City Council Meeting   3/1/2021

Present.

Councillor Payne?

Present.

Councillor Snook?

Here.

Is there a motion to approve the agenda?

Move to approve the agenda as presented.

I'll second that.

Ms.

Yes.

Councilor Payne?

Yes.

Councilor Snook?

Yes.

Are there any announcements?

That's all.

Any other announcements?

and there are a number of events that are going on throughout the community and best summary for those is found in the Jefferson Heritage or Jefferson School Heritage Center's website, which is jeffschoolheritagecenter.org.

Good evening.

Thank you for having me here.

down at the bottom in the green.

And hopefully you can all see my screen now.

Yes.

And then phase 1C is other essential workers, and then phase 2 is everybody, and more to come on those down the line.

Is that all decided by district based on literally the supply within that district and the demand?

We're not quite there yet, but we're getting very close.

The question for this was really about within this group of 1Bs, so.

So I would be happy to answer any questions that people have.

Counselors, any questions?

Can we in some way separate out the junior high and high school kids from the college kids?

If you're interested, I can try and have our data analysts pull up for you.

I'm just remembering that I think probably three months or so ago someone was able to look at the data from UVA and to compare it to your data and conclude that basically pretty much everybody in the 10 to 19 category was probably a UVA student I mean not everybody but maybe 80 percent of those a large large percentage of it is that is that general characterization action that you think you think

If I had to take a guess, I would say that probably, yes, most of that 10 to 19 is college students.

Thank you, doctor.

Any other questions?

I know that there's .

So I apologize on behalf of the state for that.

It's pretty safe to say with confidence to the community that the vaccine that has been received is being deployed expediently and there's not just vaccines sitting around and everything that we can get is getting out there and into folks with arms.

We're working on it, trying to get vaccine to everybody.

How is that process going?

So I think people should be very confident that it's a very safe and it's a very effective vaccine, and it was tested at a different time than Pfizer and Moderna were.

And in terms of updates from Pfizer and Moderna for those different variants, when will we have those?

One of the reasons we want to get people vaccinated as quickly as possible and why we don't leave vaccines sitting around but also why we really need people to continue to follow those mitigation measures so we keep the vaccine or the infection rates as low as possible and hopefully limiting the opportunity that the COVID virus has to mutate to a new form.

And in that category, where is ACRJ in that conversation?

But we are working with them and getting

But just wanting to just state that for people who also have that concern that may not be able to comment at this point.

So we recognize that there is a disproportionate impact, and we are trying to prioritize through special events targeted at communities of color.

Is there a way to separate that out?

And if you're really interested, we can try and have our data people figure out if there's a way to do that for you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

And Mr. Wheeler.

We do have Jane Kulo with us.

Thank you.

Thank you again.

Thomas, would you read the consent agenda, please?

Number three, appropriation, additional state funding for adoption assistance, $600,000, first of two readings Number four, appropriation, Virginia Transit Association, VTA, Free Transit Fair for Working Families Grant, $180,750, first of two readings

All right, Mr. Wheeler, would you open it for comments on the consent agenda from the public?

You've got three minutes.

Thank you.

And Mayor Walker, I don't see any other hands raised.

Thank you.

I move that we approve the consent agenda as presented.

I'll second it.

All right, Ms.

Walker?

Councilor Payne?

Yes.

Councilor Snook?

Yes.

Mr. Bulls, I'll turn it over to you.

Along those same lines, a question was asked as to when the first notice of credit card issues on this latest effort became known.

And that's it, Mayor and Council.

All right, Mr. Will, I'll turn it over to you for the community matters.

Go ahead.

Corey Price will now tell you more about the theme of the show and the participating artists.

We have about 25 participating artists with over 50 visual works of written, some written works of film, and like Brielle was mentioning, some performances.

So I'll kick it over to Derek next to talk about the CBAC.

Please definitely go out and see it and support.

Thank you.

You've got three minutes.

Can you hear me?

We can.

Thank you.

Nathan, you're on with City Council and you've got three minutes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

You've got three minutes.

Hi, can everyone hear me?

We can.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Sarah, you're on with the Council and you've got three minutes.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Robin, you're on the city council and you've got three minutes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mary, you're on the city council and you've got three minutes.

Thank you.

Go ahead.

That's a city manager kind of management level decision, but one that I think that we had on council might push the city manager a little bit to think about.

in this virtual world, make sure that the meetings were accessible to community members.

I certainly look forward to hearing back from the team on what may be possible to provide as much flexibility as possible for some of these boards and commissions that want more time.

Elizabeth, you're on with City Council.

Thank you.

And we're going to be talking about the budget later, so I'll say my comments for doing that discussion.

Don, you're on the city council and you've got three minutes.

Thank you all.

Thank you.

You've got three minutes.

Can you all hear me okay?

We can.

Let it go.

Can you hear us?

Can you hear me?

You've got three minutes.

Hudson on some things about being petty and not supporting the mayor but it's an election year so I expect nothing less from you all.

Thank you.

You've got three minutes.

and I think you guys should start taking that into consideration.

Thank you.

You've got three minutes.

Thank you for your time.

You've got three minutes.

Thank you.

And I'll see if I can find that or if anyone knows the numbers outright what that is.

That's definitely been one of the areas that despite the revenue decreases we've seen has continued to be a red line for council of we want to do everything we can to make sure that is still funded and supported and it still is in the budget.

the numbers and the poverty and even the Orange Dye 4.0 report speaks to the fact that this is one of the initiatives with 22% of our families living in poverty that we need to figure out how to increase the contributions to.

Amas, you're on the city council and you've got three minutes.

That's all I have.

Counselors, are there any comments?

I think we'll get into it in that agenda item.

So those are my only final budget wrap up questions until we get into the discussion.

And just because it was shared among staff that the police salary and benefits percentages 82 and a half percent for fiscal year 22.

And last year, did you have that?

I'm just going what they just sent over to us.

Endorsement request, one reading.

Jenny.

Oops, sorry, this is the wrong presentation, unless you've got them all in one.

I do have them all.

The other two members of our team are Brick and Story, who is our engagement lead, and Code Studio, who will be leading the future zoning rewrite.

The affordable housing plan, which is the topic of the discussion for tonight, is part of the comprehensive plan updates, and it's really focused on creating a unified strategy for housing Charlottesville's residents.

You can go to the next slide, Brian.

I'll hand it over to Sarah to discuss a little bit about how we went through the process since as a project manager she led this process.

I'll turn it over to Jenny, who's going to talk a little bit more about the stakeholder engagement and the public engagement that was done as part of this work.

I also want to note as shown on the slide here the affordable housing plan supports city council vision to provide quality housing opportunities for all and it contributes to goal one objective 1.3 of the city council strategic plan to increase affordable housing options if you go to the next slide HRNA will talk a bit about the budgetary impact thank you so I hit on this for a moment at a high level

Next slide.

So we're asking the city council to endorse the plan tonight so that the consultant will move to the next phase of a comprehensive plan update.

Are there comments, questions?

Because I think they're asking for more specificity around the inclusionary zoning piece.

It's usually closer to 60% and 50% AMI, and I think we need under 50% and even lower Charlottesville over here, folks described.

We just need to figure out the best way to do that.

That's how I read it, but just want to confirm.

You should not upzone without an inclusionary zoning policy to go along with it.

Is that accurate that that sort of concept is also in there to be able to have a pool of money where we can buy either land or live check properties or whatever it may be?

After low-income housing tax credit, that's probably your most powerful tool in terms of production size.

are still requiring at least some matching funds for 50 to 80 percent of AMI.

So your question is, if we change the funding recommendations to target 100 percent of that under 50 percent or lower AMI, would that then mean we can't support LIHTC?

And my only concern would be that there's programs that are meeting that need, but sometimes they also require some matching city funds, even though that program of non-city funds is meeting that need.

You know, those are numbers that, you know, we're set to structure up with the government structure that maybe the future group will end up making recommendations about shifting.

thinking about land use and upzoning in that context of the full pattern of redlining racial covenants and disproportionate, I don't know if I'm making sense, but the disproportionate impact in wealthier neighborhoods versus, you know, low-income neighborhoods that may be R1 zoning, but the development pattern is just different there, like, you know, it's like 10th of page compared to Greenbrier.

So we're not talking about radically changing the building stock in

Right, and I would certainly think that allowing a duplex versus allowing, say, a 100-unit apartment complex has a very different impact on land speculation and how the market is going to react to it.

Did I miss anything critical there?

We didn't get more specific than that because that's going to be part of the code rewrite, but they absolutely intend to keep those considerations very close in mind.

So we look forward to seeing how we can use this information as well as other information we know about community demographics to potentially target some of these land use recommendations to specific areas, not only for multifamily scale land use, but also some of the soft density.

So the...

Those are good reasons to go both directions.

Go ahead.

I've lost some county commissioners I really like recently in another market.

My understanding is on council's end, I think we certainly want to have that be part of getting together a policy so we can figure out how to do that in a more systematic way, similar to how the Planning Commission had stipends, but I don't know if that's addressed in any way in the plan.

But we were not as detailed as what you described.

Right.

And I'll say on our steering committee, our community members who don't represent a specific organization do receive a stipend for participating.

Because obviously, you know, I know there's a lot of local housing nonprofits and other groups who do provide that support and able to get more representation and engagement on the work they're doing.

And we can consider that for the community engagement chapter for the comprehensive plan as well.

I know it's been a lot of work and a lot of work from the steering committee and the community as well.

And so as Michael said, I think staffing is a big component of this, but I'm just kind of curious, you know, what are the top of mind things that are going to just be critical for us to keep this momentum going?

there's no reason you shouldn't have that information and be able to clearly talk about it and say okay we missed our goal here we need to make an adjustment but you should have that information and be able to speak to it very clearly going forward

And what individuals can do as their income increases, even if it's still below what our area median income is, it's still different the higher you move up.

and Sarah too.

This is just generally an area where we do a lot of analysis on how the cost per unit, we put that into plan, but that doesn't always tell the full story of what's important.

Now I'm thinking about projects like PHA, CRHA when I was making that comment and that we are not going to really be able to duplicate the number of families that those projects will house in a home ownership type capacity.

history that has ever existed.

But I certainly hope our conversation can move in that direction.

something I think Charlottesville has centered and everyone I've spoken to has talked about and we've tried to build into our governance is Greensboro put this plan out with the best of intent and everybody individually working on it had the best of intent but the data says they still missed the mark which to their credit they went back and recognized and have changed and made adjustments but just that point of understanding the data and thinking about all the unintended consequences and processes is really important because there was no ill intent there but we still missed the mark pretty widely.

And is that too difficult of something for us to consider at this as at this point?

If we don't, it won't.

What are your thoughts?

Sorry, make sure I heard that correctly.

Or do you think it will be accomplished, could be accomplished based on where the target percentages are now?

You just have to watch it.

So what would your recommendation be?

So I think there are other good levels you could say to that.

I feel like Lloyd is trying to say something.

I wonder whether you had one this evening.

We'll see whether they can actually pull it off.

I'm frank to say, number one, I will be off counsel and probably dead before Virginia authorizes rent control statutes.

I think it's unlikely, but things have moved on this more in the last three years than I ever thought I would see.

Thank you.

Are there any suggestions for amendments or changes to the plan?

Just the one I have.

So I would be comfortable shifting that as a bigger priority.

So I'm not going to oppose it if anybody wants that to be changed because you feel it's pretty important.

I'm just more hesitant about making that kind of a change just late in the game, given how much engagement there was around and support for that balance to have the homeownership be well represented.

I'm inclined to agree with you there.

That would be decreasing if we just focused on the 50.

Mm-hmm.

experts.

So what I hear you saying is 20% still goes to 80, up to 80, 30% goes up to 60, or are you changing that to 50?

But I'm comfortable with leaving the income level served where they are and just allocating more funding.

So really, you're just shifting a little bit from 60% down to that's not going to stop you from funding anything you wanted to fund because you still have money to help with tax credit development.

I mean, it's just I think that would work.

And I don't see any downsides in doing it that way at all.

I'm understanding, you know, as long as there's not concern with us not being able to do all the things we want to try to do or try to accomplish here, then I have no no objection.

Let's try it.

All right, so I move that we adopt a resolution to endorse an affordable housing plan for the city of Charlottesville with the one amendment around the target allocation percentages to reflect the 2030-50.

and rely on on our birds to produce a copy that is consistent with with that directive or the funding targeting for income targeting might have a different version than you all on my page number.

The motion that was made.

I don't know.

It's on 55, right?

It's also in the executive summary, so it shows up once in more details in the back.

So long as somebody figures it out.

We gave you all a rather long housing plan, so even I don't want to say that I know every page for sure.

Thank you.

Was there a second?

Yes, there was.

Mayor Walker?

Councillor Payne?

Yes.

Councillor Snook?

Yes.

So this is a good first step.

Or will we see you again?

We will show up again anytime Jenny or Code Studio asks us to join conversations because we don't want to but we are we are exiting stage left in terms of our contract.

Well thank you so much for all your work and your partnership.

Thank you all for hiring us.

Thank you all.

One reading.

The consultants will be able to use that plan along with additional community engagement to update the city's zoning code.

I'm sure you'll have questions and comments, but now I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Nick Morrison with the Thomas Jefferson Planning District for a short presentation.