CRHA Regular Meeting   5/24/2021

Okay, good evening.

Hello, everyone.

This is the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority Board of Commissioners virtual board meeting, Monday, May 24th, 6 p.m. Ms. Dean, could you, or actually, I call this meeting to order and,

I'll read Governor Northam's executive number 53.

We are still acting under Governor Northam's executive order EO 53, restricting public gatherings.

According to code 2.2-3708.2A3, it permits public bodies to meet electronically to discuss business required or necessary to operation of the public body.

and discharge of its lawful purposes, duties and responsibilities in times of emergencies and to address COVID-19.

Commissioner Goldblatt?

Yes.

Commissioner Maddy Green?

Commissioner Slaughter?

I think she's muted.

Great.

And let's take a moment of silence.

Oops, sorry.

Just to prepare for the meeting.

Okay, thank you.

And Miss Slaughter texts that she did say yes, she is here.

And we'll have to make sure that she can speak when she needs to.

I'm not sure what the issue is with the muting.

I just want to reiterate that Miss Slaughter does have the ability to speak throughout the entire meeting.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

Wonderful.

Um,

So welcome.

General announcements would just be that the CRHA board has various committees and meetings and the safety meeting is every other Tuesday.

The next one is tomorrow evening.

It's always the same link in passcode.

There's a redevelopment committee meeting every other Thursday.

at 4 p.m., so the next one is June 3rd, and Resident Service Committee every second Tuesday of the month at 1 p.m. And then we'll meet again as a board June 28th.

And we do have a work session on the books for June 10th.

We'll just need to decide what that work session is about.

Are there any general announcements

or reminders from anyone that they'd like to add tonight.

Okay, then we will move on.

Let's see.

If anybody would like to address the commission at this time, please click the raise hand icon or press star nine.

If you're calling in, you have three minutes to speak.

Okay.

Well, now I see a couple of hands raised.

All right.

First is Shelby Edwards.

Hi, I was raising my hand for the PHAR comment.

I can give that right now, but I'm seeing a non from Betsy, so I will go ahead and give that.

Thank you so much.

Hi everybody.

My name is Shelby Edwards.

I'm speaking on behalf of PHAR, the Public Housing Association of Residents.

We are the duly recognized and federally mandated representative of all public housing residents.

So we are really pleased to share that PHAR is beginning the Positive Visions Workshop at Sixth Street in West Haven.

We conducted two last week and plan to have three this upcoming week.

In these workshops, we aim to get residents familiar with what redevelopment is and how they may play a part pending their site involvement.

Speaking of site involvement, while PHAR recognizes that exact timing for site redevelopment is contingent on many factors, PHAR asks and hopes that we can continue talking about creating a calendar of which sites are next for redevelopment.

We have had more than one resident pose the question, when is it our turn for updated housing, which we think speaks to the interest there is in resident-led redevelopment in our area, which is really exciting.

PHAR is also looking forward to having a little some clarification on the role of security in the communities, of course, how we could help with that.

and how that happens in collaboration with other community resources as necessary.

We are also seeking clarification on specifically the role of the Charlottesville Police Department.

PHAR would like to close by once again saying thank you so much for the housing authority for your work.

As we all know, it is not easy and often it is thankless work.

And we look forward to continued collaboration with one another with hopes of solution oriented dialogue, open communication and overall enjoying each other's presences.

So thanks y'all so much.

I'm here with some folks from my team.

So if I didn't catch anything, PHAR team hold me accountable.

Okay, next up, we have Brandon Collins.

But before we go to Brandon, I just want to let Miss Slaughter know, thank you to Leslie Dean, who prompted me, that you might not know how to unmute yourself on the phone.

And that is by pressing star six, Miss Slaughter.

And Brandon, you are on with the commission.

Good evening, Housing Authority Board of Commissioners.

I actually raised my hand because I was a little worried that Shelby hadn't made it in, but I'm so glad she did.

And of course, we echo what she had to say.

We encourage you to pass the resolution tonight to begin engagement with residents at Sixth Street and at West Haven, and PHAR is prepared to

Already be doing some of that engagement.

Last week we had two workshops.

As we were doing outreach before those workshops, we had a lot of positive response from Sixth Street.

And I think we're going to have really great community engagement.

The workshops focused on a variety of things, but the first things that people say are always the most interesting.

So central air conditioning.

And that was unprompted.

and the other was children, a huge focus on children, not just developing a neighborhood that's good for children with play spaces, but also involving them in the process.

So I thought that was really, really awesome.

We'll be doing two at West Haven on Thursday.

One at 2.30 and one at 6 o'clock.

And we hope residents will attend that.

We'll be in front of the clinic outside socially distanced.

And we have a follow up meeting with Sixth Street residents on Wednesday.

So that's how things are looking.

And I will send some notes about more of that to the Redevelopment Committee at some point.

And if anybody else would like to address the commission, please click the raise hand icon or press star nine if you're joining us by phone.

Okay, thank you.

And thank you for the comments from FAR.

It is really exciting to hear that residents are coming out and wanting to talk about redevelopment.

And I love the idea of bringing children into the

Process of designing their own spaces.

I just read the February 22nd ones right before this meeting.

So I moved to approve the February 22nd.

Do we get them separately?

Is it one of them the next?

Okay.

All those in favor of approving the February 22nd minutes, I guess we need to roll call.

Commissioner Maddy Green?

Mayor Walker?

Okay, motion passes.

Did anyone have time to read the March 22 minutes?

I know they came in right before the meeting.

Is that yes for next month?

Okay.

All right, so we'll save those for next meeting.

Next are there, well, let's start with the safety committee and hear how that's been going.

And then if anyone else has

Updates from other meetings or committee meetings.

It would be great to hear from those two.

Sure.

I missed the most recent, the last safety committee meeting we had.

So there might be attendees in the audience who want to, I've read the notes, but I don't want to see what happened.

There was a lot of discussion and has been a lot of discussion in the past few about the role that residents want to see for police and what policing, what they want policing to look like in their neighborhoods, but also the role that they want various community safety initiatives

to play and also a feeling of like a perceived, I should say like a perceived lack of services or a desire for creativity around certain services so we spent a lot of time discussing mental health and trauma services I saw in the notes from the

Last safety committee meeting that this came up again.

And there was a feeling on the part of some residents that there might not be adequate local support in Charlottesville and that there isn't, there aren't mental health services available, where people understand the experience of living in public housing and the kinds of issues.

that people in public housing deal with routinely.

And so some discussion about potentially trying to look beyond Charlottesville for residents who say that they're interested in Zoom counseling to see if there are any other initiatives elsewhere where people would offer us counseling services.

who are really familiar with the demographic that we most want to serve.

So some residents said that they were comfortable with Section 10, sorry, Region 10.

Others felt less comfortable or felt like they'd had bad experiences.

And so we talked about ways to provide that.

We also talked a lot about not so much peer counseling with peer support,

and thinking about various ways to set up peer support networks so that people can increasingly feel like they're part of a community.

In terms of other services, there's been a huge emphasis on a need and both Ms. Edwards and Mr. Collins said this in their public comments, but for youth services, especially at all the sites that some sites have services that are not available to others,

but also especially as children grow older.

So thinking about people beyond the elementary school years and making sure that they have things to do in services throughout the summer in downtime and people really looking for these services.

So there's a desire people feel like that would contribute to safety, to have kids who feel like they have really meaningful things to do.

and that they're listened to and that they have places to go.

So there's a real desire for more services and I think a continued

Some frustration with the police department and a desire for clarity on just what they will and will not provide in public housing, as well as on the part of some residents and anxiety about what it looks like to not have security at various sites right now.

So I know that we've been working towards an RFP to think about the various kinds of services we would send out for.

And you can see those notes are up.

I assume the notes that I've received are also up on the website.

So that was in the most recent one.

Does anyone who was in the last meeting, who's in the audience want to fill in, say anything about what happened at that last meeting?

I mean, if not the, I mean, I can read the notes, but they should be up publicly.

And then next we have a meeting tomorrow.

So anyone who's on this call will be meeting at 6pm.

The link and passcode are all up on the CRHA website and on PHAR's website.

Great.

And I just have a quick, so I spent some time today trying to

I wanted to figure out again what this partnership and what the requests are and talk to Mr.

Sales, Chief Brackney, and Chief Brackney actually asked her to join in case there was any questions.

But one of the things that came out of the last meeting with them, and I talked to Ms. Edwards too today, was the request for a letter to state that there was partnership between

CRHA, the board, PHAR, and was everyone clear on what that partnership looked like?

And so I got some feedback today, which added that to my list of things to try to figure out today that that maybe wasn't going.

and the direction to get that, you know, get that letter.

And maybe everybody wasn't clear on exactly what, you know, Chief Brackney was requesting and why.

Would, and I see, yeah, I see Chief Brackney on here, so maybe she can chime in on this.

Does that sound like something the safety committee would draft and then send to all the partners for comment?

So from what my understanding is at this point is there is an agreement on this letter or why there is a need for a letter.

And Chief Brackney's position is that in response to the security firm no longer being present,

that they are being asked to increase police presence.

And this has come in at the heels of a lot of change, but very loud community response to not having cameras, not having police presence.

And now there is a request for this increase.

I understand from some of the conversations that I had that people don't wanna be maybe liable if something goes wrong.

and that the police do something that they shouldn't do.

And I don't think that that is any, of course, once officers are in a community, we can't say what will or will not happen, but I don't think that is anyone's intention.

But more so the intention is from a community who is asking to defund

where there's been a significant amount of resources being spent on increased patrol on the Thursday, Friday, and Saturday timeframe right now, there will be an increase to the budget essentially taking the place of what

some of the security officers would have done and attempting to move away from the how policing happens which is the thing I'm even having to shift from and not so comfortable with it is that officers respond to a call or to a crisis or to an emergency versus being on site to prevent

crises, emergencies, and that seems to be what we're moving away from.

So that was the question and I see that Miss Edwards has her hand up.

Are we able to move, unmute Miss Edwards?

Do we need Mr. Rice to do that?

Yep, thank you.

Hi, everyone.

So what I would love while all parties are present, I think tonight, if I could just receive some clarification about one, what the function of the letter is, I think that would be really helpful.

And I think two, what the ask of the police department is, because I think that

The function of the letter, I think I kind of understand, but I would have some specifics that we would want in the letter.

But I think the thing I understand less is what exactly the police department would be doing.

Yes, one moment.

Oh, and I also want to be clear.

I probably won't go back and forth today.

I'm very much a sit and think once folks share their perspective type thing.

So I want to give that caveat.

So thank you mayor for having the conversation.

So, Miss Edwards, that's exactly why I asked for a letter to clearly identify the additional ask

of CRHA from CPD specifically.

So that we could be clear that as we were being asked to increase our presence in the community, as we were being asked to use whatever tools and technologies that we had to be able to respond to the increase in violence in the community, as well as the fact as of May 2nd, there was no security team or security profile there.

in the community and what might that look like to address high levels of violence or incidents of violence related to the shootings and the assaults that were occurring.

The reason I wanted to letter is to say that we were all using a community approach and that we were being asked to come in as part of a community plan to reduce the harm and the violence in the CRHA properties

Most specifically, as well.

The reason the letter is important is we show a unified front that we're all attempting to do this and that we're all partners in this and that we're all asking to use whatever those tools and resources we are to make the community feel safer.

In addition to that is oftentimes anytime officers in uniform or an increased presence in any of the minority communities, they have our black or brown communities or any more CHRA properties, the first thing we get is response and pushback that we are over policing and then under protecting.

So when there is a lot of presence, I want the community to understand that this is something that the residents are asking for of us as well, that the security team, and this isn't Chief Brackney just deciding to flood the community with presence, and it is a delicate balance between

Having a lot of police presence, we're attempting to address violence.

Understanding that oftentimes there are other things, and this is the struggle we have, that they're gonna observe being in that area.

And then the pushback becomes then I'm targeting black and brown men for arrest rates and incarceration.

So if there is a spike in numbers, it doesn't become someone's talking point

That this is an approach that I am using on my own.

And the necessity for that is this.

Just last week, the last update that I had on it as of 2021, there were 121, let this sit for a minute, 121 verified shootings in Charlottesville, with the majority of them within a very small portion of the community.

And those are CHRE properties.

That is up literally 51%.

We had this year, this time to date in 2020-80.

We've had 38 aggravated assaults, 15 actual shootings, and five robbery related with firearms coming out of a very small concentrated population.

I would like

Our presence, which we are hiring our overtime officers to do, and my budget is skyrocketing.

It is expensive to hire officers to do nothing but concentrated patrols in First West Avenue, South First Street, West Haven, and Sixth.

That is extremely expensive proposition that cannot be supported and should not, the community should not want that to be supported for a long term.

We have to figure out what is an overall long term sustained approach to the violence.

And because I've asked for specifically the chair

of Safety and Security, the chair of the board, Mr.

Sales and PHAR to say that this is what they were in agreement and what they are asking for as well.

Because we've been in meetings when they were internal meetings, they asked for certain things and I won't identify who, but then externally, they said, oh, no, no, we didn't ask for that.

So I think there needs to be a unified approach in the way in which we go about the work of reducing violence

Thank you so much for that clarification.

Hi to you, Brackney.

Thank you.

I don't know if this is the form for which to go back and forth.

Like I said, that's just not my style.

But I think that

I'll speak from the eye for today.

I think that I was under the impression that the ask was for the police department to, you know, meet regularly with CRHA and let them know when things are going down on the properties and making sure that was open.

I thought the ask was for the policing to be equitable to like the rest of the community.

I don't, I will say comfortably, I don't know if that PHAR was one was thinking that it would be an increase.

Well, I think that

Yeah, when you think about equity to communities, that's a very different response than addressing violence that is currently escalating, right?

When I think about equity in the communities and everyone has said they want to be policed on South First Street, the way you do on Park, right?

The way you do on Greenbrier and things of that nature.

And my response is what we're asking for is there's the same dignity and respect and protection abided to the communities.

But there are different tools we have to use to address different crimes that are going on in the communities.

And we do have to acknowledge that as a community.

It provides a little clarity.

It does.

And I, and I love

And I love and appreciate the idea of uniformity as far as approach, but I think what we always wonder as we continue to serve the community, if we sign a letter that says we cosigns and to be clear to the public, we have not signed anything.

There was no letter quite yet.

I just wonder if anything goes down on CPD's watch, how would that look like for us?

And you don't have to answer that question.

So the way what we're saying is, is that we will still police the way that we police, right?

We use certain techniques.

There's presence, there's technology, there's investigative tools.

We've also had our physical security specialists do an assessment of where the vulnerabilities are around the physical structures that also may allow for increases in crime.

And if we change certain things, it will decrease the patterns and the traffics of crime and things of that nature.

So I think they're separate and distinct things.

Regardless, I mean, there's communities that hire officers as off duty details, right?

Just because you hire them and say, we want them here, doesn't mean you are now responsible for their behaviors.

We are always responsible.

They are employed by Charlottesville Police Department performing additional services in that community.

So for me, it's not,

How they're going to be regulated, it's are we going to say as a community externally facing that we have a problem and we must acknowledge there is one and that collaboratively we are all going to work to solve that problem.

I don't have any more thoughts at this moment, but like I said, I'll marinate on it Chief Brackney and go back to my team and always go back to the residents.

I think that this is a multifaceted issue, which I think it's going to have multifaceted solutions, but I appreciate hearing that you as much as possible want to work together and with the community to do what's best for them to keep them safe.

You're welcome.

And I'm sure we'll talk offline.

It's easy to find me.

No, I'm easier.

That I believe.

I'll just chime in as someone who is having a hard time, all of you know this, with the shift.

Because I've been that person that has been saying for years, can we police our neighborhoods like we police other neighborhoods in the city, Park Street, Greenbrier.

And so this is hard for me.

You know, even when the idea of a letter came up, even before that in the discussion with the increase, you know, just presence, I'm still struggling with, but I do know that maybe some of the things that I thought were possible, I still hope those things are possible, but I don't think we are, you know, right at a space right now where we can make them

them work the way we need to to respond to everything that's going on in the community.

And I'm always one to not even even if those numbers increase like arrest numbers and, you know, increase police presence typically leads to an increase in

I'm still on the side of trying to fight for people to make sure that they are treated fairly throughout the system.

It's just a really challenging dynamic, but I know we're at a space where we know what time of year it is.

We don't have a lot of options.

And if we are going to say during this season,

that, and I mean season that we're in for however long that lasts, that our best option is utilizing CPD there, then we just need to be clear on that and what that ask is because it's costing quite a bit

And I think that's what, as a city, and I talked to some of you about this earlier, we have to look at the budgetary impact.

We have to defend that budget because people are asking for a figure out ways to decrease a budget that we are asking, you know, that we are going to be increasing.

And so that's going to be a topic of conversation.

But I also, as I was thinking about this earlier,

In the future when maybe there are other people in these positions, it also creates an avenue for in the past, police have just come into the community and policed how they want.

I think creating this kind of partnership, having it in writing also gives an example for what future policing looks like if it's needed.

and hopefully that we can prevent some of the harm by organizations like CRHA PHAR being able to say, hey, this is what we did in 2021 and we wanna follow a model similar to that when we have people with common goals because in the meeting that we had with Mr.

Sales maybe two months ago now,

or maybe not two months ago.

Anyway, at some point I talked about the policing we witnessed in the 80s and 90s.

And we don't wanna go back to that.

No one wants to go back to that.

And we should never wanna return to that in the future.

And there are a lot of conversations going on about how necessary the police are.

And we don't want to shift from a defund to police being necessary.

I think what we are all hopefully trying to say is that right now we want to keep our families safe.

And this is the best route to do that at this time.

Thank you.

I agree about the setting some kind of example for partnership and that may change over time, but at least having, keeping a relationship up where the parties are all talking and talking about how to protect families is I think a really strong one.

You know, the question is how that

you know, might evolve over time.

It sounds like this is kind of a now thing, like short-term, we need to figure this out now, but the long-term is all of these other partnerships and backup and, you know, all of the things that cause people to be involved in these crimes in the first place, which is, you know, a longer term, ongoing long-term.

So this isn't necessarily a question or a comment for Chief Blackley.

I do think that one of the other pieces that needs to be part of a short-term plan is mental health services, is I think for a lot of residents, a heavy police presence will itself be triggering.

And I don't want to see residents caught up.

I don't think anyone wants to see residents caught up in that.

And so I think I saw in the notes from last time that Mr.

Sales says that they've worked out

An arrangement with Region 10 will they will provide like immediate services the following day after some sort of an event.

But I think we need to have on the short term community partnership agreements with people providing mental health services because I don't think I think those two things have to go hand in hand.

Laura, I agree with you.

These are short term.

I just also want us to be understanding of also when we think about triggering events.

When you're talking about the level of violence, shots fired going on 24 hours a day or seven days a week, that should be a triggering event for all of us, right?

As we're starting to think about what are those root causes and indicators of violence, what I can say is that hopefully the last three weekends that we've been in these spaces so far, there have been no shootings because we have had such a heavy presence in the last three weekends.

But that is not a sustainable model and should not be a sustainable model for any of us.

I'm having to modify our budget to try and do that to make sure that I can support it.

It is not cheap by any stretch of the imagination.

I'm sure someone listening will then FOIA me to ask how much that we've spent every weekend for the last three weekends and we are planning on doing this definitely for

for a few more, I won't broadcast completely what we're doing but we are doing this as well and then maybe there's models where we do it sporadically if we can't do it four, five, six, seven, eight weekends in a row that there's ways that we work this out differently on overtime as well.

But I can appreciate that there should be a mental health component.

I would also wish that we should understand and appreciate that police presence isn't the only thing that should or are triggering events

Our communities, it would seem to me the reasons that we're getting called there should be triggering events for our communities as well.

And I'm sure they are.

And I just wanted to, and again, I'm in the listening mode.

So I just want to make sure that I heard you Chief Brackney.

Are you citing the increased police violence as a reason there's been no violence over the past three weeks?

Police presence.

No, we've not had increased police violence.

So let me correct the record for that one.

No.

So we've had in these areas, we've had police come complete saturation.

in those areas.

Since they're already in the past, every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night, starting at eight at night till five in the morning, we've had four officers dedicated to South First, West Haven, and Sixth, Sixth and a Half Street.

So right in those areas.

And we've not had any shootings in three weeks.

And that is a

Yeah.

Police presence does make a difference.

We also know the police presence will then people will find a different place to go and it will find another pathway.

Okay.

Thank you so much for sharing your perspective.

I appreciate that.

I know this isn't the meeting for this, but I also want to throw in there as we're talking about

Community involvement, I'm gonna throw in a plug for the PCRB.

So you're saying for the PCRB to help with reducing violence in the community?

I think any avenue you use for any community group

to reduce violence in the communities.

Sure, go for it.

Well, thank you for coming on.

I know

We've been setting up meetings and I know they have been different.

Like I wasn't at the last meeting with the chief and her staff and Mr.

Sales.

So if there's nothing else for me, thank you.

Enjoy the rest of your meeting.

It's good seeing some of you.

I haven't seen you in a while, Miss Joy or Lisa.

Some of you have your pictures up.

I haven't seen you in a minute.

OK, in terms of the board, should

This be followed with, I know Mr.

Sales is gonna be late to our meeting tonight, but it sounds like Mr.

Sales, Ms. Goldblatt, those who have been going to these meetings will continue to work on whether we need this letter and what the letter says and with PHAR obviously.

Okay, Ms. Glenn-Matthews,

There's the next piece is discussion of creating a nonprofit.

Yes.

Hey.

All right, good evening, everyone.

Following up on one of our annual plan goals, tonight the board has a resolution authorizing the creation of a nonprofit.

And before we get to that, I wanted to share some information regarding the process with you all.

All right, tonight we're going to be working on a resolution to authorize the creation of this new entity, which is also subject to city council approval.

After creation of the new entity has been authorized by the board and approved by city council, we'll need to name it.

And the way we do that is open, it could be the board names it staff, we could have a resident contest, but I definitely wanna get people thinking about that.

Following that we will check with the State Corporation Commission and most likely our attorney will be doing this for us and we'll make sure that the name is available and then we'll prepare and file articles of organization and operating agreement.

It's gonna be really important at that point that we adopt a conflict of interest policy.

And it's pretty standard.

Some of you might've already done this with other boards that you've been on with nonprofits.

It's very similar to the one we have as well.

It's just requiring if you have a conflict that you disclose it.

If we're going over say a property that maybe you have some vested interest in that that's brought up.

It's to prohibit interested board members from voting on any matter in which there is a conflict.

And it'll be something that we will reference and attach a copy to, you know, any anonymous consent adopting it.

And then also go with our application.

Financial data is gonna be really important when applying for this status.

As a new entity, we'll have to provide projections of likely income and expenses.

And a lot of this is gonna have to be projected.

So we're gonna be spending a lot of time thinking about that.

It'll be like the fair market value for providing any services, value of any facilities that are gonna be used for this.

amounts expended.

This might be for grant writing and professional fees.

Fundraising is going to be kind of an exciting part of this, but one of the major responsibilities will also be to the board with that as well.

Our board hasn't traditionally been a fundraising board and this would be a shift.

And it'll be something that we'll be looking at with having a strategic plan.

Some things to think about is who will be overseeing our fundraising efforts?

Would it be the board chair or ED or a designee of our executive director?

How will our fundraising be conducted?

Will it be primarily going after grants?

Will we have online?

Will we have events around redevelopment in other areas?

Or it might be a combination of all of these things.

We're also gonna need to have some new plans in place.

Currently, I know the Housing Authority Board will be overseeing

and the executive director will designate staff.

And we'll have, as we talked for a budget for anticipated compensation of any of the staff that are involved in this process.

There's gonna be a lot of information gathering going on.

We're gonna be seeking that nonprofit tax exempt status

And as well as that, we're gonna be looking at a lot of detailed, specific information.

And the first part of that process is tonight.

I'm hoping for some feedback on the board, from the board.

I like the idea of having residents.

That's something I can help work on.

I have a question.

So the Charlottesville Community Development Corporation, is that what it's, no, I can't remember what it's called, but the CCDC.

CCDC.

That exists.

So what would be the diff, I mean, is this, this seems like it's primarily fundraising.

The CCDC is not a nonprofit.

It is not a 501c3.

Okay, gotcha.

All right.

Yes, we're gonna definitely, this is all part of organizing that.

We're gonna be needing to set up a mission.

We're gonna be talking about activities that will be done by the nonprofit and descriptions for that will need to be part of this application.

Yeah.

Let me get out of this real quick.

A big reason this became part of the annual plan is around services.

It was really interesting two weeks ago, we had a resident services meeting where everyone wanted to talk about safety concerns.

And that night we had a safety committee meeting where everyone wanted to talk about the need for services.

And the two are

You know, completely tied together.

And what I have here are just a few examples of resident service programs that we have been asked for just in the past couple of months.

Can everyone see that okay?

And in order to do a lot of these things, we need to have funds, especially to do it well.

So we've talked to a lot of other housing authorities that in some cases have multiple nonprofits.

I was recently talking to Dolores about Portsmouth.

They even have one for their FSS program.

So this may be just the beginning.

Sure.

I mean, we have a very tight budget right now.

There was a time when the Housing Authority had access to more funding through various sources for services.

There were more notices of federal funding, NOFAs, through HUD for programs this year, where waiting and waiting and hoping for family self-sufficiency, it was only open for renewal for agencies who previously had the program.

And it's hard to ask donors to donate funds when we can't give them that letter being a nonprofit.

I think whenever we were talking about the annual plan, maybe it was also just to

I shouldn't say compete because everyone is doing good work.

We have a lot of nonprofits in Charlottesville.

But I think when people see a list and they're thinking about who to donate to, they don't necessarily think about the CRHA because it's seen as funded by the government.

So to kind of separate or have a way for people to to be able to donate.

For example, I work for UVA and every year we get a little card and we can take some deduction out of our salary to to donate to different nonprofits and you get this huge list, you know, and they're all great.

But yeah, there's no like

public housing check mark on there because I guess just because we're not a nonprofit.

I think a plus there also is the, I mean, depending on what the focal point becomes initially,

The comments I think that Commissioner Goldblatt was making at the beginning of the meeting about request for services, mental health services specifically, and who can people go to?

And if the nonprofit is able to hire someone that meets the standards that

You know, the families deserve and are seeking in the communities.

That's absolutely right.

When I worked for Housing Authority about 15 years ago, we used to have grants that we would give out each year under resident services.

And we'd have a panel of residents.

Joy was part of that as well.

And people would put in applications for services that had been requested.

And we would vote on how that funding would be utilized.

That was how Harold Foley's afterschool program was funded every year.

And a lot of other

resident, you know, initiated activities.

We had, we also had the church who, what was the name?

I can't think of the name of the church of UVA.

St. Paul's and another church helped to help us fund.

I'm in that situation.

Is the only thing that didn't happen that could happen here was that the donors were able to receive a donation letter or did they donate to another nonprofit that was used as a fiscal agent?

VOP was the physical agent.

And so the,

Westminister Presbyterian Church, I'm sorry.

They had a grant cycle I think that you applied for and it went through VOP, which paid for Harold's position.

at the time and I think CRHA contributed also from one of those grants.

So Kathleen, for the resolution, we are just voting to begin the process.

But I'm wondering in terms of the mission, it seems like maybe the mission should come before the process or to starting it, or is the process going to be going slowly enough that we can talk about the mission as we're also applying for these

Yes, there's going to be a lot of paperwork that's going to be part of the application.

This is just authorizing that we can initiate this process and have our attorney assist us as well.

I want to go back to my favorite question that I asked.

What are the localities that have a nonprofit?

Is there a framework out there to guide us in this direction so we can look at what other localities may be doing in this realm?

And then again, what are they doing right and what can we do differently to make it better?

Yeah, I'd like to try to invite Dolores back to our next board meeting so she can talk about how not only have they created one nonprofit but several and how it's made it possible for them to invest in residents by doing that.

Yeah, that's a great idea.

Someone has their hand raised.

and I'm okay taking questions now if that's okay.

Mr. Rice, can you unmute?

Well, yeah, I mean, I'm okay with that if there's just a quick question.

Otherwise we can wait till the end.

And Ms. Quinn, I don't know if you know how to unmute.

Sorry, I had forgotten I've raised my hand.

Yes.

As a potential donor, I think it's imperative that you have a clear, what will we do with this funding before you get too far down the organization line?

You know, I heard a whole bunch of services.

I saw services that are available elsewhere.

Is there some reason, you know, really hone in on how are you going to accomplish the mission?

I also know from one experience setting up nonprofits, the tax deductibility is probably not as a driving incentive for many people.

I think maybe for the smaller donors, but you know, so few people deduct itemized taxes anyway.

But I do think it's an interesting idea to explore.

I would like to add one other support item that is examine more ways that CRHA can support the Noahs in town.

Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing Landlords.

Okay, thank you.

So maybe if we were to, and we'll check with Mr.

Sales about the work session, but if we want to work more on the mission for this nonprofit, we could do it at the next work session and

And maybe we just do that by ourselves.

I'm thinking it's also from a couple of the retreats we had with the Center for Nonprofit Excellence.

We're really good at helping people talk about mission.

And so that could be, we could see if one of them could attend or if that's a separate later down the line.

But that could be a good way to help us facilitate that discussion.

Is this similar to what the request that will come before council?

Because it says just in one subject to approval.

Okay.

All right.

So the resolution we have before us is a resolution authorizing the creation by Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority of a nonprofit corporation or other entities to facilitate development efforts in the city of Charlottesville.

And should I read?

I'll read down through it, read the whole thing since we're online.

And again, this is just to start the process.

Whereas the Board of Commissioners of the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority

The authority has determined that it is appropriate to participate in various development, redevelopment, educational, and community service activities that further the mission of the authority and enhance the quality of life for the residents of the city of Charlottesville.

Whereas pursuant to section 36-1912 of the Virginia Housing Authorities Law Chapter 1,

Title 36, Code of Virginia of 1950 as amended, the authority with the approval of the local governing body is authorized to form corporations, partnerships, limited liability companies and other legal entities as combinations thereof.

whereas participation of the authority in the project may require the creation of one or more legal entities including but not limited to a nonprofit corporation to oversee activities related to the project and whereas the authority plans to apply to the Internal Revenue Service to obtain tax exempt status under the Internal Revenue Code for such entity once created.

Now therefore be it resolved that the Board of Commissioners of the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority as follows.

Number one, subject to the approval of City Council, Charlottesville City Council, the formation by the authority of a nonprofit corporation or such other entities as may be necessary or desired to facilitate the participation of the authority in planning, developing and supporting the project is hereby authorized and approved.

Number two, the executive director or his designee is hereby authorized to prepare, execute and submit the necessary application to the IRS to request tax exempt status under the code for any such entity.

Number three, the executive director or his designee

is hereby authorized to execute and deliver any and all agreements, instruments, and other documents as may be necessary or desirable to consummate the transactions contemplated by this resolution and to take such other action as he may deem necessary or desirable to carry out the intent of this resolution.

Number four, all actions

heretofore taken by the executive director and other officers of the authority in connection with the transactions contemplated by this resolution are hereby approved, adopted, ratified, and confirmed in all respects.

Do we have a motion to approve?

Oh, number five, this resolution shall take effect immediately upon its adoption.

Do we have a motion to approve this resolution?

Or I think

So we would have to work on the details as we're creating versus creating without the details.

I think you usually fill in the details after you have an accepted charter.

Because we can't spell out everything we plan to do.

And my sense was that this process was initiated because of the housing being under review and therefore lacking funds

needed to do things that need to be done related to crisis and other type of issues that are going on.

And that was the idea of having this.

Yeah, no, when you submit, from my understanding of nonprofits, when you submit the documentations to this, you know, to incorporate it, you have to at least have a starting point for that.

But I think that's what Kathleen is saying.

that we are gonna be working on that over.

This is just saying that we're kind of in agreement that we can move forward with this.

And then they are saying that the board, the staff, the family.

The residents.

The needs of the American people and offering real solutions.

Yeah, there's way to a lie.

I mean, the Democrats better fight like hell.

Mr. Potter?

Is there a second?

Let's go ahead and do a roll call vote and make sure that we set up our, if Mr.

Sales didn't have something else in mind, let's follow up with the work session while it's fresh in our mind and start hashing out some of the details.

Commissioner Lisa Green?

sparking a national reckoning on police violence against Black people.

We'll have a special switch tomorrow.

Commissioner Maddy Green?

Dr.

Yes.

Great.

The resolution passed.

All right, so we have another resolution in front of us.

And a few people that can

can speak to it.

The next resolution comes from the Redevelopment Committee.

And the Redevelopment Committee has been around for at least five years.

And maybe it's someone else with a better memory can voice when it actually started.

But because of all of the work that the board oversees and that CRHA does,

Redevelopment is sort of like a whole other layer of work on top of that, on top of the normal operations of CRHA.

And so to get that going, this redevelopment committee was formed and they had voting members and still do, they were different at that time that would prioritize

where to start on redevelopment.

So we did have a resolution that had prioritized Crescent Halls as one of the first physical buildings that needed renovation or at that time we didn't know if it would be renovation and identified the South First Street ball field as the first vacant lot to get additional units.

So this resolution now comes after much discussion of what's next.

It's hard to believe there is a what's next with everything going on, but the way that the tax credits work, where there's an application once a year, the momentum that we're on with working with partners and learning from resident engagement and resident-led

Redevelopment.

I think we want to build on all of that momentum.

We don't want to let this, you know, anything pause or stop at this time.

So this resolution is coming to us about the next steps.

And I'm not sure, Miss Edwards, would you like to continue?

I'm actually gonna pivot this to Brandon.

I don't have any further comment.

Yeah.

Is Brandon able to speak?

Do we need to?

Let's see.

Sure.

Great.

Good evening again, Housing Authority Board of Commissioners.

Similar to what Shelby just said, I think we wanted to express our support for moving ahead.

I think it's also a perfect opportunity for the board to discuss some of your goals as a board and or as individual commissioners as pertains to redevelopment on the whole.

and what that means.

So when it comes to West Haven, there's been a lot of angst in the public housing community and from advocates of why wasn't West Haven first?

And there's quite a few reasons, but it doesn't let anybody off the hook.

What it does is make us all recognize that

This process takes a long period of time and any moment longer that we wait on West Haven is years of residents experiencing a not fulfilling quality of life and is also

you know, avoiding opportunities for advancement and improving the Charlottesville community as a whole and bringing about amends for housing authority's role in urban renewal at CARE and at Vinegar Hill and Hartman's Mill.

So it's time and it's a historic moment to begin that process.

And West Haven is complex and the history behind it and the residents living there and sort of our present day issues with safety, which are similar at Sixth Street.

Making sure we have a full on planning process that is the most spectacular

in the nation.

And the nation is watching.

And I think, you know, I'm happy to see the board is ready to move forward with this.

Similar with Sixth Street, it is complex.

And, you know, the idea floated is let's start with a phase one for Sixth Street, create a little bit of wiggle room.

We can do that and continue to plan for something spectacular.

and I think we're all committed to making that happen.

We're all committed to moving this forward.

What this resolution doesn't do and which may be our next steps is address the scattered sites and single family homes.

All who have been very patient, they've seen a vacancy issue reduced through a lot of hard work from the housing authority, but that's,

I've been through a lot of patients of a lot of residents wondering when it's their turn to experience a better quality of life.

So as we move this forward, it is my sincere hope and I think the sincere hope of the FAR board of directors that we can begin a similar all out historic effort on the parallel track.

I know steps are being made forward, but I think we're all very interested in how can we sort of codify that and make it spectacular.

So with that, and we hope you pass the resolution.

PHAR wants to be a partner in this process.

I think CRHA through its recent redevelopment efforts is learning and getting better and able to take on more responsibility.

for development of affordable housing and improving the community.

Thank you.

And just to clarify, the redevelopment is advising, we move forward with, there's a vacant piece of land on Sixth Street, the corner of Monticello and Sixth Street,

And if we're able to build units there, the wiggle room that Mr. Collins referred to would be, there would be new units available for when we move on to West Haven, when residents would need to relocate during that redevelopment period.

So similarly to the South First Street, new units will help

when South First Street phase two happens.

So again, building on a vacant lot to give us some units and then moving forward with a much larger redevelopment effort at West Haven.

Also just to mention the timeline and planning that is gonna be, I mean, the timeline would be to do the vacant lot first to have those units

and to spend a couple of years working with the West Haven community to really hash out what should have what should and could happen there so that if anyone's worried about the

The resolution, pushing those two together, that doesn't mean that their timeline is intertwined.

Sixth Street would happen faster and sooner and West Haven would have a longer period to really hash out what should happen there.

So I'm just wanting to add that.

I do think it's essential to move forward because

for many reasons politically, but also that the city is becoming increasingly, increasingly difficult for people to live in, you know, just every day it's shocking to see these houses go on the market for extraordinary prices.

And I'll just, I'll chime in there.

I think it's, you know, very important.

This is one of the things that excited me about, you know, what are some reasons that you maybe stay in this kind of work?

I look forward to, you know, continuing the progress that we're, you know, making and

You know, in my position at the city, just making sure that the city understands, you know, that we have, you know, that we, that our families deserve it and that we owe it.

And so I just want to make sure that I'm, you know, that being present to make sure the conversations continue to go in that direction was, I think it's so important.

But this-

Are you saying?

No, but this is really exciting work and the vacant development on Sixth Street planning to the phase two of Sixth Street, because that's ultimately what it will become.

But at the same time, letting families know who are in the development that was created first, that because there is not necessarily the available land that's available at South First Street, Sixth Street,

that that's why the decisions were made for you to have somewhere to go and that to prevent displacement as much as possible and that that's important because there are some developments in town, I'm not gonna talk about them, but they didn't necessarily prevent the displacement.

Every family that started out at the beginning of those developments, they are not the families that are still there.

So what I would like

I agree with you, Commissioner Walker.

It's important for the rest of the other sites to know I was on at least two sites last week.

And the conversations were well,

We would like to live in nice things too and win and so I've been saying and I hope that the board can address this

Very soon is about the parallel track also of redevelopment because I think people are willing to wait for their turn as long as they know when their turn is coming up, whether it is 2024 or 2026.

However, while they're waiting, they do want things fixed in their unit and it's still livable.

And so I don't want us to just, I would hope that that gets on the radar pretty soon also in a resolution, whatever you want, however you want to do it, that we also, and we have to do it for HUD, right?

because even though we're doing redevelopment, if we're not maintaining our remaining units and they're failing, we may not be able to do redevelopment going forward.

So I think that's just something I just wanna make sure that I put on your hearts that you can't leave, you cannot leave the parallel track of fixing up the other units also.

And folks want to know that I think I just letting people know why I think it's as important as what I was saying and what Mayor Walker said is why, why you had to go with Crescent Hall first, why you had to go with the ball field, why we have to now go to 6th Street and just let people know that, you know, because we don't want to lose, we don't want people to be displaced or to give them a voucher where they go out and they cannot find anything and then they're,

They become homeless.

We don't want anybody to be homeless in this process.

I think people respect that.

And I think we just need to be able to tell people that.

OK, so I'm hearing, you know, for Redevelopment Committee to work on both a more specific plan and timeline for the parallel track and just for redevelopment overall so people see residents can better see where their sites fit in the larger plan.

And we've been hoping to do that all along, I think,

I think we just get bogged down in the next, in getting the projects done, but that'll be a goal to start looking, now that this decision may be made, we can start to have a longer term picture for everyone.

Anyway, should I read the resolution?

Okay, I'll go ahead and read it.

This is CRHA Resolution 1426, a resolution adopting the recommendation of the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority Redevelopment Committee to include redevelopment of certain CRHA properties.

Whereas the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority is committed to the provision of affordable quality housing for all residents.

And whereas the CRHA Redevelopment Committee has been charged with making recommendations to the CRHA Board of Commissioners

concerning redevelopment planning and implementation matters.

And whereas the CRHA Redevelopment Committee recognizes that not all CRHA communities will be able to be redeveloped at the same time.

And whereas the best near-term option for improvement of some CRHA communities may be redevelopment.

Therefore, be it resolved that upon the recommendation of the CRHA Redevelopment Committee, the Board of Commissioners of the Charlottesville Redevelopment Housing Authority does hereby direct and charge the CRHA Redevelopment Committee to begin immediate resident engagement in order to begin the redevelopment of the Sixth Street property

vacant land and to get a tax credit application in by March, 2022.

I second.

Great.

The police are highly discouraged.

Mr. Lisa Green?

Yes.

Mr. Maddy Green?

Dr. Henry?

Dr. Henry?

Yes.

Great, resolution passes.

Does anyone need a five minute break or should we move ahead with, I think we'll move ahead with the redevelopment update because Mr.

Sales isn't with us yet.

Yeah, yeah.

Let's take a five minute break at 7.40.

Okay, let's give everyone maybe another minute to get back on.

Okay, so we will continue with the redevelopment update by Ms. Glenn-Matthews and we'll see if Mr.

Sales joins us.

We'll do his update and we'll just see.

Hello everyone.

We've been doing a lot of growing as we have started active redevelopment.

A lot of shifting's happened too as we learn more.

We have, Miss Edwards and I have been out at the sites with Hard Hat Invest.

We've had Miss Johnson out at sites in Hard Hat Invest doing labor inspections.

We've also been looking at the Redevelopment Committee

seeing how that committee needs to grow.

And we had some proposed changes with that.

We're looking at having an admin committee with the voting members and a CRHA redevelopment staff person as a secretary.

This group would start working on getting more process in place, like how voting will work and be recorded, working on the timing of meetings, location,

and improving record keeping is a really big one and also preparing the agenda so we make sure we're keeping everything on track with our timelines.

With multiple projects and a lot of future planning happening as well as a sustainability study, we felt this would be really important to get placed sooner rather than later.

We were also just looking at the committee, how it's compromised and

We're looking at having a representative from the city in attendance, but not as a voting member.

We had also been having conversations about someone from NDS being part of that and working on relationship building and just helping educate the group on challenges so we can address them early.

We also have Mr. Jeff Meyer here with us tonight, who's gonna share some updates with us.

A couple of updates, okay.

And I think you're talking about updates with financing for the next steps, okay.

Yes.

Maybe, I'm not sure how much folks are aware that we have submitted a tax credit application in this past March for additional funding for South First Phase One.

And we also this past March submitted applications to the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development for additional financing for both South First Phase One and Crescent Halls.

We're hopeful in all cases that we're going to receive the additional funding and

Of course the funding is necessary because the cost of doing both of those projects grew beyond the funding packages that we had originally prepared for them.

We're also prepared to work with the Redevelopment Committee and PHAR and other groups after tonight's vote to

prepare an application for next March for 6-3 as well.

And as far as South first phase two is concerned, we are still in the process of receiving our demolition and disposition approval from HUD.

We've been working through that with some consultants and we have to apply for mixed finance approval from HUD as well.

We anticipate to be done with both of those processes in the fall and we'll be ready to

to complete the financial package for South first phase two and be able to move it along, hopefully to a close in the spring of 2022 so that we can begin construction shortly thereafter in early summer at a time when we're able to move residents from the current South first public housing development

to the new south first phase one.

We'll begin moving residents off that site so that we can begin construction on that site.

For Mr. Meyer, thank you for doing all of that work.

It's amazing how much cost went up

through COVID or continues to go up apparently.

Miss Glenn-Matthews, do you wanna keep going on your update with relocation?

I'm looking through the report that you wrote.

Sorry, I had unmuted.

I just didn't know if you wanted to mention anything else.

Relocation, maybe because Crescent Halls is in process.

Phase one of relocation at Crescent Halls is now complete.

The eighth and seventh floor have been

Relocated and work is actively happening on the eighth floor and some of the preliminary work is happening on the seventh floor.

We've also been working really hard with the Tenant Association at Crescent Halls who have been amazing in getting everything out of the first floor.

So residents only have access now to the elevator and mailbox area and the rest of the first floor is now undergoing renovation as well.

They needed to access the sprinkler systems and things right away.

So it was important that we got everything out of there.

There's been a lot of creativity by the resident association as to how to do things and we got a storage unit out in the parking lot to put some of the items from their kitchen in there and we'll continue to work closely with them on ideas as we move vending machines and various things around in order to still keep things as accessible as we can.

We have

been having a lot of meetings about phase two.

Every other Sunday, there's a meeting with BRW Architects and the resident planners and also the Redevelopment Committee, there's been kind of an offshoot that's been meeting just about phase two to make sure we keep everything on track and it's been really helpful and we see ourselves starting a similar committee for Sixth Street now that that's been approved.

And as I said before, we're really excited to get an admin committee up and running as part of the redevelopment committee to have a lot more process in place and improve our record keeping.

Well, great.

Did you want feedback on the admin committee or?

Sure.

Well, I don't necessarily have any.

I think it's a good idea.

Yeah, we were looking at that being composed of the voting members of the committee with the CRHA staff, the redevelopment project manager being the secretary for the group.

There's currently two chairs, Betsy and Nikuyah are the chairs and we don't currently have a redevelopment project manager.

Okay.

And I do think, I'm sorry, good evening commissioners.

I do think we do need guidance from the commissioners on one of the, well, I think both of those items, the points of first removing the voting member of the city and adding a resident from 6th street as a voting member, and then the guidance on the admin committee.

because that to me will also be doing work and will be a subgroup of the main committee.

I agree with what you proposed as the makeup of the voting.

I think it was the voting.

Now I'm confused.

There's the voting and the admin group.

The admin group is going to be made up of the voting members.

Okay.

But we're asking to amend

the voting members of the Redevelopment Committee to remove the city as a voting member and add a resident from Sixth Street as a voting member.

We still want to have the city participation and I think we are aiming to have more participation from NDS and specifically asking for Alex to be really involved or to be more involved

So I like this one.

I actually like them as almost in the advisory role because since it is CRHA property and projects,

We totally need their advice, but yet I don't know that they should be voting on what we're doing next necessarily.

That's just my feeling.

But I think it's great to involve neighborhood development service, like invite them to the meetings and get their feedback and

The only part I would say about that is without the city being a voted member, I'm not sure they're vested.

What I'm trying to say there is if you're on a committee

and you have to vote, then you're accountable to the folks that you come back and talk to.

So if we're having trouble getting things through NDS, say Alex, man, you voted on this.

Why is it, you know, what's the problem?

Because there are problems getting things through NDS.

From adding the neighborhood component, because the neighborhood doesn't share the same idea of redevelopment that public housing residents share.

The same can be true if the council changes radically from its current configuration.

So those things kind of scare me as a resident.

Hey, Dr. Henry, the recommendation is a resident from the Sixth Street community that live in the public housing community join the Redevelopment Committee, not an outside

I didn't say an outside resident.

I'm talking about somebody from the neighborhood group.

Would Alex's group be a voting member?

Oh, you're talking about NDS?

Yes.

Okay.

And I'm sure your position with regard to the council not having a vote, I would

So I think the reason that we've been talking about an NDS representative is to have the expertise there and someone who

Some of the issues that we ran into, I think at both, yeah, Crescent Halls and Phase One of South First Street that we would kind of, and since we're moving on with Phase Two have moved on and Sixth Street, that it'll be helpful for that person.

And I don't know necessarily if they have to be voting or non-voting, I think,

But I do understand that we are just asking for their level of expertise, but they are outnumbered in terms of, it's not like there are multiple staff members from the department, it will be one person.

So I just would like for us to consider that, but depending on who that person is and I understand that there may be

Well, I have concerns depending on who it is from NDS too.

Yeah.

And I think knowing Alex, Alex, Mr. Ikefuna, he would do this no matter whether

It was a voting or non-voting member, but I do think that that expertise

having somebody vested and feeling like we're actually running into that with the PCRB.

Our non-voting member just resigned because they didn't feel like they had, that it really mattered and that anyone ever even took their opinion seriously.

So that's just, it's just something to think about as we consider.

So what I would say is that with the latest thing that just happened with Crescent Halls, it would have been helpful to have someone who could say, hey, this can't move forward and this can't move forward and that can't move forward.

instead of we moving forward and then they come in and just shut the whole thing down or part of the work down.

So I think that one of the reasons why I kind of like that idea is that we've been threading waters for a while now on both projects trying to figure out

or listening to people

not knowing if we're getting the right information or the wrong information because state law is different from city ordinance and all of that kind of stuff.

And so we needed to have that.

I mean, we ran into a problem with phase one and we ran into a problem with phase two almost didn't get approved.

And now this thing that just popped up

Here lately, it would have been helpful, I think, to all parties, or if there was a way where someone could say, hey, this has to happen first before you can move on to this.

And that's why I think like, and true, Lisa, I am with you.

I do have some problems with that department.

So right now, you know, Alex seems to be supportive and be interested.

And so I think that's why I was supporting Mr. Sayers idea that we're recommending that we have someone like Alex who can help us

So I think all of that makes sense.

So this might be an impossible thing to ask or like to pull off, but it sounds like there are some legitimate concerns about having a voting member and legitimate concerns about not having a voting member of NDS.

and I think we have to make a decision or have a policy that can't constantly shift depending upon who's in the role because that person might shift and we can't like say like oh we're okay with this person voting but not this person and so I'm just wondering if there's any other structure in which people can be invested and feel as though their opinions are being taken really seriously without making them officially voting members if people have concerns about saying like we'll see that control

in the long term.

And then the answer might be no, it's either like it's voting or not.

But I'm just wondering if there's a way to make an NDS invested in the project to want to see it through without necessarily turning over a voting position to them, or if people feel like there's enough votes that it doesn't matter.

I think one thing Professor Harris has taught me is that all planners take an oath to work with the community, right?

And I knew that would get your attention, right?

And those plans, you know, I haven't seen where they have been

been supportive of the low income community.

Go ahead, Lisa.

There's a lot of things that go into NDS, and it's not just planning.

So one of the things that halted some of that process with South First Street was the plan review.

So it was engineering, it was planning, it was all the folks.

So if the reality is, is if Alex has a

Jurisdiction or authority over the people reviewing the plans, then this is a great idea.

If he has no authority within NDS, then we're going to be right back where we were.

We just got somebody else from NDS going, oh, I can't make anything happen.

so this would be my suggestion if did I just not see and I'm sorry I was looking did I not see that there was a new appointment made uh of a new deputy director over yes but that person doesn't yes Mr Sanders well so here's the thing if we don't get the buy-in for from

that person in NDS will be able to do their job.

I don't know if someone just starting because Mr. Boyles is dealing with this now trying to kind of get a handle on what changes need to be made.

And even I know they're not happening as rapidly as some people would like for them to happen.

And they've been going on forever, right?

It's not just a few years

But decades.

So I understand where I know exactly where you're going.

I don't know if someone knew who's just trying to get their footing, but bringing that person in to say, hey, this is what's going on.

and we already have had those discussions with Chip who is saying that he's committed, right, to making sure affordable housing.

There was a breakdown at every level with the issue that we're talking about right there and it started with the top level just saying halt, stop, right?

Yeah, so if that doesn't happen, then

Well, so this is what I'm saying.

I'm not suggesting that that new deputy city manager be on the, but what I'm saying is I think there needs to be a meeting with Mr.

Sales, Mayor,

Chip and this new deputy city manager over NDS and create we create memorandums of understanding all the time in the city and create a memorandum of understanding so that if we appoint Alex voting or not that he has some authority to get something done and move some stuff it so this is I happen to work for another locality we we have

Whatever.

I mean, I, but

You can create within NDS a special projects person to make sure that these memorandums of understanding happen.

So if you don't have Chip and this new deputies buy-in to give Alex that authority, then it'll be great to have him on there.

And we have another thing I was going to add with the project management team.

We have the avenue to create that already set up that we just have to where CRHA, PHAR, and the city sits on.

So where we can bring them in because the new other deputy that was just hired that started on the 11th, she is actually gonna be the representative on for that level of leadership in the city right now.

Yeah.

And I'll be happy to sit on in on any meeting you need me to.

I do happen to know how things flow with

getting a plan approved, getting inspections done and things like that so that projects don't shut down.

Blew my mind when I heard it, blew my mind.

and then maybe the, what month is it?

It's May.

So either the June or July PMT meeting that we can spend that meeting talking with the new deputies and even having the city manager present at that meeting too so that everyone knows what the people sitting on this committee from the cities and will be asked to do.

but we started having that conversation in that meeting too.

So I think, I know from an NDS standpoint that, you know, Alex talked about agreement there and he's been, I think very helpful and instrumental in the PMT work.

And now Wyatt, I did talk and meet with Chip Boyles, the city manager, about Alex being more involved in the process and how to ensure we don't have another stop work order without first initially having a communication with the city, which is an investor.

They have millions of dollars in these projects.

They're an investor.

And if something costs more at the point, you know, at some point because of having to stop work and delays and things like that, then there are going to be requests from the city to if we, you know, if they can help we, they, you know, can help with that.

And so it's in everybody's best interest

to you know move things forward but more importantly to make sure that our families are living and housing that are healthy and safe you know physical structures and the external environment too so if we can get everybody on the same page with that being our common goal

and then not letting anything to delay that because last year, at least with the incident that you're talking about, I don't know, we keep moving from first names and commissioners, I'm getting confused, but that would have been a two year delay.

But that's my point.

Cause I said in that conference room and the head,

Deputy, whatever, city manager said, what do you want me to do?

Have them work on the weekend?

I said, yes, I do.

Yes, I want you to have them work on the weekend.

This is that important.

I'm so sorry that you'll have to work on the weekend, but I do.

And so if we don't have that kind of leadership to move that forward, because there's buy-in from leadership, but if we're not pushing down that buy-in from staff, then

As much as you want that leadership to know every detail that's going on during the day, we're not going to know, you know, you may not know that an engineer was going out to stop the stop work order or a building official is going out to put a stop work order for whatever reason.

Yeah.

And I think creating the avenue because one of the things that even though staff should have, I feel and said to them, they should have done things totally different in that two week time period leading up to all of us getting involved.

But one thing that was clear that I did talk to Red Light about is that if we have from this end, CRHA, Red Light Management, that there are people who are working on the project who may not be doing their part, then that needs to be a discussion too, because that was exactly what staff was able to come back with.

Well, you and I can talk about that offline.

I follow the timeline and I put together all the pieces on that, but there's still plenty of time.

Yeah, no, I get it.

And even with this last thing with Crescent Halls, you know, even with this last one,

What exactly did they say that the stop worker was for for that one?

Mr.

Sales?

So the project, there was a site plan amendment because there were some temporary parking spaces that were going to be relocated.

There was an addition entryway that was added.

There was a smoking area that was added.

And so a site plan amendment was done on Crescent Hall that was not originally submitted because there wasn't any plan to do more than 6,000 square feet worth

of Ground Disturbance.

So a site plan amendment was not completed.

It was just going to be the construction road to get to the building to actually do the work.

So where the trash hoot was going to be and where the skip hoist was going to be to get the workers upstairs and downstairs.

So that changed.

So a site plan amendment was done.

Our team continued to go forward with the road because

Typically, you could do the construction road and not have an issue because they weren't going to disturb so much square feet.

It's less than 6,000.

Well, in the site plan amendment, they included that road on the site plan.

So the city said, hey, you can't move forward with it.

This was after the fact.

And this is one of the reasons why we asked to have this amendment to the redevelopment committee.

employees were involved in these conversations.

They were present where we were discussing moving forward and where we were in the process.

And not one time did one of the city representatives say, hey, no, you got to slow down.

You missed his step.

And that's why we say, hey, if it's not working that way, then clearly we need to switch this up and do something different because that's what should have happened.

And I've spoke with city manager Boyles and he agrees it should have went that way.

We should not have found out.

I didn't find out from a city employee.

I found out from someone else that was happening.

I think it was, yes.

But it was an engineer.

So they can only, it's pretty much it's building officials or engineers can put the stop work orders.

They can't put a stop work order because you didn't get a site plan unless you've moved dirt.

Well, I think your issue was, hey, you all created a road that you showed in your site plan amendment.

So you started work without having a

Her pet exploded.

She actually exploded.

Okay, so with all this, do you have enough to move forward?

I feel like there's still a question of whether the city person should be a voting member or not.

I do think we need some more guidance on whether it's a voting member or not.

Because we're going to have items that come up to the Redevelopment Committee probably within the next three weeks.

Because we're talking about solicitations for engineering services, RFP for a contractor to do pricing at phase two.

You're talking about architectural services.

So we're going to need someone.

We need to know if that's a voting member or not to move forward with that.

and you don't have to make that decision tonight.

If you wanna sleep on it and we'll have it at the next meeting in case there's more questions or if you wanna dive into it a little deeper, we can wait on it, but we do need guidance on that.

Can you relist what the current makeup of the Redevelopment Committee is?

Cause I don't think that was on the,

for people who aren't usually there.

I don't see it.

I don't think that was on the proposal for the admin committee.

And the admin committee is gonna be everyone that's a voting member.

So give me one second.

So I would say based on the makeup of this and that the city rep is one of nine,

that I would support the person being a voting member.

But let me just leave it at before the but to not confuse anything.

That's just a pretty strong group.

I don't think any one person

would be able to come in and do their own thing with this group.

So it'll be 10 people now, right?

Yep.

I still think non-voting just because I feel like the city should be there anyway.

The expertise should be there.

It's part of the city's investment and interest.

I almost feel like it's weird

Someone who's going to be looking at a site plan to also be voting to move the site plan forward, like a client, like we're more like the client of the city, coming to them with projects.

Okay.

Everyone okay with that or we're letting Mr.

Sales know?

All right.

What are we doing?

We are Mr.

Sales.

So I don't know if that's all in terms of the redevelopment update.

We had on the agenda, Mr.

Sales, that you would tell us about sort of any COVID, any updates from your end.

Joy, you just gotta mute yourself.

So I'll give a update on where we are with public housing, HTV, and then general with the housing authority.

And it'll be COVID-based.

So right now we have 14 vacant units that are active, which means they will take less than 30 days to turn.

Three of those are completed and three more will be completed by Friday, by the close of business on Friday.

which will bring us to about, if we lease them up next week, it'll bring us to about 98% occupancy which is pretty good.

We have 16 that are under MOD which means the work is so extensive it's going to require more than 30 days to complete.

I know we have completed one of them and I believe we have a team that's gonna be working on two of them at Mickey Drive after they complete their current units.

We also submitted an application for additional shortfall funding.

It's approximately $600,000.

It's very similar to the last grant we received, which I think was closer to $800,000.

We received less this time because we were able to reduce our expenses, so it shows less of a liability.

For the HCV update, we have 396 total vouchers leased.

We were awarded 15 additional vouchers through the Emergency Housing Voucher Program.

And that program is designed for individuals that are homeless or at risk of being homeless.

And that's a program that's designed to give assistance for 18 months.

We did ask for additional vouchers up to 100.

We'll see how much they give us.

They, I believe, awarded vouchers to about 900 housing authorities.

And we do have a new AT manager.

Her name is Consuela Knight.

She comes to us from North Carolina.

She is not on the call tonight, but she will be at the next meeting in case, well, for you all to meet her and for her to give updates.

I did the financial report today for HUD and we are at a 2.44 for month of reserve.

The goal is to get to a 2.0.

So we are at a 2.44 so far this month.

We'll track it each month.

We have to submit a report to HUD to show where we are each month.

So I'll be able to provide that information to the board going forward.

There was not a financial report in the board package.

And that was because when we looked at the information, I made a decision not to provide it because it just was not accurate enough.

I'd rather provide you all with thorough information than information that's gonna paint a good picture, but not show all our liabilities.

So we, going through previous reports, we haven't done a good job of recording

I should let Mary Lou give an update on this, but I'll let her jump on after so she can correct me.

We haven't done a great job of recording the liabilities on our actual journal.

So if we use a credit card to pay it, sometimes that isn't transferred over to the actual fund that it should be paid under.

And sometimes it may take 30 days or 45 days for that to occur.

So you're getting, that correction will happen, but it'll happen 45 days down a road.

And so when you look at your picture, it doesn't actually show that because it went on a credit card bill.

And so we're looking to do a better job of getting that information and put it in the system so it provides accurate information.

And so we went, Mary Lou spent

all weekend going through the financials to try to get something that was clear and what she provided was much clearer than what was previously provided, but there was still some gaps and I would rather err on the side of caution and provide accurate information.

Yeah, the main thing that,

John's talking about is the ACH transactions.

There's a lot of transactions that are automatically, we're paying the bills.

We're trying to get the bills paid on time.

And that's been happening pretty consistently since I've been here.

We've been putting a lot more focus to make sure that, you know, things are going out the door on time, but what's happening is like, oh, jump online and pay that.

And then like, you know, it's typical vendor accounts, like a Lowe's bill, which we spend five to $7,000 a month

at Lowe's and we're not getting all the receipts in so we can't allocate what communities it's going to, what properties it's going to, what line item it's going to.

So we just can't get caught up.

And on top of that, I spent a lot of time focusing on April to try to get that pretty accurate.

And to be fair, John, we're pretty close.

And like I kind of said to him, I'm like, I know there's a lot of transactions that

A lot of things have been done here for expediency and very little has been done for accuracy.

And believe it or not, I am really looking forward to getting the finance committee going because we need to be more concerned about what's happening.

There's a lot of process and procedure things here that have not been happening I think since the last full-time finance director left in terms of, you know,

tracking entries and making sure that things are done and making sure that they're done accurately.

Before I kind of focused on April, our open enrollment is coming up for our fringe benefits.

And so I kind of had to do a deep dive on retirement and there's some issues there with how we're recording it and how we're deducting it and are we giving the right,

Payments for each employee.

Are we taking enough out of their paycheck?

And if we're short, it's on us.

We still have to pay the retirement company if we didn't take enough out of their paycheck.

So there's like a lot of little issues of those types of things that require a lot of attention.

It's not something that's like, well, let's just go fix it.

You've got to figure out what happened, when it happened.

Was it recorded?

Where was it recorded?

and it's just been kind of snowballing for as long as this position has been vacant because while the bills are getting paid and things get in the books eventually it all tends to happen in a very short period of time before something is due and I find myself falling in that same trap I think

I'm putting a lot of pressure on the new accountant that we have starting in two weeks because it's like once she starts everything will be great but in reality it will help

with all the nitty gritty.

Cause for the last several months, you know, I've tried to wrap my hands around payroll.

I've been the payroll clerk, you know, I've been the file person or not.

And you know, the move and everything on top of it, there just is not enough hours in the day to get everything straightened out.

So there's just a lot of things that need attention and we're doing it, we're getting through it.

I told John, like, we need some time, you know, it's,

It's hard to fix it all at once, but we're not paying bills that we're not using anymore.

At least not the ones that I found, because we've run across a lot of that.

Like, oh, here's a bill, you know, we owe them, we're paying them 50 bucks a month for something.

What's it for?

A phone line that we haven't used in three years.

So.

There's been, I hate to say it, there's been more than that than I would care to admit, or anyone here would probably care to admit.

I think we knew how important filling the position was.

And again, as someone who sat in on those interviews, thank you for being here.

I'm glad that you're sticking it out with us and hope

that I mean, I don't know what the date is for the finance committee starting up, but I think as Dr. Henry, right, that'll be on that.

Yeah, right now it's one of the things we need to talk to John about, but probably sometime mid June or early July, there's the initial

End of year stuff that needs to get done that kind of, you know, kind of is all hitting at once.

Also, like I said, I was trying to get April because I just, you know, I thought I'd been here long enough.

We had a fresh start, April one with the start of the fiscal year.

So what's done in the past is done in the past and we'll correct it as best I can.

And I think we've caught a lot of things since I started in December.

And we still have a lot of catching up to do, but I wanted April 1st going forward to be as clean as we can make it.

So we'll start with that.

And once we get that right, there's some changes that we can make operationally with the systems that we're using to provide better reports, to provide information, to keep track of things.

You know, not that anyone needs to dive into the details, but when you look at a financial statement, we should know what our worker's comp is.

We should know what we're paying for the retirees that had left us many years ago.

There's certain things that kind of get buried in the way that financial statements are presented now.

So there's big plans.

Hopefully we'll get to execute them in the not too distant future.

Thank you, Mary Lou.

And she touched on one of the other points I had was we're gonna be working with the federal to close out FY 2021.

That's actually due, the final deadline is the middle of June.

So like she said, after that, we can focus on getting the finance committee up and running.

So shooting for July, I knew we had a lot going on.

We had the budget,

Then end of the year, starting of a new year, plus cleaning up everything we already had going on.

I knew it was too much to get it started earlier than that.

So I hope that works with all the commissioners, but we're going to be shooting for the beginning of July for the finance committee.

And the last thing I have is the CMAP will be submitted for the HCV program.

And the CMAP is the section eight assessment.

We do it ourselves and then HUD will come and audit our assessment.

So Melinda and Consuela are both working on that now.

And that is all I have.

It sounds like a lot of good work.

I guess I have a question.

When we have been looking at the correct, what is it called?

The CAPS, the Corrective Action Plan.

I think we'll have the CMAP, I believe, after we submit ours.

I think HUD will either do a onsite review, which I don't think that will happen.

I think it's going to be a remote one.

I think they're gonna do that probably July, August for the HCV program, so we'll have an answer on that one then.

Public housing, that one's a little tricky because they're gonna start doing the REAC inspections, but it won't be REAC, it'll be INSPIRE, but they won't score them.

So we need them to be scored in order to get out of trouble status, but they are not scoring them this year because they know, hey, maintenance wasn't allowed inside of most units for a large period of time.

So we expect there's going to be issues in units.

from lack of maintenance being in there because for a large portion we were only addressed in emergency work orders that has opened up but there's still a backlog plus inspections haven't been done normally there's a six-month inspection and then a one-year inspection of units that hasn't been done because of COVID so they're not going to score them but they're going to complete them so that program is still a little tricky it's still up in the air I asked that same question at the last HUD meeting so what are you all going to do and they don't know yet

It's still, I mean, this is a first for them.

I don't think they've ever had to deal with this before.

Normally it's, hey, every year scored, but this is the first year where it won't be scored.

So I can't give you an answer on public housing, but we have a meeting tomorrow at 9 AM.

Yeah.

I mean, everything seems to be moving in the right direction.

You know, all this hard work to get all of the scores where they need to be.

I just wondered.

I remember their spreadsheet.

And just make sure we know where we are on that.

Go ahead.

That I wanted to, the section three report, the L, setting up an MOU with the city.

That's something that we need to have a discussion about as soon as possible.

I was talking to Chip today, just telling him that the person who I was sure could set that up and deliver is not there anymore.

And so I don't even know what that looks like.

So we need to have those conversations as soon as possible.

So I just wanted to share that.

OK. OK.

Why don't we move, anyone else before, I'm gonna move to public comments.

Any other questions for Mr.

Sales?

Okay, we're starting to get silly here.

Let's move to public comments.

Oh, and Mr. Rice, I think Ms.

Slaughter went back over into the,

Okay, I just, she is permitted to speak, so she is currently muted now.

Okay, thank you.

And moving on to public comment, yes, if anybody would like to address the commission at this time, please click the raise hand icon or press star nine if you're joining us by phone.

and Brandon Collins has his hand up.

And Brandon, you're on with the board.

Good evening again, I'm Brandon Collins.

I work for PHAR, the Public Housing Association of Residents.

We are the federally and locally recognized resident council jurisdiction wide and the resident advisory board.

I just wanted to say

Y'all had a great meeting.

I haven't seen a meeting this in depth in a while and I really appreciate it.

There were a lot of really important things discussed and some movement going forward.

I did want to just point out, I do think we have

A little bit of work to do when it comes to the relationship with the police department and what may be an acceptable path forward.

That's really all I'm gonna comment on that, but I do think we're gonna have to sit down and have a conversation as soon as possible.

And maybe tomorrow's safety committee meeting is the place to do that.

Otherwise, great meeting.

I just wanna put in a plug for anybody who's watching who lives in public housing.

Please give us a call at PHAR, 434-984-3255 if you need anything.

And particularly if you live at West Haven or Sixth Street, please feel free to join us for workshops this week, Wednesday at Sixth Street at 2.30.

And if anybody else would like to address the board at this time, please click your raise hand icon.

Okay, great.

And thank you to PHAR for getting those workshops started as soon as possible, which they did.

Okay, I think we're ready to adjourn.

Second.

Commissioner Maddy Green?

Yes.

All right.