City Council Meeting   3/16/2020

All right, good evening.

We have a counselor, Vice Mayor Sena Magill, who would like to electronically participate

pursuant to Virginia Code Section 2.2-3708.2.

Vice Mayor Magill, are you on the line?

I am.

OK.

And are you currently at your residence in the city of Charlottesville, Virginia?

I am.

Okay.

If I could have a motion from a counselor to allow Ms.

Alright, next we have the, so do we have the reading thing in particular?

So we're acknowledging that we're deviating from our standard council meeting procedures for public participation.

You can view us on Facebook Live.

Ms.

Thomas, roll call please.

Ms.

Walker.

Present.

Ms.

Magill.

Here.

Ms.

Hill.

All right.

Is there a motion for approval of the agenda?

We're just approving this.

We do have some other business items.

Second?

All in favor?

Aye.

Okay.

All right.

I think there's a couple here.

You're a hunger hero.

We gratefully recognize the City of Charlottesville Commissioner of Revenue for collecting enough food and funds to provide 266 meals for your neighbors in need.

This is from the Blue Ridge area.

Thank you.

Also, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Commissioner of Revenue, Treasurer, and Utility Billing will all be closed to walk-in traffic until April 1st.

As always, tax filings and payments can be made via U.S.

Mail, online, or at any of the drop boxes located on 6th Street, 7th Street, or the drive-up box by the Key Recreation Center.

Online payment options are also available at the Treasurer and Commissioner of the Revenue pages of the City's website.

These departments will still be available by telephone or email for all inquiries.

Okay, alright.

Alright, I have one announcement.

Local journalists Jordan Hager and Mark Obolca on behalf of Willow Tree have been working with community organizers, area nonprofits, and others to sign up a new centralized website called Support Seaville.

The site is a one-stop hunt for people to find and navigate the many ways, big and small, that people can help the community members by donating money, their time, and other supplies to those most impacted and most in need.

through the on-the-ground resources already doing this work.

Any other announcements?

All right.

All right.

We don't have any more commissions.

And we're not appointing to boards and commissions.

So, Ms.

Consent agenda, eight minutes, January 28th, City Schools budget work session.

March 2nd, special and regular meetings.

March 5th, budget work session.

B, appropriations.

for the second reading.

C, appropriation, transfers of these different resources and rating funds to the examination of possible burials.

Near the Gilmer, Craven, Hotop, Cemetery, and Park, $3,500, second reading.

D, resolution, Harris Street Apartments, special use permit, second reading.

E-Resolution, reallocation for acid management system, $1,250,367, 1 reading F-Resolution, landlord risk reduction fund, 1 reading G-Resolution, amendment to Charlottesville supplemental rent

H, resolution, street name change, Levy, Garrett, one reading.

Resolution, approval to apply for Safe Routes to Schools grant, one reading.

Oh, yes.

Any online?

Okay.

So we're making a motion to adopt the consent agenda with exception to item D for a separate vote.

Ms.

Magill, your vote?

Oh, you know what?

I pushed her button by accident.

We need to hear from you, Sena.

All right.

And I just want to just make my comment again that I think while I understand that we need housing in the city, I think that approving an SUP without them making any commitment

I think that that is pretty romantic, and that's one of the main reasons that I'm calling on people to increase.

All right.

Please vote.

No.

I don't want to do that again.

I don't want to do that again.

Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Blair.

I voted no.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, city council, and the public for the evening.

The first item I want to bring up is councilwoman Kelly.

Talked about the drainage plan for the cemetery.

I'll come back to you.

That was pertaining to, at this time, parks and recreation as well as

It was a groundwater issue as a result of a natural spray.

So, that's where we're at with that.

The main one is that you have to use the parking permits.

That's something that I'm going to have to bring back to the case where we can discuss a little bit further in terms of the fees when we're doing the park permits.

All the different construction projects that we're trying to provide to the police department.

One last thing I just wanted to read that I wanted to provide to the community an opportunity to look at the virus, this epidemic that we're dealing with right now.

One is, earlier today, Virginia Department of Health's Thomas Jefferson Health District announced that residents of the city of Charlottesville had tested positive for the 2019 novel coronavirus, COVID-19.

This marks the first case in the Thomas Jefferson Health District.

The positive case is an individual in their late fifties and appears to be a travel-related infection.

In an effort to contain and mitigate the coronavirus, staff saw us being in operations on tomorrow, Tuesday, March 17, 2020, with the exception of the first of March.

The staffing plan will be in effect for at least the next two weeks, and we will reevaluate it on Sunday, March 29, 2020, to determine if we are

Public is encouraged to use all available online and telephonic options for conducting business in City Hall.

And this is essentially the use of a drop box on both sides of City Hall.

And the drive-through box located between the City Hall Annex and the T.E.

Recreation Center.

They ask that all in-person transactions be curtailed unless absolutely necessary.

And that's what they're going to.

and of course the person coming to you in terms of customer service related operations throughout the city.

Also, too, with the Neighborhood Development Services team, they will be accessible to the public being to conduct essential business with their department through the market street entrance line.

We will also be coming back

hours that we will be in the NDS.

Thank you.

All right, next we have Community Matters.

and the President of the United States of America, my name is Michael Kochis, I'm the President of the United States of America, I'm the President of the United States of America, I'm the President of the United States of America, I'm the President of the United States of America, I'm the President of the United States of America, I'm the President of the United States of America, I'm the President of the United States of America, I'm the President of the United States of America, I'm the President of the United States of America, I'm the President of the United States of America,

I talked about putting one in Belmont and one in a bad neighborhood.

When it finally came about in the 1960s, the Vice got homes in Belmont and attached them to the city.

That sounds good.

The city didn't know that they were awakening their sleeping jag public housing when it passed

For 65 years, the city has been framing CRHA, the problems under the table while the private sector gets the best of their food on it.

It's got to happen.

For the last year, excuse me, for the last year, the residents of Crescent Falls have attended meeting after meeting about the renovation of our

Tell us that about $7,000, we're giving you our ideas.

Hoping things are going to be different, but it's not going to be.

Instead, it's the same old saying.

If you ask for walking turks, you say no.

I'm not going to give you a picture.

If you say we want to return to the same unit after an invasion, you say no.

That's not going to happen.

I ask you to make sure you have top quality materials for that recommendation.

Thank you.

I just want to respond.

I don't know.

I know the material conversation

that it has been conveyed to the contractor to make sure they would use the materials that they would use to build a new project.

So hopefully that is what happens.

I remember having a conversation about the talks, but I don't remember

and I know the same unit conversation meant that there would be people who would have to move multiple times and it was trying to prevent that.

You're taking people from the eighth floor now and putting them in other properties in the area.

Chrisston.

He's doing it, trying to figure out how to minimize that.

That is a discussion that they have at the Redevelopment Committee meetings.

That is where that decision is happening.

It's not happening.

I'm aware because I'm on the committee, but it's not any decision that we are making at the same time.

I understand that.

But y'all are all supposed to be

It's government working with government.

And if people leave Crescent Halls now, that's one year.

If they want to come back to Crescent Halls, it's two years.

It just seems like we always get to show the next step.

Bubba Carlson has always been the gun for the party.

I'm just saying from everybody's standpoint, whoever is in that person and y'all, but this is something that started years ago.

Thank you.

On a non-profit basis, we have second-gen experience in new farmers.

We have now approached the city council to see management of the older generation in new prices.

I've got it worked out.

I've got it worked out.

I've got it worked out.

I've got it worked out.

I've got it worked out.

I've got it worked out.

I've got it worked out.

I've got it worked out.

I've got it worked out.

I've got it worked out.

So, I'm asking City Council to provide me a $1,000 grant from the New York Mayor paying $274 to get IRS to take on the second chance of promising a fourth, final policy for the organization.

That's what I said.

The 2nd to the 40th is one of my success.

May you continue.

May I go to the entire county?

Mr. Ron Corcoran, if I may, if I may, if I may, if I may, if I may, if I may, if I may, if I may, if I may, if I may, if I may, if I may, if I may, if I may, if I may, if I may,

All right.

And Amanda Fessy is on the line, so if we could take her at the end.

Oh, at the end.

Anna Stein.

All right.

Mayor Walker, Members of the Council, my name is Elaina Manjoni.

No, that's, I need to know how to say it.

I'm being located on West Main Street.

This can be four years.

Those of us that will be most affected from a financial standpoint prior to the hospitality industry, local restauranteurs,

I, along with other independent businesses, are asking for is immediate support from the meal and meals tax forgiveness for February and March, which is coming due this week, for February.

What forgiveness of the meals tax would

and other hospitality workers that will want to earn a single dollar.

Kindly allow us to use this money to keep it directly in the local economy so that we may help our people.

We also request that the council consider refunding our accounts tax return in 2020 so that we may put that to direct support of our services fund.

On a final note, we request

Members of the City Council, City Manager, and staff, I wish to spend an effort to boost the accessibility as it increases helping negative financials due to the coronavirus outbreak.

A number of ideas have been circulating related to meals and lodging tax.

I believe you will hear a proposal tonight advocating for forgiveness of the Charlottesville meals tax or lodging tax.

You may also hear requests to push back

the due dates for these taxes that are normally due on the 20th of every month.

I wanted to give you some input on all of these proposals.

Number one, trust taxes like the meals and lodging tax are clustered by business operators from their patrons and held in trust and limited to the local government.

These funds should not be commingled with operating funds.

A business should not use these funds to cover operating expenses.

Two, meals and lodging taxes are paid in the month following the month which they are collected.

Obviously, such taxes are in direct reflection of the gross revenue generated in that prior month.

It follows then that if business is down, then meals and lodging payments are down.

Businesses are not expected to remit taxes that were never collected.

Pushing back due dates will attempt businesses to use trust tax revenue as operating revenue.

This will make the bad situation worse for those businesses who are already struggling.

Those taxes will eventually come due and if unable to pay

The arrears the businesses will find itself in violation of city code section 30-286b where all amounts collected as taxes under this article shall be deemed to be held in trust by the seller collecting them until remitted to the city as provided by this article.

The wrongful and fraudulent use of such collections other than the remittance of the same as provided by the law shall continue constitute embezzlement pursuant to section 18.2-111 of the Virginia Code.

Having said all that, my office does have some discretion when it comes to late filing and payment of bills and lodging taxes collected.

If a report and payment is received on or before it becomes 30 days late, we have some discretion to forgive penalty and interest as our intention to be as flexible on this as possible.

and the manager that we are presented with whatever is possible that we can do and hoping that federal and state aid comes to be able to assist local businesses.

In some way this is haunting to all of us.

We're just starting and we're just trying to figure out how to be supportive to the most vulnerable in our community and we understand that restaurants and not having people

opportunity to respond to that.

The time that it will take for you all to develop a plan of activism, to take the money that you've added to meals tax, where other localities and communities put directly into promoting the hospitality industry, our meals tax goes into the general fund.

And by the time that gets back in, trickle down back to us, it's going to be too late for a lot of people

and they're already going to be dipping into the city resources wherever they may be.

We have an opportunity to take this money at this time and provide it directly back to the staff.

Understanding the point about it being a trusted fund, we do understand that.

We understand that there is money that was collected back in February that they're asking to use now in direct support of that.

My main interest is that I know that's where I was sitting on that one.

What I want to talk about is mentors, which being what it was for me in the white business.

Mentors.

Who in here has ever had a mentor?

Raise your hand.

Richard D. has done that to me.

Tried to define me as being shitty or gay.

Who wants that mentor?

Who wants a mentor that tells you, oh, you have to be gay to get Amway money?

Who wants that mentor that tells you, oh, you have to marry this individual or you have to have sex with this individual to get Amway money?

The Amway Corporation, Rich Devos, Doug Devos.

I hope you get a copy of this because I am butchered 100%.

So, Mr. Hall, if you could make comments that are related to something related to city business.

The basic Amway business at Clapton will cover all financial situations that the city are involved with, from each individual to the city.

Wow.

What did I learn about this?

Hi, Mr. Hall.

Okay.

And thank you for getting this.

This is great.

Let's make sure it works.

Well, I want to say thank you beforehand.

Please unmute your microphone.

Can you hear me?

You can hear me, right?

Oh, great.

OK.

I'm reading this comment on behalf of Luis, whose broadband internet was not strong enough to support the Zoom call.

Can the city clarify in outreach materials about access to assistance that the public charge rule does not take into account city and county administered COVID-19 relief?

Even before the pandemic, there was already a public health crisis and families removing themselves from public benefits because they erroneously thought they'd impact their immigration status.

Tackling this misinformation is 10 times more important now.

So if an immigrant receives city or county government aid during the pandemic, it won't affect their immigrant status.

Thank you.

Okay, David, if you can up the volume on the webinar portion at all, that'd be great.

I'm going to pull up the next participant, and it's Meredith.

Okay.

I could.

I could.

I could.

Sorry, is this for me?

My Skype restarted, or my Zoom restarted.

Thank you, sorry.

My name is Meredith Polson and I am a resident of Brown Street.

I live at 608 Brown Street.

I am a homeowner on Brown Street and my husband is a small business owner in Charlottesville.

I'm speaking today about parking on Brown Street.

Parking is limited but doable currently.

It is limited because construction workers from the Quirk Hotel and other construction sites on Main Street park there and daily commuters park there.

The city is considering adding no parking at the top of both sides of Brown Street because the street is very narrow and the fire department has cited the street as a hazard for emergency vehicles.

However, I would request instead that the city widen Brown Street instead of adding no parking.

The street is very narrow and has drainage issues during heavy rains at the bottom of the hill.

The sidewalk often floods up to the stairs of my house.

The street itself needs to be fixed instead of just adding signs.

The city could do this since the city yard runs the length of Brown Street.

No parking signs or band-aids on the safety issue, which will only end up hurting homeowners on Brown Street when daily commuters and construction workers park at the bottom of the hill instead of the top of the hill.

The city traffic engineers have posted this request for no parking comments at the top of the hill at the beginning of March.

This is right after the end of the February deadline to submit petitions for parking permits for the rest of the street for 2020.

Therefore, I could not get a parking permit added to my street or petition for that until 2021.

If this no parking is implemented instead of widening the road

or alternatively being able to petition for parking permits for the rest of the street before next year, my husband and I will not be able to park at our home or even on our street since we don't have a good way.

We also have neighbors who park on the street who will lose their spots to these daily commuters and construction workers.

Let's keep existing city parking, widen Brown Street and fix the drainage issue instead of adding no parking signs to Brown Street.

and what flexibility there is with timelines.

Yeah, we'll take a look at that in the morning.

Okay, just a second.

Can everyone hear and see me?

There we go.

All right.

Hi.

Sorry.

This is my first time having to do this from home, obviously.

All right.

My name is Lindsay Daniels.

I am a resident of the city of Charlottesville, and I work in three small businesses in town, including one restaurant on the UVA corner.

Many of my close friends own restaurants in Charlottesville also.

If City Council expects restaurants to pay meals tax towards the general fund right now, when we have been forced to close our doors, then it does seem insensitive and unrealistic.

This has really not only to do with the employees but also the owners themselves who are unable to operate their businesses, unable to pay their rents, unable to pay any bills that are currently outstanding for product that's in the restaurant and they're unable to sell.

and not to mention that they're forced to let go of employees who they will have to end up rehiring later.

The employees can apply for unemployment, but what can the owners do?

Right now there's just loans and that's just creating more debt.

We can't even apply for an insurance claim until a public health authority officially closes the restaurant, which hasn't happened yet.

Every day we're losing thousands of dollars in every restaurant that has to close.

Most are highly seasonal, and the money that we make in certain times carries us through other times.

Money on the corner from March Madness through graduation is the money that carries most of the restaurants on the corner through until August.

Now that's gone.

Without any sort of serious relief, many businesses will be forced to close.

I strongly urge you to consider the tax forgiveness proposed by the previous restaurant owner who spoke.

I also strongly urge you to publicly declare that any restaurants within a mile radius of a confirmed case must close due to exposure to the COVID-19 virus.

That would allow these restaurants to file an insurance claim to at least attempt to help in these times.

because we're all really just frustrated with the circumstances that we're finding these businesses in.

And we've asked for legal advice on this.

One point that we should make, by the way, Mayor Walker, you were talking about how the city doesn't want to do this.

The city actually can't do that.

There's a state law, not just a local law.

The state law says exactly what the local law says, which is that the funds that have been received have been received in trust.

And I understand, believe me, I have family who owns businesses locally, and they are being impacted.

All right.

I'm in charge here.

So next we have public hearing.

And just before we get started on this, we did talk about whether it would be best to postpone the public hearings to make sure that as many citizens who wanted to could come before us and talk to us.

It has been advised that because this is a just very important part of the process that we continue with the public hearings, but we are reading every email and once we know fully what this pandemic will look like locally, if there are opportunities to create a more open meeting and have

The comments made in the future, we are committed to that.

And so we just want to use that to know that.

So we may be extending the budget cycle.

And again, we don't have those dates at this time.

And it's hard to figure out who needs to be where.

However, we can limit contact.

We're, you know, trying to speed up so that may be awesome, that we can stay on track for the timeline for the budget on 5th, 8th, 3th, week after June.

Yes, I mean, do you want to add anything?

The council needs to adopt a budget and appropriations

I think it's fair to say that part of our statutory requirement is to have a public hearing in the budget.

Public hearing in case there isn't some other opportunity to vote a public hearing between now and June 30th.

This is something, though, that it is a state law requirement that there is a public hearing in the budget before the Council can adopt its budget and recommendations.

Thank you.

All right, so next we have the proposed real estate tax rate for fiscal year 2021.

One person?

Well, Tyneke, you are on the webinar with city council.

Great, thanks.

Paul Tyneke, 1521 Amherst Street.

First I wanted to say thank you to Council for everything you're doing to react to the COVID virus crisis.

I have a lot of confidence in your ability to respond to this and probably more confidence than I have in the White House.

On the budget issue, on the tax rate issue, I've been thinking about, you know, first of all, I'm reticent to encourage you to raise taxes, but I've been thinking about this crisis and how it's going to impact different people in our community at different income levels.

and it's gonna have a differential impact and I'm starting to think and I'm curious what you all think about the possibility of going ahead and approving the tax increase to bank that money in case we need to use it.

for some kind of emergency.

And I think that takes some thinking in terms of what the impact is of a real estate increase.

I know there's a lot of people who are gonna be impacted in this community who are service workers and who are renters.

And I'm wondering if,

have higher income and higher means as long tax abatement program is in place to protect those people at the lower end of the spectrum.

And I always think that, you know, if we just raise the taxes two cents for this year, we can always go back and lower it another two cents or another four cents later as we sort of figure out how we're going to deal with the financial impacts of this virus and how it's going to impact low income people in our communities.

I guess at this point I'm thinking, unless you can argue for why we shouldn't raise the tax and how it might not be helpful in this particular circumstance that we're facing in terms of budgetary crisis that may be looming, maybe we should be thinking about raising the tax rate.

Jason Halbert, I'm trying to bring you up next, just a moment.

Standby Jason, we're still trying here.

Jason, it does not look like we're able to bring you in as a panelist.

I'm going to encourage you to leave the webinar and come back, and we'll see if we can come back to you in just a moment.

All right, Jason has left the webinar.

We're going to see if he comes back here.

Thanks for everyone's patience.

I'm sorry, I'm getting the same error message, Jason.

If you would like to type something in the comment, I'd be happy to

Read it as we go here.

Jason is thinking about that.

Jason Halbert's comment is to please keep the tax rate where it is.

and that's all he's going to say.

I hear you.

Okay.

So I'll close the public hearing.

Discussion?

Just remind me of the process for this.

At some point in time, we have to make a formal decision whether we're going to adjust the rate or not.

What was that date again?

I mean, could we not tell when it's posted?

That's for that generation, right?

And that's one new area of the work sessions that we can advertise to talk to this system here.

I thought I saw the fire, right?

And I think it's time for these judges to sit down together and move back up to that 90-second set, right?

One that can go down from that 90-second set is in the budget, but they can't.

But at this point, this is an advertise, and I just think we're going to have to do a little bit more in that break.

Well, but I think that the tax rate has to be set in February 14th.

Yes, in terms of getting the tax rate set, the tax bill

Yeah, I agree.

The rest of the budget decisions can be more flexible, too.

Okay.

Thank you for clarifying.

I know you still made your choice, but it's on the telephone, and it's one of the times for you.

It's one of the same.

Once again, Madam Mayor, Madam Secretary of City Public, good evening.

It's such a good sense that we're going to be discussing tonight what we've been waiting for and the system to warm up is to basically recap what we've talked about since the beginning as well as what we've been talking about

in terms of what our goal to employ was, and that was to keep the tax rate at its current rate, which is $0.95.

As was mentioned a few minutes ago, we talked about it in terms of the advertisement of it.

But the key here is that we do have a set tax rate, and we can make adjustments in the form in terms of if you want to make some changes, what they call the expenditures.

It's been a long time.

I had a long, long time with the city council.

I think that we should be at a point to move forward.

Because we had those discussions.

You wanted us to go back and look at the things that we collected and provide more money for expenditures.

And we did just that.

And the council had the opportunity to talk a little bit

utilize those expenditures.

So as you can see, it was actually at 5% when we went down actually for FY21.

So our proposed budget was 196-625-21.

And as I go back to what we talked about before, about the overall themes and where we put the money back in the budget and staying consistent with council

looking at overall investing in our employees with the COLA as well as doing the CARM study with the year-end revenues that we had.

And then also to continue in our traditional community funding for schools.

And as you know, we talked about last week was just that.

We looked at ways to be able to provide the schools with additional funds for their expenditures.

and that's inclusive of the other things that we provided them as we mentioned before 40% of the real estate as well as personal property taxes and then the additional funds that we provide them for the capital projects that they have and then also too when we talk about the reconfiguration of schools

We did a lot this year, and we want to keep on moving forward in FY21 to talk about our continuing to preserve and enhance the quality of our services that we provide to the public on a day-to-day basis, and being able to have those funding, those dollars in place to be able to do that, but also to overall, as we talked about when we did different things, to look at the overall organizational

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

As you can see, we talked about our tax rate remaining at $0.95 per $100 of assessed value.

And as I talked about before, in terms of maintaining that, because as assessments have gone up,

You know, you didn't want the real estate tax rate to go up along with that, so we wanted to stay consistent and make sure that we maintain the same tax rate as the previous year while those assessments did go up.

So that's why we propose a $0.95 tax rate.

As you can see, we derive a lot of our money from our local taxes at 73%.

As you can see all the other areas where we generate our revenues from.

major budget themes in dealing with the schools.

As we look at our overall expenditures, the schools are still the largest portion of our expenditures at 33%.

Well, at the Blue Ridge Juvenile Detention Center, we were able to receive actually $45,176.

So that helped out some in terms of having that extra dollars that could go in here in terms of the overall expenditures.

When you look at the increase in expenditures, you have, you know, a grand match, you have a contemporary center of arts, and that's why I think it's a $500,000, along with a cap of $200,000, as well as the $626,000 that you would take for the schools out of the projects that we brought to you.

for $74,000, which gives a total of 196,694,612.

and the scholars that were presented to you.

Here we have our various dates that we have and we talked about before.

Dates, we can make some adjustments to.

We'll try to list those in case we see anything that we're looking for and a quick improvement in terms of this virus going away so that we can keep on moving forward so we have those listed dates.

I would say that if we're going to be limiting this here, I think we should be here because it helps our communications staff.

It's turnkey.

It's here.

We know we're going to limit how people can be here.

We've already tried it once, so that would be my preference is to at least know that we're going to make those locations here and that we're going to minimize the number of people that would have to be engaged.

But at the same time, I hope that we're going to make some progress with maybe getting permissions to have a council participate as needed.

that's outside of the normal two times career facility.

No?

Yeah, they don't.

The statute itself for electronic participation, medical reasons are unlimited.

Okay, okay.

The other thing I want to note that I was briefing tonight with Dr. Bonds of the Health Department and one of the last things she said to me was you all on council need to model behavior for the rest of the community.

I know, I started talking about this immediately.

I'm trying to lead by example from what I'm saying.

I think it's important to note that these dates are in flux right now until we have a little more clarity.

And again, I mean, I think it's important for everybody, both council and participating in the webinar and watching it.

This is obviously fairly unprecedented in modern Virginia times, that to something like this where we have the state.

there was some federal official I think later in the day today are asking that no more than 10 people gather in any space and that does make makes it difficult with the way the Freedom of Information Act has worked when you have regular business you know obviously we want to be as transparent and obviously have as much input as possible but

It's also worth noting, but the council can waive this.

Mr. Davidson reminded me, the state requires a budget be passed by June 30th.

The city code says by April the 15th.

Again, we can only hope that, you know, first of all, that everyone's safe and healthy and that the curve bends significantly to where these restrictions don't last.

Yes, that's a fair question.

I think the Freedom of Information Act does allow telephonic meetings without a physical form to address the emergency itself.

You could convene telephonically to address the emergency in states that, due to the current declaration of emergency the state's under, we're going to waive our April 15 deadline for passing a budget in the city cabinet.

I think that is certainly part and parcel of the emergency itself, is to waive

So this was done before that, you know, we stumble a lot.

Thank you.

My name is Jay James, Assistant Director of the Bridge Ministry Program, which is a team of residential program members.

We've been dealing with life controlling issues, and we're a non-profit agency.

We've been serving men dealing with addiction, addictive behavior, homelessness, incarceration, and a total lack of vocational skills or training for over 23 years as the Executive Director.

We've saved our community well over a million years in monies that would have been spent to incarcerate the men that we've helped to become productive employees and tax-paying citizens in our community.

And we've done that only this time.

We have a time to support.

We have a success rate of 81%.

Every single one of our graduates leaves with a career job, often beginning at $16 an hour.

We have an 81% success rate, so that means 39 of those individuals were successful.

Lastly, we're a minority-owned business.

well equipped to deal with that issue as well as other individuals with any kind of economic condition.

Albemarle is looking into ways that they can support us when they receive this information.

I want to quickly read to you what they said about us.

They said that we meet their goal, present local data, describe the need, demonstrate a good understanding of participant strategies, and trust the identified need.

So, the counting process is separate.

So you just didn't see the organization, and that's why you are reaching out.

I mean, it was, I mean, it didn't need to be that much.

Mr. Daniels, there is, there is, there is, you know, late days,

You don't know how to... I don't know about that.

In the end, that was completed.

Because there wasn't, the audit was completed.

That was not received in any of that.

No, no, I didn't double-check to verify it.

Exactly.

One other thing.

Okay, so I'm assuming that there is a vicinity of separation charges that you get with some of these.

What that's interesting is that you turn it off to see if there is an increase in the number of times that it has been resolved that it has been solicited.

Could you just send us an email and I'll send you a message.

Thank you.

Would council entertain a break at this point before we take the, can we break in the middle of a public hearing before we take further comment?

If we could resolve that, that'd be great.

All right, I call this meeting back to order.

And Jason Halbert, you're online with council.

Okay, thank you Mayor Walker, staff.

I appreciate the time.

I want to praise you all for holding this meeting at all and under certain circumstances and great job Brian and the staff for trying to make this work on the tech.

I do support an extended budget process.

I think that's why it's getting considered what's happening.

I want to just echo what I've said in the work fashion before.

I'm the president of the Fry Springs Neighborhood Association.

and just three points.

One, bringing more transparency to the budget development committee and the process is always a good thing.

I hope that Dr. Richardson will continue to take input from the neighborhoods and the neighborhood associations on what their priorities are.

We've submitted three priorities for the last three years and I'm just going to go into number one, which is Stribling Avenue.

I don't live on Stribling, but I appreciate the stress and the situation there with pedestrians and the traffic.

It is a very busy street and there is consideration for 240 Stribling, which is a huge development at the end of the street, which will add upwards of probably 200 families

potentially at the end of that street.

And there's really no sidewalks, there's no stormwater infrastructure, and it needs more attention in the CIP.

My points to Dr. Richards and I appreciate his zero-based budgeting, and I appreciate that he's going to try to bring a software solution to understanding the queue for projects.

We're not trying to be first in line.

We just want to know where we are, and we want to eventually get to this project.

I'm going to take my neighborhood association hat off and use the rest of my time to just make a plug for emphasizing climate change going forward, maybe not in this budget, but in future budgets.

I would hope it would have been in this budget.

One major point.

The General Assembly just passed a slew of bills, which I've worked on, to help with solar, wind, and energy efficiency.

There are some items in the budget which are great on energy efficiency.

I encourage you to increase those.

The city has lagged on solar.

The do-it-ourselves approach, the DIY approach to solar on the high school was nice, but right now what you can do with zero upfront cost is the power purchase agreement.

That pilot program was extended.

increased.

There's no barrier now to the city engaging in a pilot, a power purchase agreement with a third party vendor.

I'm going to email staff and city council exactly step by step how you can do that.

You can use the existing solar funds and the CIP to do some feasibility analysis and get that done.

I hope you'll do that.

All right, next we're going to bring a new person on.

Yes, I sure can.

Yes, you're live with counsel.

Okay.

Hi, I'm Donna Shaughnessy, 1003 Birdwood Road, and I'm speaking to you today not just as a city resident, but as the chair of the local Sierra Club.

We were appalled at the lack of funding to address the climate crisis in the budget and urge you to, at a minimum, adopt the recommendations by the Community Climate Collaborative.

We cannot wait another year to start tackling this issue.

Low income folks will suffer with increasing hot weather, higher electricity bills, more catastrophic weather events, and increasing medical expenses.

We need to take action now to protect everyone.

The city was such a pioneer in adopting the climate goal back on July 1st and has fallen far behind in the meantime.

A goal without implementation is worthless.

Eight months have gone by and nothing has happened.

The Climate Action Plan has stalled, starved by bare bones staffing while the county is surging forward with over half a million dollars budgeted for climate initiatives.

They just released their draft plan last week after an extensive public participation effort.

The Sierra Club collaborated in public meetings and some of our suggestions have been incorporated.

Charlottesville should be a leader in this effort.

Our failure to move forward has implications not just for us, but for other smaller communities who look

to us for guidance.

Good evening, counselors.

Thank you for first of all declaring a state of emergency for Charlottesville and what you're doing and sacrificing to keep all of us safe here in Charlottesville and beyond.

Tonight, I am thinking a lot about the nurses at UVA and Martha Jefferson, the caregivers at assisted living centers like Trinity Mission, the daycare teachers making hard decisions, the parents who are home with their kids, and the many people who are losing their paychecks and their sense of stability in their lives.

The coronavirus pandemic is giving us the window into what it looks to shift our lives when there is a major change in our safety status.

Climate change is going to do the exact same thing to us that the coronavirus is doing to us now.

It is going to shift our lives because we won't have the same level of safety or security.

Climate change will get worse and because we are not ready as a city

and we are not doing enough work to work against it, it will change our lives and especially the lives of our children and our grandchildren.

Charlottesville, I'm really proud to say set these amazing greenhouse gas emissions goals in this past year and yet now the first budget after these goals has no money going to work to meet these goals and in fact has money coming away from making the city walkable and bikeable

so making it more of a driving city and driving up the carbon emissions.

How are we going to have the resiliency to face these changes if we do not invest in it now?

I'm asking that the City Council change the direction of the future of the city by giving money in the budget to support real action against the climate change crisis that we face.

Please strengthen the city's Environmental Sustainability Division

Susan Elliott is doing an incredible job, but she's doing more work than she should.

She should have people supporting her.

Albemarle has a new position posted to do just that for them.

Incentivize cleaner, more efficient, and more equitable energy consumption patterns.

I want the city to incentivize cleaner, more efficient, and more equitable transportation system.

I want the city to ensure that climate is a priority criteria for key decision making in the city by creating a real panel of experts that could support how Charlottesville can take action on climate change.

We are so blessed in Charlottesville to have so many experts and to have so many people with knowledge about how we can do this and do this well.

If we are slow in our prevention of climate action, it will be the people who are keeping us safe right now during the coronavirus

that will make the sacrifices again and will make them even bigger when it comes to climate change.

It will be nurses, it will be caregivers, it will be teachers, it will be parents and most of all it will be women.

Women who are sacrificing a lot right now will be the same women who will be sacrificed when it comes to climate change getting worse.

So for the webinar folks, we have four of you that have raised your hand that we're going to go to next.

Right now it appears I can most easily bring in your audio.

So I'm going to do that.

And Peter Krebs is next, followed by Walt Heinecky, Jennifer Phillips, and Lisa Torres.

Can you hear me okay?

Can you hear me at all?

Peter, go ahead.

Hello?

Okay, great.

I'm going to mute my speaker and then speak.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight.

I appreciate that you are finding ways for people to participate without entering a crowded city hall space.

I know many of other people are grateful for this opportunity as well.

Before I begin my public comments, and by the way, I'm Peter Krebs.

I live at 1022 Tufton Avenue.

Before I begin my comments, I'd like to remind everyone to take good care of yourselves.

Eat right, get rest,

exercise and plenty of fresh air.

Be there for one another as best you can.

We humans are social creatures who require contact in order to thrive.

This is going to be a long struggle and we need to be there for each other full strength for the long haul.

It's not a sprint.

The substance to my comments should be familiar to you.

I request that you adjust the CIP funding in three specific accounts.

new sidewalks, bicycle infrastructure, and trail development, at least to levels consistent with previous years.

The Planning Commission and many others have suggested that they actually be increased, and I agree with them.

The city has made ambitious and properly so goals for addressing climate change.

These cannot be met unless we change the way people get around town, and that requires safe places to walk, ride a bike, and access to transit.

Sidewalks connect people to resources in places like Elliott Avenue and Rugby Road.

The bicycle budget will be used for improvements like ones you will soon be seeing on Monticello Avenue.

And the trails account will be used to connect kids who live in Greenstone to Tonsler Park, as well as larger efforts like you're seeing along the 250 bypass.

This moment we are facing in which there is a climate crisis

Public health is at the front of everyone's mind, and people need places to breathe is not the time to scale back our investments and infrastructure for safe, helpful, and restorative walking and biking connectivity.

Please return these three bicycle pedestrian spending accounts at least to historic levels.

Next up is Walt Heinecky.

Walt, you've got three minutes.

Thanks.

And thanks again for allowing us to speak this way and going out of your way for making these hearings available to the public.

I wanted to talk about the budget in two ways, first on expenditures.

As you all know, we're on a journey to solve the affordable housing crisis in Charlottesville.

We're about somewhere between 3,500 and 4,000 units short.

and we started last year with a good commitment to putting $10 million into that affordable housing fund and I just wanted to make sure that when we drill down this year that we're gonna see another $10 million in that commitment to affordable housing that's reflected in the CIP, the CAF programs like the tax abatement program and programs like the CHAP program.

So that when all is done and said that we're going to find $10 million again to address the affordable housing crisis in town, especially for those that are below 50% of area median income.

So I'm just hoping that

We're going to see a commitment in total of about $10 million again this year because, as you know, the housing study has shown that it's going to take about $150 million over 10 years to get this thing solved.

And I think we're seeing some solid results from last year's $10 million.

So I'm hoping that we'll get that commitment again.

On the revenue side, at a previous meeting, I brought up the idea or the thought or the possibility that we may be subsidizing corporate and private accounts in our parking structures.

And I'm wondering if anybody's checked into that and if there's some possibility of getting some revenue back for the budget this year.

I've heard estimates of up to somewhere around

300,000 to 400,000 in revenue that we may be losing by subsidizing parking spaces.

On that same note on parking, I note I saw an automated counter for the two parking garages this week.

And it looks like we're about, even at peak times, we're about 50 spaces available in Market Street and up to 100 spaces available in Water Street.

And I'm wondering if you might take a look at that again to see if we might figure out a way to postpone putting funds into building a new garage over where Guadalajara is.

Lastly, on your agenda tonight is some updates from New Hill, and I see that New Hill has sort of changed their plans from an area

an area plan to a vision plan and I'm wondering if that's you put five hundred thousand into into from the equity fund into that project and I'm wondering if they're changing the scope of that project if we're gonna see any return on possible revenue in other words can we take some of that revenue from the five hundred thousand that you initially proposed and if they're if they are narrowing their scope of what they're gonna be delivering can we use some of that money toward affordable housing this year?

Next up will be Jennifer Phillips, followed by Lisa Torres.

And if anyone else would like to raise their hand, seems to be working in audio only mode, so we'll keep doing that.

So happy to take any other participants in the public hearing.

Jennifer, you're live with City Council.

Okay.

Can you hear me?

Okay, thank you.

My name is Jennifer Phillips and thank you for allowing me to speak.

I am not a city resident, but my spouse has proudly served the city of Charlottesville in the fire department for more than 20 years.

I come to you tonight in the midst of this public health crisis that is facing this city.

our nation and the world.

This is nothing like anything we have ever seen before.

While you are asking the majority of the city employees to stay home and not come to work, our first responders are not only reporting to work, but also required to work mandatory overtime to meet minimal staffing needs.

Our firefighters and first responders are on the front lines caring for the citizens of this city with no regard to their own welfare and that of their families whom they may expose just by coming home from work.

I am disappointed to see no increase in the budget for public safety.

We are entering a crisis that may well continue into the summer, and the pressure and stress this will put on our first responders could be unprecedented.

The time is now for you to take a long, hard look at the staffing and resources our firefighters need to do their jobs taking care of this community.

The city manager spoke earlier about the goals of taking care of the city employees and improving the services provided by the city.

This can only be accomplished by providing the funding needed to support hiring more firefighters for the fire department.

They are here to take care of you now it's your turn to take care of them.

I also have one other request.

Please, if you see any of our first responders out there, please provide them the respect they deserve and the gratitude they have earned for the services they are providing.

They are literally putting their lives at risk and sacrificing times with their families for this city and its citizens.

Next up is Lisa Torres.

Lisa, you're on the City Council.

Good evening, Mayor Walker, Councillors, our City Manager, Dr. Richardson.

I am a city resident, parent, and one of our city school board members.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide public comment via Zoom.

This option is much appreciated.

I have tried to attend and follow each of your budget work sessions this year so far.

I appreciate your time, effort, and ongoing process to work through this with the ultimate goal of taking care of our Charlottesville community.

I realize there are still many decisions you have to make, and I felt it crucial to come to you tonight

to speak again on behalf of the Charlottesville City Schools.

The school board has worked very hard to prioritize and support changes within the school division to address the many inequities brought to light over the last couple of years.

The implementation of these changes are long overdue.

The process, not an easy one sometimes, and the conversations and journey not always comfortable.

But it is imperative that we continue this work, that we do our part to continue to push and dismantle the systemic racism embedded within the school and other systems.

And the schools want to do our part.

The superintendent's proposed budget, the budget that our board approved, is one that will support this continued work.

We are dependent on you, City Council, to fund and support us in this work.

Historically, there is the 40% formula that the city has used as a base of financial support each year.

And we all know that the graphs that you have shown throughout your presentations, that that 40% hasn't been enough.

I do know that the county uses something closer to 60% for their funding formula.

We are grateful for the $2.1 million and the roughly $626,000 you all mentioned last week, but I need you to know and I need the community to know that this still leaves us with approximately a $1.2 million funding gap for the 2020-2021 budget.

Please continue to consider fully funding and prioritizing our request.

Our awesome students deserve this.

Our incredibly hardworking teachers who are now going, once again, above and beyond to organize and establish online learning options for the students.

They deserve this raise and so, so much more.

and a quick and from the bottom of my heart, thank you to all of the teachers, staff, parents, community members and partners who scrambled to get lunches and food out today and ongoing throughout the next weeks or days.

These tough times really challenge us all and this community definitely showed up.

Thank you.

Next up is Tanisha Hudson.

Tanisha, you're on with city council.

Hello.

I just wanted to say during the last budget meeting last Thursday in city space, you know, Heather was really big on process and while we're always so keen on process for nonprofits and developers or whatever, whoever else comes here and do whatever they want to do.

We need to have a process for the people who are not living wages.

The COVID-19 is really going to affect low-income individuals.

Also, people who have the temporary housing vouchers, some of those people are supposed to move out.

Like, they had one-year vouchers or two-year vouchers.

They're going to have to move out.

We're putting people in a worse situation.

at this point and I just feel like you know we should focus on a process for people who don't have it at this point.

You know like maybe assure that people gas or utilities won't be cut off.

Assure that if people are late paying their taxes due to this because a lot of people are about to lose their jobs especially

The UVA workers, you know, some people aren't reporting the work in certain departments.

They've already shut down stuff, especially like the cafeteria workers, people that work at O'Hill or the different dining halls up at UVA.

You guys are cutting hours.

Like, jobs are really doing

you know, shutdowns at this point.

I think safety is absolutely first.

I just want to piggyback off the lady that made the comment about the fire department.

While I love and respect the fire department for what they do, we do have other people that can do what they do as well.

We have ambulatory services all throughout the city of Charlottesville.

I don't think that we're going to have that many fires during the COVID-19, but I think we need to just focus on moving the money

at this point.

Stop funding nonprofits at this point.

McGuffey don't need any money.

I mean, it's a bunch of people that don't need money.

Schools, healthcare, and affordable housing should definitely be at the top of the list at this point considering what we're facing.

We just really need to

Sit back and think about how this is going to affect everyone, but how it's really going to push poor people back even further.

Thank you guys and I hope you guys stay safe and I hope y'all have some light sauce to spray on whites.

Is there anyone else who would like to speak?

Checking.

Interesting, my hand hurts right now.

It's just hard to be here.

If it is a little disappointing, you know, with first locality in Virginia, it's not an issue, it's an issue that we're dealing with, and it's Albemarle who is kind of a sort of a staff member for that, to fill that goal in as well as having 500,000 funds adjusted for climate change related projects.

We're thinking about how this COVID crisis is changing some of our systems that have been operated in this city and as a community in 20 to 30 years, if not before that, climate change is going to be happening in that same context.

It's not going to be working, it's not going to be working.

We're thinking about shocks to our supply chain networks.

food supply, communication patterns, people moving, food and beverage in the beach area because the companies are full of it.

So it's something that we absolutely need to believe in, right?

And first thing is to talk about communities and thinking in that 20th century.

I agree with you, Councilor Hill, that this budget process is really going to have to think through.

I think it's going to satisfy GDP production for quarter to negative 5% growth, which is going to put a wrench in everything in terms of adding revenue projections and up-end.

if that prediction comes true, how, you know, not just this budget cycle, but the next level.

I think, you know, that's something that, at least since maybe the first year of being on council, that staff has been

trying to get us to understand just, you know, unknowns.

When the unknowns pop, how do we handle those events of conversation?

I am looking forward to the work session, the climate change work session, because one thing that I want to, you know, make sure of is that we have a balance between

And so, I have a third thought.

and the county is doing within a lot of areas that the county is not supporting the way we are by affordable housing.

So that's also somewhere that we consider like just the priorities.

We know it's important in just trying to figure out how to balance it in.

The retreat.

Retreat.

Retreat planning.

Life expectancy is, in the last report of these, and I haven't been able to read this one, 11 years difference between North Downtown and the forestry neighborhoods, and that's primarily held by black community members.

So, linking them together is good, but also you have to look at it, and that's what I'm hoping that we are able to do.

That's what I'm looking for, is the work session.

You have to understand that you,

have to look at the climate change holistically and a lot of, I know it's linked and racial and hard to discuss, but a lot of black people feel left out of that conversation and they feel as if people are telling them what it looks like for them.

My concern for black and brown people is that they are going to the forefront of a conversation that they have lived for years.

And I tell people often, my grandmother, Louisa County, land, garden, smokehouse, animals, like all of the things that we talk about today to get back to.

through your food, raise the animals, all of that.

And in terms of limiting carbon emissions, we had all of that impact that you drive and was walking.

So people have been doing it for a lot of years.

And some people had to do it their whole lives.

They're not being taught that.

One thing I just wanted to say to address a couple of comments, and I've said this in other contexts.

to say it again in this context that we've been asked a number of times over the last few weeks and months to subscribe to or to underwrite some new initiatives in some areas.

For example, the climate change initiative is just one.

We've also been asked to consider adding more firefighters and things like that.

Those are two discussions that I really hope we will have in a serious way but not during the budget season.

It's very hard for us to figure that stuff out during the budget season and what we need to do is come up with a broader plan.

and the work session on climate change may be a good time to start some of that discussion, but it's really hard to start that discussion right now in terms of trying to figure out how much money we ought to, you know, the request has been made that we set aside that money while we try to figure out what we might do with it, which is a terrible way to look at it when the school system, for example, is saying, we already know what we want to do with it.

We've got a plan.

and we're going to say to the schools, I know you've got a plan and yes you've got a need but we're going to put that money over here instead to where there is no plan yet.

What he's saying is that these were the dollars that were in the budget previously.

That's one of the questions.

I do have one other question from a couple of budget people here.

Yes.

So we have a 17% fund balance.

Policy that we maintain, 3% of that is what is called an economic downturn.

The way the policy is written, however, is that we, our revenues have to be down overall one and a half percent before we can even touch it.

And then if we do, it has to be replenished within three years.

So right now, roughly one and a half percent, our revenues would have to be down 2.8 million and some change.

could even think about using it.

And also, it basically happens at the end, so it's not a source of funds per se to address the economic downturn.

The better way would be, if we are concerned about that, is to start

It's basically a protection against what would work out to be a $2.8 million downturn at a time when we're looking, oh, let's say we've got four more months of revenues left in the fiscal year.

When our lodging and meals taxes bring in an average $1.5 million a month,

you wouldn't think that unforeseeable, I mean it is foreseeable given the current issues that we could have that kind of a downturn and we could have that kind of a downturn.

Now interestingly I suppose the question would be what happens if part of that downturn occurs in one fiscal year and part of it in another fiscal year.

But still the point is I want to know what our funds were that were available for that purpose.

that has been raised, and we talked about it earlier, was the question of whether we could say to restaurants, okay, we know you all have collected that tax money, you can use it to pay

and on local law, you can't do that.

So just two comments.

One is correct in terms of you're so great in the meals and lodging.

The other thing we already know is because of the real estate assessments and with our current projections with personal property, they are projecting to be an upper budget.

So based on, again, just some really quick math, some really high in the sky projections with our revenue team, we really think that probably 20 is going to be okay.

That's what we just don't have.

And all of these sources, all of the big six, big seven sources that we talked to you about, they're all trending.

Up until this point, they were all trending ahead.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Oh, thank you.

I'm still here.

I don't have anything new to add.

All right.

Well, we're done.

No, with this, three.

No.

I will tell you, I don't sound as well.

I need to drink some lavender tea.

Good evening, Mayor Walker and Council.

This is sort of where the rubber meets the road, so to speak, with what's going on nationally and internationally with COVID-19.

There are some actions that department heads have come up with in the past couple of days that they're asking for Council to consider tonight.

The first is that

The Haven operates a shelter at 112 West Market Street.

There was a special use permit granted in February of 2007.

There are conditions that are attached to that special use permit, which limits its hours of operation.

Before you, there is a resolution that is just for the duration

of the City Manager's Emergency Declaration, which would negate the conditions that are attached to that special use permit.

and that would allow the haven to possibly serve as a shelter during the duration of this urgency.

And Kaki Demick, the head of human services is requesting it.

I think this is due to some correspondence the council has received from Pancho.

that they may not be able to fulfill their sheltering needs due to the COVID-19 crisis right now.

And so this is an option that Ms.

Timothy came up with, is the idea, again, just for the duration of the emergency, allowing possibly the haven to serve as a shelter.

And the way that would happen is for the council to pass a resolution

Second?

Yes, if you want to make an amendment to that and to have the condition also read, I mean, to have the resolution also read that

I'm just, I want to support that because I want just maximum flexibility and not needing for us to potentially need to take a vote at some point.

I'm going to say it's got to be by agreement with city council.

So I think the reason why they are asking, we're talking about a very vulnerable population,

are citizens and these are the Pacham and the Kochis associated with them are the groups that have signed up to take, to help make sure that their needs are met.

And I would just want to trust that process that the reason that they're asking us to do this is, again, the churches are concerned about mitigating the spread of

about viruses in any way.

It was talk about the fact that I think, Councilor Magill, that the daycare centers have these churches.

And so if they decide to use this as one of the sites and are able to do that, I don't want them to have to run off the planes for us.

I think at any point, if we hear something that's out of the line, that we could say something.

I would be concerned about that, especially with how dizzy everyone is.

I didn't know a lot of that came with the concern of just even that location being where it was, right?

There were four separate conditions for it.

The way this is worded, we're saying they can operate without regard to these special use permit conditions.

I just want to know what the provision, yeah, certainly limiting to that provision would help.

Maybe if we get the exact language we would know.

We may know from that whether my concern is at all a valid concern.

I would say that it could be interpreted, for example, that if we decide, if we were to approve the waiver, that somebody could decide that this was going to be a quarantine facility.

Now, that may be a valid purpose, but I think it's a decision that the city government ought to have some say over.

I don't think that would be their purpose.

I just want to make sure that the city is willing to be aware of the plan, has the ability to influence the implementation of the plan.

I'm not sure that I want to say yes, we're

I still want to, if I do remember, the one condition is it's available from 7 a.m.

We have all done four conditions and they were to remove all four.

There are four conditions.

Operation of the shelter shall be limited to hours of 7 a.m.

to 7 p.m.

Overnight accommodations will not be provided.

The third condition says, except for related office and storage uses, the operation of the shelter is limited to the lower or basement level of the premises.

And I don't need to worry about the fourth condition.

Reading and hearing about the history of it, downtown businesses and others did not want a homeless shelter, period, on the downtown wall.

And so in order for them to create the haven, they wanted to limit the ability to use it as an overnight homeless shelter.

And I think that was, that helped assure them that that kind of never happened.

But I was there a couple weeks ago.

You were there.

A few people were napping in that area.

You did, right?

Yes.

While they were waiting for the program and so on or whatever.

So I think they should be able to.

So one through three, right?

I would think all of them spend their time and.

Just having worked in the building and stuff, I would suggest at least one space because if necessary, the upstairs offices could be turned into a swimming shelter.

There's the basement floor, the first floor, the second floor, the first floor, so the second floor, I don't know what's there right now, but that could potentially be

So, does the motion even appear to grant permission to operate without regard to special use permit conditions one, two, and three?

That's right, so I'm sorry.

That we're granted on February 5, 2007?

Right.

So that's my revised motion.

Is there a second?

All right.

I didn't hear that, Sena.

Except that I think they're already involved in the discussions, so I'm not sure what additional burdens are being suggested.

I simply want to make sure that if we're, if we had

Of course, the special use permit was developed by and passed with a great deal of public discussion.

And for us to, without even giving notice to any of the neighbors, that we are just sort of eliminating these provisions that were so much of a product of discussion 15 years ago, I at the very least think that the city audit takes some responsibility for making sure that

Do you have any further discussion?

would have the same discussions that we would have beforehand.

I mean, the economic climate, the downtown area is pretty much the same.

I know at this point, our citizens who would use that space, if we used the library, they're unable to use the library.

The city is being asked to consider using our rec centers if this can be accommodated and paid.

I'm not asking that we meet the needs of the neighbors in the area.

I'm simply asking that the city, which has set out these conditions, rather than simply waiving the conditions completely and saying we don't

I just want to share how you go about this process that the city exercises oversight, which is apparently already happening.

I won't belabor the point any further.

All right.

Please vote.

Yeah.

Commissioner Divers is requesting an emergency witness.

So I move that we adapt the ordinance extending the deadline for elderly and disabled individuals to see that application is pursuant to Transylvania Code Section 225-25.

That's right.

All right, back to five to zero.

All right.

And then there is another request for an emergency for this.

Again, it has to be passed, proceeding with the offensive case in the dynamic structure

What it says, in effect, is a reminder of Dr. Richardson's emergency declaration and mandatory review periods that are less than 60 days.

Those timelines are going to be waived and because if they're not, then for instance,

certificates of appropriateness and other site plans.

There are certain deadlines in the city code, like 60 days, if staff or boards and commissions don't act upon them.

And in effect, they're deemed approved.

And this could, in fact, you know, depending on the process, there may not be time for consideration.

We just don't know.

Thank you so much.

Do I have anything to say?

Yeah.

All right.

Thank you.

I'll respond.

Finally, there was a resolution brought up, which was the last of the session,

I would move that

on my resolution, passing Governor Odom to sign HB 66.

Let me say that this actually has the potential, if not passed, to mess up and work out things that the city has suddenly involved with.

Is there any other?

Now we have to open up.

Really quick, I just want to say to Claire, we're here.

You don't know when we'll be here.

That's a fair question, but again, and I do want to give compliments to Ms.

Robertson, Ms.

Timothy, Ms.

Rivers.

These are folks, the NDS staff really did over the weekend, I think, think about the true, practical, logistical issues that arose when they came to our office today.

We've all been working to get these before you.

Thank you to all of our staff.

and many other folks, they choose.

Health.

We work hard to cover a lot of the work that we've done for the city, for the public.

I would add that I hope that folks will understand that in this respect, although we have our own declaration of an emergency, we're really operating under the governor's declaration of an emergency.

So the exercise of emergency powers by the city manager, as authorized by state law, is subject to the control of the governor.

So when people say, well, why doesn't Charlottesville just charge off and go do things that we want to have done, because it's an emergency?

There are some things that need to be done.

There are.

I think one thing that's probably fair to say is both at the federal and state level, but it's a good idea.

The more centralized in terms of decision making and applicability against the state or the nation, they expect.

and the tax amnesty that is also something I think a lot of people are concerned about.

We have a great 15-day plan.

Madam Mayor Walker, Marcia Dyer.

I don't need three minutes.

One thing, the state had today decided that there will be no billing, no shutoff for utility services of any kind.

That's what the SPC, I'm sorry, my alphabet suit for who can do that is a little

Scramble.

But I know I saw that news.

So that doesn't affect rents, but for utilities, the state has spoken.

And secondly, I ask you to, for climate change, put it in perspective.

You know that

When there is a climate emergency, it hurts lower income people, the people with the least ability to cope get hit the hardest.

In the city's budget,

You've got something like a $100,000 problem here.

It's not a million dollars, $100,000.

To my mind, it's one position and possibly half of a second position.

If you would share, the county and the city would share one position to do the

a checking on a GHG that's supposed to be reported every two years.

That's not a full-time job for somebody for two years, but it could be shared between the two entities.

So it's a little problem and you could solve it if you wanted to.

Sorry, I don't know why you're laughing at me.

So there was an interference that kind of startled us a bit.