Council Budget Work Session   3/4/2021

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I can't hear anything back, though.

Try your mic.

Michael was having some log on issues so he's joining now so we'll get started in just a just a moment.

All right.

Thank you all for being here today.

I'll call this meeting to order.

Ms.

Mayor Walker?

Present.

Vice Mayor McGill?

Here.

Councillor Hill?

Here.

Thank you.

And I'll turn this

Thank you, Mayor and Council.

Thank you for allowing me, the budget team, and the department heads to present for your discussion the first work session for the fiscal year 22 budget preparation.

This afternoon we'll be concentrating on the general fund budget.

This is a high level view of the general fund revenues and the general fund expenditures for FY22.

We'll provide changes from FY21 to the recommended FY22 budget for both revenues and expenditures.

We'll provide once again the recommended balanced budget of $190,689,839.

Included in this recommended budget are several identified council priorities of affordable housing, racial equity, safety and security, workforce development, as well as investment in our employees.

Items not recommended for funding in FY22 will also be identified to include that currently no salary increases,

to include level departmental funding as well as some other council-enquired programs.

Those include projects as well as services.

Hopefully, with the understanding today that for every dollar we add, we must also cut a dollar from an existing department or program for any additional program or services that are recommended.

The largest of our programs, the Charlottesville school systems, has three options that we offer for your thoughts, as well as for perhaps a later approval, knowing that $4.5 million will be needed to level fund their request from FY22 to FY23, though the school's current request is a level funding from FY21 to FY22.

Ryan and Chrissy will walk us through these highlights and should you have any questions in general, they will be able to answer.

Should you have a question for a departmental budget, the department head is here to answer those questions.

I asked that if you as a group would like for a specific presentation of a particular department or a program, we'd be glad to schedule special meetings or place in an upcoming workshop so that you can receive the details needed for your review.

Emailed to you earlier and part of this work session packet are the lists of unfunded requests as well as reductions to previously funded expenses.

The reductions shown are merely reductions and do not include several added expenses above the FY21 expenses, such as the Citizen Review Board additions and Deputy City Manager for Race, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion additions.

I've recently stated to many of you that I plan to begin the FY23 budget process immediately after the approval of the FY22 budget.

I would like to revise that to say now today is the beginning of the FY23 budget process.

Items discussed by council and items that were requested by department heads that may be unfunded in FY22

will be the starting point for consideration to add to the baseline of the FY23 budgets.

I also ask your indulgence when considering programs to add to this budget.

We have five weeks until we should approve this budget.

It came together in a period of major transition of staff,

And not helping at all is the limited funding available for this budget due to the revenue shortfalls in both FY21 and expected shortfalls in FY22.

We're quite limited and well vetted programs that we could implement in FY22.

Immediately after approving this budget and working from programs that may go unfunded, staff will begin working with council as well as the community for an updated city council strategic plan.

Upon that completion, staff should fully know where council's priorities are for the next year and develop budget requests accordingly.

I wish circumstances were different, but we are where we are and we believe that we have delivered a very conservative but fair budget for FY22.

And if circumstances change during the fiscal year, we can certainly work together to amend this budget should revenues begin to come back faster than expected.

As Ryan and Chrissy walk you through this overview, we in the department heads will be prepared to answer your specific questions or take notes to provide you any information that you may need to include any special work sessions by department or by the programs.

Thank you, Chip.

Brian, you can go ahead and start the presentation if you would please.

Okay.

So as Mr. Boyle said, our first work session, we're going to kind of do a high level overview of our revenues and our expenditures for the general fund.

Excuse me.

And we're going to start by talking about the general fund revenues, and then we'll get into some expenditures.

And finally, we will have some wrap up and some staff follow up what we heard, what we need to follow up for.

And then I know Mayor Walker, you normally like to allow for time for public comment at the end.

So we've built in an area for some public comment at the end of the work session should time permit.

Next slide, please.

So we're going to start by going over a high level view at our revenues.

We're going to look at the revenues by category.

We're not plans not to go through each one, every every single one line by line.

Most of these between our monthly financial meetings and the presentation on Monday night, we've kind of talked about over and over and over again.

however if you have any questions about any of the individual lines that show up as we go through here or any of the other revenues feel free to interrupt stop me and ask but our plan is to just look at these each one each one by the categories as they show up in our budget document and the revenues that are showing up in these categories right here are

The only ones that had any changes between the FY21 adopted and the FY22 proposed budget.

So if you don't see a revenue listed up here, that means it is being level funded from the previous fiscal years.

So overall, this is our local taxes, which as you can see, includes all of our real estate and our local consumer driven taxes.

And these overall, this amount is decreasing by about $836,000.

And so

if there's any questions about any of these specifically feel free to speak up now or we can come back to these at any point and one thing one second counselor one thing I did want to point out and I put this at the bottom of the slide there's a lot more detailed information on

most of these revenues in the budget document, specifically that little section of B5 to B12.

There's a lot of good details behind some of the trends and projections that you can look at that might help explain some of this as well as some further explanation on you.

Well, I'm sure, I mean, I will go and look at that document.

I apologize if it's

I'm wasting time asking, but I think just generally speaking, I'm trying to understand the thought around the both the meals tax and occupancy taxes versus where we are in this current year, which obviously the entire fiscal year has been affected for those areas for FY21.

But this is reflecting even lower amounts.

So this is what these changes are shown from is technically we haven't

We haven't officially revised anything with a council action on our budget for our budget revenues.

The revised projections I'm showing you are where we anticipate finishing.

So this is showing from what was adopted in June versus what is being proposed in March here.

And so a lot of these, yes, some of these revenues, like, for example, transient occupancy tax is showing an increase

from our revised projections.

So yeah, and I would say that with most of our consumer-driven taxes that we are seeing increases from our current revisions.

It's just from the prior year adopted, we had not taken as deep of a cut as what has materialized.

If there's no other questions on this one, we can go ahead and move to our next slide.

So here we have our licenses and permits, the biggest one being BPOL, our business licenses, and that's projected to increase in total by about $225,000.

Intergovernmental revenue, state revenue, Albemarle County revenue outside of the revenue sharing, that is increasing by $65,000, or excuse me, decreasing.

Our charges for services, you can see some of them listed here, and in total, that's an overall decrease of about $27,000.

Is there any questions on any of the items that would fall in here?

Okay, now we'll move on to the next one.

Miscellaneous revenue, this is a decrease of about $295,000.

Transfers is decreasing by about $200,000.

City County revenue sharing, I did want to point out overall, we're seeing an increase of about $822,000.

However, the operating budget portion is reducing because last year we took this portion of the moved it from our cash funded CIP into that covered reserve area.

And so we're putting this back into our cash funded CIP project.

So we're seeing it showing up as a as a reduction in the operating portion.

But on the next slide, you'll see it's actually an increase in the designated portion.

and the total increase for that item is about eight hundred twenty thousand dollars.

Next slide.

And here you see that first line, that increase of about six point two million dollars in our transfer to the capital projects.

but overall our designated revenues are seeing an increase of about 5.9 million total general fund budget revenue changes of roughly a decrease of roughly $500,000 from what was adopted in June of last year.

Are there any other questions on the revenues at this time?

We can always come back to these later on if we have additional questions.

All right, hearing none.

All of these changes we just looked at, as Mr. Boyle said, added up to a general fund revenue budget of just shy of 190.7 million, which again, decrease of about $500,000 from the prior year's budget.

We use those projections to form the basis of our general fund expenditure budget, which as you can see, also $190 million.

And so as a slide illustrates, we're presenting you with a balanced budget with the budget gap of zero.

And as Mr. Boyles mentioned earlier, any addition on the expenditure side or a reduction on the revenue side is going to result in a decrease from somewhere else in a different item, a different area in the proposed budget.

So we need to keep that in mind as we move through what is and isn't in our general fund budget.

One thing I did want to point out is as we move through the budget process, we may come across changes or amendments that may need to be made to the budget that staff becomes aware of.

And there are a couple both on the revenue and expenditure side that we're in the process of tracking and reviewing.

And once we have all of that information on these, and if we feel that a change is necessitated or warranted in the operating budget, then we'll come back to council and explain what those changes were and any potential impacts that they may have on our overall budget.

But we will, you know, normally we will begin the work sessions by any follow-up or from the previous work session and showing any amendments or changes that we have had since the last time we met and had a budget discussion with city council.

Thanks, Ryan.

So this slide here, we wanted to just highlight the things that are in this budget.

Again, these are things we talked about Monday night, but just as a reminder, we are continuing our investments in many of Council's priorities, such as affordable housing, tax and rent relief programs, that's the CHAT program, and then the other tax relief programs is in the budget at approximately $1.8 million.

For racial equity, we are fully funding the deputy city manager of race, equity, diversity and inclusion, the home to hope program, the food equity initiative, the office of human rights, in addition to the city's minority business activities.

Regarding safety and security, we are adding additional funding to fully fund the police civilian review board.

We've also been able to enhance our EMS services by taking advantage of a safer grant to add employees to the fire department.

For workforce and economic development, we are again funding the Downtown Job Center.

The very popular Go workforce development programs are all still in this budget.

In addition, although not at a level maybe where we'd like it to be, we are investing in our employees.

The living wage will remain at $15 an hour.

We have added a health care premium holiday that will be roughly equivalent to one month.

We're still working on those details and they'll be rolling out with open enrollment, but that is in this budget.

And we've also added a redesigned gym subsidy program for employees.

Next slide, please.

So now the bad news is what's not in this budget.

And I think as Mr. Boyle started off and as Ryan reiterated, anything or any changes from this point on that council chooses to make, a plus on one side is a negative on the other.

So it really is a balancing act to keep the budget in balance.

The things that we could not fund, which is where Ryan and I spend our time stressing about, is there is no increase for employee compensation.

Some of the other localities and other places are looking at 2% COLAs.

If we were to do something like that, that's roughly $1,040,000.

that is not currently in the budget.

There were new departmental requests of about 4.9 million, which we sent that list along for your review, and it will also be on our website.

The economic reserve funding, last year, if you recall, we deferred capital projects, cash funding, and left that in the general fund to fund a reserve of about $6.6 million.

There is currently no reserve funded in the FY22 budget.

We also have talked about with the current CIP, the affordability issues and the future needs on debt service.

This budget maintains a level of funding for debt service transfer.

And there are roughly $123 million worth of unfunded CIP projects.

All of those things are things we know about.

And then the last bullet are any other council initiatives or additions that you all may want to talk about.

And that's what we're hoping to talk about today.

So next slide.

One of the biggest decision points while it may not necessarily have an impact on the budget for 22 is what decisions you will make regarding your funding for schools in 22.

As you know, we talked about Monday night, the school board has requested level funding for school operations in 22 with a total contribution of 5.8 million.

They've also talked about that they will be increasing their budget and using CARES, the one-time CARES Act funding, and in doing so, they would be projecting an increase from the city contribution of $4.5 million for FY22.

Again, that would be to just fund the things they know about this year.

That doesn't add on anything else that may come up between now and then.

And then the increase is largely being driven by the addition of 14 and a half FTEs and arrays for teachers and staff on average of about 5%.

So again, these graphs we've looked at, we look at these every year, the one on the left, the bars are the target

Strictly based on the formula, which is the 40%, and then the line is what we've actually given to schools.

Again, the idea here is to sort of give you a visual of the fact that we have consistently funded over and above the actual formula.

And then the graph on the right, which is where we want to talk about a couple options for you is the idea of the bars represent the growth that we expect that would relate to the formula.

And the red line reflects the actual contribution to schools.

So the options that we want to talk about really talks about this last big uptick for 23.

and if you'll go to the next slide please.

We wanted to again talk about what that means.

So option number one would basically be to adopt the school's proposal as submitted for FY 22 and 23.

That means we would leave the contribution level for FY 22

And then once we start FY23, the 4.5 million that's being funded with one time funds would become the new base.

So this would be very similar to the scenario that we talked about in the budget with the budget 21 budget with the gifted teacher program.

Again, this would increase your base.

So we are starting off at 58.7.

We would be adding four and a half million to that under option one just to start 23.

Option two would be to reduce the FY22 school contribution and use some of the savings to fund items that had to be removed from the city budget in order to balance.

Some of those things would be a 2% COLA for city employees at a cost of about $1,040,000.

To add funding, we had to remove about $640,000 of city positions out of this budget.

Again, these were vacant positions, but in many cases, they're needed positions that could not be funded.

We had to take out $200,000 for facility repair projects that could not be funded.

That's half of what we normally fund in facilities repair.

and then also the funding for equipment replacement, we took out 400,000 which equates to all of the new money that we typically add into the equipment replacement fund.

I'm sorry, that's not correct.

We normally put in about a million three I believe, this 400,000 takes it down to about 860-ish thousand.

So all of those things had to be taken out.

We could pick and choose some of those and reduce the school contribution to add those back into the city budget.

That would be the option number two.

Option number three would be to adopt the school's proposal as submitted for FY22 only.

and there would be no assumed increase to the base for 23.

So in other words, when we start the conversations in FY23, we would be starting with the base of $58.7 million, meaning that any new operational increases that schools decide to fund in 22 with their CARES funding would have to be on the table and reconsidered as a new request for 23.

So those are the three options that council would have as you look towards the school contribution for FY22.

And I'll stop there.

And are there any questions, further discussion?

This other way I'm looking at it, I can think achieves one of these options is laying out is just that my suggestion on Monday that they consider smoothing out how much they let those dollars stretch over the next couple of years versus kind of going much more all in and this first year knowing that this is going to be a real struggle for us.

But it seems like that would just equate to option two where we're going to reduce their budget but without even

I mean, either we reduce their budget or they decide to let CARES money itself, don't put that full amount in this next coming year and maybe just do half of that and then another half, which allows us to smooth over.

Does that make sense?

It does.

And if we could just pop back one slide, I just want to make sure that visually we make one other point about that.

So if we look at the slide on the right here, just keep in mind that if we don't make any considerations and we accept the option as proposed,

Basically, we're going to be having this exact same conversation next year, because as we can see from this graph, we're only anticipating a small amount of growth in real estate and personal property.

And that is far less than the anticipated four and a half million dollar need.

And one other item or one other point of clarification I wanted to make on your suggestion, Counselor Hill, is I know in their presentation on Monday, schools said that they had until September of the fiscal year 23, I believe it was, to spend those funds down.

And we would need to get clarification from the schools.

And so that would just be by the end of that first quarter of the following year.

I thought it was calendar year 23.

Maybe I misunderstood that.

Okay.

I was under that impression from another session that we had for the Merlin year, but

I could have misunderstood as well, but that's why I was trying to say that I thought we had more time to expend those because they had much longer than we did for our city here's funds.

And then Chrissy, so the million and 23 of new expected revenues would be additional to the 0.7.

So it'd be 1.7, which would be different because we're not giving them that additional 0.7 this year if we're holding them level.

So it was an opportunity for 1.7 additional when we go out to fiscal year 23 versus now.

Again, I'm not really clear on those details.

That would definitely be a question we could clarify.

I do believe that there is some

Strings attached to receiving the additional money and that the pay raise does need to be included, but I'm not exactly sure of those specifics.

Yeah.

Well, I believe that was the last

content slide.

And just for clarification, while we're on this slide here are the option two.

When you've laid out these sub bullets, these are kind of the last things that you all gave up on to get a balanced budget and that's why they're being identified

I would say that these are the more substantial things that we had to give up in order to get the budget to balance.

Yeah, and, you know, we don't have a lot of slides here because we wanted council to be able to use this time to talk amongst yourselves about things or to communicate with us about things that, you know, are not here that you want here or changes that you would like to switch around.

Do we have that?

Hey, afternoon, everybody.

The proposal that I put in my budget request

really is just a placeholder to kind of keep it in the conversation was going.

It was to combine the CHAP program and the real estate tax relief programs into one program.

And in the first year that we did that, that was going to be about six hundred and fifteen thousand dollars, I believe.

And so I just don't really, I mean, you may be able to find the money for that.

I don't see how you're going to be able to do that.

Beyond that, I didn't really, I haven't put in any recommendations for updates to those programs.

I was kind of hoping we could just kind of leave them alone for a year and then revisit this back in FY23 and do it right and merge the programs the way we've been wanting to do.

Yeah, but Todd, could you talk a little bit about what merging the programs, what that process would look like?

Because it's not a one cycle process.

So you would need the funds to begin to merge the process or

Yeah, it kind of is.

The first budget that it takes place in is going to be the big one because you would need to fund

The way these things are structured, the application process for real estate tax relief comes in the second half of a fiscal year, and the application for the CHAP program comes in the first half of the fiscal year.

So you'd be in a situation for that one fiscal year of kind of paying for

one and a half per, I mean, both programs in one year, if that makes sense.

Basically, the new adjusted program plus part of the old regime.

And so then the outlay in that first year is what makes it, you know, the big bite.

The following year, when you're not paying for a half a year of CHAP or what have you,

then the cost comes down.

To follow up on that, on the departmental new request summary sheet that we were given,

talks about the merger as costing $615,000.

Yes, sir.

What would be the effect going forward?

Okay, so the way it would work, I think the way we had envisioned it in the proposal was the new budget gets adopted.

in the and so we would be in the if we did it this year, let's say.

So we would be moving into the second half of calendar year 21, which is the first half of fiscal year 22.

That's when the big expense for the CHAP program takes place.

Those payments go out in the first half.

They would go out in the first half of fiscal year 22.

then we get to the second half of fiscal year 22 and we would combine the programs.

And so you would have to spend for that calendar year, you would be spending on the real estate tax relief, what was formerly the real estate tax relief program with the new CHAP people in it.

John, if I can jump in for a second and kind of take a step back from the nitty gritty details of everything and just look at it as an overall program, big picture program.

Todd's much better at the details, but when you step back, what we were looking at was roughly $2.5 million program, thereabouts, if we had enacted this into FY22, and then moving forward, the estimate of, and this is assuming no other parameter changes or nothing else along those lines,

Then we're looking at more like a $2.3 million program moving forward because you're not having that double hit of that one program.

And

Help me.

I mean, I get the idea of the transitional problem, but going forward, if we're merging them, is there a difference?

It actually would.

We wanted to structure it in a way that nobody does worse after we combine the programs.

So most folks would do at least as good as they're doing now.

Some would do a little bit better.

Well, I mean, it's beyond the scope of this particular discussion right now.

Maybe I'll call you up and say, okay, explain this to me slowly.

Yeah.

I'm really more interested just purely the budgetary impacts and the budgetary impacts are number one, that because we're not doing this, we're not incurring proposed $615,000 in this coming fiscal year, right?

And we are then not incurring another three years to 300,000 or so the following year.

Yes.

If we decided to do all of this a year from now,

A year from now, we would have the roughly six hundred and some thousand dollars and basically just kick everything back a year.

And while I understand that thinking, and that's what the premise that the decision was made last year to hold off, we're now going into the second year.

And I know that there are some individuals who think that the increases are

since they were increased over what it had been forever in the past few years, that that should be significant.

But I think what we need to also think about when we're having this conversation is all the money that we are seeing that we're going to invest now

She's a member of the U.S.

Department of Public Health and Public Health and Public Health in affordable housing and why we're doing that and if that is sufficient enough, which is why I think we need to have these programs evaluated that we're already invested in, because even the things that I champion, I can think they're really good ideas, but if they're not actually helping people, if they're actually not keeping people in their homes and if there's something else that we need to be doing, we don't know that.

Everyone that owns a home in the city limits receive their assessments.

They know the valuation of their property, what those increases look like.

We know the developments that we have voted for, and we know what those type of developments do to the assessments of properties within neighborhoods.

And then the conversation should become, can the individuals who need these programs most survive until we get to a year where our budget has stabilized?

Or is this an equity-related conversation that we need to have to ensure that they are even here a few years from now?

when we plan to implement the program.

So that's how I'm looking at it.

And again, I don't know if it's working or not.

I mean, I don't know if you want me to address that.

I mean, we're not going to stop with the two programs as they are.

I mean, they're going to continue, you know, for another year.

They're just going to be like they were last year.

And it's better than it was, but there's still a place where

that could be more helpful, and we don't know if helpful is helpful enough.

Yeah, and I don't know if I can answer that.

You know, I mean, we've got, we do every year, you know, we pull numbers on how many folks have taken advantage of the program, you know, how much grant money we've given out.

I mean, I've got all those statistics I can share with you.

I don't know that it's going to

get to what sounds like you're wanting to know.

Yeah.

No, I'm not really asking.

All of what I said wasn't just for you.

I'm just thinking to have this conversation about what we're doing.

Even the slides earlier about, you know, the equity related initiatives, while those things have been talked about as in tipping the budget into this current state in the past, if you look at how much money we're talking about in terms of a 996

Million Dollar Budget and now $190 million budget is still a very small amount of that budget.

Because what we haven't done is decided, which this started under Mike Murphy's interim period, but looking at how do we infuse equity into these conversations.

So we haven't done that yet.

So we think that a few million dollars is

is sufficient while it's more than we've done in the past, it's still not a large percentage of the budget.

That $40 million over five years that we're talking about, if the budget didn't grow, we're talking about a budget that would almost be a billion dollars in a five-year period that we're comparing $40 million to.

So I just think if we, at some point,

and maybe this is not where we're going, but where the community think we're going is where we're looking at every action that we do through an equity lens and how do we get there and how do we ensure that we're progressing.

And so as I see those numbers, that's, I don't really, I don't know.

I mean, questions that I would have,

as somebody who always attempts to figure out how to support employees is we're back to that same work that was done during that interim period with Mike about how do you infuse equity into your budgets?

And there were some department leaders that didn't even have answers.

and I'm sure they still don't have answers and so when I'm sitting here looking at that department leaders comb through their budget without a more detailed explanation of that based on what I'm passionate about and what people elected me to do for this brief period of time that I'm here would be

to make sure that equity was a component of all of our discussions.

Any other questions from counsel?

And back to the school's budget, you know,

There's a lot to all of this.

I think at least we do have the complete information from the schools to know what's continuing every year within their budget and what they're decreasing.

But we also have to look at this.

I think if we start looking at how things are linked together, then we get to a better place.

What the school is saying,

that because of the pandemic, because of the stressors that the families have gone through during this time, that there will be an increased need.

It's just highly unlikely that anyone on this council is not going to try to meet what those needs are.

But there's also a better way to look at this.

When I see that the school is saying that they need social workers to attend to the needs of their students, I'm also thinking about what our Department of Social Services and our Department of Human Services, what are their plans and how have they planned for this in their budget?

and have every has a school and those departments had those conversations so that we can know whether that is a true need and if this is the best way for it to be fulfilled.

So that's just one of the I know some of this is planning for students that may be behind because of being out of

School for the portion they were last year and then up until this point this year.

And I agree with that.

I think it goes even beyond our own city and also just what other partners

what resources they're able to provide to those ends.

Because I think there certainly is a community that is attuned to what this impact is having on the youth in our community.

And obviously the schools have a place in that.

But I agree that we should be looking at it across all resources that are available to serve these needs.

And the other thing that is weighing on me, and I mentioned it I think on Monday, is just how big business school system projected is going to be.

And I've heard just

The estimates and what attrition they think will be maintained, but I know that's going to impact future funding outside of the local dollars, depending on how many students are serving.

So those are all just kind of weighing on me when we're looking at how deeply they're kind of digging into this CARES funding in this first year.

But I don't disagree that the needs are

really acute right now.

Some kids are going to start going back on Monday, and I don't disagree with that.

And it's just, again, it's that tough spot where when the greatest need is happening, we have the least amount of revenue, really, to be able to support those needs.

One thought that I had on the whole issue with the schools, and I sent this around an email to

to counselors a week or so ago, when the schools are talking about a 5% pay increase for their people, and we are, because we are funding their pay increase, we have no pay increase for our employees, that doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Virtually every governmental agency around here that I'm aware of, certainly the ones we have direct dealings with, like Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority,

and Sewer and Solid Waste Authority are having at least a 2% increase for their people.

And I just have a hard time trying to figure out why we would essentially be funding for the schools a 5% increase when we're giving nothing to our own folks.

I note that the cost of living increase, the cost of living according to the federal government between 2019 and 2020

went up about 4.4% between those two years, 2.6 and 1.8, I think it was.

There's not a magic necessarily to getting to something consistent with that, but that's certainly, I think, where we ought to be thinking about.

But I think since that funding would be delayed until the next fiscal year, that

It would exist if we reduced the school contribution from the 58 and took a million off of that.

So we would give the schools less.

That's option two.

Well, that's certainly a way to approach it.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean part of the part of the thing that that's occurring here is that the school system seems to be taking the CARES Act money and almost credit holding it against us for the next fiscal year and beyond by saying because we were able to take this four or five million dollars in CARES Act funding and even though it's only temporary

We're telling you in advance, City Council, that we're going to expect you guys to make that up for us in coming years, which of course we don't really have the ability to see how we can do at this point.

But anyway, that's neither here nor there.

My point is that I think we have gotten to the point where there is something of an uncoupling between assumptions that we have made in the past, for example, about always giving the up to 40% increase in

up to 40% of the amount by which the property taxes have gone up.

The CARES Act money has clearly changed the ballgame, at least in the short term.

And the fact that the governor is going to be giving them another squad of money to allow them to give a pay increase to their people at a time when if we do what we're saying we're going to do, we can't afford to give a pay increase to our people.

It just doesn't make any sense.

So could I I think, you know, if I do have a problem, which I stated in the past with giving other people pay increases and not being able to assure that our employees are also

you know, taken care of.

But I don't, that doesn't translate to not doing it.

And I don't know based on how this budget is being presented, you know, how

how we're doing it, because this is just presented as like kind of this is it.

And we don't even know what some of those trade-offs could be.

And if it's not a

If it's not an open process, then it's going to be a more stressful process to staff to try to figure out because I don't know what they've been through to date in terms of how you've already discussed their budgets with them.

I said at the last meeting by now we would have at least had more two to ones about, you know, the budget so that we could have talked through some of this stuff as counsel and staff.

So

If the way I'm hearing the budget is this is just it, and if staff is hearing it the same way, anything that we send back is just going to be more stressful unless they've had, I guess, more positive experience than just this is it, kind of, because I don't even know where to start and making recommendations.

So I can't imagine,

Um, you know, unless the process has gone differently with the staff.

I don't know.

So one thing I would offer is that, you know, basically the departments were asked to submit level budgets for FY22 with no new requests or no increases and to maintain those as level as possible.

We've made every effort to

make that a reality so the departmental budgets are for the most part level except for the exceptions of positions that were unfunded and again when we looked at those positions that we chose to recommend for unfunding they were positions that were vacant and expected to be vacant for the year but that's why we didn't recommend removing the FTEs just unfunding them so

It really is a case of pretty much a status quo budget, with the exception of those big bullet points for cuts.

And again, I think it's not that we're offering a budget that says it's this or nothing, but it's

The budget is basically the same as last year.

And other than these other cuts, we had to make a reduced budget.

And where would you like us to start looking in terms of cuts?

So that's what I'm saying.

I don't know.

And I'm probably the one who, if anyone did know, I've worked with, you know,

not in the Department of Social Services, but with a secondary agency that worked closely with social services.

I've worked in human services.

I've worked in Parks and Rec as an employee.

I know my colleagues can't tell you where you would start because I couldn't even tell you even having worked in two departments and with one department closely where to start because it really just it doesn't work in that way.

We don't know what I mean unless we were not going to take into consideration that our department leaders are experts and know what they're doing.

If we're gonna start from that foundation is I'm assuming that what they presented to you all, they were saying that this is what we need to run our department.

If we are always at that space, which is why I brought up the work that I think was beginning during that interim period of just because we've done something for X number of or done it this way doesn't mean that we have to continue

And I don't know if five weeks into the budget cycle is where you start to have those conversations that we've been, you know, kind of tiptoeing around for years, you know, at this time during a pandemic when everybody's completely exhausted.

So I mean, I can understand why this is just, you know, challenging for everyone.

But I also know that there were some very positive highlights about growth and what that means in this community.

And so from the lens that I am looking through,

is that there are people who are still doing really well and that things during this time have not affected and we don't have a good handle on the people who may not be able to survive this time on their own.

And if we don't get a better handle on that, I'm thinking of the Great

During periods like this, and this is no one has experienced what we're experienced during this pandemic.

We are putting, again, the most vulnerable people in the community and the most vulnerable staff members.

There are some people who a 2% COLA will mean absolutely nothing for.

I've had this discussion with the previous city manager about several topics, including the raises

that the 4.17% raise that was given.

And then last year when I was trying to figure out if there were cuts that needed to be made within the city, how do we make sure this wasn't about temporary staff because temporary staff members were pretty much on the block

Chop and Block within a two-week time frame, as most of you know.

So trying to look beyond that with that thinking, how do you not transfer that mindset to then the next set of most vulnerable employees in the area, in the organization, and never really got any good feedback on how we would prevent that.

And an example I think everybody would understand is that

We typically have this conversation about how people like kind of pull themselves up out at bootstraps in this country, which everybody's story there is somebody who helps them.

But now we're having the same conversation that we usually have with people who need assistance and aid with some of the program social services administer and some of the programs that this council has been

you know, ensuring that we attempt to cover during this pandemic around the student loans.

There are people who are like if I was, you know, disciplined and pay my student loans off by now, other people should have.

And that debate is the same debate that we have on whether people deserve assistance and who are the most vulnerable members of the community.

And my point in just bringing that story up is that if we don't have a good foundation that we're working from, we will always make someone the next group of people the other.

And if we are not looking at things through an equity lens, there will always be the next set of vulnerable people who will always be on the chopping block.

And that's what I'm concerned about when we look at even a budget that is five, what is it, $500,000 or so short of the current budget.

I just don't

Just two other thoughts on the question of finding money on ways to increase salaries for our employees.

A lot of them, not all of them, but a lot of them got a bonus this year from CARES Act funding in some way.

Obviously, it was to some extent compensation for additional risks and stresses and so on.

but that's money that was outside of the regular budget, outside of their regular pay and therefore not duplicated in this current budget.

So if we did nothing, at least a fair number of our employees will actually suffer a pay cut from what they will have received during this present calendar year or fiscal year.

So that's point number one.

The second point is

that if you look at the number of full-time equivalent positions that the schools are adding, it's something like 18, 18.5, somewhere around there.

It's about $2 million.

$2 million is about what it would take to give our people a 4% raise, which is still less than the 5% that the schools are giving their own people.

I think, and I just, I'm sorry, I wish I'd followed up with someone in the schools between Monday and now just to get more clarification around how these dollars are tied to other funds that they may get.

I pulled up that deck from the other night because it also felt like there might be other funds coming at the state level.

Is that how anyone else kind of understood?

It said the net increase in state funding will be known when the final calc tool is released.

Additional state funding will reduce the dependency on CARES funding.

I think she said that would be around probably about $300,000.

Okay.

Certainly the budget isn't final until the governor signs off on it.

So

I think there was some thought that the governor might have some tweaks to some of that funding as well.

It'll also be interesting to see what comes out of Congress.

There may be some money coming out of Congress for us, for the schools, who knows?

Apparently, the Democrats are going to ram something of some sort through the reconciliation process, but that even assumes that they get all 50 of their votes

and that's still a little up in the air, so there's going to have to be some negotiation there.

That's also, again, one-time dollars.

We have to be careful about where that would go, and it only exacerbates the problem if we're both relying on one-time dollars for operational things.

I'm not saying that it won't be helpful in some capacity, but...

it's just raises that flag to me.

I think where I am at around this is to evaluating that option too, because I have a really hard time with that increase in the schools and not being able to offer that to the city staff.

And I think the schools may have some tough decisions that they wanna maintain the 5%, but that's not in our purview.

So I'm trying to remember the conversation because they also stated that they didn't give their teachers a raise last year.

I mean, I know, again, we look at this as a separate thing, but the majority of the funding for the schools come from us.

The expectation that even around the conversation that we were just having, the local contribution

was one of the topics that came up because I was wondering if there was a possibility that whether that entire $1.9 million would be covered.

And they said no, that it would just possibly increase by the 300

I think 32,000 would increase to by maybe 300,000.

So even though we look at the schools as a separate entity, it is going to be difficult I think to really separate because they're not separate really.

And so

Whether it's 5% or not, and I think it's very important for us to have this conversation about what we can do for our employees too.

We are now already demanding as a community that they come back even before we have more information, all the necessary information about this

about this virus.

So you again are putting, you're talking about people who are putting themselves on the line during this time.

I don't think that it's, yeah, I don't, I definitely don't see how number, how we reduce the budget.

on, you know, on those bases.

I do think that the increases is something that we probably need to talk about, especially since we are saying that we have our departments going through and submitting level funding in the same way.

Hi.

Yeah.

I'm all about, like, as more information comes up, I mean, I guess we still have several weeks of this process.

I'm just kind of putting out there that there are some options, you know, that I'm willing to consider.

And as more information comes in, I know, Mr. Boyles, you also mentioned that

We'll have more information in terms of our own revenues by the end of this month.

And maybe that will be a more optimistic picture that might allow us to do this on our own without having to touch on the schools.

And so this is kind of the game we always find ourselves in.

Every week there's more information.

And at the same time, we're just trying to at least directionally give staff options that we're willing to consider and things that aren't on the table at all.

Just some thoughts.

I mean, I think at a high level, obviously, you know, what I'm just struggling with is, as everyone is aware, you know, just the needs in so many areas outstrip our budget, particularly in the pandemic environment, resulting in a decrease in the budget for the first time in some years and

So sort of just how I'm thinking of all choices is that there's no solutions for these problems.

There's only trade-offs in trying to evaluate exactly what those trade-offs are.

And every choice is going to have a cost.

But what is the sort of least worst cost we have to bear?

And with that in mind, I think I'm certainly interested in engaging with the school board about, you know, the second option or some of those options just to be able to work with them to figure out what those tradeoffs might look like.

Because as I stated at the beginning, any choice we're going to make is going to require identifying where to cut that money from.

And the departments have been level for several years.

Any cuts there are probably going to have impacts on their operations.

So I don't see any clear good solutions for a lot of these problems.

So like everyone, it's just sort of difficult to think through, you know, what course of action to take.

A couple of things that came to mind that, you know, I'm curious in is these are smaller things, but what level, if any money could be available to, you know,

take from, again, the parking fund, as well as, and I know this is the CIP request, but the cash funded CIP expenditure for mobile data units in the police department, and whether that may open up at least a little bit of money that may be available to

Reinvest into some of these other priorities.

When it comes to staff positions, I am particularly interested if there's any way to fund the climate action planning specialist.

And as I said at the other meeting, you know, potentially the idea of the staff position recommended in the affordable housing plan for a position that could help guarantee counsel in eviction cases.

And again, whether the

Some level of money may be available from those sources, which, again, will be smaller, but it may be enough to cover positions like that.

I'm also wondering, you know, if it would be useful for counsel to think about should a stimulus bill pass?

And should we be in a situation over the coming year where we have a surplus and revenues rebound?

Do we want to figure out things that, you know, we can't fund now, but if that money becomes available, we've already prioritized where we want it to go?

Um,

And when it comes to that, some ideas that come to mind is prioritizing investment in the CAF, again, if stimulus money or surplus frees up some money and trying to work through those goals that we have in our now adopted affordable housing plan to those staff positions related to the climate planning and housing positions, again, recommended in the affordable housing plan.

and again if that may be useful just for us to be able to prioritize so we know ahead of time like should new money appear we know it's going to go to there but those are just sort of general thoughts I have right now I guess and again I would certainly be interested in engaging in a conversation with the school board about exploring some of these

options about adjusting their request or just figuring out how we can best allocate our resources.

over the next couple budget cycles with regards to school.

Also in the context of in the midterm school reconfiguration potentially beginning and that's a huge investment in schools.

Lent of staffing, and I realize, again, we're talking about priorities as maybe additional funding becomes available, but I do want to second Michael's suggestion around both the climate and housing, because I do believe, like, given how strong of a priority those things are going to continue to be, and all the work I had, especially on the climate side in just the next couple of years, I just think that if we're going to be, you know, investing in those things and having such a priority that we need to have the staffing that can support those investments, and so I put that at the forefront as well.

I hate to bring up other additionals here, but if we really are going to be working on the climate action goals, we also really need to look at what Mr. Williams has proposed with the transit requests, especially in moving the

relief operators into more regular full-time positions away from being temporary employees.

This is the parks and rec and our transit are the two areas that we've had the temporary employees for the most.

So we need to be making sure we're factoring that in and seeing.

Okay.

And I'm sorry if I missed this on Monday night.

Um,

So we will probably see a slight adjustment there, but largely their increase is for computers and software.

But they they are getting some adjustments, but they have not finalized their budget.

They have risk because the county is their fiscal agent.

I know they are going to get some adjustments on health care and a couple of other things.

And I also want to third the climate action specialist as being a priority.

If

if we have an economic recovery better than we expected.

I also want to weigh in that I also would like to talk with the school.

I mean, I understand again that I missed the presentation on Monday night.

I would like to talk.

I have a hard time.

I have a hard time not giving our people a 2% raise while giving it

It just feels if I was working for the city and I saw that I would feel underappreciated and I would feel and many of our city workers are have also been not able to work from home either.

What is my

I think using CARES money, the point there is that basically the CARES is a one-time funding source, but they're using it for ongoing expenses.

So whether they use it now or later, if they're going to increase their operating budget, i.e.

Right.

And so I guess if we pursued a different path in the recommendation that they gave us, we wouldn't really be getting money this budget cycle, just next budget cycle because of that problem of one-time expenditures for operational.

So in other words, it doesn't really, pursuing a different path will help us next budget cycle, but not immediately right now.

I would say not necessarily because I think what we had somewhat envisioned with this, I assume we're talking more towards the option two method here, is instead of $58.7 million, it would be, say, just to use a nice round, $1 million figure, $57.7 million.

So we would make that up in the current year.

That would not do anything towards the future financial cliff that we could be potentially facing with that four and a half million dollar increase because that

We, as a council, you've mentioned this before, you don't have direct control over what they do with their money.

We give them the check and then they can determine the way best to use that money.

So if we said we're going to give you $57.7 million and they say, well, we're still going to give our people 5% and we're still going to hire these additional positions, then that wouldn't change any of the future considerations that we have with relation to that $4.5 million.

So it

It all depends on, I guess, a conversation with the schools and decisions from the school side.

And it's similar to, you know, Ms.

McGill brought up the transit positions.

Well, yes, we, you know, in the current budget, we added some in our budget related to the CARES funding.

Mr Williams had put forth a proposal that it would be phased in over time on that and there is a larger conversation to be had with our regional partners in the transit on this but you know we're able to do this with CARES funding and the transit CARES funding has a longer window than what the city did

to be able to spend.

And then even when we, you know, whereas the safer grant, it ends on March 2024, you know, as we spend through those CARES funds, it would be, you know, Mr. Williams is proposing in two years, we have maybe, this is all things being equal, nothing, you know, we all know there could be other expenses, $250,000.

And the year after that, then it's another $150,000.

And, you know, just progressively increasing to get to that number to make up these positions.

So that's kind of, you know,

The CARES funding really does complicate things and it does create some one-time future decisions you have to look at, but in this particular case with the schools, there is that potential that if we pull some money back and they could use additional CARES funding to fill that gap, if we said, you know, I don't know exactly how much they would have held behind, but if we said we're going to pull back a million dollars, they could say, well, we're still going to fill that with CARES funding or additional state funding we know we're going to get and do all these things and then we'd still be in the same boat

And I do think it is fair to say, though, all things being equal, if we decided to go with option two and use some of that money to, i.e., offer a COLA to our employees, that is reducing their base, right?

So once you get to 23,

From 22 to 23, they'll make up that difference with CARES money.

But if they didn't have CARES money, when we get to 23, then you are looking at a reduced contribution.

So if they had no more CARES money, then they will have had a budget reduction.

Right.

No, and that definitely makes sense.

And I guess just thinking through

Just thinking through like where as council we need to get to, it sounds like identifying our biggest priorities, not in the budget right now, that dollar amount, identifying and co-industing around the options we want to choose for what to cut to afford those.

And it sounds like that schools are potentially an option.

Having gone through the budget, two that popped out to me, again, is potentially

Parking Enterprise Fund and the cash funded CIP expenditure for mobile data units, but just knowing that total of dollar amount compared to the dollar amount of what we want, and then whatever that mismatch is, maybe then setting the priorities of what we want should stimulus money slash revenue rebounds happen.

Um,

So, again, where I'm at is, you know, I'm definitely open to exploring that option two with the schools, exploring the parking enterprise fund and the mobile data units.

I don't know how much, if any, money may materialize from those two areas.

And for me, my top priorities, again, would be the CAF and those staff positions recommended in the housing plan, as well as the climate action planning process.

And it sounds like what I've heard from other counselors as well is that, you know,

Wage increases for city employees as well as a priority.

So again, I guess where we just have to get to is totaling up those dollar amounts, identifying the cuts and seeing whether the cuts are actually enough to cover them.

Yeah, and just as a quick update, one of your questions from Monday night that we'll be following up with you, but

and we'll be updating the budget document online relating to the parking fund.

We have updated that budget with the impact or in the process of doing that.

And there's probably by the time that's updated with the revised revenues, there's probably only a couple hundred thousand dollars as a fund balance in that fund.

I think there's roughly a projection of about a million four loss in that fund this year.

And yes, yeah, the revenues just did not materialize.

And I'm glad you asked that question, because in hindsight, you know, most of those budgets in the other fund section, you know, if we just, here's the 21 budget, here's the 22 budget.

And that makes sense.

Yeah, and there will be, there is some money.

The police department actually submitted a revised request on the MDT, so there will be a little bit of savings there, and we will...

Ryan, I think, mentioned in one of his slides where the budget was balanced.

That will be one of the amendments we come back.

Right.

OK.

And can we talk a little bit more about that?

I was going to bring that up since Michael first brought it up because the community has been talking about the police department budget increase.

And so if we can get some clarity on that and any revisions and if the chief can come on and explain that, I think that would be helpful.

I hope that's what the staff explained that across every department it's regarding the timing of when the 4.17 increase was actually being reflected in department budgets and that's now what's happening now whereas they actually happened in the past and it's not that there's any new additional increases but it's just how it's being allocated by the department.

That's correct.

It was an accounting function of how we had to account for that 4.17 that was given several years ago.

So what's shown in the police department, I believe, is a roughly 4.5% increase or something along those.

And that's related to that catch up of the salary and the benefits.

And then Chrissy is more familiar with this budget than I am.

So there was no... Right, in the budget document, am I correct that basically it was just money the city spent last year in a spreadsheet was under CIP and then it just moved in a spreadsheet to operational budget.

So the actual dollar amount the city's spending is exactly the same.

So it's not really an increase.

It is.

So a couple of things there.

One is the salary change that Ryan just described.

And the other one is the body-worn cameras.

That contract was previously paid out of the CIP.

And because it's more of an operational item, it got moved to the general fund to their operating budget.

And then also we unfunded two vacant police officer positions, which was roughly $178,000.

No, fair point.

But it was reduced.

Yeah, and to piggyback on what Chrissy was saying about the level funding of that department and other departments, there may be some increases in certain departments, but some of that is related to how we level, when we level funded everything from 20 to 21, there are like some contractual increases that we do not have control over.

We sign a contract that says it has a 3% inflator or 5% inflator on an annual basis that

In the 22 budget, we accounted for some of those, you know, a larger increase, not to pick on public works, but is our, you know, our refuse contracts and our, those have an increase built in.

And so that's one area where you might look at public service and see an increase in their other fund budget.

But that's because of these contractual costs that we had to catch up with.

IT is another area where that happened.

You can point to those throughout the city in various departments where we had to account for those.

Some departments had small increases and were able to essentially work those in to their operating budget.

But in some of these departments, the increases were large enough that it would affect services if they tried to work that in.

And in terms of the CHAP program, one of the key, people may not do worse and some people may not do slightly better, just referencing that comment.

Where CHAP is now, we still have the ability to make a higher contribution

to families who are lower income.

And so that would mean that the merger can't, that's one factor, but it still has to come with the increase.

Like what I sent around to you all, that was even that first category of getting families

to 100% who currently are at $25,000 a year, but it's families earning $35,000 or less who are homeowners in the city.

And realistically, we should be

hoping to expand that to families under the 60% AMI and above to be included in that first column if we're really talking about like an authentic equity lens look at this.

So as assessments rise, you're talking about the most vulnerable families being able to afford the tax increases annually.

Now I know I had significant conversations around

whether people should have pay no real estate tax.

I can partially, I mean, I can kind of speak to that.

The proposal, once the programs emerged, just this was sort of my first pitch, was that anybody under any households grossing $25,000 or less would have 100%.

benefit.

Anybody 35 to 25 would be 80 and then 45 to 35 would be 60 and so on.

The beauty of, in my thinking, of making this change is you go entirely to a percentage-based benefit rather than flat grant amounts.

and then it would be a lot easier in the years to come if council wants to fiddle with the income parameter.

It'd be a lot easier to do that if everything is based on percentages.

And so, in other words, that 100% group, you know, maybe the next year you move it to 30,000 and below.

or whatever.

I think this kind of gets to that.

And then, you know, the language that's in the charter that I think that's kind of what you're partially touching on is the language in the charter that says that the folks that benefit from the existing CHAP program would not or I guess they

the city's criteria for that have to mirror the VHDA home loan program.

I think that's all still true for anybody.

I think we could make all of that still work in a merged program.

No, I got it.

I'm here.

I'm with you.

But I think that even starting off with what the numbers would look like with an increase after two years without an increase is probably where, not probably where, but where I'm going with this.

So even when we talk about the transition over,

even if with which I'm not advocating for but because I'm still advocating for us to look take the look at this seriously but if we don't look at it seriously this year because any dollar in is a dollar out I think we at least

talk seriously about what dollars are needed to transition and if putting dollars up if possible, if we get some of that unrestricted funding like the schools got to help with that initial transition so that we know going in that we're starting it

this fiscal year and budgeting it in if this is the first day of FY23 budget process into next year without all the knowns of what could happen with this pandemic because we make a lot of decisions on something we actually have no control over because there's already data out that the winner is going to be even if the vaccines do something now, those mutations

that none of us can control, that the winter is not looking so promising for some of those same scientists who thought that the two vaccines were going to make us have a more promising year.

So with all that in saying, I just think if we, you know, have that conversation around

What does an increase to at least the next bracket look like starting at the 35,000 and then using the percentage after that and then setting targets at least up to the 60% AMI for future years so that we at least have a baseline for councils to consider each year.

So I guess, am I understanding correct, like just in the context of the budget, the goal then would be those changes identify the dollar amount of increased costs, those changes would be

identify what cuts would be necessary to afford it.

And if that's not feasible, this budget cycle, we just will know what the dollar amount is.

Yes, I think that it's important to have that information to look at annually, no matter what, like it should be on an unfunded to be considered list.

you know whatever those lists look like and that it can become a part of the conversation every year so that at least you know but in terms of what the first year of the new merged programs look like I'm also asking if that can start with the baseline being

the category.

So I submitted to you all and I've been submitting to Todd since I've been here these increases.

And so right now, he just talked about the $25,000.

That was the increase from two years ago.

And so what I'm saying is that if that $35,000 in the first category at the 100% can be the base for what even the proposal he submitted

that we are talking about.

So you submitted a proposal with the base being at the $25,000 at 100% and I'm just asking if we can know what that base would look like at the $35,000 and then I'm also asking is that if CARES dollars are able to be spent towards this,

Then if we can give some of that initial dollars, those initial dollars needed that would be higher this year, but would level out, I think it was $300,000 or so.

And after the programs are merged, if we can put those dollars towards it.

There's an increase cost no matter what.

In the first.

And so I'm saying that if we get some unrestricted dollars, can those dollars be put towards these, you know, that first half to make sure that we get started?

You mean to sort of like bank it for next year?

No, I was just going to say, I think that would be a good use of money because it's a one-time bump.

The big bump is one time, right, Todd?

Yes.

It's going to be bigger if I move that first quarter or that first grouping to $35,000.

There are two different programs being talked about at the same time here.

Well, I mean, there are lots of negative...

things that happen because we've got two different programs that are running at different times of the year.

For the CHAP applicants, for one, that benefit is paid in the second half.

And so CHAP applicants have to pay their first half tax bill to even be eligible for the second half bill.

You've got two application periods.

That's confusing.

You've got two different benefit criteria.

You've got different income criteria.

One program has an asset or a net worth component that the other program doesn't have.

A lot of times we'll find that folks who are elderly who may normally qualify or may apply for the elderly and disabled program, if their assets are too high, they can't get that.

So they've got to come back later in the year and apply for CHAP

and then things are completely different.

The way income is is calculated between the two programs is slightly different.

OK, so so so.

And I understand that one of the reasons it's a big bump now is because of the different timetables and therefore actually crossing over different fiscal years.

Because in order to make it so that nobody, you've got people who are in CHAP and people who are in real estate tax relief, these are the elderly and disabled folks.

This is a slightly better program, right?

Once you put these people into the program, once you merge the two programs, you don't want anybody to fall off.

And so then that means you've got to slightly bump this group.

So the CHAP program would get slightly bumped up.

Correct.

The applicants, the folks who would formally have applied for CHAP are going to get a little bit of an increase.

My proposal was, yeah, you would put the home value limit on folks who are less than 65 years of age or not disabled.

So that would still Yeah, I think we kind of have to based on the language in the charter.

I think, you know, unless you're elderly or disabled,

Okay, so it would be pulling our income criteria, basically merging those, and we'll go to the lower or the better one that would qualify more people so that nobody would get kicked out.

I would do away with the asset criteria completely.

It's not required in state code to have a net worth component for a real estate or tax relief program.

We've always had it because we've always had it.

It needlessly complicates things.

It doesn't exist in the CHAP program.

Yes.

And now, and I think I can anticipate the mayor's question.

Why would that not result in more people applying?

And I think we've sort of reached critical mass every year of who is eligible and can apply.

If you're an elderly person whose income

whose assets, whose net worth precludes you from applying for the real estate tax relief program, you're going to come back and apply for CHAP.

So I guess my other question and question I had from January that I didn't ask when we were having this discussion was, do you think that the net worth component would be helpful to add for the merger or to take it away?

Because there could that there's still a difference.

You don't think?

I would take it away.

And the the net worth component is a is a pain.

You know, you're asking these people to bring in all of these documents and then we've got to pour through them.

So that's what I was asking, because if it does make a difference, then that means that we could possibly help more people who actually were lower income and who also did not have a net worth, you know, than if we just across the board eliminated it.

The formula we have now is very, very complicated.

I understand that, but I do think that there are some people who may not have income because of their age anymore, but they have accumulated a lot of assets that would be different from the people we're probably thinking about when we implement programs like this.

I just don't want to, like if a headline in a few years is that, you know, there are people with considerable assets able to benefit from this merge program, that wouldn't have been our goal.

I say you eliminate it.

I say currently, the person you're talking about, let's say somebody who's got a very, very low income, but has a bunch of built up assets, and they're not currently going to be able to qualify for anything under the real estate program.

They're just going to turn around and apply for the CHAP program.

And if their income is that low, they're going to get the highest benefit under CHAP.

I guess, I don't know if I'm not asking the question clearly.

Knowing people who have assets, whose income eventually drops,

They still are able to access benefits from having those assets that other people are not.

And I'm just asking, is there a benefit to requiring it for the new program, other than the fact that it's a cumbersome process?

I mean, I guess there would be a benefit.

I'll be perfectly candid with you.

I mean, if I've got to keep

I just know we're getting close to six and still have public comment, but

shift in a different direction.

It sounds like maybe there's consensus on exploring that option two for schools and some of those

Right.

Do we want to have a full council one or do you and Vice Mayor McGill want to meet with them as a leadership team?

Yeah, I think based on how this goes is that we probably should figure out how to have a full conversation.

Okay.

as with the entire council and the board.

Madam Mayor, if I can, my council member Payne looked like he was reading my notepad.

He summed it up very, very well.

I've got pretty much three takeaways.

Exactly what Council Member Payne just said.

We'll talk to the schools.

We'll do our due diligence on the financials and then work with them on setting up a meeting based on what you just said.

We'll bring you adjusted revenue

figures as soon as we have those, you know, as they start coming in, some of the adjustments we already have.

So we'll be able to bring those back to you at one of your upcoming meetings.

And then the list of those potential projects and, you know, let me start with saying this is exactly what we wanted to try to have as an outcome of this meeting.

It's exactly it.

is to put together a list of the priorities that you have that whether we can find the money in the current proposal, whether there's additional revenue sources that we're able to identify, whether revenue sources come in during the year, or this is our starting point for FY23, you have done very well given us this list.

The list I'm looking at has the CHAP merger slash revision slash increase in funds is one of those items.

And these are in no particular order.

So salary increase of 2% for city employees, additional funding for CAF, a climate position, a housing eviction specialist position,

and a movement of the temporary employees to full time.

If I'm missing anything, please mention what we'll do is try to put some dollar figures to this as staff so that we can come back to you and you can try to give us then the prioritization of these as money may become available

What list?

The housing eviction specialist, was that an, I guess that could go under like the equity office or something, but there was also a conversation about legal aid maybe starting a position, right?

And so is this something that we would fund or is it just an in-house position?

I actually talked to somebody today about this kind of, I do, there's been a couple of different ideas.

I know it was originally it's in our, it's the affordable housing recommendations.

I don't think a lot of clarity has come around that yet.

The person I was talking to today did want to make sure we made sure if the city could have a lawyer or somebody

with we'd have to make sure with legal and Dylan rules stuff about that.

But the potential that maybe legal aid would and maybe we could help fund that or I think there's a couple of different options there.

I had talked to them also about maybe eventually it going in with either human the idea that maybe going in with our human rights office

And again, I haven't even mentioned this to the Human Rights Office.

This was just me kind of spitballing with somebody or maybe even under our housing position since it is coming up as this affordable housing.

But if we had it in the city that it, you know, to live there

Yeah, and I think making, you know, letting kind of the experts do what they do and us providing the resources would be my, and since it's something new with

are able to have access to a city employee in the way they wouldn't be able to have access to a legal aid attorney.

I think that we should see if there is a willingness for an outside agency to start this.

But speaking of attorneys, there have been thoughts

about just the need for attorneys.

And I think I talked to during my meeting the other day with Chip, maybe, I don't know, so many meetings, but the idea of even thinking about the PCRB and them hiring outside counsel, if there was a attorney or someone with an expertise for

to kind of a floater between equity, human rights, PCRB, then that would take a lot of those needs that keep coming up to make sure that they have access to that legal counsel.

And there, you know, maybe, you know, that's something that we have to consider, you know, long term.

The eviction specialist, I think, you know,

How these economic downturns go, we could be dealing with this for at least the next three to five years.

And so we would need to, if we are committing to funding, you know, thinking about it in terms of as long as this crises, you know, would last and how and people attempting to dig themselves out of it.

And my thought on the question of a right to counsel is that I really, really, really don't think you want that person to be a city employee for a whole lot of reasons, ethical reasons, malpractice insurance reasons, all kinds of things.

If it means putting somebody like legal aid into a contract position, I mean, I don't know, I have to talk about that, that

that gets sort of to one of my fundamental concerns about the Vibrant Community Fund and the way we're using it to support programs that really aren't competitive with everything else.

We know we want them.

Anyway, I think it may be a good idea to figure out a way to try to fund

such a program in part.

The other thing is I talked, I think it was the housing people said there may be 50 evictions a year in Charlottesville.

Well, and it may be that the way to do it is if the county is also interested

The county probably has twice as many evictions as we do.

Now you're beginning to look like a full time job for a lawyer and the eviction courts for the most part meet the city and county meet on different days.

I don't know if one person can do both localities.

I'm just thinking about the pre

For the most part, those aren't lawyerly things.

You may not have to, but right now, I mean, I am a part of a conversation around a case at this point, and there is an attorney who's involved in this discussion between two housing authorities.

So whether you need to have it or not, the lawyers are often involved.

I'm thinking of all the things over the years that it has required a lawyer to, you know, to even kind of get the conversation

of the citizen who is at risk of losing their home.

And I know it's already six, so we need to definitely let the public comment, even if we're going to continue.

Thank you, Mayor Walker.

If you're in the audience, you'd like to speak for up to three minutes to counsel about the budget, please click the raise hand icon in the Zoom webinar.

If you're on via telephone, you can press star nine.

Right now we have one hand raised.

It's Jason Halbert.

Jason, you're on with council.

Thanks, Brian.

Members of council, appreciate the time.

I know you spend many hours on this, so I appreciate all the time you're putting into it and how difficult it is.

I am also the co-president of the Fry Springs Neighborhood Association.

And over the last five years, we've been trumpeting our

Brian Pinkston, Juandos, J.P.A.

And those items have been submitted to the CIP and left on the editing floor.

And Mr. Oberdorfer, who's no longer with us, assured me, assured all of you actually, last year that there was this computer system going to be put in place

to manage the CIP process, all the projects.

He said it'd be online by the end of 2020, if not the beginning of 2021.

He said it probably three times.

I can go get the recordings if you want.

I want to know where that is and when it will be online.

I don't think it exists, if you ask me.

That's just one.

I'm going to put all this in an email too so you don't have to remember it all.

When I was the chair of the CRHA board, we got, that was during the stimulus

fund the last time you had a big federal influx.

And we had sort of a philosophical discussion about this, the same that you're having about whether to do salaried positions versus using, as Michael Payne said, one-time dollars for one-time purchases.

Clearly, the latter is a wiser approach, in my opinion.

We replaced all the windows at Crescent Halls and upgraded that Byzantine cooling system back then with the one-time dollars and didn't have any

CARES Act cliff, because I think you're facing a CARES Act cliff if you spend money on salaried positions and the school district does that too.

I think it's very unwise.

So to the schools, the schools are leaving money on the table.

I think you know this, but I have fought through my career for better policies on energy and climate.

And we've won a lot of those policies in the last two years after 20 years of fighting.

The schools are leaving money on the table by not doing power purchase agreements on all of the buildings.

So is the city for solar.

So if the schools are going to continue to ignore this, the city has talked about it for years.

It's in your CIP as a little bit of money.

You could take the existing money in the CIP and even some one-time money from the CARES Act and pay down a PPA and just make money, basically.

You're essentially leaving money on the table.

So that's a real opportunity, I think.

And the last one, I really do support, I think, Councilor McGill and Councilor Payne's point about the climate action specialist.

We have to get serious about this.

We've been talking about it for too long.

I'm really tired of the talk.

We need action.

And I, of course, support all of the priorities council has placed ahead of these things, like affordable housing.

I totally endorse all that.

So anyway, I'll follow up with an email.

Next up is William Malone.

Hello, members of council and mayor.

Thank you very much for your time.

I emailed a few about a week ago to the West Main Street, and I have a few more thoughts to add to that.

Can I stop the clock, Mayor Walker?

William, your audio is cutting out.

William, can you hear us?

I'm very sorry.

I can hear now, yes.

Okay, that sounds a little better.

Go ahead.

Yes, so I was saying that a lot of the documentation that the design team submitted to the Board of Architecture Review in 2018 said that the tree canopy of the West Main Corridor would increase by 400%.

It also is really impossible to de-emphasize the automobiles.

Taking advantage of a lot of state funding, potential state funding that we would otherwise maybe turn around by not being able to project and approve it this year.

But it's very tight.

Yeah, we still can't hear you.

but if certain parts of the plan need to be put off that it would simply that it was pro-uptive to any parts of the plan that would need to occur earlier and that it would happen in a way that we'd be able to take advantage turn down.

Yes, I did.

Sounds good.

Next up is Jeff Vogel.

Jeff, you're on the city council.

You've got three minutes.

And you'll have to unmute your microphone.

And Jeff's hand is no longer raised.

Okay, go ahead.

I think the big question for me is, why are you all so afraid of increasing taxes?

What is it that puts the fear of God into you about raising taxes?

Do you call point to issues?

Do you point to activities, programs that are in need of funding?

And you look around and you say, well, I don't know where the money's coming from.

It's not raining money.

No, it's not.

The way with government gets money is it raises it by taxes.

Unfortunately, the city has not been fully implementing the CHAP program either.

So I don't wanna see anybody hurt by this process.

So really what you need to do is to fully utilize the CHAP program and increase the taxes so that those taxes will fall on the well-to-do in our community.

And that's the money that can be used to do the things that you all claim you can't do.

Three counselors were at the impact meeting

called for an additional million dollars or two million dollars for the affordable housing fund.

Three counselors were there condescendingly telling the impact, well, you're such sweet people, you have such nice ideas, but you're totally unrealistic.

You're a bunch of idealists.

Nothing we can consider now.

Well, you know what, if you don't consider it now, you're putting everything off for 18 months before anything can be implemented.

The same thing is true of the movement in this country to shift some resources from the police department to other means of accomplishing some of the problems that they have been utilized for.

It's almost as if that never happened.

Never happened in the country, never happened in the city.

because nobody here seems to think that that's an issue at all.

Well, if you don't do it now, you're putting it off for another 18 months.

So why don't you be honest and say, listen, we want a fully funded police department.

We don't care about the efforts, not just to defund, but to reallocate some of that money to other sources that can provide similar kinds of activities without the problems associated with police civilian encounters.

And when I think about it, I have to laugh sometimes.

We've got a socialist on the city council who doesn't want to raise taxes on the rich in order to support the poor.

I mean, this is unbelievable to me.

The Democrats are doing it in that state house here in Virginia.

They're trying to do it in Washington.

But no, we can't raise taxes because some of the upper middle class people and the rich people won't like it.

Well, I'm not sure you're right.

I spent many years in the state of New Jersey.

They said that when Brandon Byrne introduced an income tax, he would lose the next election.

He didn't.

If people see that the money is being used for good purposes, for the purposes for which we need that money, people are willing to pay their taxes in order to support that.

So I guess I'm guessing that I'm not going to get a response from anybody.

about the issue of why you're so afraid of raising taxes in order to accomplish the very things that you want to accomplish and to do it now and to do it along with the full implementation of all available resources to the program allowing for rebates for people who are under 50,000, not 25,000, 50,000 who have homes under 370,000.

And if I may briefly just to respond, there was a discussion at previous work sessions about our CIP budget, about our existing CIP projects.

in order to be affordable in any way necessitating over a five-year period a 10 cent increase in the real estate tax or some equivalent of revenue increases that would match that.

So it's certainly something which is talked about and is

Michael Pollan, Ph.D.

: So it's certainly something that's not off the table by any means.

It's a question of timing of when it's going to happen.

Michael Pollan, Ph.D.

: To the second piece, you know, around the chat program.

I think the reality is, you know, our CHAP program makes the real estate tax a little more progressive, but it has that limit.

Every year, fewer people qualify for it.

So you're making it a little bit more progressive, but you're not achieving a progressive tax.

So we are limited.

We can only implement regressive taxes.

I've engaged with some groups looking to see if the General Assembly can allow land value taxes or taxes to income.

The General Assembly will need to approve that.

We've also had discussions around getting approval to increase the sales tax in order to fund school infrastructure.

So it's certainly a conversation that's happening is going to need to happen.

But unfortunately, we have very limited powers.

And I'll just chime in.

You know, I've been sharing for years that, you know, and even shared a story of a friend of mine who still had a home here, but her family moved to New York and the comparison between what their tax rate was here versus income and tax rate there versus income.

And since they were of the, you know, higher income families that live in the community, you know, we've had the conversation about that they were getting, you know, a really good deal.

And then we also were able to have the conversation of, you know, within their friend circle, what they thought they should pay and what the contribution should be versus not.

So that's a conversation I think that we haven't resolved because we're still struggling

you know with it as a community whether you know we offset tax increases on people who can afford them by making sure that people who can't afford them and not just a tax increase because that's only one part of the conversation but the increase in the values of the homes and what the assessments have been over the years that's

pretty grave and devastating for most families.

So if we don't resolve this, we are going to end up in a community where only the wealthiest members live here and everyone else has been pushed out.

And anytime we are putting things off, that's what we're signing up for.

And I keep saying that.

I know that there wasn't an appetite to talk about tax increase this year.

That was pushed

And even last year during the budget season, it was made clear that we were not going to increase taxes and we didn't really have the discussion.

but I think we have a lot of work to do to make sure when we're talking about equity and fairness and in this same community while Jeff just came on and said that this is something that he would be okay with experiencing as a homeowner in the community that's not everyone's story and I don't think that it's clear across council members and leadership what direction we should go in and so we are only presented with certain options and then

I will say our intention at the beginning of last year was to have a work session dedicated to what are the avenues we could take to have a more progressive approach that obviously falls within the limits that we do have in the state of Virginia.

All right.

The only comment I wanted to say is relative to the housing.

I felt that the position we were just talking about before we went to the public comment around the eviction support was different than what I was reading in the housing plan.

Matthew Gillican, you're on the city council.

You've got three minutes.

Good evening, City Council.

This is Matthew Gillican.

I live at 726 Orangedale Avenue.

I was listening in to some of the conversation about raises for the schools and concerns about a perception or experience of unfairness among city employees.

I'll remind you all that in September there was

one-time bonuses given to every city employee and no bonuses given to city schools employees.

$400,000 came from CARES money and $400,000 came from the city general fund to pay for that bonus.

So I hope that as you're thinking about fairness, you keep in mind that not only did our city employees deserve a bonus, but our city school employees deserve fair compensation.

Additionally, keep in mind that many of our city and schools employees are food service providers, custodians and teaching assistants who are not compensated very well.

And I agree with that.

I do think that I'll just say the bonus that we gave could have been more sufficient.

And I was hoping for the second bonus for our staff too.

And I just think that we could have done that process better also.