City Council Special Meeting: Reports   12/21/2020

I call this, the purpose of this meeting is to hear reports that require no formal action by council and I call this meeting to order.

Mayor Walker is absent.

Councillor Hill?

So our first item up is the City Financial Report for FY21 through November month end.

Thank you, Vice Mayor Magill.

And I will turn this over to Ryan Davidson.

So this afternoon, we're going to continue to provide counsel with the monthly snapshot of the revenues and expenses for the general fund and the utility funds.

And also today, we're going to provide a brief summary of the preliminary information and data from the December tax deadline.

And Jason Vandiver, our treasurer, will speak with you about that after we get through this.

In the past, we've also provided an update on our progress with the CARES funds, but since you're going to be having a report on that at your meeting this evening with an action item, we're not going to get into those today.

And again, the following slides are just go over some of the highlights.

There's more detailed information that can be found in the report that was given to council and that will be posted online as always.

Go to the next slide, please, Brian.

So tonight we're gonna, or this afternoon, we're gonna start with the expenditures.

And currently we are through five months, which is approximately 41.6, 42% of the fiscal year.

But as I caution each month, when you're looking at

Expenditures, they don't spread evenly over the 12 months, so we can use this as a guideline when we're looking at the percent of budget utilized, but it shouldn't be a hard and fast rule when we're looking at savings and expenses and those things as we move through.

As we look through this first slide, schools, that counts both our contribution to the city schools and our contracts for pupil transportation and maintenance.

Healthy family section is one I wanted to point out.

if we were using that 42% guideline, it's slightly above that, but that's reflecting, the actuals are reflecting first and second quarter payments for several of the outside agencies.

Plus this category also is where we're showing all of the rent and tax relief programs for the city, including CHAP and the real estate tax relief, real estate and the rent relief for the elderly and the disabled.

And so those allocations, at least the one half of the yearly

fiscal year CHAP allocations are being reflected in that as well as some of the rent and real estate tax relief allocations.

And again, non-departmental activities, the reason this shows with such a low expenditure actual as opposed to the current budget is because most of those are one-time payments and transfers to other funds such as debt, social services, transit.

One-time payments recorded at different increments throughout the fiscal year, some at the end of the second and third quarter, some not till the end of the year, and they're adjusted as needed.

Next slide, please.

So as we start to talk about the revenue, this is just a reminder that our revenue team that develops these projections meets every other week, or more often if necessary, and consists of our commissioner of revenue, treasurer, director of economic development, director of finance, budget office staff, city assessor, city manager, deputy city manager.

We're constantly looking and discussing these revenues and our projections and our performance to date.

This first slide is a repeat of the information that we've shared with the council the past couple months.

There's no real new updates to these projections and I want to point out overall we're still looking at a revised projection with a decrease of approximately 4.9 million or two and a half percent from the original adopted budget.

We always monitor our revenues as we progress through the fiscal year and we'll come back with

to counsel with any revisions to our projections.

And previously we had reported out to council that we would come back on a quarterly basis with revisions to our revenue projections.

And at our next monthly meeting, we'll come back and we'll discuss any of the revisions or potential changes to the revenue projections that we might have.

Since at that point, we will now have six months worth of data and be able to make a better educated guess if you would on some of these with the

extra information that we now have at our disposal.

And the last, one last thing I wanted to point out on this is the meals tax decrease on here.

As I pointed out in the past, about 400,000 of that is related to the portion that's transferred to the debt service.

So there's also a corresponding decrease on that particular item of a expenditure, but that's not the case with all of these revenue, with most of these.

Next slide, please, Brian.

Here we're going to look at the five major revenues that we discuss each month.

Projections on the slide are still showing our original year-to-date projections.

Again, as we get into next month's report, we may look at presenting this to council in a different manner.

But for now, we wanted to stay consistent with how we're doing it.

And the real number that we're looking at is our percent of the 21 budget that's collected to date and discuss our relative performance to that.

With that, there's been no real major changes to these revenues as we've gone through, but I do want to move on to the next piece because there were some Council did have some questions or staff with questions about if we had any preliminary information on the

And again, I know Mr. Vandiver will stress this as well, but these are early preliminary figures.

There's still a lot of information, still a lot of variables to be had with this.

Thanks, Ryan.

Hopefully you can hear me.

All right.

As Ryan mentioned, these are just preliminary numbers.

The tax deadline for real estate and personal property was just two weeks ago.

So we're at the point where all the payments that have come in have been processed, but we have not yet sent out any past due notices.

So as we anticipated a few months ago, the city did experience a slight dip

and on-time tax payments for December similar to what we experienced in June when you compare it to last December's installment.

The on-time personal property tax payments declined by about 3.8% and on-time real estate tax payments declined by about 1.2%.

So we did have about 55 taxpayers who took advantage of extended payment plans.

And so these were taxpayers who contacted our office

and explain that they were having a financial hardship.

And so we worked out extended payment plans with them.

So it was a moderate number and it did account for some of the nonpayment that we saw.

And so we do expect that those taxpayers will make payments over the next few months and that revenue will come in this fiscal year.

But it did account a little bit for the nonpayment that we did see two weeks ago.

And so as Ryan mentioned, the current revised forecast that we're

Utilizing did account for a slight reduction in on-time collections.

And now that we're past the deadline, we do see that the city did experience that.

And so if we move on to the next slide, we can just show you exactly what that looks like.

So the red line on the top is the real estate on-time payment.

The blue line is the personal property.

And so you can see a very slight decline since last year, both moving into the June deadline and the December deadline.

of about 1.2% compared to last year, a slightly more drastic decline on personal property, not as large on a dollar for dollar basis since that revenue stream is, represents a smaller portion of the city's budget, but a larger decline there going from 83.9 a year ago, down to just over 80% on-time payments this year.

So as we move over the next few months, a lot of those payments will come in on the first past due notice that's going to go out in about two weeks.

And so we'll continue to work with taxpayers as we can, but just wanted to give you just what it's looking like so far.

And of course, as Ryan mentioned, coming back to you in January, if any of those numbers need to be revised for their current fiscal year budget.

The last slide, can we just go back real quick?

Most of that is on real estate.

I was looking at the accounting for the third bullet point down, the quarter of a percentage point.

Is that meant to be a quarter of a percent?

Yeah.

And as I say, if we don't have, if council doesn't have any additional questions at this point, that's,

All we had to report on this information.

And again, we'll come back to you again next month and we'll look at if we have any additional revenue revisions.

Let me just say that, first of all, I really appreciate the level of detail and the analysis.

For counsel's benefit, at least for my personal benefit, it's almost less important that I understand the numbers than that you understand the numbers.

and that we understand the big picture, which is that we're still looking at being roughly $4.9 ish million down.

And that number, as I recall, has not changed greatly over the last couple of months.

So hopefully that will be stable.

I would say that we are putting this number out there to let council know that because right now we still have the ability there's still a lot of unknowns where we are only six months not quite six months into the fiscal year there's still a lot of unknowns and so

That 4.9 number, while it may not equal the 6 million we put aside, there's still a lot of unknowns out there.

And at this point, we still have the ability to do more cost containment measures and more on the expenditure side.

Whereas if we wait down the road until potentially those numbers shift again in three months or whenever

then we're looking at less of an ability to be able to control that on the call side.

So that's part of the story we're trying to get across is that while, yes, we don't have any immediate danger of being, I don't want to say it that way, while we are not at that $6 million figure at this point, we don't want to limit our flexibility down the road by saying, oh, well, we have an additional 1.7 million in our cushion to be able to use for other purposes.

Absolutely, yeah.

I mean, we've got seven months left, and we've already used three-fourths of the cushion.

But that kind of cost containment is a staff issue, really, rather than a council issue.

We're not going to tell you to cut $10,000 here and $20,000 there.

Sure.

Yes, yes.

And if there's anything that would require a major policy shift or initiative, we would obviously come back to city council to discuss that.

Thank you very much.

I think Councilor Snook just brought up a very good point about we still have seven more months to go when we've already used three quarters of the cushion.

That's very,

Real.

I think we also have to make sure that anybody watching this understands that when we say we use three quarters of the cushion, that is projected out for the full year already.

Correct.

So it's not like, oh my goodness, we're 4.9 million down.

So are there clarifying questions from council?

Thank you.

Council, any discussion?

All right, Mr. Davidson, Mr. Blair, thank you very much.

Thank you.

Next up, we have our Social Services Advisory Board Annual Report.

I'd like to invite Janet Morrow, Social Services Advisory Board Member, to present with Diane Kuking.

Diane, I never pronounced your last name, so please forgive me.

To present,

Thank you, Sena.

I'm very pleased to present how social services has adapted to the pandemic and then the impact of that on our city.

There's three areas.

There's the benefits program, family services, and also admit.

So I'll start with the benefits program and Brian, do you have some slides there?

Let's see where you.

and the next one and then the next one.

Okay, on the benefits programs, the office did a transition to teleworking and that involved getting laptops and they changed their cell phones or they changed their office phones to be redirected to cell phones.

So they had to purchase some laptops and cell phones.

They changed the workflow.

They changed how to log in from home, but they did all this quickly and were able to execute the benefits program basically from home.

Supervisors still had to come in because the electronic benefits cards had to be signed and other issues that couldn't be done teleworking, but largely they adapted totally to working from home.

The Client Entry Team was another group that had to come into the office.

Some of the things helped them.

Waivers were issued for SNAP and Medicaid.

These were not consistent.

On page three of the report, there's some dates that go with

when they had to do interviews, when they didn't have to do interviews, and then they did have to do interviews again, they had to be ready to adapt quickly because sometimes things were waived and then they were reinstated.

One of the things that helped is that they didn't have to do interviews on SNAP for renewals.

And then they also could do the max benefit for SNAP.

If it was a family of four, based on income, sometimes they'd get one level of funding.

Sometimes it'd be a different level of funding if their income was different.

But they were allowed to say, oh, there's four people.

We're doing the max for four people.

But these kind of waivers and changes came and went throughout the pandemic.

On the next view graph, Brian, you can see some of the workload changes.

We're doing a report for both FY 2019 and FY 20.

You see it in FY, on the purples on the left, it's the months from March to June, you see that Medicaid was actually higher in 2019.

And that's because Medicaid expansion was in 2019.

but there's still a lot of new applications for Medicaid into 2020.

Then SNAP and TANF went up significantly between 2019 and 2020.

If you go to the right side of the slide, you see the months July to October, and there's still a lot of new SNAP and TANF applications

But there's not that surge that there was right at the very beginning of the pandemic.

Okay, Brian, if you could go back one slide.

Backwards, I'm sorry.

And the family services programs that are managed by social services.

They also did a transition to home.

And it was somewhat easier for them because they were used to working from home, but they still had to adapt.

At the beginning of the year, they could do virtual interviews with clients.

And then suddenly at the end of the summer, they had to be back doing interviews in person, which meant they needed PPE, which they had never used before.

So suddenly the admin folks had to

find PPE for people to meet with their clients in person.

If a family had a COVID instance in the house, they did not have to go there.

But otherwise, they were actually going to see their families in PPE.

They adapted to do the family partnership meetings virtually as well, which suited some of the families better because they didn't have

to travel to be at a family services meeting.

But they continued doing these family partnership meetings, which if you will recall from the last time we briefed you, there was a recognition for our little Charlottesville Social Services for how many kinship placements were done.

And now we've gotten national recognition from the Casey Foundation, which is,

So it's something we can be very proud of that our social services is being very successful in placing kids rather in homes with strangers in homes with kinship when at all possible.

There were some problems with doing things from home.

I'm sorry, with not having

in person.

And that is without in-person school, there was a reduction in child protection services referrals.

Most of the referrals for child protective services come from schools.

Some come from neighbors, some come from law enforcement and whatever, but the majority, and from medical personnel, but the majority comes from schools.

And without schools being in session,

that the number of Child Protective Services cases of referrals was decreased.

And then in admin, the finance team could not work from home.

And there's some issues there with, we have old systems that require paperwork, they require signatures.

Also some of the systems can't support telework.

So the admin people basically were not teleworking.

They were trying to rotate and take some time at home if they possibly could, but largely they were trying to distance in the office and wear masks in the office, and I hope they all continue to be safe.

So that is a summary of most of the changes that were made to adapt to the pandemic.

but there's also impacts from this.

Next slide, please, Brian.

And yes, in 2019, the total economic impact to the community is the number just underneath the yellow block, which is 90.9 million.

Very limited of that is local funding.

Most of that is federal funding.

And then you compare that at 90.85 million

up to the next slide, which is 2020.

Next slide, please, Brian.

And you see now it's 103 million dispersed to the community through these programs.

And keep in mind that FY20 only goes to the end of June.

So this increase of funding that's been dispersed through these programs, there's been a huge surge.

at the beginning and these first four and a half months of the pandemic.

Can't tell you yet what it's gonna be for 2021, but I think there's a lot of impact economically to the community.

We'd love to tell you also the impact that these numbers are making to families or to people or to our communities that it's harder to do because you get into trying to double count is this person receiving TANF

and food stamps or are they on SNAP one month and then other months they're not and then they're back.

It's very easy to double count.

So we don't have a number specifically, but you can see in your packet for the individual programs, how much money went for each of these benefits that are being managed successfully by our social services.

I guess I just want to say, I mean, I serve on the Social Services Board and I just want to, I guess, reiterate two points that came up in this report.

One, to be recognized by the Casey Foundation.

is a really, really big deal to take that national recognition.

And our social services team has worked incredibly hard in all the right ways to earn that recognition.

And it's a moment we should really be very proud as a city because the KC Foundation is looking to our social services to how to do this across the country and how to improve

putting children back with family and kinship placement, which leads to long-term better stabilization for children, less trauma in a child's life who has already been through trauma.

And I'm really proud that that's our social services here.

And then the second piece is just how much

Our citizens are needing the support right now and how that is also an increase in the workload on our social services workers.

I'm sorry, Sena.

I just wanted to say, if you estimate how many people are being affected through these programs in our community, it would normally be about 20%, and now it's about 25%, or upwards of 25%.

Although it'd be very hard to get you an exact number, it's a huge proportion of the citizenry of Charlottesville that depends on these programs.

You know that's hard to judge Heather because I think there are a number of people out there in this environment who have never ever relied on government assistance and don't you know it's not that they don't know how to contact us but they don't know they don't want to and you know that

That is something that is hard to control.

I mean, if there are people listening right now to our report, I encourage anybody to apply if there's a chance that they would qualify for assistance.

And it is nothing to be ashamed of.

You know, we all pay our tax dollars and many of the people that are now receiving assistance, it's because they've lost jobs and they've had jobs all their lives, but they paid their taxes all their lives also.

And to that end, I guess I'll ask Mr. Blair and Mr. Wheeler as well.

Like, are there ways that we can be conveying these opportunities maybe a little bit more deliberately than we have in the past, just given what you're expressing?

And I think we've kind of seen the same on the human services side.

It's just, how are we not, you know, we have to kind of connect these dots in terms of like people who are needing it need to understand what is available to them, so that we make sure that there isn't resources that aren't being untapped.

Well, I will certainly turn this over to Brian, but what I would point out is, and a prime example of this was today and posting about the Municipal Utility Relief Program, which we'll have on a consent agenda later tonight, but posting that on the website today.

But again, that's one example of starting

Not just starting, but ways to get the message out to a broader public.

Good afternoon.

You know, I think in general, what I would say is, I'll be happy to work with Diane and we, my department tends to respond to, you know, the initiatives from each of these departments.

So Laura Hildebrand, you know, teed up that press release that went out this morning for us.

Thank you.

So are there any other clarifying questions from council at this time?

Thank you.

Generally, we do this report earlier in the year so you don't get two comparisons of economic impact like you do now, but also remember that that increase really doesn't reflect the total increase there'll be this year in the federal and state dollars that are coming in because this is only through June 30th, the very beginning, and it doesn't include all of the new cases and the ongoing benefits that people have been receiving since June 30th

and also to note that it really does have a lot to do with what has happened since March and I expect to see next year's numbers even larger until we are through this pandemic.

And again, it's mainly federal and state dollars.

Very little local dollars are presented there.

And most of that is there's a match for staff costs.

But all of the benefit costs do not have local dollars in them.

So thank you very much.

Thanks, city council, for all you do.

And Diane, for all you do.

Diane and Janet, thank you very much for this report.

You're welcome.

Happy holidays, stay safe.

You too.

Next, we will go to recognitions of the EPA WaterSense Sustained Excellence Award.

Jill Greiner will be- Greiner.

Greiner, okay, I apologize.

Hi.

Thank you, city council, for your time.

I appreciate it.

I'm excited to share that the US Environmental Protection Agency has recognized the city of Charlottesville with the 2020 WaterSense Sustained Excellence Award.

Very exciting.

This is the highest level of program recognition.

And it's for promoting WaterSense and water efficiency in 2019.

Charlottesville is honored for a third year in a row for receiving this and also actually the sixth year of receiving a WaterSense Award.

Highlighted programs and community engagement efforts by the conservation program include issuing 253 toilet rebates, which estimated to save more than 2.3 million gallons of water per year, promoted water saving outside by asking when is the best time to water your lawn in ads that generated over 150,000 impressions and nearly 400 clicks

to the water conservation website.

We also launched the energy and water management program, which promotes saving water and installing WaterSense labeled products internally in the city's own buildings.

And the program also worked with Charlottesville City Schools to implement energy and water efficiency projects, education for staff and students.

And lastly, we distributed water saving fixtures to city residents, including over 430 water conservation kits

which included WaterSense labeled showerheads, faucet aerators, and toilet leak detection dye tablets.

The Water Conservation Program thanks the Charlottesville community for their continued support of the program and the efforts to save water.

And if you like more information about our program, you can go to Charlottesville.gov slash water conservation.

Thank you very much.

And that's wonderful news.

Absolutely.

Congrats.

It's always nice to have some good news towards the end of the year.

Thank you for all the work on this.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's great to see continued saving no matter even drought or not.

It's made an impact.

Next, we have recognition of the Circuit Court's LEAD Gold Certification.

Scott Hendricks will be presenting the Circuit Court.

Wait, did I already read this?

I think you read just both of those at once, but it's fine.

Yeah.

So I apologize for that.

That was the EPA WaterSense Award before.

Thank you and more good news, right?

So thank you, City Council, for the opportunity to present you with the announcement that Charlottesville Circuit Court renovation project recently completed has been awarded the LEED gold certification.

Mr. Hendricks, you seem to have

We'll see if he comes back.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Picking up where I left off, I think this is the seventh project to achieve LEED certification.

Previously, we've had the Downtown Transit Station, the CAT Operations Center out at Avon, Public Works Facilities Maintenance Building renovation, Echo Remod House on 5th Street, Smith Aquatic Center, and the Fontaine Fire Station.

LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is the most widely recognized green building rating system in the world and is an international symbol of excellence.

LEED projects earn points by adhering to prerequisites and credits across line measurements for the building's excellence.

Overall, buildings in the U.S.

account for almost 40% of greenhouse gas emissions, and in Charlottesville they account for over 50% of our greenhouse gas emissions.

by designing and constructing the Charlottesville Circuit Court renovation and addition project to lead standards.

The city's project team have demonstrated a continued and strong commitment to the city's council's long-term vision of conserving energy and promoting environmentally sustainable building practices.

Charlottesville Circuit Court was constructed in 1962.

It houses the 16th Judicial Circuit of Virginia.

This renovation and about 9,000 square foot addition represent the first significant improvements to that building since it was built.

The project achieved LEED Gold for implementing practical and measurable strategies and solutions in a number of areas.

It minimized landfill waste during construction, integrated sustainable materials, optimized energy performance, and conserves water.

The project is expected to achieve energy cost savings of up to 35%.

I'm pleased as a project manager to have the designation awarded to the circuit court project and appreciate the commitment from the project team and council on the city in getting this done.

Glad to deliver.

You too.

Thank you.

So our last report for the evening, this says written only on here.

Does that mean no one will be presenting it?

Something right before that, but maybe I have an old agenda.

You have an older agenda that has number five has been struck at this point.

Okay.

So we are on to number six.

the Community Attention Youth Internship Program.

And it says written only.

Right.

OK.

So I guess I'm going to be calling this meeting to a close.

Do I need to take a poll or anything like that on this?

Okay.

Um, so we will be re adjourning at 5 30 to be read into closed session.

Um, so, yeah, Brian, do we have the link for the main meeting?

Well, we sometimes when this four o'clock slot has gone a little longer, we've gone right into closed session.

So since we have this break, should we

So for the 6.30 meeting, you will come into a different link for that public meeting.

Yeah.

So if if we do that, the meeting will we need to re come into a public link before then or just go straight?

Okay.

Well, if you read the motion, if you read the motion,

Now, and you say that the meeting, you'll be convening in the closed portion starting at 5.30, then you don't have to go back into this public meeting before you start your closed session.

But the motion should clearly say that, you know, pursuant to your motion, you'll be convening the closed meeting at 5.30.

Yeah, I see the opportunity to do that.

I do have a question about that, because

because it has been advertised to the public that the closed meeting would be at 5.30.

Well, it's up to you all.

I think that might be just a little bit cleaner.

We'll keep this same meeting running because that's how we advertised it.

And I'll put up a slate that says you're in recess.

And then when you come back at 5.30, you can make the motion and then you'll switch to whatever your closed meeting link is.

Thank you.

Thank you everybody very much.

I adjourn the special meeting.

Until 5.30.

Until 5.30 of which we will come back for announcement of the closed session.

That's right.

Thank you.

I'm just watching the countdown timer here.

All right.

Yes, ma'am.

Pursuant to section 2.23712 with the Virginia Code, I hereby move that City Council close this open meeting and convene in a closed session as authorized by Virginia Code section 223711A1 for discussion and consideration of appointments to boards and commissions and the performance of the Acting City Manager.

Section 2.23711A29 for discussion of the award of a public contract to conduct the search for a new city manager and discussion of the terms or scope of the contract where discussion and open meeting would adversely affect the bargaining position or negotiating strategy of the city.

Councilor Payne?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Magill?

Your mic was off.

Yes.

Yes.

Everyone should have received a Teams invite from me and my city email.

All right.