instead of 50, in practice, people who might want to serve on Council would not be able to supplement their salary by working part-time because

unless you own your own business at the top of the heap or you're working for minimum wage at the bottom, there are no part-time jobs, very, very few.

So you need this position to pay a living wage for living here in Charlottesville.

Churches often set their pastor's salary as about the middle of the salaries of the congregation.

they understand this is a service position.

And there's kind of a, being on council is also a service position.

So maybe trying to go in the middle is what council should think of doing.

I hope you get the staff you need.

That's really important.

I know you can't pay attention to everything.

It's impossible.

So good luck with that.

Walt Honeke, Amherst Street.

First I wanted to say I totally support the idea that Councilor, I mean Mr. Long brought up about having a strong mayor and having an elected strong mayor.

I think it's a really good idea.

Secondly, the issue for me on this is about accessibility to governance.

I think there are a lot of people who are really qualified in this city who might consider running for council but just don't have the means.

They're working one job, two jobs part time or whatever and don't have the means.

So for me, part of this initiative, part of this idea makes a lot of sense in that it would open up folks running for council who would never dream

of being able to do it

increase in salary.

In other words, if I'm making $80,000, $150,000 a year, I don't think I need an increase from city council, from the city in terms of my salary for doing the work.

That said, I think maybe an idea here is to ask for an increase, but I'm wondering if there's a way to index it to your all's salaries.

Like if you're at a certain salary level, then you're eligible for the salary increase.

And if you're at a higher level of income, you don't get the salary increase.

I don't know if that's equitable or not, but it sure seems like it would make more sense to taxpayers.

and it would also enable those who are thinking about running for council but would never try it because of their income level.

It would open up the opportunity for much more diversity, I think, in the perspectives that councilors bring when they take this job.

Thank you.

My name is Louis Schultz.

I live at 1809 East Market Street.

While the publicity around tonight's public hearing and the entirety of Mr. Blair's introduction has focused on questions of Council's pay, most of the proposed amendment actually has to do with changing the timing of City Council elections to November of odd-numbered years from May of even-numbered years.

There seems to be no dispute among counsel, its attorneys, the state's attorney general, or Virginia Supreme Court about the effect of the Dillon Rule or the need for the city to obey its charter and do as it prescribes.

The whole premise of this hearing is that counsel can't legally do something that the General Assembly hasn't explicitly authorized it to do.

There also seems to be agreement among council and its legal advisors that in order to have November council elections, the city is going to have to have its charter amended to allow that.

It wouldn't be on the agenda tonight otherwise.

That sets off all sorts of alarms since not a single person currently acting as a councilor ever ran or was elected in a May election.

Everyone seems to agree that council couldn't possibly have had the authority in July of 2004 to move elections to November, when more than 14 years later, the charter amendment that would allow that hasn't yet gone to the General Assembly, let alone been approved.

The ordinance that changed the election date acknowledges that it was done in violation of the charter, but attempts to excuse that by citing Virginia Code section 24.2-222.1 as authority to make that change.

The problem is that until 12 years later, when Senate Bill 43 of 2016 amended that section of code to say that it could be applied, quote, not withstanding any contrary provisions of a city or town charter, it did not allow any locality to hold November elections, local elections, if its charter required otherwise.

Case after case in Virginia's Supreme Court and numerous opinions of the Attorney General have reaffirmed the principle that a special law takes precedence over a general law that doesn't explicitly say that it should take precedence.

In a July 2017 demurrer filed in the Lee statue case, the city's attorneys persuasively argue that in Virginia, at least,

Courts have limited retroactive application to procedural or remedial legislation and not to substantive law.

That is to say, the 2016 amendment could not have retroactively legalized Charlottesville's change to November elections in 2004.

Article 7, Section 5 of Virginia's Constitution says that the governing body of each city shall be elected in the manner provided by law.

Section 5A of the charter defines Charlottesville City Council as being composed of members elected on the day prescribed for such elections by the laws of the state whose terms of office shall begin and continue for such length of time as is prescribed by law.

The General Assembly, under the authority granted to it by Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution, has prescribed by law that Charlottesville's council elections are to take place in May of even-numbered years for terms to begin and end in July.

The group sitting as counsel tonight was not elected in the manner prescribed by law and as such does not make up a governing body that meets either the Constitution's or the Charter's requirement.

It is imperative that the group claiming to be this city's governing body immediately petition the court to resolve the apparent constitutional crisis that the proposed charter amendment has now exposed.

And I would have you that Mr. Blair, we have talked about this since he came on and he brought it to the entire council to about our charter and updating it and getting a commission together with council members.

So it is something that we're,

I'm very aware that needs to be done and that's not what we asked him to do when we had these proposed amendments and when we got our when we got our when he sent the amendments back to us he had changed to submit

So Mr. Blair, the edits that you're talking about, he made sure that they were done correctly instead of just proposing the amendment change just to simply say compensation.

to give us the right to set compensation, he made sure he went through and made all the edits that needed to be made.

So what I'm saying is that we are aware that our charter needs to be updated and that those updates needed to have been done a long time ago and that they haven't.

I just said that.

Well, I'm letting you know that the Constitution, that neither the Constitution nor the city started, the whole question, the whole reason that we're having

A meeting tonight, a discussion of this is because you, the rest of council, the city attorney, and pretty much everybody else seems to agree that council cannot do what it hasn't been authorized to do by the General Assembly.

Council was never authorized at the time that the 2004

change to the law was made that moved elections from May to November were not allowed to do that.

So neither you nor anybody else, first of all as mayor, the law says that you had to be elected in July and that didn't happen, you were elected in January.

So what I'm saying is that you are attempting, this council is attempting

because it has been said to be necessary to amend the city's charter.

I'm questioning whether you or anyone else on this council, acting as this council, actually has the legal authority to do so.

At this point,

It seems that this council has not been elected, does not meet the requirements of the charter, and is therefore constitutionally and under the terms of the charter not empowered to act in any way on behalf of this city.

That's a question that needs to be answered.

I just think just the bigger picture here that Richmond is just an hour or so away and I think the General Assembly is aware when we've been holding elections since 2004.

But you're telling me then the law doesn't matter.

So does that mean that you're going to petition the courts to answer the question?

Or the sake of the meeting and others who maybe want to speak?

That's not what I'm telling you.

I didn't tell you that.

And I told you that before that you should try to listen more and understand when people are making efforts.

And you don't seem to do that well.

But are they ever going to be answered?

I mean, Mike Murphy comes up here and answers questions, but it's funny how he always omits answering the ones that I've raised.

which are substantial questions about his legitimacy, your legitimacy, this entire council's legitimacy.

Thank you.

And they need to be answered.

You're right.

Will they be answered?

I agree, we're working on it.

But that's the kind of thing to brush off somebody that you don't actually- I'm not trying to brush you off, thank you.

All right, thank you.

Good evening.

I do agree with this.

I think before it goes to General Assembly there should be some sort of end cap because I don't think the General Assembly will look at it otherwise because this will set a precedent in Virginia if you look at the different areas that requesting that we are allowed to make our own

choice of how much we're going to pay our counselors.

I don't fully trust the General Assembly giving away that much power.

I think it's a really great statement to make that we feel that the current amount is not a fair wage.

And I think it does stop people who have not as flexible jobs

or Jobs or a significant other who makes a significant wage, it stops them from the ability to run.

Because even if technically Council is supposed to be 20 hours a week, it is not 20 hours a week, even if it was, it is not 20 hours a week that is a set timetable.

And when you're working, a lot of types of jobs, I've worked plenty of jobs where you have to choose the one job that is your

your primary job and the other jobs have to fit in around that job.

And in order to do that, to survive, you need to be able to have a living wage.

And I hope that, I thought maybe 50% AMI, since it's a pretty, it would move consistently with the area and would reflect what, if it's a 20 hour a week, 50% is 20 hours,

if it shows later on that, hey, it's definitely more than 20 hours, we can prove that it's more than 20 hours, that can be adjusted.

That's all.

Thank you.

I think that's a fascinating suggestion in regards to tying it to the AMI.

Do we know what the, oh, I'm sorry.

Is there anyone else who would like to speak?

OK, we're going to close the public hearing.

I would be interested in finding the dollar amount or what is the, I guess,

The 50% AMI, as she just suggested, for 20 hours a week, do we know what that figure may be?

Or is there a way for us to, I mean, obviously you wouldn't know right off the top of your head, Mr. Blair.

Right.

If I may say something, Mayor Walker.

I think a big decision to make on the part of the council is whether the goal is to have this to be a part-time job or a full-time job.

And that is a debatable point.

Because if your goal is to make this really a part-time job,

because you believe in the notion that this isn't supposed to be a career political position, then you're going to be setting up your framework, including your relationship with your city manager and all your council staff, and your commitments to boards and commissions to make sure that it does stay part-time.

That kind of a focus has never happened.

There's been scope creep.

endlessly in this job.

So that's just one question.

The next question is that, okay, if we're gonna agree that this is to be a full-time job, then you gotta get it to hourly rate.

So there are a lot of decisions here that need to be made, and in one fell swoop, no matter what we decide, the General Assembly could shoot it down.

So my thought is that the idea of just giving us locality, the latitude to make that change,

was actually conserving our time, our focus, and getting it before the General Assembly sooner versus later so that we could be doing much more.

Once we get that permission to do this change, then you could do a much more exhaustive review.

Because I don't know about you, but I've been getting a lot of debate about this issue.

It's not clear in the public.

Could I make a point of order?

I think that Mayor Walker, you were correct, that a motion should be on the floor before we get into full debate that we need to even determine whether there's support for a motion.

And I think the reason that I said that was it still sounds like this is organic, and no one's prepared to make a motion.

Yeah, I would like to discuss the options.

and then even based on the options as it was described to a certain extent from Ms. Galvin, I think we all speak to different constituencies and that's why we all are elected and nobody has one set group in which we're supposed to talk to and we kind of get a chance to reach in touch and speak to a variety of different people.

I've actually heard from a lot of people quite the opposite.

I haven't heard, and I know from my personal estimation, I don't think anyone intends for this to be a career position in which you're trying to be a city councilor for 20 years.

God bless you if anyone would like to do this for that amount of time.

I mean, some will say even four years is a good bit.

However, I do think when we take into account the amount of work

Oh, we all have agreed on that.

I mean, even to say in the foreseeable future and especially with how active our... Our council is.

And the citizens.

And our community, oh.

I mean, I know this morning alone, I took four meetings at Seville Coffee.

I was there from 8 a.m. to 10.30 a.m. just meeting with constituents.

I mean, and that's like that's three, four times a week.

I mean, that's that's all the time.

That's not even taken into account when you're researching, looking for policy.

God forbid you want to actually come up with new ideas or talk and research other stuff.

People, as has been eloquently stated, people who don't have the kind of flexibilities in their jobs to do this right now are boxed out.

And if we want to try to expand

the scope of people who can actually be a city council and be actually true representatives of our community, we have to look at increasing the wages.

I don't get how we can get a different pool of people.

I've seen some of the emails and people have said, well, I've been on council before.

Some prior councilors have sent us emails and said they've been on council and served with a large majority of people.

I'm just going to be very frank.

This is the first time we've ever had two black people on city council.

Nikuyah and I are the seventh and eighth persons of colors to ever be on the city council.

That there in itself shows that there is a large population and segment of people who have been left out.

And I'm not saying that we need to increase the wages just for black folk, but a person who I met with this morning.

He's 60 some odd years old.

He's on a fixed income.

He's saying that his current life situation, he wouldn't be able to run for council, serve on council, and take care of himself.

He wouldn't be able to do it.

We have to be able to make this a position in which it's all inclusive for everyone.

And that's why I'm also very interested in the Alexandria model.

as well as, I think you're absolutely right, if we go to the General Assembly with what we're looking for specifically, they're more susceptible to hear us out and grant us the charter change than just asking them, can you allow us to do it and then we come up with it on our own.

Just, oh I'm sorry, could I, with the fact, the question that Councillor Bellamy had asked,

Just looking at our income charts, for a one-person household, it says 80% AMI is 47.8.

And doing the math, looks like that would be 59.7 for a full-time at 100% AMI.

And so if you divided that by two, I came up with 29.875.

as about 20%.

And again, these are numbers based on our own income guidelines for housing programs on our website in terms of what 80% AMI is at 47.8.

So I took a fourth of that and added it.

So I think the way that I approach this is that I'm concerned about putting the cart before the horse.

So we have had a lot of discussion about governmental reform in the city about the way that the city council and city council staff are designed.

That has been happening alongside a serious discussion about the kind of city manager we want to have in the wake of one very specific

I think that's a really good question.

cities.

Your city council meetings move pretty quickly, and the city council's roles are not nearly as intensive because there's a lot more reliance on staff to get a lot of things done and make sure that when something comes to the city council meeting, it's ripe for a decision.

Meanwhile, there was all this discussion under the prior regime about creating this very robust office for city council, including a chief of staff, a policy advisor, a communications advisor, and a deputy, I think.

So four staff members.

Then there's been a lot of discussion, including in this council, about whether that's appropriate, including the chief of staff position and so on.

Ironically, that idea came from Roanoke because they've got that sort of same structure for the city council.

Meanwhile, there were a lot of people who ran for this council last time around.

I think there were seven or eight candidates.

So it doesn't seem as if the way that it is right now is preventing people from being interested in running for council.

And just another fact to throw in the mix is Alexandria is in the DC area, which is the most expensive metropolitan area in the country, I think.

The median household income there is, I'm just looking right now, $89,200.

My view is we get the city manager in place correctly and that is the primary goal that's happening right now for the city in terms of how the whole government is functioning and we focus on getting the council staff correct.

I know that there's two different pieces here.

How much are we paid and how much time are we putting in?

When you have young kids and a very demanding

I'm very much looking for a discussion we're going to have about all the boards we sit on and can we send a staff delegate or an alternate.

I found out by surprise that the MPO, which both Councilor Galvin and I sit on, allows an alternate.

I want to be able to send staff once we have these staff in place to you know have some protocols because it is and now because there's so much interest in this council which I credit this council with in doing a lot of extra stuff but we are having virtually weekly work sessions and the work sessions when they go into the night when you have young kids or family can they've been very very hard I had to leave at nine o'clock last week

because I've got two four year olds and my wife is on the job market and there's a lot of other details that nobody would particularly care about but it is really all of us have our own makeups any day to day and it is a part-time job.

It is meant to be a part-time job.

It's a citizen legislative form of government just like our delegates and senators, just like the majority of states have.

That is the design of the government.

So we can tweak it and they have in Alexandria, Fairfax, Arlington, some other localities but

That's where I fall.

But I'm not sure, Mr. Signer, what the city manager decision in regards to who we elect, or excuse me, who we choose to be our new city manager has to do with the compensation of council, as well as how we're trying to potentially make this position or these positions more available for those in the community.

And that's the first point.

The second point I would push back to a certain extent in regards to the last election.

I mean,

Six, seven people, I don't think that that's a significant amount of people when you think about you have nearly 50,000 people in the city and only six or seven of them choose to run for office.

I don't consider that to be a large amount of people who decided to run.

And I think one barrier of it is the amount of time that we put in and people say this all the time.

You guys put so much time in,

Mayor Walker did the calculations.

It's like 11 cent an hour for the amount of work that we've done.

That's my point.

I think you said it was like 40.

But that's still assuming that if we... Can I finish?

Can I finish, please?

You all were talking back and forth.

So that's assuming that the staff would alleviate some of our workload.

Yeah, and you and Wes was talking back and forth.

We were just discussing in regards to the lack of compensation, right?

I mean, I was saying, Mayor Signer, when you were

Mayor, Mr. Signer, when you were mayor as well, you were talking about, I think you came up with a calculation like 40 some miles or something like that.

So I think that's a real part of what prohibits people.

And I think your point that you were making, correct me if I'm wrong, you were speaking that we were creating a new, these new policy positions were supposed to help us with that.

But I don't know if that's going to deter us or stop us from still having community engagement meetings or people

still wanted us to be responsive to a variety of things, or us as the actual policy makers, even if we have assistance, still saying that we want to write the policy, do the research, go where we have to go, and so forth.

Well, so, Mr. Bellamy, my perception right now is that we are unintentionally creating this problem more than resolving it with the amount of work sessions, the amount of extra work that is happening in this council in the vacuum of having

I mean the search for the city manager is going on right now.

When we have this, like what we did the prior time, even to try to manage this was we move the work sessions into the first, into the, into the Tuesday meeting.

So now I get the impulse.

I think it's a very noble impulse to do a lot, but it's happening while we're looking for the city manager, hopefully will change that whole calculation entirely.

So we're not,

doing multiple evening work sessions that go on for three hours or three and a half or four hours.

That's not the design of the job.

The design of the job is to have two meetings a month and then occasional other meetings.

It's not meant to be – it's just not designed to be that way.

And so we're ending having both debates.

And I really – at least this position I'm standing for is to put a break on that first one while we work at the second one.

No, I think to a certain extent, we're part to blame for that, because I think if I'm being completely transparent, I think you and I, and our last council as a whole I would say, kind of said that

We're going to ramp up the amount of work in which we do look at different policies.

Let's try to change this, change that.

Let's discuss these difficult issues that require a whole lot of work.

I think the last council as a whole, we all committed to doing so.

Even if we bring in new positions, I don't see how that's going to stop.

Councilors from still saying, because to me, regardless if you have policy analysts or whomever, to do the job right, in my opinion, you're still going to have to have a great deal of engagement with people.

That's going to be offsite meetings.

That's going to be doing a ton of research.

those individuals were still working very hard.

And I mean, I remember my conversations with Dr. Holly Edwards and the same, I mean, that pace always being in meetings, always being contacted.

And I think, I don't think anybody is disputing that whether we are working 50 hours or 20 hours right now, we are not being compensated properly.

So I think it's just the discussion of whether

So at either, whether we were just at 20 or not, it's still not based on the amount of work that we do.

So I think that's part of the discussion.

I know the last meeting, what my comments, I was talking about that if you want people

to be able to even consider whether they.

Right now, I work for the city.

I have to get coverage when I, luckily, my director is very flexible with me.

As long as my shift is covered, I can take off.

But I am an hourly wage person also, so when I'm not at work, like the meeting that I'm not gonna be able to be at tomorrow is at 8.30 in the morning.

I do not have coverage for it and I will be at work tomorrow at 830 so now we're back to that I'm going to be missing.

Luckily Mr. Murphy just said he'll be there so I will be able to get you know an update but I think when you those are the type of things that council members

like people who don't have to consider those kind of aspects.

If I'm not there, which you all know how often, and even in these last email exchanges that we've been doing about interviews, I have to weigh that I can't just leave.

There's no vacation time.

The fact that there are so many other people in this community that have to deal with that type of thought process than just I can take off, I have vacation as long as I get my work done, I still get paid the same hourly wage.

So there's a completely different population of people.

And again, I've had several conversations.

There's been tons of email, tons and tons of Facebook.

Conversations surround that and I mean just for a personal note, for me I'm only in the financial position that I am in because I sacrifice myself for other people.

I had a job before.

I earned a salary.

I had vacation time and have worked in nonprofits throughout the city, but my activism for people that I work for led me into my current position.

So I've received comments from work harder if you want a different job to be able to have those kind of that kind of leave then you should do something so you can have a better career.

I mean and so for me this is telling still of the kind of community that

that we live in and why we're facing the kind of issues that we're facing across the board.

This General Assembly will probably deny this, so that's the reality of this.

And then next year, when we meet earlier in the year, I plan to present this again because for me it just makes its

worth the statement that this is important.

But I think the debate that the community is having around it is more telling of where we are and why we're still in this place.

That there we are constantly talking about the racial aspect of things, but there is a major class division and a class divide and people don't even know how to step out of their circumstance and see why something like this

would be important.

So for those people I'm responding for myself, I have worked for nothing and I will continue to do it.

And I will continue to do this job at the current salary.

And so I'm not going anywhere and it's not going to hinder me.

And so I think

But what we're looking at right now is pretty open-ended.

And I think that some of the, and obviously the last two weeks ago it was tied to the manager's role, which I think a lot of us were uncomfortable with.

And so I'm uncomfortable with just kind of giving it an open slate without having more definitions behind it.

And I also, my biggest focus, and I've started by having a vast, Mr. Blair, to look at all the boards and commissions around, I think there's just a lot we need to do to make this more manageable, regardless of the salaries.

so that people can step into it.

Because as we talked about, even if we were to set these AMIs,

Those are still not wages that alone people could live on if this was their only income.

And once you're working this much, it's hard no matter what.

Unless we can really reduce the time commitment, we're not solving the problem, in my opinion.

And I'm really struggling with this because I, as Mr. Heineke brought up, I actually brought up to a couple of my colleagues, and I even think to Mr. Blair, is it indexable?

Because let's be honest, there are different means that different people have.

And I'm just not sure what the legal ramifications are of that.

We did.

I think again you have to remember it's the General Assembly could look at that now there's no other charter in the state that provides for indexing like that.

I think there's also the question of in effect who would exactly I think it would almost require you

to make this practical rather than theoretical.

I know tax returns are a touchy issue at different levels, but in effect, really what that would require is in effect to say, here is my income from the past year, if you were looking at a pure indexing system.

to income.

So I think with that model, it's worth a shot.

And I would be open even to your suggestion, Vice Mayor Hill, in regards to you saying it's open.

I think that, again, as we heard from the, ma'am, what's your name again?

I'm sorry.

Yes.

Ms. McGill, excuse me.

So as we heard from Ms. McGill, I think that we can't have it so open when we go and approach the General Assembly.

We need to be rather specified in asking them the request because if they think, I don't think they're just going to grant us, oh, hey, go figure it out on your own.

So if there were two models,

And that's where I'm just struggling because we were a couple of weeks ago, and that's why I asked for more time.

Even for the two things we're looking at, I just think that

This is a lot of detail that we would need to consider and I recognize that we're going to bring it up again even if it does pass tonight that it may not likely be able to go through but it is a part of a more robust conversation because the other aspect of this I'm really struggling with is the feedback I've gotten from some members of staff when they look at counselors making more than them for what we should consider a part-time elected position.

I just think about they're a major stakeholder in this and I think it's just important that

And I will say as someone who has championed the living wage, even our discussion tonight about the surplus, my first conversation with Mr. Murphy was looking at employees who are not in the compression issue or departments where there are major issues in pay and see if we can allocate any of the surplus funding to

So my, and since I was the one that brought this up, my first thought and as being an employee and hearing and seeing the effects of people not being paid well, I totally understand that.

That still doesn't take into account, I mean,

of this council, and I'm just going to say the level of work I know that you and I do together, right?

It's insane.

Okay?

Just insane.

It's constant and it's not just looking at one thing per day.

It's you're looking at multiple things and have to be very aware and knowledgeable of what's going on.

you know, a ton of effort.

So I mean, I think, I mean, I think we're talking about like just a lot of different things.

And again, back to if this is passed, we still have another major layer to be granted permission to do it.

And then at that point, what does it look like?

Something to comment or a question to my colleagues.

So then it does.

It does seem like then someone has to make an amendment to Mr. Blair's resolution tonight to put more definition.

I don't know.

Is anyone ready for that?

I don't.

I'm not.

I don't have a resolution in my head.

And so what we have before us tonight is is an open ended resolution.

But to get the ball rolling and bring it before the General Assembly, that we are looking to be able to have our own autonomy and setting our own salaries.

It's the same idea of having our own

are two specific models to move

like after they approve, like this is not something that we would need to approve and have finalized today.

We're just asking.

But this is still an open-ended charter.

This is open-ended charter change.

The change to give us autonomy to make our own decisions, that's what it is.

Right, because that's gonna.

So a future council could.

by making this charge in future counts that we're going to pay each other 100th, I'm going to be making up numbers.

Like, let's just get a little extreme here.

I'm not comfortable with that lack of control.

So then what is the amendment to put the control in?

In Alexandria, they had a study commission, which put it in the realm of policy.

They're just looking online.

I just want to say one thing about that.

I think that the idea of indexing is like very interesting.

I think it sets up crazy incentives about somebody quitting their job to get full time on whatever the council or the government salary is.

The city has really good benefits.

So when you're talking about benefits, I just think that that needs to be cooked up more.

I also want to, we are in a very acute

phase right now, guys, because we don't, we have an acting clerk.

We had a long time clerk who was the, also the chief of staff was in the city for eight years.

A lot of capacity has gone away, so there's a lot of work that's being done right now that hopefully is going to be solved.

I mean, I'm thinking about like the, I think I told the story for my first month as mayor before I started trying to put together a whole staff.

I was up at three in the morning writing letters to constituents about the fourth day about the school shut down with the, with the snow,

with the snow issues.

And I'm like sitting there composing emails three in the morning because I didn't know that that's something that staff was supposed to do.

But I was getting the emails, and I was like, I was two weeks in the position.

And the point is that the staff is supposed to take a lot of this work.

Like right now, you guys are scheduling the interviews that we're doing with these clerk candidates or whatever.

And staff should be doing a lot of what

both of you all are doing and you're very hard workers.

It's absolutely appreciated, but we're really off kilter right now.

We're talking about it in public, but that will go away once we have more

I think even when we have more staff, we're still going to be putting in a lot of work.

Well, I would counter that that isn't the way it should be going.

We should be having vetting of all of the—like, you know, one of the things that we talked about was, unlike a lot of other places in Virginia, when scheduling—I mean, the public should know, like, when we get emails

Nobody reads those emails.

Those just go into the individual counselor's inbox.

And that's one of the reasons that it's hard for us to respond a lot of the time.

And we, it just is because it's overwhelming.

So the idea of staff was you have somebody, you have systems running all that stuff like they do in other councils.

And it really becomes part time with this modern age of like a million communications coming 24-7 to your phone.

That's the idea.

I agree.

We're not there with, I think there's a lot of transition happening right now.

And I also just feel like,

you know we talked about with Mr. Blair I think we need to take this next year and really look at our charter really holistically and have a group of folks that are focused on really putting the thought into that and then bringing it back to council for consideration because there has been a lot of things that have been brought up by the public in the last year over even our form of government and I just feel like we haven't been able to kind of really dedicate the resources because we're in this transition time

to really do that thoughtfully and I just feel like right now with what's presented in front of us it's very open-ended and I don't know that it has the controls in the place that I'm not comfortable going in that direction and I just, as I mentioned two weeks ago, I just felt like I know everyone wants to do things right now and I am also personally to do things right now but I don't think we have all the information we're in a position tonight to make a decision on this.

So even in the open-ended method

What's the harm in just sending it up to the General Assembly and trying?

We all know that something needs to be done.

What hurts?

Well, what you're deciding tonight is, in effect, a request to the General Assembly to amend the charter.

At that point, it's truly up to the legislators in Richmond.

And then, if they were to approve the charter amendment, it would probably come into effect July 1 as do most state laws.

Saying that, you know, what's

What's the harm?

I think that there is a, and just to let you know, there is a provision in the state code that if you hold this hearing and this isn't introduced by a legislator, it can't be bought up by the council, the exact same amendment tonight about the salaries.

So then it would need to go through a different process.

But again, this is an open-ended amendment that you're talking about tonight.

May I ask a question of Mr. Blair?

So Mr. Blair, then if the General Assembly rejects our request and this council though in the interim year does have a commission that looks holistically at the charter including a more robust investigation as to what would be a just compensation for councilors.

if there is another request next year for changing the council salary, but it is decidedly and discernibly different than this one with caps and with formulas.

Yes, I think if you were to take a completely substantively different amendment to the General Assembly next year, let's say that this failed.

Again, if you want I can give you the exact citation here.

If it was introduced at the session and the General Assembly failed to enact this specific bill,

Then it doesn't, as long as it's introduced, it doesn't have to, the exact same amendment would not have to be approved by voters.

However, if it's not introduced, if you wanted to do this exact same amendment, then it would have to be approved by voters.

Okay.

So, any more comments?

I second that.

Any other comments?

All right, we'll vote.

That carries three to two.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, Members of Council.

My name is Chris Cullen.

I'm the Director of Finance for the city.

The next two items on the agenda pertain to the financial results for the fiscal year ending June 30th of 2018, FY18.

First, there'll be a report from Mr. John Aldrich, partner with the firm of Brown-Edwards, the city's independent auditors.

The second item is a year-end appropriation and public hearing.

I invite Mr. Aldridge to join us here.

He'll be referring to two documents that you have in front of you.

One is titled The Letter to Those Charged with Governance.

The other one is a copy of the actual financial report, about 171 pages, for your reading pleasure.

We anticipate having that document posted on the city's website tomorrow and available for folks to look into.

Thank you all for having me and every time I come to one of these meetings I really truly appreciate what you do and all the things that come before you all.

So with that being said, just to give you just a brief background, I'm going to keep this very high level but happy to answer questions as we go.

The audit process begins in late April and it ends November 30th.

The report has to be filed with the state of Virginia on November 30th of every year.

Yours was filed about 645 p.m. Friday night.

So you're in compliance with all the rules and regulations with the state as far as filings go.

The actual document you have in front of you, the large one, I'm just going to touch on a few pages I just want to mention to you all.

On page number 21 you have the section there just says independent auditors report.

This is our I guess opinion on the financial statements.

The most important part there is actually on the next page where it says opinions and it says in our opinion

The financial statements referred to above present fairly in all material respects.

What that simply means is we issued an unmodified or a clean opinion.

That's as good as it gets.

That's the highest level of assurance we will put on a financial report.

So we issued you all a clean opinion.

Right.

On page number, and again if I skip over something please yell, but on page number 40

I just want to point out something that's new this year that has not been in the financial report in the past and booked.

There's a new liability that you'll notice it's called net other post-employment benefits liability.

This is the cost of insurance for retirees, meaning a person earns it while they're here.

You need to pick up that liability while they're still here.

And if you'll notice, this is the first time that's been on the books.

And for the city, that liability is $44 million.

And for the school board, that number is $12.7 million.

And again, this isn't the pension.

This is something totally different, just the health insurance piece of it.

So that's something again that's really how it's going to work day to day for you all.

It's not going to change things much.

However, this gets the reader out there and lets them know the city does have a liability for this out there.

This is the true cost we want to recognize while the employees are still in the building, not after they're retired.

So they're earning it while they're here and so that's why you see that that liability there.

What you're more interested in and how you manage the city, you'll actually find on page number 42

On page 42, you can see the various funds of the city, and the biggest one being the general fund, and that's how you all manage the operations of the city.

And the part I always like to look at is the actual fund balance.

That's what's left over after assets and liabilities.

You've got different categories.

The piece you want to focus on is this part there at the end, unassigned fund balance.

What that simply represents are funds that the city has accumulated that aren't for a specific project or any earmarks.

It's not debt money.

It's not anything else.

It's money that you as a group, as a council, can decide what we want to do with it.

And what I like to do is say, how does that compare to our monthly expenditures and how many months do we have in fund balance?

If you did that exercise with the city of Charlottesville, you have 2.58 months in fund balance.

Meaning, if you didn't collect another dime, how long could we make it if everything was steady?

The bare bones minimum that the Government Finance Officers Association would say you need to have is two months.

So you're above that.

Best practices say five months is what you should shoot for, but very few governments have that.

But again, 2.5 last year was 3.8 and the year before 2.79.

So it's been fairly consistent the last few years.

But again, just something to monitor.

The thing that makes it different, and I get the question, what's the magic number for us?

There isn't one because every locality is different.

I mean, Charlottesville is very diverse in your industries, what you have, who's paying the taxes.

Where it gets a little hairy is if you're in a small, low county.

You've got the one or two manufacturing plants that employ everybody.

Well, if you've got that situation, that number needs to be higher because they could go out of business, layoffs.

We need better reserves.

What you have to monitor that is do we have that one big employer, if they left, would really put a dent in us, okay?

Again, you're fortunate you don't have that per se.

I mean, you've got the university, but I don't think they're going anywhere anytime soon.

All right.

Then the other thing that I find fascinating in this report, again, I'm an accountant, I think it's all fascinating, but I do just want to mention to you all, Page 47,

I think this is interesting and something you ought to be aware of.

This is a little bit different.

This you will see you have what they call business type activities.

And the reason they call those business type activities, they're supposed to be set up like a business and have charges in there that cover their cost.

And what you will notice there, your water

You had operating income there, sewer, operating income, gas, operating income, storm water, we had operating income.

But the one that stands out is the golf course.

And so if you look at the golf course and the golf fund, looking at it on its own, well, our charges didn't cover, I'm sorry, that's page 47.

Y'all don't have that one?

It should be exhibit E2.

Y'all have that?

The Gulf should be the fifth column over from the left.

But you notice there that column represents the fund and you'll see there the operating income.

They actually had a loss of $103,000.

Okay, so the question is, well how did we make it?

Well what you can see, if you go down the page, the general fund had to transfer $133,000 over there.

Just something to be aware of.

What we find oftentimes, localities, golf courses, a lot of times they roll those back in Parks and Rec after a few years because they find they're not set up to cover themselves.

We have a couple clients that do have golf courses and they're doing alright, but

I would say a lot of them that have them are down in Parks and Rec and kind of just back in the general fund is kind of a benefit for our citizens.

The only thing I would mention to you is just getting people out there, getting golfers out there, how much they're using it.

Exactly.

It's a decision the council would have to make saying is this what we're gonna do?

Basically using tax money now $133,000

That's something to think about.

Then if you would go over to page 100 and it starts on 104.

I always like to point out the good things as well.

If you look on page 104, you have the budget to actual statement for the city this year.

And this is for the general fund.

The first section you have are the revenues, and that continues over to page 105.

And you all budgeted revenues of $162.2 million, and you will notice that the actual came in at $163 million.

So you exceeded your budget on revenues by a little bit under a million dollars, so $896,000.

Well, then the next question is, well, how did we deal with expenditures?

Well, you can see that if you go two pages over to page 107,

Your budgeted expenditures were $152 million.

Your actual expenditures this past year

were $140 million.

And that's like right third line from the second line from the bottom on page 107.

So you can see there you were under budgeted expenditures by $11,540,000 this year.

And again, if you walked your way back up the page, you can see where those savings were.

They're basically split amongst several different departments and functions within the city.

But again, the thing we look at is, did the cities overspend their budget?

And I'm happy to say you did not.

You certainly, you had $11 million there of expenditures you didn't use up.

The last thing I will mention in this report, and I think it's something to be commended, you all as a governing body.

As we do your audit, we also do the audit for the school system.

And the school system's financial information begins on page 136.

What I'd like to point out to you all is if you look there at their financial statements beginning on 136 and go to the next page, 137, you will see there the revenues for the school system.

And the city, their total revenues at schools this year for all their funds were $73 million.

The city kicked in out of that $44 million.

So you're paying more than half of the

revenues that the city or the school system has.

And what we find there, the intergovernmental, that's going to be your federal money and your state money, okay?

Most of those haven't really gone up a lot over the years.

And as a result, what we're finding is localities are having to kick in more money to keep that same basic level of service or even improve upon it.

But again, that's something just to point out that with the 73 million, the city paid 44 million at the schools.

what's going on over there.

I'd be happy to give it.

I have actually a chart at the office that I will email Mr. Cullin and he can provide to you all.

I have a chart.

What I did, and I wish I'd have brought it, but it kind of lines you up next to Lynchburg, Danville, Roanoke, similar urban centers.

cities kind of outside the DC area but more you know the Danville, the Lynchburg, the Runo, Charlottesville very like-sized the school system what they're doing so that would be a good example but again if memory serves me right you were definitely on the high side what your percentage what you were all paying I do recall Danville got quite a bit more state and federal money

So, but that's just, like I said, a 20,000 foot view of the audit.

It's like I mentioned, it starts in April.

In addition to this, we have to test any federal money that comes through here, a certain percentage of it.

That report is almost done.

I reviewed a draft of it earlier today.

That should be issued any time now.

To my knowledge, the federal money, if I recall, I don't think there were any findings at all related to the programs we tested there.

Again, it's not final.

But overall, it was a good audit.

Your staff does a nice job of pulling this together.

They prepare this document.

We simply put an opinion on it.

I mean, we audit the numbers in there.

We get an understanding of what goes behind making these numbers, make it to the financial report.

But again, at the end of the day, your staff is preparing this.

And there's a lot of people touching it in their staff in that department.

And they do a nice job.

With that, the other document you have, I'm briefly just going to mention it.

It just kind of spells out what the audit represents.

At 90% of that's boilerplate language.

It says at the end of the day, the audit is these are your financial statements, not mine.

It talks about if we had disagreements with management, there were none.

It talks about if there were difficulties in dealing with management, there were none.

So again, that's pretty much standard information there, just to give you a sense of what we

encountered in working with the city and their staff.

I do have a question.

It might be just related to something Mr. Conlon would be able to answer.

But I know there's a relationship between a good audit report and then our bond rating.

They go hand in glove.

For example, Mr. Aldridge mentioned the approximately $30.5 million of fund balance.

That's the 17% reserve that we have set as part of our long-term financial policies.

And so, you know, they're intertwined with each other in terms of the audit.

You know, we have policies that say this is what we're going to do.

The audit then verifies that we are doing that, that we are following those guidelines.

One thing I will mention that bond rating people have come to us and said, and I've said in seminars, with the pension liability and with that other post-employment benefit,

They have asked that localities at least have a plan how they're going to fund it.

Meaning they don't expect you to pay off, go issue debt for $44 million to make that liability go away.

But they would like to know, what do we have?

What is our plan to address this $44 million?

Are we setting this out a little bit?

The city actually did that a number of years ago so you know in the media the reporting is most often when you see cities in distress they really are focusing on the pension they're not even talking about the other post-employment benefits with the OPEB that's sort of the other shoe so to speak and certainly we've done some significant things in the last year or two in terms of our pension plan in terms of

of doing a sustainability study, looking at how current employees contribute now, all contribute to that, how new employees contribute.

But a number of years ago, the city made a conscious decision to start funding its OPEB.

and so our OPEB is actually funded at 44, I believe it's about 44.7%.

I dare say that's probably one of the highest ones out there but now we'll know for sure because now everybody has to report this.

Before, you know, I think that's one of the important things and this is in the transmittal letter from Mr. Murphy and myself is that this is not a new liability.

This has always been there.

We've been funding 100% of our contribution for a number of years and we anticipate to do so into the future.

but most cities have not and they've not been reporting in a consistent manner so now you'll be able to see how we stack up to other folks when you when you hear folks talk about their their pension funded status it's just the pension piece there's all this op-ed piece that's been out there and you know even places that say we have a 100% or a 95% funded pension

That's great, but the better question is, what's your OPEB funding?

Because again, that's sort of the piece that nobody really talks about.

We had clients in the past that controlled that number, or tried to, by basically grandfathering everybody, saying if you were hired after this date, the minute you leave the city or county, you're not on our insurance anymore.

And so that's a way to cut it down.

I think it was kind of knee-jerk.

You know, they just thought we can do this and make it go away.

Yes, I'll send it to Chris, and I'll send it to him tomorrow.

Item as it relates to the golf fund.

For a number of years, it did operate as an enterprise fund in terms of its revenues covering its expenses.

But a number of years ago, that wasn't always the case.

The result's very similar to what you see.

Some years it was a little bit ahead, some years the general fund had to make a subsidy.

I believe it was one or two fiscal years ago, parks and rec brought forth a proposal to formalize that subsidy to make that part of the general fund budget.

which council did at that time so it's accounted for as an enterprise fund but in reality it's budgeted with a small general fund subsidy in it and so

and again that will be a similar discussion we'll have as we head into budget season for FY20 with Mr. Daley and his folks in terms of not just the golf fund but parks and recreation programs in general and what's an appropriate level of revenue recovery and fees.

Not really, I mean I think the key, what I've seen, it's been fairly rare, I mean I've seen things from the CDBG grants and things like that have kind of helped.

What I've found the best thing is make sure all the players are talking, everybody talks to each other because you might have, the planning department has this grandiose idea that's great and they sell it to the public

but they've never talked about how we're going to pay for this.

You know, make sure is it legal, even.

Make sure the legal guys are on board and folks, you know, it's the worst thing is you get to the end and realize everything we've done is wrong.

It's not legal.

So definitely bring in your legal counsel.

But the key, I found, is just communication on that stuff.

And make sure the money's there.

I mean, it's one thing to have all these dreams, but if there's no money there, then we're kind of wasting time.

Any other questions?

I'd just like to say thank you to our finance staff.

Mr. Cullinan, thank you and your team.

Sounds like you're keeping the city honest.

Thank you.

Stay in the job, Mr. Culver.

All right.

Thank you.

Moving on to the next agenda item is the year end appropriation and public hearing.

And so, as Mr. Aldrich mentioned, the city general fund ended FY18 with a surplus, a positive balance of about $4.7 million, or about 2.7% within the adopted budget, which from a budgeting efficiency standpoint is a pretty good result.

Revenues for the General Fund were slightly less than $2 million to the good with expenses being about $2.7 million under budget.

And that combination of revenues doing better than expected and expenses being less.

Gave you a lot of paper this evening.

And so that trend of revenues doing better than expected and expenditures being less than budgeted is what we've seen in the past.

That's sort of typically how our surpluses have been generated.

and just to provide some point of context, that $4.7 million last year for FY17, the surplus was about $8.9 million, FY16 was about $6 million and this year's, in those two years we had commercial assessments come in higher than expected and that actually occurs over two fiscal years and so accounted for those surpluses being as large as they were and so this year's result is a little more in line what we saw from maybe two, three, four years ago.

On the revenue side, real estate taxes, personal property taxes, tax on bank stock and business professional licenses or BPOL were some of the revenues that performed notably well.

on the expenditure side.

The savings were across the city, but we call out a few departments for their savings, the Commonwealth's Attorney, Parks and Recreation, Public Works.

And the thing that really generates a lot of the savings are either position vacancies or positions being held open for some period of time.

As you know, some departments have gone through some reorganization.

and so department heads are taking a more strategic look at their vacancies which is not only good from a programmatic standpoint but obviously in terms of budget it does generate savings when we do that.

We've also had retirements of fairly senior city staff and so when they leave not only is there a vacancy savings while we search for their replacement typically they're being replaced by somebody who doesn't make as much as they did.

You can imagine a tenured 30-year city employee makes one amount

Somebody who comes in with maybe five or ten years of experience is somewhere less than that.

So that results in some savings as well.

And so staff is recommending for the year-end appropriation for the general in front of the $4.7 million.

We're recommending three uses of that.

The first is a city-wide reserve for unplanned expenses of approximately $1 million.

As you're all aware, we had unbudgeted expenditures of a little over $900,000 for the events of this past August 12th weekend, which we did not budget for.

We've been working with the Virginia Department of Emergency Management in terms of the possibility of public assistance.

We continue having discussions with that agency.

However, much like last year, this is a program of last resort.

I anticipate that we will probably wind up in the same position where we were last year where it's just not an appropriate

mechanism for the city.

However, we do continue to pursue that.

And I mean, if we do are successful in getting public assistance, we would get about 71 cents on the dollar.

So there will still be some portion that we wouldn't be made whole.

And so this amount will allow us as the fiscal year goes along.

If departments need additional assistance to make payroll, other budgetary shortfalls, this allows us to to have the funds to take care of that.

City also owes approximately $150,000 in mutual aid to other jurisdictions who helped out that weekend.

We certainly want to take care of those expenses.

The second use is a transfer of about $500,000 to the retirement fund.

Every year when we calculate the annual contribution for retirement benefits, including OPEB, as we've discussed this evening, we're assuming that retirees will receive a half of the COLA that general employees do.

And we typically anticipate that COLA to be 2% for active employees, thus 1% for the retirees.

For this fiscal year, the COLA was actually a little bit higher at 3%.

And so we should have been putting one half percent away, so we're about half a percent short.

This $500,000 just makes that whole in the current fiscal year.

And then the final use, the balance of $3.2 million.

We're recommending being transferred to the capital projects fund to be reserved for affordable housing redevelopment.

There are some other appropriations here as well for the other cities.

These other 34 funds are predominantly sort of housekeeping matters or in instances where there are fiduciary funds involved that carry over automatically or decisions made by past councils carry over certain balances automatically every year fill out the rest of the appropriation.

And so I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have.

Are there any questions?

Okay, so I'll open the public hearing.

All right, one more time.

As you know, I came back in April during budget season and asked for funding for the Human Rights Commission position of Enforcement and Compliance.

We've been at this for many, many years.

The Council's making some good progress.

You've had meetings with the Human Rights Commission.

You've worked toward having a work share agreement with the EEOC.

You've required them to now meet with you quarterly so that they stay on track.

And now I think you're also asking them to stay on track with their policy work, which has been all over the map.

So those are all really positive steps.

When this all started, I swear to you, the thing that started me on this whole thing was I was at a meeting at Charlottesville High School at the end of the Dialogue on Race, and there were a bunch of low-income folks in this town who were gathered around

putting stickers on sheets of how to prioritize what the dialogue on race was supposed to be doing.

And what I heard over and over at that point was, we need a place to bring our complaints of housing and employment discrimination so that they're resolved.

and that was the original intention of the Human Rights Commission.

That's the only part of it that hasn't been fulfilled and now I'm asking you, you have a surplus and you don't have to take it out of the equity fund but there's a surplus now and I think there's room in there somewhere for you to make a commitment and all I'm asking for at this point

It's just to think about a three-year pilot project.

Three years at $100,000 to hire a compliance officer, put that compliance officer in the city attorney's office, and let them build a program for three years where they can actually fulfill the promise of the Dialogue on Race and the Human Rights Commission to actually

solve people's employment discrimination complaints.

Because if we think we can bring new jobs to this city without addressing the racial, the age, the gender discrimination that's going on in town, then we're sorely, sorely wrong.

Right?

So all I'm asking you to do is to think about taking some of that surplus, $300,000, hiring a compliance officer,

as a pilot project, let them build a program that builds some trust with the city citizens that they understand that this is a place where their complaints are really going to be addressed and let them do their work and at the end of three years you don't see some evaluation data that shows that people are actually, this is actually having an impact on people's lives

then you can terminate the program.

So that's all I'm asking is to think about this surplus in terms of equity and it's tied to housing too.

We can't have equitable housing in this town without some form of a process for people who go to rent an apartment or a townhouse and they get denied because of their race, their age, their gender or whatever.

Thanks.

Mark Cabot.

I'm not asking that the money be used for this purpose, but something I think you all need to be aware of and think about long term is I hear this all the time from long term residents that are very concerned about their property taxes and what they're paying and concerned that whether or not they're going to be able to remain in their houses in retirement because they're concerned that they may get priced out of affordability.

So at some point, I think we need to look at that and address that.

Maybe something can be done for seniors, or we need to try to roll back some of the property tax rates, especially with some of the online projects that are coming on board and bringing in new tax dollars.

But it just needs to be a concern that you all need addressed on a long term basis.

Thank you.

Is there anyone else?

OK.

Closing the public hearing.

I have a quick one.

We had very helpful meetings with Mr. Murphy and staff last week about this.

And having been through it a couple times the last couple years, I think of all that we talk about the public getting and us narrating and explaining and having a real connection about what's happening with what we're doing.

this is

out of the four point, how much is it, four point seven, is slated for affordable housing.

But I wish that we could put that in red blinking lights above this and that we could really explain to the public how serious of a commitment that is as a down payment if we vote for it, which I think we should, on the whole discussion we're having.

So it's over $3 million right into, and we'll go through the CIP, but it's not the CIP

and so on.

And then we have the reserve fund which is typically where it goes, this is earmarked for affordable housing and redevelopment, earmarked for redevelopment.

And I had a, so I asked Mr. Murphy to look at whether, especially since, and let me do a disclaimer first, I'm a current employee of Parks and Recreation, what I'm about to say I would not benefit from.

one of the employees considered for compression issues.

I'm a temporary part-time employee and did benefit from the living wage, but this is separate.

So with saying that, I asked Mr. Murphy to look into, especially with the figures that came in, during our luncheons and as an employee, I

You know, we heard consistently about the compression issues in public works.

I'm aware of it in Parks and Rec.

We didn't have a significant number of those employees.

And the transit, well the CAT drivers.

and so I asked Mr. Murphy to look into whether we could earmark some of these funds to set for compression that would go into effect in January.

And I'll also add it because when I was on the Social Services Advisory Board, they

talked about the on-call pay for DSS on-call workers and that it was not, that hourly wage was not up to regional standards and whether that was something that we could look into and use some of this funding to just, I know it's only a few departments and you do a little bit at a time, but to look at to see whether

for those individuals or anyone else that could benefit if we could use some of this money to deal with some of those issues.

I will remind everyone that every year during the living wage discussions, the compression discussion has been tied to that.

I raised something similar with Ms. Beauregard, and it was just my understanding that obviously these aren't sustaining funds, these are this year's funds, and so there are challenges with us getting too aggressive in how we earmark that.

As I understand it, the problem with using these funds is that because it's not an annual expenditure, it's not part of the operating budget.

But related to costs for our employees,

you could do something like make a employer assisted housing assistance program.

Either it's through home ownership assistance or something, because I know housing costs is a huge problem for our employees.

That's why 80% of them aren't living here.

That is like a one shot deal that you could do that would assist our employees creating an employer assisted housing fund.

And it's like Montgomery County in Maryland has it.

I believe Austin has it.

It's tied to providing either down payment assistance, even rental assistance to employees.

And it is done in other localities.

It sounds like a great idea, but it also sounds like it would have programmatic startup costs.

I mean, you'd need to have staff and applications and procedures and then it would take all of, I mean, it sounds like an operational thing, just the way I first hear it, as opposed to something that could be plugged in and infused

you know, to existing needs, which is typically, that sounds like something we would have a, that sounds like a policy, as opposed to that sounds corporate.

Well, it's both.

I'm just saying that it's both brick and mortar as well as policy that's related to operations.

But I'm just trying to tie this important question to employer compensation.

And it might be later on that we discuss this, but I do understand the concern about we can't use money for wages that's one shot.

So the, in terms of the compression issue, the council, previous council has allocated a certain amount of money to, for the departments to decide, you know, go through their staff and allocate that to staff to do that bump.

So that is something that we have committed to.

I thought that was annual.

Yes.

Does the budget for the year we're in deal with compression?

Yes in two ways.

One is to recognize the compression that was created by the first round of living wage adjustments that took you all to 1379.

And we believe that we've tackled that problem in full.

Did we also believe that in part that the 3% COLA that you all approved for this year was a step in the right direction towards dealing with compression?

The answer to that is also yes.