CRHA Meeting   9/27/2021

Governor Northam issued an executive order 53, restricting public gatherings of greater than 10 persons.

Accordingly, code section 2.23708- I mean, period two,

A3 permits public bodies to meet electronically to discuss business required or necessary to operation a public body in discharge of its lawful purposes, duties and responsibilities in times of emergencies and to address COVID-19.

Therefore, this meeting is being held electronically pursuant to Virginia law because the COVID-19 pandemic makes it impractical and unsafe to assemble a quorum physically in a single location.

General announcements, meetings slash reminders.

I'm just gonna read from the agenda and beginning with the CRHAB board work session, which is Tuesday, October 14th.

And that's at 6 p.m.

The CRH board regular meeting will be Monday, October 25th.

And that's at 6 p.m.

The safety meeting, it's every other Tuesday.

So the next one will be September 28th, October 12th and October 26th.

Those are 6 p.m. And then there's a link that goes with that.

And I guess you can get that from our website.

Laura, if you're interested in going to it, then there's a Redevelopment Committee, which meets every other Thursday of the month at 4 p.m. and updated time.

So September, I guess it met September 20th, it says the 2nd and the 16th.

And so it doesn't show when the next ones are, but that's every other Thursday.

Resident Services Committee is meeting every second Tuesday of the month at one.

They've been doing quite a bit of busy stuff and I think Kathleen will probably update on some of that later.

And then the Maintenance Committee is meeting every third Tuesday of the month at 6 p.m. And then finally, the Personnel Committee is meeting every third Tuesday of the month at 2 p.m.

The finance committee still hasn't established a time as of this particular meeting.

And at this time, if you'd like to address the commission, please click your raise hand icon.

You will have three minutes for comment.

Okay.

Okay.

So then we will go on in return in terms of the, um,

Updates from commissioners.

And the only one that I have down is safety and Laura's not here right now.

Is there someone else as a commissioner?

I think Brigid or Maddy might have something that they want to say, which folds into section three policy.

I don't know.

For the committees?

Well, the personnel committee, Brigid and I, we're on that.

We met twice.

I don't know if I gave an update the last time, but we've been reviewing the HR policy.

And so we're just in the initial phase of that and discussing what the evaluation process for employees

could potentially look like.

And that will, of course, come before, you know, any changes will come before the board.

And Laura and I have been working on the process for Mr.

Sales evaluation to the board.

And the maintenance committee we met last week

and we're just really trying to get the process, planning on eventually, I guess, meeting in person and being on site and talking to individuals, you know, who live on site about their concerns, but it was our initial meeting and so that's it, that's my update.

Commissioner Green, did you have anything to say?

I don't, I think we'll hear from all the staff, but yeah, we're, you know, looking at the section three policy, which Joy and Kathleen have been working really hard on tonight.

And the resident services also has been working hard.

So I'm looking forward to that update from the staff.

Okay.

So then we can hear from section three policy resolution one four

Can I just apologize quickly?

Thank you.

Can everyone see what I'm sharing on the screen?

Great.

Good evening.

So my task tonight is to just kind of highlight some stuff with the section three policy that has been out for 45 days now and needs to be approved so that we can have a policy.

So the section three table of contents is here and it's all listed to see what is in the policy.

The things that I will be highlighting on is the section three goals, the self-certification and compliance.

and just to also tell you about the new rules.

So in section three is a part of the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968.

Sorry, Kathleen, next.

And I can't really see, okay, I'm gonna move this down.

Okay, I got you.

So the first part in our policy reads, for the public's sake, this policy is developed for the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority for the exclusive use of the agency hereafter referred to CRHA.

It's contractors, subcontractors, bidders, developers, sub-grantees, related affiliates, and instrumentality collaborating local government entities and other sub-recipient

of covered funding in the partnership with CRHA.

The funding type and program grant name may change over the years.

However, the intent of the policy is to encompass all applicable funding from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.

All hiring and contracting must meet

section three of the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968.

And you can find that in 24 CFR 135 requirement.

All hiring and contracting must meet conflict of interest requirements set forth in the federal state or local law regulations of policies and comply with internal CRHA hiring policies.

And then next it goes on to talk about the purpose

which I talked about it a little bit.

So even though we had a section three policy,

It started out just being HUD money for public housing, but there is a Housing and Community Development Act of 1992 that also go in effect.

So anytime we're using any kind of community development dollars, any HUD dollars, that triggers section three.

So home funds, CBDG funds, all of that triggers section three policies and regulations.

Any questions?

Number next, so section three requirement, requirement applied to all projects and activity, funding in whole in part with covered funds.

So for instance, the housing authority gets subsidy, that subsidy also can use to employ residents as a section three resident.

Our next one,

So under definition, and I'm going to go fast through this.

If you need me to stop and back up, I will.

Under definition is speak about the recipients, contractors, subcontractors, new hire, employment opportunity generated by Section 3 assistance,

section three worker, targeted worker.

Can you just back up a little and then go back, Kathleen, to section three worker?

So a section three worker fits one or more of the following category, a public housing resident or a housing choice voucher holder.

It is employed by a section three business concern.

And I don't know why they use business concern, but section three business.

An individual that reside in a service area in which the section three covered assistant is expanded, and he or she is a low income person, less than 80% of the area median income.

Now,

Everyone who works in CRHA who doesn't make over 80% of the area median income is considered a section three worker.

So this housing authority will get a check for that.

Targeted section three worker, this individual fit one of the following category, work for section three business concern or live in public housing or section eight.

So, and then we'll go down and then I'll come back and explain something.

Very low income person's family whose income does not exceed over 80% of the median income for the area as determined by HUD and there is the website where you can go to it.

Very low income families include single person whose income does not exceed 50%.

So low income is 80% of the area median income and very low is 50% of the area median income.

All right, so what I wanna say, I wanna just pause here for a minute.

No, go ahead, I'll back up, go up.

Next one, Kathleen, go up a little.

Okay, right there.

Under section three business, 51% or more owned by a very low income person or

over 75% of labor hours performed for the business or performed by low and very low income person.

And C, it is a business at least 25% owned and controlled by a current public housing resident or resident who currently live in section eight assisted housing.

So I just wanna explain a little bit about housing.

That was, this is a part of the new rules.

The old rule basically said before 30%, you have to hire 30% of your worker.

Now they're doing it by hours work.

And so, and I'm not sure

March of 2021, HUD changed the rules.

And this is why we have to come up with a new policy.

So some of the new rules that I just want to point out to you all under, just one minute, let me find it.

So just to get you, tell y'all what some of the major change are.

Major change in the final rule,

The new rule is hours worked.

All rule was new hire requirement.

A section three worker, again, like I said before, is defined as individual income.

Individual income is below the low income limit of 80% of the AMI, employed as a low income business concern, youth bill, and labor hours benchmark.

section three, targeted section three worker.

And there's five tiers.

I apologize.

There's five tiers in this.

So if you have money that's going into public housing and it is going to rehab or do any kind of work in that site, they ask you to give the people on that site first preference.

Even if they get, so if their first preference and they're not qualified because they don't have the qualification, then they go to the other public housing sites that is surrounding.

So if they're working on West Haven, they couldn't find any qualified people in West Haven, they can go to South First Street.

If they can't find anybody there, they can go to Mickey Drive if they can.

So they just wanna make sure that public housing residents get some opportunity to get

hired.

If not, then it goes to Section 8, and then after Section 8 is Youth Bill, and then after Youth Bill is the metropolitan area.

So what they're doing is starting from in and spreading it out so that you can find low-income people to get some of these jobs.

Any questions?

This will be what I'm going over tonight is will be the policy going forward.

Okay.

because in March of 2021, things, they changed up.

They changed quite a few things.

The basic idea is still there, but they did change some things.

And so in our policy though, we try to put some more teeth in it and I will tell you why we did that.

All right, next.

And under, as you can see, it's section three, converted project.

You can scroll up, Kathleen.

All right, section three, goal and preference.

And so anytime there is a contract signed with, that is going to be signed with any developer, these are some of the things that HUD is saying that they would prefer you doing, training and employment opportunity.

Next one.

Oh, sorry, sorry.

Contracting opportunity for section three business, building trades, other contracts.

Next page.

Self-certification section for section three and section three business.

Now in the package that was sent to you, the policy, there is two section there that speak about the self-certification.

It's on page, I don't know if you all have it, but one is on page 14 and one is on page 26.

And that's the required contractor's form.

And then you have the internal department procedures for Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority.

In the required, you will find form

number two, and that is the business certification form, and form number four is the resident self-certification form.

And so going forward after we approve, once this get approved, everyone who has came in and fill out

The interest form, I have to go back and make sure these are filled out and is attached to it for tracking purposes.

You can go back, Kathleen.

All right.

So going up, Kathleen.

No, no, no, back up.

Okay, self-certification.

And under self-certification, it basically tell you that in order to receive preference as a Section 3 resident and a Section 3 business concern, the resident or business must self-certify that they meet the eligibility requirement.

CRHA has developed a self-certification form for both Section 3 resident and Section 3 businesses, and which are included in the Section 3

form number four, and section three form number two, which I just pointed out to you all.

As section three residents seeking preference in employment must fulfill the requirement qualification of the SORT position.

If asked, they also must provide evidence of their section three status.

Example, receipt of public housing assistance addressed in residency.

A Section 3 business concern seeking preference in contracting must submit evidence to demonstrate that they are a responsible firm and can perform successfully under the terms and condition of the proposed contract.

If asked, they also must provide evidence of the Section 3 status.

It is important to note that all persons and or business concerned

are self-certifying their eligibility under section 3 to CRHA and HUD and that served civil and or criminal penalty may apply for false certification.

And then it also talk about the contractor's goal which I'm not going to read all of that

just for time.

One of the things that I do wanna point out is the purpose, you don't have to go back Kathleen, but the purpose is to ensure that jobs and other economic opportunities cause when HUD assisted housing and community development project goes to low and extremely low people to the greatest extent feasible, then you must consider

the categories that I told you.

The problem we've been running into with the new contracts that we now have, the contracts were weak.

Number two, what I've learned is that when a contract is signed and they're looking for their subcontractors, those subcontractors already have their staff.

due to, they do not have to hire any of our folks in that position.

But if they create any new jobs, any new jobs, then they have to, then they're bound by these rules.

So what we're trying to do with ours is to be able to have more teeth in it to say, we want you to hire two carpenter, we want you to hire two plumbers, we want you to hire, so just to give it a little bit more teeth.

so we don't get pushed around.

You can go on up.

Okay, let me, okay.

These are some of the requirements.

You have notices, enforcement, number next, Kathleen.

Facilitation and then go on.

I don't think

The other thing I want to point out, because we ran into this with one of our contractors, it's not just the housing authority responsibility to make sure the community knows about the job training or any kind of jobs that's coming up.

It's a partnership.

So it's the contractor and the housing authority who is supposed to do, or the contractor and the city, if they're using community development money, who must work together to make sure the communities know about these positions that are coming up.

Okay.

All right.

Economic opportunities to achieve, contractors compliance, it's the same thing.

Training, and I don't know much about the business if Mr.

Sales is on here, he can talk a little bit about that.

The business piece of it, I'm just have not wrapped my brain around it yet because I am trying to

figure out how we get our folks jobs and just trying to, Kathleen and I have been meeting with different, we now have a section three advisory board and we will be going over a lot of this to make sure that

You know, we just have a good policy and that we're using all of the resources or getting all of the resources we can get to get our folks ready.

Cause we do have to train our folks for some of these jobs.

Soft skills is an issue.

Substance abuse is an issue.

Babysitting, transportation, you name it, all of it is an issue.

Are you working with CATEC at all to train any of the public housing people in these construction areas?

We will be discussing that with the advisory board, like coming up with a training curriculum, coming up with what are the ABCs or the one, two, threes to get people ready so that when these contracts is signed and they're ready to go that we have people ready.

So the answer to your question is no, not yet.

And okay, go back up one compliance monitoring.

One of the things I did not talk about a little bit is the Davis-Bacon wage.

They have to pay their workers a Davis-Bacon wage.

which means that they have to pay them.

You can't have someone as a laborer and have them operating a machine.

If they're operating the machine, you have to pay them what a machine operator will get.

We have to do prevailing wage.

Mr.

Sales took me on one, haven't done another one.

We plan to do another one.

but that now haven't happened yet but we have to be making we do checking checking balance to make sure that they're paying people what they're hiring people for we did have one section three hire with Breeden and he basically had gentleman's license from UVA he went through their training

and so they did hire him.

He is a breeding employee now and that was the only hire since the construction has started that have happened.

So that's it.

If you all have any question, you can direct them to me, myself or Mr.

Sales.

So I mentioned to Kathleen that at some point when you ought to do in a work session, there needs to be a work session around this.

section three, because there's a lot of things that triggers section three.

Like a lot of people think that, I had to learn that, you know, anytime you are partnering and using any, if you use one penny of any money that is coming from HUD or is CBDG dollars or whatever, then you have these other things you have to do.

on the section three.

And I don't know if this is entirely correct, but I was told by someone who on the national level who I work with that there are sometimes federal money trickle down to state and state then trickle it down to the state.

That also trigger section three because it is federal dollars.

That's my grandson in the back, I apologize.

Okay, so that's the end of my presentation.

Is there any discussion from commissioners?

Well, I noticed Laura is not here, but I noticed Laura here.

No, she's here now, she has her hands up.

Okay, Laura.

Okay, so hopefully, sorry, hopefully I'm in transit, so hopefully people can hear me.

I did want to ask, I mean, I think that the work here, Ms. Joy, is really impressive, and I know that this has been really, really hard to put together, but I think as an agency, something we need to think about is it's my understanding that federal legislation like this tends to be very poorly enforced because there's not a lot of good enforcement mechanisms.

And so I was hoping that we could, I don't know if people have ideas, but one thing we could be thinking in addition to job training, but to be thinking really creatively about how we can make sure that people don't just say lip service to the section three program, but are genuinely

I have a question that maybe follows up on what Laura was saying is that if

If someone who we hire has section three included in their contract, would we have, and we find them to not be complying in something like maybe our redevelopment, which has multiple phases, like could we legally stop a contract because someone is not complying to section three?

Without better information, I couldn't answer that.

I mean, the problem is that it's covered by the UCC.

It's also covered

by general common law and contracts.

And it's also covered by federal contracting guidelines.

So I, and I hate to give it that way, but it's just, there are too many complexities, theoretically, sure.

But I couldn't tell you that you could with any sort of definitiveness, unless I had the facts of each circumstance.

Yeah.

And it would also disincentivize other people to bid on it, frankly.

Well, what can happen is because what we,

What we ran into was that we were sending like in May about six people went for interviews and then in June another six went and then we had five people, five other people.

So we had about 16, 17 people who did interviews and we weren't getting anything.

And so

With our weekly meeting with one of the contractors, we started putting pressure by saying, you know, A, B, C, and D. Kathleen were like really banging at the door to say, hey, this is not happening.

And so with working

One of them, I think they finally start looking at the section, they have never done section three, even though they were aware about section three, they decided that, okay, we will send me some people, we will go to

the people that we interviewed and then they said oh well we have one that we're looking at and we were like send us a report we want an update so we were doing our due diligence to like say what's going on now they decided to hire one um which it's not

You know, for me it's not 100, 100, but at least they did hire one person.

Now they have given me an application and now they are basically saying with the building going up now,

that we will be looking for A, B, C, and D. So now my job is once this policy is approved, there's some things I got to go back and do like attach all these papers to all these people who fill out the application, but it'll get done.

And then also start setting up appointments with them for the upcoming jobs.

but it shouldn't be that hard to do, right?

It shouldn't, you know, they didn't make, I just walked away a couple of times feeling like I should just give this up because people were going for interviews and they weren't getting any callbacks or saying anything.

So our goal is to make absolutely sure that we have people ready

for when we get to Sixth Street, that we have people ready for demolition, that we have people ready for abatement, that we have people ready for coal bays, that we have people ready for electrician, that we have people ready for roofing, that we have those people to have a cohort of classes going, which will include, you know, CATEC,

PVCC, and any other local folks who wants to train people because part of the problem, we did have one class with the city and then COVID hit and there were two young ladies in it who, you know, my heart really went out to them because one of them

Virtua was hard for that person to learn and they got kicked out the class.

And part of what we're trying to do is to make sure that if anybody have any kind of learning disability that we find the resources because we're resources rich to make sure that they can still have an opportunity.

Just a brief comment.

I know that this has been very important for you, that you've talked about it for a long time.

So it looks like a great just beginning.

And I know that you wanna make sure that the answer to that question that Commissioner Green asked is a lot stronger to make sure that the contractors that work with

You know, with CRHA, you can enforce in some way to make sure that the people from the communities are benefiting.

So I'm glad that this is, you know, on your plate and that you are as committed to it.

Yes, ma'am.

Do you want to read it?

Oh, gosh.

Okay.

CRHA resolution number 1431, a resolution to adopt an amended section policy.

Is that should they say section three?

Okay.

Whereas the United States Congress passed section three of the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968,

12 USC 7170LU section 3 to further the goal of ensuring that federal funds benefit the low and very low income residents of projects funded wholly or partly by those funds and whereas

Part 75 of section three is to establish the standards and procedures to be followed to ensure that the objectives of section three are met and whereas the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority staff has developed a revised section three policy slash plan in adherence to

24 CFR part 75 that more comprehensively addresses the standards and procedures prescribed in the act and whereas the section 3 plan as reviewed by the housing authority senior staff members and their comments incorporated into

policy into the policy slash plan.

Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Board of Commissioners authorizes the development and implementation of the revised section three policy slash plan to ensure compliance with federal law.

This resolution shall become effective immediately upon its adoption by this board resolved this 27th day of September,

21 by the CRHA Board of Commissioners.

One thing I would like to say, please do a spell check and get those spaces before you have me sign it.

Discussion?

You get a second?

I second that.

Okay, somebody get a call?

Commissioner Goldblatt?

Yes.

Commissioner Lisa Green?

Commissioner Jackson?

Yes.

Good work.

Hello, we'll see how my camera does on this.

Wi-Fi is a little spotty.

So I don't know if you've had a chance to look at the notes I provided or to look at the financial statements.

Kathleen, are you able to share the financials?

I'm sure.

Just give me a second.

Okay.

I mean, overall, the

The agency organization is in good shape, I think in large part due to one time funds.

So as a financial director, you never want to get too comfortable with anything that's being the budget because it's an unusual circumstance.

And the biggest thing when she gets that up there, we can see, I separated out our shortfall funds that are coming from HUD.

And I also separated out the money that we pulled out and

towards the wages from the PPP loan, the second loan.

Oh, I wanted the actual financial statement.

So one change that I've made since I've been here

What used to happen in the past kind of relates to some of the discussion we had last week surrounding the personnel committee is that when they did the books, there was one account called FICA taxes or whatever.

And anything that was benefit related got posted to there.

So any type of insurance bill for the employees benefits got posted there.

I think the only thing that maybe didn't was workers comp.

but health vision, dental, retirement, and there's several other smaller miscellaneous benefits that rolled through there.

Likewise, all of the deductions that came out of an employee's payroll, they're supposed to contribute somewhat towards their health insurance, went into that account.

And because we have so many different cost centers,

and so someone like a maintenance person whose salary is spread across all the public housing cost centers, you spend $10 for them and it's split up seven or 11 or however many different ways for every single cost center including the scattered sites are individualized.

So it gets messy and when you look at that and you try to reconcile it, it's extremely difficult

And for the most part, the reconciliation hasn't been done.

At the end of the year, they would look at it and they would say, well, all the deductions should have been applied towards all the bills.

And once that's done, anything that's left over, if it's too much or too little, we'll just run it through the expense side of it.

And it could be significant.

And the reason that you wanna pay attention to that, because month to month, week to week,

If you're not paying attention to it, you don't know, am I taking too much out of somebody's salary?

Am I not taking anything at all?

Did I just forget something or was there a recalculation done that we didn't adjust for?

Actually, it wasn't.

Sure.

Okay.

Sorry about that.

So basically I've set up accounts trying to capture some of the things that I know as being financial director I want to pay attention to not only on the benefits side, but on the revenue side.

So that's good right there.

That's fine.

So we'll take a step back.

One of the things that happened on here under the grant income section is you can see we added account 3401-10 subsidy shortfall or HUD PHA shortfall funds.

So you can see now year to date that actually it's called the period to date.

So I guess if you wanna scroll over a little bit,

I need to change my view.

You can see that those two lines together, we're doing really well.

The first line of our normal operating grants and subsidy from HUD, but we're actually behind our budget.

Yep, right there, 794 versus 855.

Overall, we're doing great because we've accounted for over $300,000 of shortfall funds in this period.

It's just really important to know that when you say, oh, you know, they're doing great financially.

Well, there's a reason for it.

And, you know, parts of it may continue or we may try to get it to continue, but it's not through our normal operations that we're doing so well.

And the other piece of it, if you could scroll back over so we can see the accounts.

Yep, right there.

Oh, up a little bit.

So what you see here, this is public housing, the central office, and all the HCV programs combined.

So the first two lines there, and you'll see it again down in, actually, I don't think it is in maintenance, because I don't think maintenance has applicable salaries, but under the administrative salaries, we added this contra account,

What happened last year is say we had total salaries of a million dollars.

At the end of the year, a hundred or excuse me, I think it was $202,000 was the first PPP loan.

That million dollars just got reduced by the $200,000 and it got pulled out and charged against to zero out the PPP loan.

And there is a computational reasons why we would pull

The salary's out versus add the revenue.

It's to our benefit to reduce our expenses.

It has a better net effect than increasing the revenue.

We don't have that option with the shortfall funds.

So they're handled a little bit differently, but the effect is the same.

It improves our bottom line.

So here, so we have an idea of what our true administrative salaries are, 252,000, you know, at the end of the day,

it's gonna be less 125,000 that we've allocated this fiscal year to that second PPP loan.

And then the other area that I started talking about a little, oh, so you can see here, employee insurance is Health Vision and dental, retirement is now separated out as is unemployment, disability, we offer a fitness program and then workers comp I think always had its own account.

Some of those are fairly minor, but it does help with the reconciliation to make sure that we're withdrawing the correct amount from the employees.

And over the years, those errors have gone both ways.

Sometimes we've took out too much.

Sometimes we didn't take out enough.

So we want it to be the Goldilocks amount.

If you could scroll down a little bit to the next page or towards the bottom.

I want to get to legal or the, sorry, the insurances.

You can keep going.

General, there it is, general expenses.

So here's another, up a little bit right there.

Here's another area where the insurance, I believe we had property liability and then everything else

got run through the miscellaneous taxes, licenses and insurance.

And I broke that out to include auto because that is a significant amount.

Now we do have, I think it's 10 or 12 vehicles.

And the other business insurances are two new riders.

It looks like that got put on the account relatively, maybe within the last two years, it's cyber insurance.

and a crime, which is intentional employee theft.

So they're relatively small compared to the rest of the policy, but the property insurance all are broken out according to the tables that are provided by the insurance.

So that's kind of the nitty gritty of it.

I think overall, if you take out

the shortfall funds and the PPP funds and look at the programs at their whole they're still operating fairly successful but not as well as once we include those amounts in there and then I think the only other thing that I wanted to point out if you happen to catch it if you're really like scrutinizing these financial statements on the COC cost center that that statement that's presented by itself

because we were able to tap HUD funds for all the public housing salaries, maintenance salaries and other public housing staff.

We can't use it for salaries related to our central office administrative salaries or redevelopment or the city program cost center.

So in this fiscal year for what we had left, we went

and pulled out those salaries from the first pay period that happened in April that actually was paid in this fiscal year until the money ran out.

I think it took us up to like maybe the payrolls in July or actually August.

And because on the COC Cost Center, it looks like we pulled more money out than we had expenses.

because it has to do with the way the year ended.

We recorded the last eight days of the first payroll that got paid in fiscal year 21, 22 to last year because it's a cruel accounting.

It's like, essentially if you worked up till March 31st, last year has to grab those expenses.

But when we recorded the whole payroll, if you look at it on a cash basis, all those wages were paid in April.

The PPP money, the clock started ticking in March.

So it doesn't care what fiscal year you're in.

And that'll basically wash out with the next payroll.

You won't see that negative amount anymore.

And we'll report the actual payrolls that we used it for

to the Small Business Association.

I mean, it's neither here nor there, but I guess if someone said, hey, how are you having negative expenses?

It just has to do with the timing of when the payroll hit our books and in our fiscal year end.

So does anybody have any questions?

Kathleen, I think if you scroll down to page 12 on the PDF, you can see that.

Right there.

Stop.

So you can see under, I will answer your question just to point this out what's on the screen.

The administrator says it says 117, but we pulled out 125.

It's because that 8,000 was due to March.

But with the PPP, we don't really have to be that specific.

So if it was 8,000 from March or 8,000 from the end of when we stopped doing it, it doesn't really matter.

but what we'll submit to them just so we have a continuous flow of when we started using the money, we're gonna start it in March.

And Chair Henry, to answer your question, we should not, now we do have to apply for forgiveness of that and we do expect to get it.

The people that are having it pulled back,

If you read some of the stories when it first became available, the companies knew that they had no right to it.

They hadn't lost any revenue.

They were still employing workers.

And they got millions.

It's actually very interesting if you do some Googling on that to see what companies got what money.

You can go in there and you can just type in Charlottesville.

and anyone that is in Charlottesville or has Charlottesville in their name or whatever parameters you put in there, you can see exactly how much money they got and you'll be surprised.

You know, like private practice physician's office got a couple million dollars because they had to continue and protect the payroll of their very highly compensated

Physicians.

So I don't believe that we're in that position and we are certainly on the lower end of the allocations.

Like I said, so many places got millions and millions.

So right now it is on our books as a liability in total.

So hopefully we can not have to worry about any type of repayment because it was considered a loan until you can prove that you used it

to pay, it was salaries, rent and utilities.

We weren't allowed to use the latter two just because of the way HUD reimburses us and we were very careful to have no overlap with what we were requesting from HUD or what we've already gotten from HUD.

So hopefully that answers your question.

Yeah, sorry, I'm having trouble with my mute button.

So I do have a question.

I understand that we have all this PPP money and otherwise, and that it's not due to our normal operations, which is somewhat alarming to think about what's coming because I'm sure that we're gonna see that lots of residents are gonna be dealing with needing to pay a lower rent for some time.

Are there any programs, could you give us just even, I don't know how long a list this is, but an update on what programs we,

intend to apply for or have already applied for to get additional funding.

Well, I think the good news is that there is likely to be shortfall funds available from HUD.

It is limited to what we can use it for.

It is obviously primarily the public housing programs.

I do know that through the city funded position with the, I want to call it sustainability, but I think I'm getting my position titles mixed up, but the eviction avoidance

a role that Claudette Green is filling.

Then in the large part is operating as following up on outstanding receivables.

I mean, internally we have had a conversation as to how we can equitably apply money that comes from the city without encouraging non-payment of rent.

And so we really need to look at those programs in the future.

But I guess, I mean, Kathleen, I'll kind of defer to you.

She did CUMI and it's the Housing Stabilization Coordinator position.

But in terms of other funding, I know she's been pretty dogged in trying to recruit additional funds, but

On the public housing side, we do expect there to be shortfall funds available there.

Oh, the state of Virginia has the rent relief program.

That was what I wanted to mention that if Claudette were here, she could certainly speak to that.

That's an issue where she's trying to get our residents signed up for that program to be able to receive money from them to cover their rent.

So could you explain a little bit, I just don't fully understand what you changed when you were talking about the maintenance workers and that they are spread across AMPs and what that looks like.

Well, and this, the one that you're looking at, this is actually the COC.

Kathleen, if you scroll to any one of the amps, I mean, I don't know that you'll, that you'll actually, it'll, it's not super, oh, you can stop here, or go to maintenance, sorry, sorry.

There you go.

So we look at the allocations for primarily the maintenance department because they service all of our sites.

So we look at basically it's been approved by HUD was prior to my getting here, but we did adjust it this year with the changes at Crescent Halls.

If we have the 300

76 available housing units.

Then Crescent Halls has 105 of them.

And you're going to test me.

I don't know how many West Haven has, but it's a fraction of our total.

And that basically are how all the salaries and every benefit, every, you know, when you look at our vehicle expense, for example, the vehicle insurance and the gas,

When we get a bill in, you know, our software helps us, but there's basically a formula to say, and then when you look at the scattered sites, they get a fraction of a fraction, you know, because you need a couple units.

Okay, I get it.

So I because I didn't see that I'm just like, maybe I just need more explanation.

Well, and when I started here, you know, I was printing out the cost centers out individually and saying, okay, well, which ones can I add up and get a total

and some of it works behind the scenes.

And there were some issues with some things.

I don't think any of the reports that we ever gave you but there were some internal reports that said it was all and there were things that were missing and there were things that shouldn't have been included.

So we've just kind of cleaned that up a little bit so that it's relevant.

And now, and I understand it now too, obviously as to what's included in there, but it just makes for a messy general ledger because everything's split out so many different ways.

So some of this, I was just gonna say some of the accounts that we've set up, it narrows it down a little bit.

So we know that what the disability is, what the retirement should be, and we can, it's just much easier to try to reconcile.

Yeah, and so then you, just in the notes, it just said that the,

Yeah, so I've presented the financial statements as had been traditionally provided to you.

And I believe there should be more information as, cause it's not the CSRAP program isn't part of the HUD,

Dealings, but it's obviously part of our organizational operations.

So we do have an all that includes that and likewise with redevelopment.

When the budget was approved, other than the salaries that are appropriated to those two cost centers, there really was no other budget created for them.

And John and I, Mr.

Sales and I have spoken about that, that we really need to have a full operational budget for you to, for the board to approve and to review going forward.

And those, those programs can certainly be separated out and presented separately similar to the COC.

And that was part of the budget, that was part of the budget revision that we, I actually personally had hoped to do it over the summer and

We just have not been able to get to it to include those two cost centers with the relevant expenses.

Cause we're certainly allocating expenses to them.

So, and, but we were, what we've just been able to do with the PPP money and those programs, it just, it helped them a lot because there's not as many revenue sources to cover those other expenses.

Like with CSRAP, I think it's mainly

The rent and then an administrative fee that doesn't cover some of the allocated salaries that go there.

Yeah, but I do think it's important to see,

Those things and especially if we end up, I mean, I think the board needs to fully understand the budget in case there like comes a time where there's a larger request than the city currently has allocated or something like that.

I think when there's advocacy for that additional funding, that if there have been presentations on what's going out, why, what those increases are, then it's just a better understanding.

I can kind of put it as a goal to try to provide all those, it's really just those two additional

There are some other funds within our general ledger, but it is more an accounting function.

Not necessarily, it's not tracking our business operations.

It's more of, it sits here until it gets cleared out kind of thing.

So like if there's a nonprofit established,

Yeah.

But right now it's supposed to have the same, well, possibly the same staff.

Right, nope, that's fine.

You can have shared services and it's similar to what we do with the departments now, we can allocate a piece of that over and the difference there would be, they would actually have to make a payment to the other company because they wouldn't share a checking account kind of like all these cost centers do.

Okay.

Oh, I have one more question.

That is a good question.

I think mainly because of the shortfall funds they enter.

And I do think, and I do wish Mr.

Sales was here because he could respond better.

to Crescent Halls and some of the effects of what we're gonna see there.

I mean, that's actually shifting to basically amp two is gonna be phased out.

And I think that happened as of September 1st.

So I have to figure it out in short order for the September statements, but I believe it's now amp nine, but I, again, am not the right person to look at that, but against budget,

Overall, I believe all the AMPs are ahead of their budgets.

And the individual AMP financials are presented.

All right.

OK.

I think I have one more question.

But you had mentioned that there were things that had been paid even though the services were still not there.

I mean, the answer is I don't know, but I think that we're close.

Today, for example, is something that we knew of for a while, but we haven't devoted the time to it.

There's a thing with the phone lines and our fax lines and crescent halls, and something was disconnected by mistake by the vendor.

They couldn't set it back up because the city of Charlottesville is restricted as to who is allowed to do that.

It's only CenturyLink.

And I actually had a phone conversation with the vendor that provided the original service today.

They're like, they physically wouldn't give us a line to be able to reconnect that once it got disconnected by mistake, yet we were still paying the old vendor.

So we're looking to have to disconnect it if we can, but we,

There may be lines attached to the fire system or the elevator for emergency services.

So it's like we just really need to do our due diligence on some of these services before we get rid of them.

But there's been other like little things that it's like, you know, items weren't returned or

Most of those I think we've kind of caught and we're paying so much more attention to it now.

So there's still some reconciliation to do on the benefits side, especially with the VRS.

We kind of touched on it a little bit in the personnel committee meeting, but yeah, I do feel like we're getting close.

Okay.

All right.

Okay, thank you.

Before we go to public comments, I wanted to give Laura the chance to have any comments because I know she was sort of

in Transient earlier when all of the other commissioners spoke.

Yeah.

So the only thing I'll add is that there's been a lot of changes since our last meeting in terms of the safety committee.

And so it's my understanding, and Mr.

Sales isn't on the call, but I know that he had a meeting with the interim CPD

are the interim chief of Charlottesville police and that he's open to an MOU, which is something that we've wanted.

And so that was good news with residents.

There was also a lot of meetings.

I was in a meeting that was facilitated by Todd Niemeyer,

about their crisis response group and a lot of talk about getting social services into residents and finding ways to help residents deal with trauma.

But I think there continues to be really active interest both in care after

A violent incident occurs but also preventing them in the first place and I think that those conversations are ongoing and will look different depending upon how this role is filled and how long it's vacant.

But the other piece is that it's my understanding this might have already come up at the start of the meeting but that cameras have started to go up.

and so we have our safety committee meeting tomorrow at 6 p.m.

I'll be eager to hear from residents how they feel about cameras going up but also how they're feeling about some of the changes and if there's any updates to the conversations with the interim chief of police.

So those are the updates I have from the safety committee.

Thank you.

At this time, if you'd like to join us for public comment, please put your raised hand icon.

You'll have three minutes for comment.

And we have Brandon Collins.

Brandon, you have three minutes.

Good evening, CRHA Board of Commissioners.

My name is Brandon Collins.

I am

A resident of the city of Charlottesville, lived here my entire life, have children here who have lived here their entire lives until one of them recently moved away.

I was going to take this opportunity to address the board as a private citizen.

Friday was my last day of employment with the Public Housing Association of Residents, which is your awesome resident council and resident advisory board.

And in about a week's time, I'm going to go start working for y'all.

And in the meantime, I figured I would address you all and just give you a couple of thoughts as a private citizen.

When I first came to work with PHAR, I was at war with the Housing Authority.

There was a hostile administration and a hostile board.

Now that was a long time ago and it took a lot.

It took a lot of battling it out.

It took a lot of residents who went through really, really, really hard times.

And somehow this board and your organization along with PHAR have been able to overcome that

that battle and I just want to highlight that looking back how much progress has been made and I think ultimately this is benefiting residents.

I think there's a long ways to go but as far as CRHA board goes, I think it's vitally important to recognize that

the transformational work that's been going on and how important it is to work with the resident council and resident advisory board, which is PHAR.

PHAR will fight and they're good at it.

And residents will mobilize if they're in a bad spot.

And it is really, really important to maintain an amazing working relationship

with the resident council.

And I don't worry that that's gonna change, but I do want to just say, looking back after everything I've seen, how important that is and how that's fairly unique in this world and in public housing.

Everything's not perfect.

Hey, Kingston.

It's not perfect.

And it is very difficult.

HUD is a giant bureaucracy.

And if you could imagine being a low income resident, trying to keep your life together, keep your kids in school, deal with COVID, deal with everything that life throws your way and live under this oppressive bureaucracy and be expected to attend meetings and participate in determining your own future.

That's a lot.

That's a huge weight for residents.

And I think PHAR is uniquely poised to help residents engage

and this housing authority right now is uniquely poised to begin to transform how public housing is in Charlottesville in the nation.

And so part of that leads into redevelopment.

I really hope that this board can be deeply in tune with a really important thought which is the city of Charlottesville along with

the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority are guilty of pretty awful crimes to the black community in Charlottesville.

And this is an organization that I'm getting ready to go work for.

And that's really hard.

It's something I never thought would happen.

But I think, and I hope that the board is in touch with the idea that reparations

and that CRHA can play a role in that and be one way to begin to repair some of the damage.

So it means not just the buildings, but actually making an attempt to pay back, to make amends to the community for something, things that happened 50 years ago or 20 years ago,

five years ago.

And so I really hope the board moving forward will keep that close to them, the idea of transforming the housing authority and making reparations.

At the end of the day, I love Joy, I love Audrey, I love Katrina, Tina, board secretary, and I really love the CRH

It was awful when I started and a lot of work has been done to have a board that cares, that wants to see this transformation happen and so I really encourage you all to do that.

All that said, residents don't always see this amazing progress and there are a lot of hard feelings out there with residents about their day-to-day quality of life and I really look forward to helping to improve that

and I hope that CRHA board and staff will keep that in mind that there's still a long ways to go to build that trust and to begin those reparations.

Okay, thank you, Brandon.

Two oversights, I guess, from the agenda that were just brought to my attention.

The first is there was no mention of the minutes and we also did not receive copies of the minutes.

They received them.

Oh, go ahead.

Okay.

Well, we have them from the, we have the July 26 minutes.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you.

All right.

That's okay.

But then the second oversight, unless things were changed again, because I know that the section three was going to take a long time, but we did not have anything on the agenda with regard to a report from Mrs. Glenn Matthews.

No, and we realized that Mr.

Sales was not able to make it tonight and Joy and I had talked and we really wanted to go through the whole policy.

So if you do look at the report that I sent out, it's definitely a lot longer than usual and

and I encourage you to read it.

I'm gonna start using this new format, really detailing what's happening at each site.

And we would love feedback on that.

I saw that's what I was working from the revised agenda.

So just wanted to make certain.

Anyone wants to move that we adjourn or did I just move that we adjourn?

Aye, Mayor.

I second.

Please.

Kathleen.

Commissioner Goldblatt?

Yes.

Commissioner Lisa Green?

Thank you.