City Council Meeting   2/16/2021

Understand?

Yeah, I just texted him.

Good afternoon.

I call this meeting to order.

Ms.

Thomas, would you take roll call, please?

Mayor Walker?

Mayor McGill?

Here.

Councillor Hill?

Here.

All right, thank you.

So I'll turn this meeting over to and welcome Mr. Boyles for your first meeting.

I'll be glad to introduce Ryan Davidson, our senior budget management analyst and just thank you for the welcome Mayor Walker and the rest of council.

Very glad to be here on the first day and happy Mardi Gras to everyone.

Okay.

Thank you.

Brian, you can go ahead and start the slideshow.

and I've been informed that I've been having some computer issues.

So if I start to break up, just wave me down, flag me down so that I know and I can repeat myself.

I've been having some issues with my microphone today.

Okay.

So this afternoon, we're going to continue with our monthly snapshot of the revenues and expenses for the general funds and the utility funds and to discuss the potential steps that we've identified to manage the shortfall we've been discussing with you over the last couple months.

The following slides, we're just going to go over some of the highlights of these monthly reports.

Again, more detailed information can be found in the actual report that was given to council and is posted online.

So there have been no real changes to our revenue projection from what we shared and discussed with council at our meeting last month.

We're still looking at projecting our revenues to come in approximately $9.9 million lower than the FY21 adopted budget amounts.

Just as a reminder, our revenue team that develops these projections meets every other week and consists of our commissioner of revenue, our treasurer, economic development director, staff,

City Assessors, Finance, Budget, City Manager.

And so we meet on a regular basis.

And if there are any significant changes, we will bring those back to Council at the report for the following month.

This first slide, we're just presenting the data graphically to show the continued decline in our revenue projections.

What we'll really be working off of it and discussing is this

middle row in the blue, which is our current revision and how we anticipate finishing out the year.

But we did, as we did last year, wanted to continue to show you that we are looking at what would happen if things got substantially worse in terms of cases and we continue to revert backwards through the stages and show these multiple scenarios just so we can have an idea of where we are and to know that we're looking at this and we're managing to these figures.

Next slide, please.

Again, as I said earlier, overall, we're looking at a revised projection with a decrease of approximately $9.9 million or about 5% below our original adopted budget from June.

Again, as always, we monitor these and we'll come back to you with any revisions.

As we continue to see

We will, we do continue, excuse me, we do continue to see volatility month to month on some of our larger economic driven revenues, such as sales, meals and lodging.

Revenues in these areas were continuing to improve through the beginning of FY21, but saw a sharp decline for the November revenues that were actually collected in December.

And however, but the receipts for December that we collected in the city for January actually looked much better as compared to the receipts from the previous month.

As I said, it's been a pretty volatile trend recently, and so trying to extrapolate out some kind of a sustainable trend has been difficult, but at this point we're still confident in the numbers we're showing in the current forecast.

One thing I wanted to point out is that we have, at the urging of Council, we've added back in the year-to-date projection columns

That year-to-date projection column is showing our projections based off of the current forecast, the blue columns we're working from, and we thought that's the most relevant data to be showing projections on the year-to-date projections because showing that from the original budget just didn't seem to make sense because we all know that we're, as I said, about $9.5 or almost $10 million below those original numbers.

Again,

I caution against looking at year-to-date projections because they vary wildly from month to month.

And so overall, you know, just seeing where we are in our collections and our percent collected probably in some cases will give you a more accurate picture of projection because things such as real estate and personal property tax, those are only collected twice a year.

So anything that comes in

between those is going to be a little bit off and may move those projections a little bit, but that's just some of the things we look at and we work through as we go through these projections.

When looking at these projections, as you can see, we're running ahead in some areas, most notably real estate and some of the economic driven revenues.

As I mentioned, with receipts, it came in much better than what we were expecting, but I don't want to give us a sense of false security because, again, overall, we're still looking to come in approximately nine

to $10 million below the original budgeted figures.

Next slide, please.

And again, as you can see here on these overall revenue figures, again, we're slightly ahead of our projections, but as I said, that's still projections based on a drastically reduced revenue forecast.

And again, some of these items do have corresponding

Expenditure decreases mainly in the other designated revenue section, which includes some of the meals tax and also in the other designated revenue section, the transfer to the mall maintenance account, which comes from our vendors.

Next slide.

And again, once again, just wanted to show the overall impact of the revenues and what we've been looking at over the last several months.

Okay, Brian, next slide.

So as we look at the expenditure, again, we're currently through seven, these figures are currently through seven months or approximately 58.3% of the fiscal year.

But again, as a cost in each month, expenditures don't spread evenly, you don't can't slice them evenly over 12 months.

And so looking at that should give you a general idea if you're using that 58% figure.

But there are a lot of nuances in these, in the way things are charged and the way things come through that

that could throw some percentages off in that area.

For example, non-departmental activities that contains all of our transfers such as debt, social services, transfers to transit, CIP, those kind of things, most of which are one-time payments.

And so those come through all at one time.

And as you can see, we've gone through almost 70% of that, you know,

that designated or that allotted budget.

However, as the year progresses through, that will again continue to normalize as we're not going to have as many expenditures showing up in that area.

Same thing with Healthy Families and Community.

That section is above the 58% due to the actuals reflecting several third quarter quarterly payments for several of the outside agencies, which brings that budget up above the 50%.

If you look at those budgets that are

driven by mainly by the departments, those categories such as public safety, infrastructure operations, management, internal services, you'll see those are still trending slightly below the 58% kind of threshold or benchmark.

And so you can see where we are starting to see, you know, we are recognizing some savings in those areas and managing within those areas to stay well within our means.

Next slide, please.

So on this final slide, we had showed you this last year, and I just wanted to bring this up as a reminder of how staff and management is currently proposing to manage and work through the shortfall.

Again, these are just several areas.

We're meeting on a regular basis, and we examine both the revenues and expenditures on a regular basis.

We're meeting weekly right now, and this is part of those topics that are brought up.

But there's things we're looking at.

I mean, the COVID-19 reserve, which is that roughly $6.7 million that was set aside as part of last year's budget, as well as there was care spending that was appropriated for some public safety expenses in FY21 that has produced savings that

We see our savings of around $7.6 million.

And then there's also some areas where we're seeing those revenue decreases that I mentioned, the meals tax transfer to debt service, the CIP transfer related to the mall vending permits.

So those items have between $800,000 to $900,000 worth of expenditure savings.

So as those revenues go down, there is going to be an offsetting expenditure reduction on each of those.

We've been looking at departmental savings that could, you know, and as we look through that, we're only seven months in, so we have greater flexibility on the various expenditure levers that we can pull than if this was happening later in the fiscal year, but we are continuing to look at those and monitor those and make sure that we're going to have those savings available to us should we need them

Do want to point out again, as I did last month, in terms of the departmental savings, these do not include any layoffs, and we're not anticipating looking at layoffs at this time, still feel that we can manage to do that amount without making that.

And then there's also the use of the FY19 and FY20 year-end surpluses that have been shifted to the CIP by policy that we could look at moving back should we need to use some of those funds.

While the ranges of these amounts we have listed here potentially cover the shortfall.

Again, I don't want us to think that the work's done and that we're out of the woods here.

On the contrary, it's going to be and going to require an ongoing effort by everyone involved to manage the shortfall.

And we just need to continue to keep these figures in front of us as we're continuing to make the decisions as we move through the fiscal year as we make those financial decisions at this point.

I just have a question about the first page just to make sure that I understand.

So the year to date projections you said is based on the blue column.

Yes, ma'am.

but to date we have like just take the real estate taxes.

Sure.

More has come in than we originally projected.

That's correct.

Okay.

That's a lot of that is just a timing.

Those percentages will vary on a year to year basis as we, you know, it's not a steadfast rule that at this point we could expect to have collected 58% or 63% of these revenues.

Okay, and so then this $200,000 that is in the blue box too, what is that pertaining to?

I'm still just in the first column.

So it's in the red in the brackets?

The $278,000?

Okay, so what that is, is that current, so that's showing, that column is showing the change from what was initially adopted to what is our current forecast.

I was just trying to figure that out in relation to the projection and the actuals and with them being over.

So, okay, now I got it.

All right.

Okay.

And my other question is, I was reading an article

that was talking about how much, and I think I asked this earlier in the year, well last year, but how much money like grocery stores are bringing in.

So do we know how well in terms of those stores are doing that over what they typically do?

Yeah, I can't give you any hard and fast numbers.

I could try to tease some things out.

We know that grocery stores are doing pretty well based on what we're seeing in sales tax every month.

They're one of the few sectors.

Well, I don't know.

I mean, there's others that are doing okay, too.

But that's one of the sectors that have done pretty well throughout this.

I mean, if you wanted, I could...

I was just thinking about it again that if it would just I think be helpful to know if the like meals and lodging taxes are down but then we're increasing due to sales tax from grocery stores I just think it's something that at least you know we could highlight that tells part of the story about why those numbers may be

shifting.

Yeah, I would be careful.

Oh, I understand that.

But if we're doing better in those categories than we would in previous years at the same point is kind of what I'm thinking.

I could try to quantify that.

It's going to take me a few days to pull the numbers together just looking at sales tax because that's what we've got for grocery stores that's going to speak to the point better than meals tax for grocery stores.

What is the portion of that tax that we even get?

Yeah, that's correct.

Normal sales tax is 5.3%, and we get one of those 5.3% two months later.

Grocery store sales, it's not even, I think it's like 3.2 on home consumables, but we get 1% of that.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, we have a report from the Thomas Jefferson Area Community Criminal Justice Board.

Yes, Mayor Walker.

I'd like to introduce Neil Goodloe from

Thank you, Vice Mayor McGill.

I also want to thank you for your participation as Charlottesville's government representative to the CCJB.

I also owe a debt of gratitude to your citizen representative, Hosea Mitchell.

Both of these individuals have been very involved in the work of the board and in the vetting of the data that you are about ready to see.

Brian, I hope you have my slide deck.

We had some trouble getting it through.

Oh, excellent.

I want to start by saying that jail costs and jail bed day utilization is driven by a couple of fairly predictable things.

And among those are increases or decreases in a population of a community.

Of course, Charlottesville's population is rising.

They're also influenced by crime rates per capita, booking volume at the jail, particularly at the felony level because they tend to consume more bed days.

The number of inmates who are known to the jail year over year.

the number of beds that they actually consume by virtue of their average length of stay, and then how well or how poorly we utilize alternatives and pretrial release and things of that matter.

So all of those kind of come together in this report.

Next slide, please.

So about this time last year, I was directed by the board, and this springs from the strategic plan that had been put in place by the CCJB.

One of the key items in the strategic plan was to offer each jurisdiction specific data to that jurisdiction to help them make better criminal justice decisions locally.

So I presented, I prepared an annual report for

eight different jurisdictions, and they were all using the same methodology, all using the same template.

I also prepared a separate report for each of the two regional jails so that Charlottesville, for instance, can look to its contribution to ACRJ

not only as a function of your own statistics, but also as a function of your two partners, which are Albemarle and Nelson Camps.

Next slide, please.

So the first item that influences bed day expenditures is population.

Your population rose almost 9% during the decade.

A little bit less in Albemarle County, but not by much.

Next slide.

Some of the great news that I'm prepared to deliver today is that crime's down, and crime of all three major crime types is down.

Crimes against persons down 39%, next slide.

Crimes against property are down 41%, next slide.

And reported crimes against society, these include largely

Weapons offenses and drug offenses are down 44% as a function of this particular category.

Next slide.

I also calculated your drug and narcotics offenses per thousand residents, which is also down substantially.

Next slide.

I went to the Virginia Department of Forensic Science for data.

and this actually has a broader time horizon almost two decades and you can see that just very gently in fits and starts the number of drug felony certificates of analysis and these are analysis certificates that are completed by the Virginia Forensic Science to accompany a drug case as it moves through the court system.

They're down

modestly over the last 15 years.

But more importantly is that this Virginia Department of Forensic Science data gives us our first look ever into the actual drug utilization patterns.

Next slide.

And you can see that historically cocaine has been by far the most seized felony narcotic in Charlottesville.

Some increase in opioids over the course of the last decade, very minor increase in the amount of methamphetamine.

In virtually every other jurisdiction that I studied in all of the surrounding jurisdictions, opioids were up very strongly and methamphetamine was up very strongly.

rivaling cocaine and in some cases replacing it as the most seized narcotic.

Next slide, please.

So I want to make a distinction.

A booking is a charge.

If I get booked into ACRJ on 48 counts of forgery,

That's 48 bookings.

So this is the best view of the volume of charges that are coming into the jail and the kinds of charges that are coming into the jail.

It is not necessarily a good reflection of the number of people who are coming into jail.

Next slide, please.

So wherever possible in the written report that I've submitted to counsel, I also calculate

a per capita rate per thousand residents so that we can factor in that 8.8% increase in the general population.

And when we do that, we can see that bookings fell 14% over the decade, again, and a little bit of a rise before a significant fall between 17 and 19.

Next slide.

Why this matters is that the way the jail's funding formula is achieved is that the rate that a particular jurisdiction utilizes in terms of its bed day expenditures over a three-year period of time are factored into the cost formula for each jurisdiction.

And as you can see, this is particularly with regard to bookings.

Booking volume for the city of Charlottesville dropped from 43% of the total at the jail in 2010 to 31.3% in 2019.

Next slide, please.

Thank you.

Significant is the fact that felonies were actually up 25%.

That was negated by a drop in misdemeanor booking volume.

So once we start to get a little bit more granular on the data, we can see that these two trends are heading in opposite directions.

Next slide.

We can also see that the

that drop in booking volume was not equal among the races.

Black booking volume was actually up 6% while white booking volume was down 19%.

More on that later.

Next slide, please.

Contrary to a national trend, female booking volume was down 16%.

Almost every other jurisdiction I've looked at

This slide was exactly the opposite, that booking volume among females was heading upward at a fairly substantial rate, but that isn't true for the city of Charlottesville.

Next slide.

What is probably the most interesting and perplexing trend that I have observed is the increase

in booking volume among individuals who are booked in on a Charlottesville charge and are age 50 or older.

Far surpasses any increase in any other age group.

And I would argue that it alone is responsible for the vast majority of that 25% increase in felony bookings.

Next slide.

The good news is that booking

volume among the youngest inmates those age 18 to 24 has dropped substantially and this has implications as you will see momentarily.

Next slide.

What you're looking at here is by crime category the 10 top booking offense categories starting on your far left and ending on your far right.

They are in

descending order of booking volume over the 10 years, alcohol, assault, DWI, probation violations, narcotics, larceny, contempt of court, fraud, operator's license charges, and weapons offenses.

Next slide, please.

This is another look at booking volume

separated by not only charge type but charge severity.

And since we know that felonies are trending up and misdemeanors are trending down, this will show you a little bit of what makes up the difference between the two.

You can see that alcohol charges, particularly drunk and public charges, have plummeted over the last 10 years.

Traffic offenses also down sharply.

and that is largely due to a decrease in DUI offenses.

You'll notice that felony probation violations were probably trending up the most strongly during the 10-year period but dropping off in the last couple years.

Next slide.

This gives a percentage change for each of these different crime types and

crime levels over the last 10 years.

77% increase in probation violation felony being the greatest increase over the 10 years.

Next slide.

So now let's shift gears.

An intake is a person.

And a person can be taken into the jail multiple times during a year.

But this counts every

time a person is taken in regardless of how many bookings or charges they are taken in on.

And you will notice that this is down 12%.

Next slide.

And down 20% per thousand residents given the fact that the city is growing in population.

So nearly one fifth fewer individuals being booked into the jail

taken into the jail in 2019 than in 2010.

Next slide.

Again, a difference between racial trends with both black intakes and white intakes down, white intakes down about 5% more steeply.

Next slide.

Very little difference between the trends among male intakes and female intakes, about a four percentage difference with female intakes down more steeply.

Next slide.

And here you can see the impact that fewer bookings of younger people is having on the jail, both in the under 20 age category and the 20 to 24

age category down sharply in both of those categories.

And again, out on the other end, we see a rise in the number of older people entering the jail, but not anywhere near the rise in the number of felony charges or the percentage increase in felony charges, which was over 200%.

Next slide.

So what this means, and it's true for the jail as a whole and is true for the Charlottesville cohort at the jail, that the inmate population is aging and aged 6%, about two and a half years older on average at intake than 10 years ago.

And this has some significant implications for

health costs at the jail, and particularly in that 50 and over age group.

Next slide.

Almost no movement at all over the last 10 years in the percentage of individuals who are released pretrial, either on their recognizance or a bond or to OAR's pretrial supervision, holding very, very steady overall, which is significant given the fact that there was a 25% increase

in felony booking volume, which generally would have created fewer opportunities for pretrial release.

Next slide.

This slide attempts to show the number of individuals known to the jail during a given year, regardless of how many times they got taken in, regardless of how many bookings they had,

These are just the number of human beings that if you saw them once in 2010, they counted one time for that year.

If you saw them 50 times, they counted one time.

And what this suggests is that fewer and fewer individuals are known to the jail year over year.

And given the data that I've already presented, it suggests that there are more individuals who are being booked multiple times in a year.

So we need to better understand who they are and what those charge types are.

Next slide.

Perhaps the most significant finding for Charlottesville

is the fact that your length of stay has dropped so significantly over the last 10 years.

This has enormous implications for your bed day utilization.

Obviously, the shorter term of stay, the fewer bed days that are expended.

And again, I'll remind you, this is despite increases in felony booking volume.

So this is bucking a trend in the other direction in terms of the kinds of charges that would

generally result in longer lengths of stay.

Next slide, please.

This is a racial difference in length of stay.

Significant differences with Black inmates spending more average days than white inmates.

However, the percentages were closing

toward the end of the 10-year period.

And the difference between the two average lengths of stay dropped about 44% over the 10-year period.

However, black inmates still serve an average of a little over 18 days longer per stay than do white inmates.

Next slide, please.

The men stayed 27% fewer days than they did 10 years ago.

However, they still significantly stay longer than women do.

Next slide.

And this continues this concerning trend I have about this age 50 plus cohort.

every other age group experienced a drop in their average length of stay.

25 to 29 year olds experienced a 51% drop, yet we have a 42% increase among this one age cohort.

Next slide.

And length of stay was down across the board.

Every single charge category

Charged level, charged type, experienced a general drop in length of stay over the 10-year period.

Next slide.

As a result, on an average day in 2019,

You had significantly fewer Charlottesville inmates in the jail than you had 10 years ago.

Next slide.

Resulting in fewer bed days expended.

26% fewer.

Next slide.

And even fewer as a rate per thousand residents.

Next slide.

This has significant implications for how much Charlottesville will pay for its share of ACRJ bed day costs over the next couple of years.

And you can see that Albemarle County's bed day expenditure is up 23%.

Nelson's bed day expenditure is up even sharper at 67%.

And Charlottesville's

bed day expenditure has dropped 19% during the decade.

Still the most correctionally dense per capita, but the trends are heading in opposite directions for Charlottesville and Animal County.

Next slide.

Black bed day expenditures were down twice that of white inmates for the city of Charlottesville.

This is a 55% difference between bed expenditures by race over the last 10 years.

Next slide.

Identical.

drops for men and women for their bed day expenditures.

Next slide.

And once again, way out on the right hand side of this graph, we can see that inmates on Charlottesville offenses who are 50 years old or older were the proximate cause of more bed day expenditures at the jail

in 2019 than any other age group.

And this is confounding, as a criminologist, it confounds me because there's a very well-established desistance curve and most risk assessments are designed to assign less recidivism risk to someone after their 30th birthday, yet

we are seeing a significant increase in bed day expenditures among an age cohort that should have largely desisted.

And so we need to better understand what is driving what the underlying factors are in what we're seeing with this 50 plus age group.

And I'm working on that right now.

To that point, I'm sorry, in the other jurisdictions, is that the same trend with the age groups, or does it just seem like it's unique to us?

So, great question.

I also saw a similar phenomenon in the Albemarle County data, but I didn't see it

as strongly in any of the smaller rural counties.

So it seems to be consistent with either an urban or suburban urban ring kind of environment.

The slide you're looking at now is basically by bed days what

Council spends its money on for ACRJ's expenditures.

And each one of these days in 2019 costs $93.96.

By far, year after year, the greatest bed day expenditures are for felony probation violations,

There are a number of reasons for this.

And you will notice that the last three years in a row they have been down.

There are some reasons for that.

But probation violators do tend to be arrested, incarcerated, and sit there without bond while awaiting their hearing in the circuit court.

So I can't tell you precisely what percentage of these bed days are consumed before their probation violation hearing and how much are consumed after.

But I can tell you that a significant portion of those bed day expenditures are prior to a hearing.

Next slide.

So

Overall, your costs as a function of bed days was up 4%.

Even though your bed day expenditure was down, the cost for the jail to run increased a little more than 30% over the past 10 years.

So even with a reduction in bed day cost,

Your expenditures were up very, very modestly over the last 10 years.

Next slide.

However, when we add in the increased number of citizens in Charlottesville, the cost per capita dropped 5% over the last 10 years.

Charlottesville is the only one of the eight jurisdictions I studied that actually had a per capita

drop in bed day expenditures for that time frame.

Next slide.

So in summary, reported crime is down.

It's down in all three major categories.

As a consequence, Charlottesville's share of bookings and bed days at ACRJ have also dropped.

Despite increases in felony bookings, bed days are down.

However, increases were observed in felony bookings, in intakes, in average length of stay, and in bed days expended among

inmates who are age 50 and older.

It's probably the most significant finding in this data set.

On the bright side, incarceration rates among 18 to 24-year-olds have dropped sharply.

And it's interesting to note that when I looked at DUI particularly, DUI booking rates among the 18 to 24-year-old age group

were down substantially.

So long story short, fewer lengths of stay, fewer bed days expended, and per capita, lower cost.

Neil, one question I had is about the elderly.

So that's what I'm investigating now.

Financial stress.

Well, and I'm using the jail's risk and needs assessment database to also look at some of the underlying factors that were prevalent in folks' lives before they got locked up.

And I can look at whether they were having trouble working

maintaining affordable housing.

Were they having trouble with just getting food on the table?

One of the really interesting things is substance abuse rates increased with every single age group.

But when I've looked at it a little deeper,

Drug abuse rates did not, and alcohol abuse climbs with age.

And then the other question I had is a sort of technical point.

In your numbers, if someone is arrested, brought to the magistrate's office,

I know they go into the back, they come to the magistrate's office through the jail.

So every visit to the magistrate's office that results in a charge results in a booking.

Even if the person's there for 10 minutes.

Thank you.

That's an interesting question because, you know, the average length of stay may be 26, 27 days, but the median length of stay is more like three, four.

And I guess one other question.

I know we often

have an issue with people who have been sentenced by a circuit court who don't get picked up by the Department of Corrections for months afterwards.

Do those folks continue to count against us until they are sent off to parts down the road?

However, the number of people actually end up in the Department of Corrections is only about 4% of the total intakes.

Are there any other questions?

All right.

Well, thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

Hello, good evening.

Jenny Koch with RHI, part of the Seville Plans Together consultant team.

As you can see, we also have Sarah Kirk and Philip Cash from HRNA with us today.

I'll give a little brief introduction to what we're going to talk about, and then I'll pass it off to them.

So we've, as a consultant team, I've met with you a few times about the affordable housing plan.

So our intent with this meeting is to not walk through the entire plan in detail, but instead to talk through some of the main revisions that HRNA has made since December.

And if you attended the Planning Commission meeting, this is largely the same presentation.

So you'll be getting it twice.

If you wanted to view a summary of that feedback we got in November and December that led to a lot of these changes, I did include a link to the public engagement summary on the agenda.

I think we sent it to you via email as well.

So as you'll see in the slides, we're hoping to work toward a council endorsement of this plan in March, and we're using this path forward with this sort of endorsement so that we can have some consensus around these major elements of the housing plan, which will influence the next steps for the comprehensive plan update process, particularly in the housing and, you know, related to housing and land use.

Thank you, Jenny.

So, Philip Cash, HRNA.

As I said, we're going to walk through changes.

The overall plan is, I think, over 150 pages at this point, excluding the public comments section.

So, first of all, we appreciate the feedback we got from the public in general and, frankly, also from Council.

We don't always find that our plans are read and we get detailed, thoughtful input.

So it's nice when that happens.

And sitting through session today is a good reminder of all the other topics you all are covering.

So I know this is not the only subject I've played.

So we're going to go through.

As always, you've seen us present before.

Please stop us, ask questions, push back.

We think we have good information here, but always ready to discuss.

Next slide, please.

So we started this planning process actually well over a year ago because I remember going down long before there was COVID and

COVID's been around for a year now.

So we started this a while back.

We really started the drafting and revisions back in November.

We put out a different version of the plan, talked about it, got feedback from the Planning Commission, got feedback from the Advisory Committee, and got feedback from the general public.

We have tried to respond to all of that and work it into here and are now moving into actually this conversation today and, as was said, towards endorsement.

Next slide.

So I'm going to go through the summary of the changes here.

I think we've got it pretty well covered, but happy to get to that.

Next slide.

So we grouped this into four broad areas.

One was clarified language, so just being clearer about what we're saying or making a point that was implied but frankly wasn't said at all.

There was a lot of comments and a lot of feedback on, hey, this means something, you know, you didn't say this or you didn't speak to that or you're implying something here or I'm reading it this way and we wanted, you know, just being clear about things.

I think those are

Those are quite important points.

There was also just a general feedback about expanding homeownership and making sure homeownership was viewed as co-equal to rental and real emphasis there.

We've made both language changes and frankly added a couple of tools.

And then there were similar comments and points about really getting into details of the vulnerable populations and energy efficiency.

The changes there were less about adding new tools and more about

drawing a finer point about the connections on the existing tools and making sure we're adjusting them as tools and making it clear.

And then the last piece was, this is a lot, and we added a great deal of, we added some detail and just got clear about what we're recommending on implementation and how we actually think this will happen and try to be both ambitious and practical, which is always attention and so

Spent some time talking about with the staff and welcome feedback and pushback on that in particular since implementation is the key.

Next slide, please.

So clarified language, really four areas.

One is the link between racial equity and homeownership.

We'll talk about both the link there and just being clear about what we're talking about.

Opportunities for regional collaboration.

These are both thematic points for us, racial equity and regional collaboration.

We tried to address them throughout the plan.

For both of those points, we actually just

moved out a little bit more to the floor and tried to be clear about it.

The area where I think we spent the most time working with city staff and trying to be clear is on the funding commitment.

And we've tried, we added a significant amount of information there and clarifying language.

And we'll spend some time walking through that, trying to be extremely clear.

And then there was points just where we were clear about when does, what projects trigger receiving city assistance.

Put a definition down there.

So this is a lot of text and it's different colors.

So I apologize.

I don't expect you to actually read it.

Right now, I expect you to read it at some point.

For the guiding principle of racial equity, what we tried to lay out was what are the key strategies, recommendations, and what's the link back to racial equity so that we're being as explicit as we could be about how the plan advances this and what aspects of the plan have to be implemented in order for this to really happen.

It was called out throughout the plan, but it's in place, frankly, it was a bit diffuse and not drawing it as clearly as we could.

So one was just making the point about the inequity on home ownership and how that gets addressed.

That was in our initial assessments and our market analysis.

We talked about it, but it wasn't as clear in the plan.

And we got, I think reasonably so, a fair amount of pushback on that.

So we, one, tried to draw a finer point on the market analysis on existing conditions.

and two, just draw a final point on here are the programs and actions that are actually going to address that.

Another point was in governance.

We talked a lot about governance.

I thought that was actually the area where we had the fewest, I expected more requests for change, but we didn't actually make a lot of changes to our governance points, but actually just being more clear on them.

And then the last piece really was on metrics, making sure we're calling out and talking about how we're disaggregating in the metrics.

And so this plan, as it gets implemented and it's monitored,

we're able, you're able to really see is this adjacent racial equity or not and making sure that's clear in the data analysis.

So those are the three primary points in here and really this was about pulling it all into one place and making it clear about how the plan connects to these points.

This is largely a new slide.

Next slide.

So regional collaboration was another guiding principle.

This is one where we did the exact same thing and pulled in the different points and tried to be extremely clear.

We put it in true groupings really based on your key regional partners.

One was Albemarle County and the other was UVA.

Those are, as we see it, your two most important regional partners.

Not that they're the only partners, but the two most important.

On the county side, we really tried to put a finer point and pull up to the front of

the agreement about housing funding.

So the city is making significant commitments to funding.

How does that work in the urban ring where there's city commitments to funding between commitments in the city and the county and where's the county putting in funding?

And frankly, just a larger commitment to addressing affordable housing because Charlottesville is part of a regional housing market.

And so as Charlottesville commits subsidy, that is great.

The county committing subsidy to affordable housing is also really important to addressing affordability.

The other area, so we talked about that both in the first point and the last point there on the governance side and the funny side, the point in between is really we're excited about the city's commitments on the land use side, but wanting to be extremely clear that a lot of the impact and benefit of those are dependent about having alignment in the urban ring.

If the city makes the changes but there's not agreement to make similar changes and have them general alignment in the urban ring, that's where a lot of development and growth is happening.

the benefits and the impact will be significantly lower.

So we wanted to call that out.

Then on UVA, we had called out several points, but really all of these points are about collaborating with UVA and working with UVA to make sure they're coming in,

is significant to affordable housing is in alignment with the city's effort so that it's centering racial equity in the same way, which they have lots of language in it, that it's really targeting deeper levels of affordability where there's greatest need as the city is, that it's valuing homeownership as well as rental, and it's also giving consideration.

All that is thematically about making sure that as the city makes its commitments and moves forward on its housing plan, UVA's investment really reinforces and supports.

It's primarily about alignment.

Next slide.

So getting into the funding piece here.

This is taking a look at the $10 million number and laying out what the components are.

This is a slide that was in the previous version of the plan.

The real change here is about a clarification of language, and this is an important clarification.

The $10 million is the total commitment of local funding.

It is not

the commitment of additional local funding over the next 10 years.

So $10 million annually over the next 10 years, that is a total commitment.

So I have a quick question about that because I was watching a couple of the YouTube videos of the meetings and there was some comments about whether this 10 million included city staff that need to be hired to sustain the program.

Does it?

It just seems like some of the nonprofit partners thought that this, the city's staffing needs that arises out of trying to meet the capacity needs for the affordable housing shouldn't come out of this $10 million.

So we definitely have talked about them.

So I'm going to, can we go forward one more slide?

It's too much.

I should actually get into this a little bit more.

I think it's a very, we can come back.

Let's go forward one more slide.

So we started to look at other cities as part of this.

And when we looked at other cities, we backed that piece out.

We didn't include that when we looked at Charlottesville, the funding that went to the cost for Charlottesville, about the level of Charlottesville commitment, and we didn't include the tax abatement because we were comparing ourselves to other cities.

I think the comment and feedback from both some of the nonprofits, but also other community members on that was valid that that was not a normal way

We thought it was important to include it because it gives a picture of the full cost and the full commitment.

But when you're comparing yourself with other communities or about the money that's going into actual housing, it's not normal to include that.

We don't want to inflate or over represent.

So I want to acknowledge, I think that it was a fair, like, it's not an unreasonable point for them to raise.

Yes.

No, I didn't necessarily disagree, you know, with them at all.

I just, because I even have questions about where the 10 million is going to get us, which I know we are going to, you know, talk about that when we, over the next few weeks as adopting this.

But, and I've heard how you all arrived at that number, but it seems like it'll be more overall than the 10 million if, you

Yes.

So can I go back two slides?

And I think we can jump around.

So that definitely included the admin.

It also included the tax abatement.

Can we go to the next slide?

So part of what this means, though, and this is a slide that we added to try to be clearer.

is if you look at what the city's commitments are right now.

So if you look at over through now through 2025, so amendments to the rental voucher program, the public housing redevelopment, the Friendship Court, to existing housing, rehabilitation, energy conservation programs.

Really what this level of commitment says is

that the city has made good on this commitment to higher level funding and there's not a lot of additional bandwidth for new programs over through 2025.

That's what this level of funding means.

And I think this has been one of the biggest areas we've had conversations with the nonprofits and different folks in the community about how much more need there is and the need

for their, yes, the city has increased its funding, but for it to need to go even further.

And there was conversation about whether it was $8 million, that I guess the average had been around 8 million.

And so the 10 million, so based on what we have,

voted on for, let's say, the current fiscal year.

The admin cost is not beyond the $10 million, at least the way we have it set up, it's included in the $10 million, but you're not currently funding that.

That is correct.

What the amount of money that we've already allocated, that we currently have allocated in the budget.

That's what wasn't clear whether the $10 million was already maxed out.

There were some conversations that sounded as if it was already maxed.

And then there were some conversation that as if there were maybe a million to 2 million kind of room to add things.

PB, David Ensign, My understanding from the budget process is there is room to add small amounts separate from the staff.

A lot of that depends, though, on PB, David Ensign, When PB, David Ensign, The timing of some of these projects, some of these larger capital projects.

So public housing development and the friendship courts.

If those were all to happen between now and 2025, which

isn't aligned with the projections we've seen, but recognizing development project shift and nothing about that is finalized, the amount available will be very small.

If some of them were to take longer to happen, you know, development space over longer time, then there is more flexibility.

I apologize on an answer that I feel is more evasive than I intend to be.

I'm just not partially a timing answer.

No, it's fine.

It's just some questions I had after.

I wasn't able to watch the videos during your meetings, but I've gone back and watched them, and it took me a while, so I didn't have the questions in advance.

Next slide, please.

So part of this is just, we also, one of the questions we got when we've been getting through the whole process is,

Well, how does what Charlottesville do compare to other communities?

And we looked at a number of other communities and we settled on a group that, frankly, there was data available for and seemed to be making larger commitments on affordable housing.

As I was saying this a little bit earlier, we excluded the funding that Charlottesville is putting towards the administrative costs and the funding the city's putting towards tax abatement, not because

We don't think that those are significant commitments, but because we couldn't compare those apples to apples with other communities, it's because you guys were just going through your financial report.

Municipal finance is a bit opaque, and getting data on other cities' municipal finance is challenging, even if this is what you do all the time, because everybody sets it up slightly differently.

And so as we look at this, Charlottesville is in the top tier for making commitments.

The only jurisdiction we saw that was making a larger commitment was Washington and D.C.

is

both a city and somewhat a state.

So we get to do property taxes, we get to do income taxes, and we don't have to share them with anybody.

When we get sales taxes, we don't have to share them with anybody.

So that helps us, and frankly, the population.

It's not out of alignment with other communities that are making significant payments, but this is a large commitment.

This is a significant per capita per year commitment relative Charlottesville, both Charlottesville size and relative Charlottesville size.

and so we put this in here to really make that clearer as we got a lot of questions on it.

That doesn't mean it's a reason not to go higher, but it is helpful to understand where you stand.

Next slide.

One of the other pieces that we called out in here is we're really pulling the funding right now out of the capital improvement plan and really that's general funding.

It's not from a special source as it's often set up in many places.

and both to sustain that level of funding, which is something we're calling for here and potentially to expand it, there's a need to identify additional funding sources.

And any additional funding source means somebody's paying for it.

It means it's a fee or a tax or an issue.

And so we gave some examples of other fees that have been used to support affordable housing throughout Virginia.

And we've laid out some criteria for how you evaluate this.

And we've evaluated these in other places.

and recommend this as one of the higher priorities for Charlottesville as we move forward and affordable housing plan is the level of production right now does not close the gap, the complete gap.

It doesn't.

And additional funding is necessary to do that.

And part of the question here, and we're trying to lay it out, is where is there agreement for that additional funding to come from?

And how can that conversation move forward?

Because that seems to be, in many ways, the current

Grant's current sticking point.

In some ways, this is a new recommendation because we did not talk about how to get into more detail on the funding sources, but we laid that out and we recommend this as something that gets resolved within the next 18 months because it is really critical to both sustaining and expanding.

The other piece I want to add in here is that part of this has shifted and you all were just looking at this so you know it, but I want to say it.

The fiscal situation because of COVID has shifted a lot and it is extremely unstable.

It's quite helpful that you just had a presentation that said all that in much more detail so I don't have to get into it.

Part of this is just getting clearer where are things going to stabilize at and what are the other funding sources are and that really allows for reevaluation and a closer look at how additional funding might be put in.

Next slide.

So that's it of funding.

We'll get into the level of impact on the last slide.

I separated those out.

Hopefully that's not, you know, makes it a little choppy, but I think it works well.

The next point is just going through some of the tools, our changes on the tools.

We made a very slight adjustment on the tenant's right side, just to make it clear what we mean by developments receiving city assistance.

It means they're direct subsidy or indirectly subsidized through a major infrastructure.

So like if you built a parking deck for someone,

So that means city money going into a deal is what it takes to make that work.

Next slide.

So the next area related category, those were the clarifying languages.

The next area of changes was really the expanding homeownership.

And this was, we made some language text changes to the existing programs, but primarily this was about adding additional programs and going deeper.

I would say that some of the comments stung a little bit that they felt that we were too surface level and didn't give new thinking.

So we tried to push this and put out some ideas that are more aggressive and a little bit more innovative.

Some of them have been pushed throughout the process and others are approaches we've worked on in other places.

Next slide.

So again, there's three areas.

Employer assisted down payments

Section 8 voucher for homeownership and then local mortgage pool.

And we'll go through each one of those.

Next.

So on employer-assisted down payment assistance, this is not something really the city is directly doing.

This really ties somewhat to your regionality conversation and the conversations with UVA or other major employers.

This is about encouraging and working with large employers and their ability to support

down payment assistance.

Yale runs a program on all these lines.

There's a number of other programs around the country that work along these lines.

This is about really finding private funding or philanthropic funding to help support the city's effort.

Down payment assistance programs run very similar to how public down payment assistance programs work, where local government, or in this case, an employer, helps put in money to help a household cover that down payments.

You have to lower the cost of home ownership and actually qualify and access home ownership.

Next slide.

You can go to the next slide.

So Section 8, voucher to homeownership.

Now, this was a recommendation that was brought up several times during the process.

Again, this is not something the city can do directly.

This is up to CRHA to do, but it's about engaging with them and talking about this.

And this is about using a housing voucher and having a program that allows you to take that voucher and use it to qualify for a mortgage and actually pursue home ownership as opposed to just paying, as opposed to paying rent with it.

There are programs like this throughout the country.

Many of them work quite well.

The key is finding mortgage lenders that will work with you and the counseling support to help households really move through this process.

Next slide.

And next slide.

The last area of recommendation we got into is looking at a local mortgage pool with an individual development account.

and this recommendation really lumps together a couple different concepts and as the city explores this it might course them or split them or push them in different ways there's different approaches to it but it's about addressing a couple of issues structurally you know access to mortgage financing still has huge racial disparity and frankly has growing income disparity so moderate income

and minority populations lost home ownership and much higher rate than foreclosure crisis.

And if you look at your Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, which reports on mortgage access, you have never regained actual access to the mortgage market.

And there's numerous factors involved.

There's the way appraisals are done and disparities between how properties are appased.

There is credit disparities and structural racism within the credit process.

There is differences in intergenerational wealth transfer.

There's a number of factors there.

There's also a lot of data that shows, frankly, the way many of us view a 30-year fixed rate mortgage as the traditional or natural mortgage.

There's nothing traditional or natural about the way a 30-year fixed rate mortgage works.

It's an artificial construct that was created by Congress in the financial system.

And this recommendation is about doing two things.

One, creating a mortgage pool with mortgage terms that have different terms that better fit populations that can't access it.

potentially different credit standards, different collateral standards, but also different down payment requirements and different levels of assistance and support.

So on one side, it's creating individual development accounts, which are really savings accounts for households that are usually matched publicly or philanthropically.

So instead of asking a household to take all the money they've saved and put it in as down payment assistance, you keep the down payment minimum, very minimal, $3,000, very low.

and have money set aside where they can actually access it if there's a major, you know, they need to replace the HVAC system or the roof.

There's plenty of analysis that shows this is actually a more effective way to prevent foreclosure and reduce default and have housing stability.

Our mortgage system in the country is just not set up that way because that's not how the financial markets are set up.

And so there's something you can do and do differently at a regional level.

There's also the ability to have enhanced servicing, which is a

Way to say, you know, we do homeownership counseling before households buy, but once you buy a household, there's not really ongoing, buy a house, there's not ongoing support.

And this is about funding and making sure that if you miss, if a household had an unemployment issue, health, any other crisis, you know, divorce, any of the things that can happen to anybody, there's somewhere for them to go and someone's already paid to help support them.

And if that household doesn't reach out for help, but if they miss a payment, when the servicer sends that late payment notice, a housing counselor is also notified at the same time and can reach out to the household and start to give them help because we know people tend to not want to ask for help and they tend to ask for help late in the process, which makes it harder to help them.

And we don't have a process set up to actually support them.

And so those are the types of changes this looks at doing.

So this is about changing the credit standards.

It's about changing how households can access wealth and savings.

And it's about giving them additional support throughout ownership.

Local mortgage pools are hard to create and will take a partnership with a lender.

The city can't do it by itself.

But they have been done throughout the country and they can be done and they can be much more effective at reaching

reaching households who are not accessing your Black population, your lower moderate income populations, households that are basing systemic barriers to accessing mortgage financing currently.

Go to the next slide, please.

So we talked a little bit about some examples here.

One mistake that I just want to call a note on our side, and this will update, is the funding needs on this are not accurate.

The funding needs here describe only the enhanced servicing.

described the financial support for individual development assistance accounts.

If we could solve homeownership at $500 a pop per household, I'd be really happy, but it takes more than that.

So a more accurate number is about $7,000 to $8,000 for an IDA account, and we'll update the number.

We just pulled the wrong number from the chart, and that's my mistake there.

But I want to just call that out, that this is not as magical as that number might make it look.

Next slide.

and this lays out a little bit more detail how enhanced servicing works and I've already talked about it a little bit getting out of order but the idea that you're using your existing nonprofit and housing counseling services to continue to support households after both counseling support but also that those housing counselors have access to financial workout funding if a household is in need.

One of the big

failures of the foreclosure crisis and the efforts to address it is there was a lot of funding for housing counseling and you could call a housing counselor and they would support you.

Those housing counselors had exactly zero money to give you to help you stay in your home and so they were not, while well-intentioned and well-run, were not particularly effective.

So this is about making sure you both get the counseling and there's funding to help provide support.

We also laid out additional detail on making sure we're serving seniors and adults with disability, and then pulling a clear link between housing costs, energy costs, and just general efforts to support energy efficiency.

Next slide.

So this is the slides already in there.

Really, the concept we want to make sure we added this is just clear about the total cost of housing.

We tend to get focused, and a lot of our work, I acknowledge this is focused on

portion of your cost that's rent or your mortgage, but utility costs are a huge factor within this as are transportation costs.

So there's a cost to pay rent or mortgage, there's a cost to actually run the house, and there's the cost to live in a certain location.

And we want to make sure we acknowledge that and think about it a little bit more holistically.

Next slide.

We also went through a number of tools and just added language to call it the fact that energy retrofits or energy efficiency improvements can be a way to reduce the cost of housing and then pass on savings to those households with increased affordability, as well as have environmental benefits.

So the acquisition fund is going to grab existing properties, retrofitting those properties and making energy efficiency improvements should be part of that.

Next slide.

Same thing with the owner occupied rehabilitation, the energy efficiency is a real opportunity there and hopefully we'll see additional stimulus funding that match any local funding on that.

Also on that, we called out the need to support aging in place and disabled households where there's need there.

Next slide.

Finally, we get into the implementation steps and timing for recommendations.

So there's a lot of text here, and I apologize for the volume of text, but wanted to make sure we were detailing this.

We really broke this up into three areas within six months.

So these are things that are getting completed immediately.

That doesn't mean they're the only things you're starting, but we're trying to get completed within the next six months.

There's what's getting completed within the next 18 months.

So these things that we think are gonna take longer to complete, but we'll still need to get started.

And then there's within three to five years.

These are things that you're not necessarily addressing

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You're doing mid-level, large-level city-scale affordable housing, but have a smaller city-scale staff.

And so those two things have to be brought more into alignment.

And that really has to happen first to move some of the other tasks forward.

On the funding side, the most impressive task is the identifying sustainable and reliable sources.

This is something that we think should start almost immediately as soon as there's available staff.

But having been through the process,

and other places, it takes a while to make this happen.

So you have to really think about the fiscal impact, you have to think about how this works, and then you have to move through a process of getting consensus and buy-in to actually get those funding sources in place.

But if you want this funding source to be in place two years from now, three years from now to support additional revenue, you really have to start moving in the very near term.

Next slide.

Then for

each of the areas, land use, tennis rights, and subsidy, we call out programs on the land use.

This is really about the work you're already doing through the larger comprehensive planning effort and making sure it actually gets adopted.

Planning process and conversations, there's a real opportunity to derail and never get to the full implementation.

And so this is about making sure that's a top priority for land use.

On the subsidy side, this is really about sustaining your existing programs and a particular call out to the work with CRHA, who is moving forward in that relationship and that partnership.

Because in terms of serving extremely low-income households, that's your most important partner and that's the most important initiative the city is already taking on.

Next slide.

So this is really our last slide and this is about impact.

So what we're talking about doing, when we look at the different programs and recommendations, this may vary depending on how funding actually gets allocated, but when we start to look at this, what we see is $10 million a year, $100 million total with $1 million every year going to admin producing is about 1,100 new subsidized units preserving, so this is largely in your public housing, but preserving about 600

existing affordable units are major, major reinvestments in them.

And then it's separate from those units, those physical units being created, you're looking to helping about 1,600 to 2,000 households every year through your tax abatement, through your emergency rental assistance, through services, through programs that actually help them on the affordability side.

So it is relative to the current number of affordable units, it is a significant impact and it is a major increase in impact.

It is also significantly less than the 4,000 unit number that was talked about, you know, has been put forward at different points in time.

So we're trying to acknowledge both things as truths.

Like this is a major commitment for Charlottesville to take on and was going to have really important impact.

And for the size of the city, it is larger commitment than we've seen from any other local government.

And that's somewhat reflected when you look at the housing trust fund.

But it's also, we don't want to

We are not trying to find this as this is going to solve all the housing problems of Charlottesville.

It's going to make a significant improvement, but it doesn't necessarily address all of them.

I know I'm at time and given very little time for questions and I apologize.

Sure, yeah, I guess I'll ask Mayor Walker others to guide us on what you would like us to do.

I do have some comments from Planning Commission I can share with you.

I had one question.

Yes, I don't know that we have the most current, getting the most current data is sometimes can be challenging, but yes, that data exists.

And we've done, we have analysis before COVID.

We have analysis before COVID.

I'm curious about both evictions and just the number of unlawful detainer actions being filed for failure to pay rent and so on, because I'm curious in particular about the notion of providing

having some sort of a grant to provide counsel for eviction proceedings and so on.

I actually talked to the judge.

He said, you know, we don't have very many of those in our courts.

I'm not sure whether this is really a problem or not.

So I'd be curious to get some more data on that or if you just point me to where the data is, I'll go find it.

Related to that is how many foreclosures do we see in Charlottesville?

Do you know that?

I know I have the eviction data.

I don't know if I have the most current foreclosure data.

On the eviction side, Charlottesville had a lower eviction rate than many other cities, even under control for per capita, but still had, it's all relative.

So we're happy to provide the data.

Still a significant number of evictions.

I think the support for eviction council

I think would be significant and still valuable, but we can send over the data on that.

The data source, we normally use charges, but every county does it slightly differently.

every state and county does it differently.

So let me, I can, that's not a hard question for me to get an answer to.

I just don't know.

Okay, thanks.

One of the concerns that I had, and I'll have to go back and look at that in particular, I don't have it in front of me, but I noted in my comments that a lot of times the data that you have

that talks about Charlottesville is for the Charlottesville housing market as a whole or for a larger entity than just the city.

We have eviction data that's specific to Charlottesville, but we can pull it out and send it over.

It's okay.

I mean, if you compare yourself to Richmond, you're doing great.

Did were any other cities, especially university towns of our size, because I know I've been talking to some other university towns or small cities in regards to zoning issues that can have unintentional consequences.

And I saw, you know, the soft density

recommendation.

And I was just wondering if because because I keep seeing I saw us compared to these much larger cities.

Um, and it's that's hard to be apples to apples on that.

And I appreciate how you've taken that we don't have the staffing that a large city does.

And that's one of the issues with trying to do such a large program is the infrastructure, our own internal infrastructure to support it.

Um,

So, and Sarah, jump in here if you have other ones.

Like there isn't, this is really based on our knowledge and our, frankly, our network.

So there isn't a great database of everywhere this is happening.

Durham, North Carolina was the place where, well, Durham is about five times bigger than you.

So not exactly apples to apples, but not totally dissimilar

is for us seem like the most similar city that is doing this.

Obviously, the city of Atlanta is not similar in size or scale to you, but it's another city that I think has some housing typology similarities that is moving forward in this direction.

It's just starting to move forward in this direction.

They wouldn't like me saying it this way, but they're calling it

calling a bunch of things ADUs, but they're actually duplexes.

Because if you can legally separate it and sell it, that's not an ADU anymore.

But that's how they can get it through their approval process.

They're moving in that direction.

It was another good partner to bring in this conversation because they work, one, this is primarily what they do, and two, they work in smaller cities throughout the country.

We did initially set out to do a bunch of comparisons to other similarly sized university towns.

And what we found among other things was that due to differences in state level legislation, growth trends, things like that, that they weren't actually very good points of comparison, which is why, again, Durham was used kind of frequently throughout because that was really a good comparison in terms of North Carolina and Virginia have similar state level restrictions.

Durham's doing a lot around affordable housing has a lot of challenges around racial equity and affordability.

Well, and just...

Two quick comments.

For whatever it's worth, I think another comparison of a city that's similar in a lot of ways, obviously differences, is Burlington, Vermont.

They're around our size, also a university town.

And I think they've relied very heavily on the land trust model in land acquisition.

I think they have a total of several thousand people who are

in the land trust model, and they're basically focused on acquiring land and decommodifying it.

And it seems our central challenge really is the use of land as a commodity and the need to, you know, our limited land, get as much money as we can up front to take that land off the speculative market and insurance and nonprofits, land trusts, even if they don't have the money to develop right away, we know that it won't be, it will eventually, and it won't just be another

a hotel or something.

And then would definitely echo, I mean, it seems like the foundational thing is making the staff investments to execute it in

The revenue side makes me really think, you know, we might need to as counseling with the community, you know, make some demands from the state legislature and that's going to take time.

It's not going to happen overnight, but it seems like a land value tax or the authority to base taxes off of the value of a property land income is really going to be necessary for us to do this long term because our regressive taxes

I just don't think they're going to cut it.

And the CHAP program, I think the cutoff is $350,000 for the value of the property.

And every year these assessments keep going up.

So every year fewer people are even going to be able to qualify.

The point on Burlington is well taken.

Mm-hmm.

And I had a lot of questions about some of the land use changing recommendations, the conversation about the soft density versus LIHTC and there was a pretty significant conversation and I think important because we run into it here all the time about how we won't necessarily be able to build our way out of this and

If we can't get developers who may not traditionally do subsidized housing, those were some of the questions I had around that.

competitiveness for the nonprofit programs.

I had a question for that.

I have about five different sections of questions.

So I probably said just in the interest of time, because we do have a closed session.

That'd be helpful.

We'll work with Jenny and find the time to talk.

I just want to thank you all for the snapshot of the implementation.

I know it's something that I had raised and it's really helpful just as we are looking at things just on a very short couple pages just to see that within six months these are the types of things that we working supporting staff have to do and then 18 months in three to five years.

So I thank you for making those additions to this final version.

Appreciate the request.

And again, appreciate all the feedback.

We got feedback and you're all questioning that you're just

So, thank you.

So, recognizing that you all have a closed session, I will go ahead and email you the info we got from the Planning Commission, CCing the Planning Commission, so they can clarify if I missed anything.

Okay.

Sorry, I was just pulling up.

Pursuant to Section 2.23712 of the Virginia Code, I hereby move that City Council close this open meeting and convene in a closed session as authorized by Section 2.23711A1 for discussion and consideration of candidates for appointment to the Police Civilian Review Board.

Section 2.23711A7 for consultation with legal counsel regarding specific contractual claims and probable litigation, as well as the pending litigation with Elmoral County regarding recreational use of Ragin Mountain Reservoir.

Or is there a second?

Second.

Ms.

Vice Mayor McGill?

Yes.

Councilor Hill?

Yes.

All right.

Correct.

Correct.

Thanks.