City Council Meeting   6/25/2024

Collard Tuesday, June 25, 2024.

City Council meeting to order.

Mayor Reed.

Present.

City Manager Banks.

Here.

Vice Mayor Dent.

Here.

Council Member Jones-Apsin.

Council Member Robinson.

Present.

Deputy Chief Pollard.

And Chief Tobian.

If you would please stand for the invocation given by Council Member Robinson.

Dear Lord, we come before you with gratitude and we thank you for being a God of love who is with us now in this very room.

We thank you for making each of us in this room, every person we meet, every resident of this city and every city, in your own image with dignity and infinite worth.

We thank you, Lord, for our mayor, our city manager, our city staff, and my fellow council members.

We give thanks for the way of service they have chosen to take up on behalf of all of us here.

Help us, Lord, to trust you more and guide us in tonight's work.

In your name we pray.

We do have a special recognition to give this evening a proclamation declaring July 2024 as Parks and Recreation Month.

So we have some special guests here with us this evening.

who I would like to call up and stand up here with me while we give this proclamation.

So, young people, come on up.

I want you to be able to be seen.

Okay, so this is a proclamation declaring July 2024 at Park and Recreation Month.

Whereas park and recreation programs are integral part of communities throughout this country, including the city of Harrisonburg.

And whereas our parks and recreation are vitally important to establishing and maintaining the quality of life in our communities, ensuring the health of all

citizens and contributing to economic and environmental well-being of a community and region.

And we're, as parks and recreation programs build healthy, active communities that aid in the prevention of chronic disease, provide therapeutic recreation services for those who are mentally and physically disabled, and also improve the mental and emotional health of all citizens.

and whereas Parks and Recreation programs increase the community's economic prosperity through increased property values, expansion of the local tax space, increased tourism, the attraction and retention of businesses and crime reduction.

And whereas Parks and Recreations is fundamental to the environmental well-being of our community.

And whereas Parks and National Recreation areas improve

Water quality, protect groundwater, prevent flooding, improve the quality of the air we breathe, provide vegetative buffers to development and produce habitat for wildlife, and whereas all our parts and natural recreations

areas ensure the ecological beauty of our community and provide a place for children and adults to connect with nature and recreate outdoors, recreate outdoors, and whereas the U.S.

House of Representatives has designed July, designated July as Park and Recreation Month, and whereas the City of Harrisonburg recognizes the benefits from parks and recreation resources.

Now therefore, I, Deanna Reed, Mayor of the City of Harrisonburg,

do hear about reclaim July 20, 2024 as Park and Recreation Month.

Here you go.

Thank you.

You are so welcome.

Thank you for coming.

We're going to let you go ahead and go out.

Mayor, if you would, I'd just like to point out these are some of the children that are participating.

Oh, no, you guys can keep walking.

I just wanted to point out that they are some of the kids that are enjoying our summer day program, summer camp programs through Harrisburg Parks and Recreation.

and it touches my heart because I remember very fondly summer camp with Parks and Rec when I was their age so it's really fun.

Yes, very few, very few.

That's why we give to our parks because it's more than just, it touches

Everybody.

Parks and recreation touches everybody.

So that's why we have to keep funding our parks and recreation.

Great.

All right, let's go to our consent agenda.

Consent agenda.

Any items placed on the consent agenda shall be removed and taken up as a separate matter if so requested by any member of council.

Otherwise, all items will be voted on with one motion.

So moved.

I'm going to have a second bet.

Thank you.

Vice Mayor Dent.

Aye.

Council Member Robinson.

Aye.

Aye.

We will now go into our public hearings.

Good evening, Mary Reed and other council members.

There was no PowerPoint.

Yeah, there was.

Give me one second.

I did this to you last time.

I apologize.

If not, I have printed one, but they won't be able to see that too well.

Now, just give me a second.

All right, well, I am here this evening to present our applications for tax relief for real estate and personal property taxes.

Give a little background.

The Constitution of Virginia allows for specific local tax exemption

and prior to January 1st, 2003, the General Assembly passed bills exempted in an organization from local taxation.

And as of January 1st, 2003, local elected officials were given the authority to make the determination.

Council passed local ordinance addressing the real and personal property exemption and that can be found in Section 4-2-3.

17 of the Harrisonburg City Code.

The process is that the 501C3 will fill out a tax exempt application and submit that with supporting documents, their financial statements, tax returns, and other documents as articles and corporation.

And those are all reviewed by a committee made up of myself, the finance director, and the treasurer.

We determine the revenue impact and a public hearing is set for tonight and then the information is provided to you.

All you make the decision in that decision is final.

Currently we have 13 501 C3s that receive personal property exemption and the total tax amount that was exempted in fiscal year 24 was $33,195.

There are 11 501C3s that receive real estate tax exemption and that total amount exempted in fiscal year 24 was $123,766.

This year we had three different applicants, Strength and Peers, Chando Valley Black Heritage Project, and our community place.

Strength and Peers is located at 917 North Main Street.

They recently purchased that property.

Their mission is to offer hope, support, and advocacy for those seeking recovery so that they can build resilience and thrive in our lives and communities.

More than half of their board of directors and staff are in active recovery from substance use, mental health,

and drama related challenges.

They provide mental health and substance use recovery support services, including peer support and case management.

They operate a community resource center for anyone to get community information and referrals to community services.

And they also offer HIV and hep C testing, a food pantry, homeless supplies, homeless outreach and jail based support groups.

I had nice pictures of their meeting room.

I apologize.

They bought the entire building, but they are only occupying the first floor for this purpose.

So the only part that they are requesting is exemption on the first floor.

The real estate tax assessment for fiscal year 25 would be $421,300.

and at the real estate rate that will be $4,255 to be exempted.

Their personal property tax assessment is $21,284 and that would equate to $451 of taxes and they also own a vehicle and that assessment is $1,513 which equates to $52 in taxes.

Shenandoah Valley Black Heritage Project is at 425 Hill Street.

And I had nice pictures with that as well.

Their mission is to learn, share, and illuminate the rich African-American history and culture of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

They have a library.

They have displays in the Friendly City Co-op.

They provide self-guided driving

or Walking Tours featuring historic African American sites throughout the valley.

They've completed eight tours and are working on more of them.

They teach on the intersectionality of history and how environment, health, poverty and other issues have disproportionately affected Black and African American communities and how to eradicate those barriers.

They present a professional development activities for local schools.

They clean and uncover burial grounds of enslaved and free blacks.

And they provide free genealogy services for community as well as free internet services.

Their real estate tax assessment for fiscal year 25 is $111,100.

that at the tax rate would be $4,255 of relief.

The personal property tax assessment is $8,17, which would be $170 of relief and personal property.

Our final applicant is our community place at 17 East Johnson Street.

They have already been granted real estate and personal property taxes in September.

of 2011.

The Personal Property Tax Exemption on Vehicles is specific to the vehicles, and so they have now acquired two additional vehicles, and they are requesting exemption on those.

These vehicles are used for collecting food donations and supplies from the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank, Transportation to and from Medical, Mental Health and Addiction Counseling Service appointments,

and for transporting the personal belongings of unhoused and recently housed individuals into their newly secured residence.

Their mission is to build a safe, loving community of restoration and hope for all, especially those facing homelessness and other adverse experiences.

They are real estate taxes in 2000

23 was $5,106 that was exempted and their personal property was $734.

These additional vehicles that they're requesting have an assessment of $35,200 for this year, which would equate to another $1,214 of personal property taxes that would be exempted.

Our committee met and recommended that Strength and Peers

Shenandoah Valley Black Heritage Project, Inc., and our community place being exempted the respective taxes for which they have applied.

If you have any questions for me or I actually invited representatives from the organizations, I don't know if you would have questions you'd want them to answer as well.

We're available.

Well, I'll just say this is a really important option we give to organizations that provide critical services in our community.

When they get this relief, these are funds that actually are freed up in those organizations to continue the work they're doing on behalf of residences and the services they provide.

Thank you.

I'm going to open this item up for public hearing if anyone was just to speak.

Please state your name and address.

You'll have five minutes.

See a nun in person?

One moment please.

You are now live with City Council.

I just want to indicate that Strength and Peers is very grateful for the City Council's

Thank you.

Thank you.

We'll close public hearing on this item.

Council, before we go to a vote, you have to refuse yourself.

Are you guys going to vote for all three at the same time?

No, we're going to separately.

We're going to have to do a statement of disqualification.

The Virginia State and Local Government Conflict of Interest Act requires that I make disclosure to be recorded in the city records.

in any matter in which I am prohibited by law from participating.

Therefore, I make the following disclosure.

This particular matter involves a request for tax exemption from the Shenandoah Valley Black Heritage Project.

My personal interest affected by this transaction is that I am an employee of Shenandoah Valley Black Heritage Project.

So we're going to vote on them separately, so we will

We'll start with strength and peers, and we'll do each one separately, okay?

Second.

Roll call, please, Pam.

Council Member Robinson.

Aye.

Aye.

Shenandoah Valley Black Heritage Project.

Any discussion?

Council Member Fleming.

Aye.

Vice Mayor Dent.

Aye.

Council Member Robinson.

Recuse.

Recuse.

Aye.

And our community, please.

Madam Mayor, I move that we approve real estate and tax exemption and personal property tax exemption

I'll second that.

Any discussion?

Vice Mayor Dent.

Aye.

Council Member Robinson.

Aye.

Aye.

All right, we'll go to our regular, I think you care, we'll go to our regular items on 7A.

Thank you, Mayor Reed.

City Council, good evening.

I'm here to present the Transit Strategic Plan.

This is something we've been working on for the past nine months.

It's a state-required document if you have to receive funding.

So we do want the money, so we'll do what the state wants us to do.

It's a 10-year plan.

I'll invite Ms.

McCrae to kind of give a presentation on this.

She's with Kim Lee Horn.

She'll give you all what we went through, what we did.

And I want to thank some Mr. Fleming and some people who are on the stakeholders.

And it's been a process.

It's been good.

And then I'll let me turn it back to Ms.

McCrae and she can give up.

We are here if you need to ask us questions.

Hello.

Hi.

Good evening, mayor and city council members.

My name is Danielle McCrae.

I'm a transportation planner with Kimley Horne and I'm also the project manager for the consultant team that supported the Harrisonburg Department of Public Transportation on the transit strategic plan.

We were, Kimley Horne was also teamed with Foursquare integrated transportation planning.

So we were a team, the consulting team that supported the public transportation department on this effort.

I'll give you an overview of the process and the project.

I will give you an update on the work completed to date, which includes the technical work and also our public engagement efforts, which, as Gerald mentioned, included stakeholder engagement with many members of the community.

And then I'll walk through the draft trans-strategic plan document, which has been available for public comment for the past four-week period.

I'll give you an update on the feedback we've received there and then open it up for questions and answering the questions you may have.

So the Transit Strategic Plan is a comprehensive document that has a 10-year horizon year.

This is a document that is required for all urbanized areas in the Commonwealth of Virginia to document and lay out the blueprint, if you will, for the community and how existing transit service needs will be met and implemented

currently and to meet the demands over the next 10 years.

The program is managed by the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation, also known as DRPT.

They have established guidelines that create a process that helps each of the agencies understand what the expectations are and introduces consistency across all agencies in the state of Virginia.

However, there are opportunities for each community to be reflected and that's where we get community input and the unique

Data that is unique to Harrisonburg.

So this document serves as a blueprint for how operational and capital needs will be implemented over that 10-year horizon.

Once the plan is adopted, this transit strategic plan, it will be replacing the existing 2017 transit development plan that you may be familiar with.

And that will then become the planning document that shapes the future of transit for Harrisonburg.

This was an opportunity, this process, to review the existing demand, the existing network and identify opportunities to better or more efficiently serve your community needs and also plan for future demands that may be projected or forecasted over that 10-year horizon.

This planning process was quite robust and we focused on existing riders and also people who may be inclined to use the system if the system was modified to serve their needs.

Here's an overview of our project schedule.

As Gerald mentioned, we have been working on this for nearly a year.

Last spring, we kicked off our efforts with a visioning session and met with many stakeholders that represented different departments of the city and also community organizations.

During that time, we established the vision and goals for the plan.

And then we had three different rounds of engagement, which also included public engagement and feedback from members of the public on

proposed system changes.

And most recently, the third round of engagement included the draft plan for the public to respond to.

And we are currently at the adoption phase, which is we're seeking adoption tonight from the council.

So I'll give you an overview of public engagement and outreach that happened over the course of the project.

In the fall of last year, between October 24th to December 15th,

we had a public survey open where we solicit feedback from the public on priorities for transit service in the community and we received over a 760 survey responses including details about where people were most interested in taking transit, what were barriers or deterrents from riding transit and what were perceived as priorities for riders of the system.

That information was used along with our technical work to really understand how we could

make changes to the system or make recommendations for improvements to the system to meet the community needs.

We partnered with the city to facilitate five different community pop-up events where we had over 130 interactions with the public to communicate to them an opportunity to provide feedback on improvements to the service.

Those locations were throughout the city and also on the campus at JMU.

We established

We had stakeholder meetings three times throughout this process and Mr. Fleming, you participated as well in those meetings as well as Mr. Parks from the city to help us with communication and that group of individuals helped to provide feedback on not only the vision but provided feedback on the network and the recommendations that we were developing.

We also engaged with transit operators

who are on the front line of service in the community and they provided feedback on opportunities for improvement.

And I'll wrap up with that public comment period that was most recently held the four weeks, most recently where we received feedback on the draft plan that was made publicly available on the city's website.

In the public comment period, we've received 19 responses and 90% of those responses are in support of the plan to some degree.

Here's a highlight of that public survey that was presented last fall.

We asked people about their priorities for improving the service.

And on a scale of one to five, one being the greatest opportunity for improvement, a desire for more frequent service was the most frequently indicated opportunity for improvement and a desire for extended weekday service hours.

And you'll see that in our recommendations.

Some of the most common destinations were of course, as one may expect the college,

and a home and also shopping trips.

And the two different items that were most common that deterred people from using transit included the transit system not coming often enough or it may taking too long or the ride may be too long for riders to use the system.

So now I'll shift to the actual document itself.

The TSP document is structured, every TSP document is structured with five different chapters.

that grounds that vision, a performance of the existing system, and then a highlight of the planned improvements over the 10-year horizon.

And then it is accompanied with an implementation plan and a funding plan that actually identifies how improvements that are recommended in Chapter 4 will be facilitated over the 10-year horizon.

And of course, it's layered with public input and stakeholder engagement.

It's worth noting that this transit strategic plan is a legislative mandated document to obtain future state funding, but it is not binding.

So the recommendations that I walk through and the horizon years that are recommended, there is flexibility there for those recommendations to be altered as the agency gets closer to implementation.

But this document provides a projected forecast for future funding opportunities and I will

be used to support future funding requests either from the state or the federal government.

The proposed changes are highlighted around four different efficiency goals or operating efficiency goals.

The first is to create more regular or to provide service that operates on a regular interval.

That is addressing some of the feedback we heard from the public.

I'm providing direct path from point A to point B so that your trip is really direct for users or for riders

providing symmetric routes throughout the community or the city so that there's not duplicative routes and overlapping service but symmetry so that coverage is provided and also serving our well-defined markets where there's greatest need for transit ridership.

The plan, while it's a 10-year horizon, there are three different horizon years or buckets in which the recommendations are introduced.

The short-term improvements are for the fiscal year

2024 or 2025, excuse me, the midterm year is 2029.

And then, of course, long term is 10 years out.

So in the short term improvement bucket, we have a focus on expanding more service, specifically with Route 1 and ICS, increasing frequency to address that desire from the public for two of those routes and addressing some overlapping with with routes in the near term.

So that's within the next two years.

In total, the recommendations and the short term improvement when compared to the current service will result in 475 additional hours of service and will require one additional vehicle.

When we look at the midterm, we are looking to increase daytime frequency a bit more and you'll see that the number of additional service hours compared to the short term is expanded and we're over 5,900 additional service hours.

and we're looking to increase weekend service on Saturday and Sunday, introducing new Saturday service and Sunday service.

The proposed changes in the midterm will require one additional vehicle compared to the short term.

The long term recommendations includes increased frequency on Route 6.

We're looking at 20 minute frequencies during the weekday and 30 minute frequencies on Sunday.

and that additional service hours will be about 3,900 more hours over the midterm phase in the long term requiring one additional peak vehicle.

So in total when we consider the implementation considerations across the entire 10 year horizon year we're looking at three new buses to deliver the proposed improvements in this plan and 46 revenue vehicles will be needed to replace

are needed to be replaced.

Those vehicles will be replaced to maintain the current existing service.

There are financial implications or the financial considerations to be fiscally constrained.

This TSP is fiscally constrained.

So all of the improvements that you see in the document are fiscally constrained.

We are not making any recommendations that would be outside of

planned or projected revenue.

And to maximize those external funding sources from either state, regional, or federal, we've identified a funding plan.

And so that's outlined in Chapter 5.

By fiscal year 2034, excuse me, the operating costs for the TSP will be just over $2.8 million.

higher than with no changes, if no changes were made in the TSP.

And those details are outlined in the executive summary and in the document itself.

So the next steps are for us to ask you for your approval of this document and for submission to the Department of Rail and Public Transportation.

or the process thank you so you know my for me our job is counsel the biggest it's not even a question because you kind of answered it but we have to look at the financial piece of this and so I know you said it was in chapter five is that what you said is it there is there a breakdown of what is the

What's the path for that?

Yes ma'am.

Well, one, just to comment on this, and one, I know that Gerald and the staff are very excited to finally be able to present this to us so they can think about planning and then hear, you know, kind of our response.

They can move forward and

So, yeah, when it began, I was part of that group, you know, as we interact with councils and folks around the state and around the country, you know, what's really clear when we compare with some other cities, this is how professional our staff are, how much, how lucky we are in the city, City Manager Banks and Director Godabu have put together such a

professional and qualified team.

You know, to bring a transportation system that is for a city our size and budget, like exceeds what we might expect otherwise.

Having JMU here is a fund for that is an important part of that.

And JMU students are the majority of our riders here, certainly.

But because of that, you know, it gives us the ability to

We put in a public transportation system here.

We know that's one of the most significant challenges many folks face in our city is how to get to and from work, how to get to and from the places they need to, the grocery store, the doctors, those things.

So we're able to think of a public transportation system that we can put in place.

There are constraints to what we can do.

You'll see that the amount of data that was collected and put together for this program was immense.

This is a data-driven project.

These recommendations are based on not only the expertise of the folks who have done it, but just real data showing where residents are moving to and from cell phone data.

I don't know exactly how many pings, but it's in the millions and tens of millions, I would imagine, bits of data that was collected there.

So, you know, I feel more confident that the recommendations

You know, they've been put forward, reflect what's needed within the confines of what we can produce here.

So, I was grateful to be part of that process.

I think what we're seeing is we're increased efficiency with the limited resources that we have, because we do have limited resources, but this increases the efficiency at the same time as adding service.

One of the things I'm very thankful for is that

We live in an area with a high Alice population, asset limited income constrained employed.

And later on we will be getting a report from that group, on that group.

But one of the problems has been what are the barriers to employment and transportation definitely can be a barrier to employment for folks.

When you were doing your presentation, I got stuck on one through four of the four areas where improvements could be made because I kept thinking about this area, the Atlas population, you know, folks who couldn't afford a car.

or folks who had two cars, I mean, had children but only had one car but two jobs.

How do you navigate, you know, getting where you need to be on time?

And so, by dealing with such things as regular intervals, having a more direct path, symmetrical routes, I mean, if I get dropped off, is somebody going to be coming back anytime soon to pick me up when I get off of work or even serving well-defined markets?

and I think back when I had car repairs and had to catch the bus.

I'd catch the bus to the mall, it was a seven minute trip and then it was a seven minute trip home, which was wonderful.

But everyone's going to the mall or to shopping venues.

But what would it be if I worked somewhere else?

So I'm just very thankful that these four areas are being addressed

Defined Plan.

I think the plan is excellent.

And I think it's going to benefit the Owens population and folks in the city of Harrisonburg and help to remove a barrier to employment.

So I'm very thankful for that.

Very thankful for your work, Gerald.

Gerald, I'm sitting here looking at some money.

Break this down for me.

What is, so it says FY 2025, FY 2026, it says 468, 482, 497.

So is this the need for that, that's the increase needed each year?

Are you on Table 9?

Yes, these are the operating costs.

What we are doing is, and thank you Ms.

Robinson for that, is we are trying to make sure that

We provide the service even right now we've extended the hours for the city route and this allows people to actually be able to go to work and take the bus home.

It's been something they've been asking for for a long time and we decided now that we've shifted things.

What we did is we had a lot of part-time

and Mr. Banks knows we've tried to shift to more people with full-time jobs.

It's a little more in terms of upfront costs and what you call the backend, but the community has responded so well.

The ridership has been excellent with just adding two hours to the end of it.

So that's something we've done this summer, we'll take it all the way to August 10th.

We just were like, let's see how this works.

How many times you gonna say that?

How many times?

Yeah, I have to bring up their constraints.

We're trying to make sure we hire as much as we can.

Yeah, and that's something I introduced a lot of you, and thank you.

I want to say thank you.

It was really good to see you all at VTA.

Well attended.

We did really well.

We did excellent.

We did really well.

I've had nothing but good things, including Mr. Bang showing up there.

It was awesome.

For our industry, to see you all there was, it meant a lot to me and my stuff.

So I should say thank you for that because we have a good system.

We have good things going.

We just want to make sure we

can serve the community better, and not just Jamie.

I'm looking more at the city residents too.

So let's stay here for a second.

How are you with full-time positions?

Yeah, what's happening now?

We are getting quite a number of applicants.

The thing is you have to take at least two months to get a driver competent.

Safety is the number one thing.

Is we make sure that anybody who gets on that seat on the bus is safe, is well trained and can make sure that if something happens they know what to do.

So with that, there's also good customer service and of course, we make sure that, you know, they pass the drug test and background and all that.

So it's a process and it takes a while.

Drivers are never plug and play.

This includes even school bus.

We have to make sure that our people, you know, we transport kids.

It keeps me up at night.

Transport kids from elementary to even university.

So we make sure that we are safe always.

It doesn't matter.

That's the number one key thing that we do.

And my staff has been doing a good job at that.

So what we are doing now is just trying to make sure we can ramp up the training, which there's no shortcut.

We just have to do it right.

So with that, it'll take some time.

And no, there was a pandemic.

We're getting out of it.

People are not adjusting.

Some people doing one part time.

Mr. Banks has been gracious to be adding the full-time jobs so that we don't break the bank.

Just adding, you know, slowly to make sure that we catch up.

So it's now a game of how many part-time versus full-time do we need to make to get back to where we were.

Right as she pays up.

People aren't right.

It's just a matter of supply now.

If we can have enough drivers, we'll do much better.

Do they still cross train?

That has been our strength.

That's what kept us afloat because we had some who could do both school bus and transit.

Whenever the schools are out, they help on transit.

Right.

And when transit has some leeway, we can have some go to school bus and help with things like even field trips.

It's an operation that we kind of try and manage and I showed you the only other person who has this kind of thing is Charles who has both school bus and transit and we also have the central garage.

So we really appreciate your help, we appreciate Ms.

McCree and what her team has done, done a good job.

We've collaborated and thank you Mr. Fleming for the words and yeah, if there are any other questions I'll be more than happy to help.

We will update you

Well, I want to thank you for your good work.

Remember walking around the corner, getting on the ICS bus, going to the Virginia Breeze, getting to Washington.

That's great.

It's the feeling that the world is at my feet.

I could go to Dulles and go anywhere.

And it was an interesting experience being the only non-student on a very crowded bus.

So that, to me, kind of underscored that our bus system to some degree is really geared towards the students.

And I'm glad to see you

So with time, we'll make sure we can start slowly and get bi-directional on the routes that really need it and then just keep adding.

Because one of the biggest things we've always heard is frequency.

And one of the things that has driven this is Uber and all this because kids nowadays want to go from door to door.

You know, you're taking me here to there and have an up.

I can see when you're getting there, you know, when I'm getting there.

So a bus is limited in that sense.

We can't take you to your door.

Dany.

Wherever I go, I try and use at least mass transportation.

So it's a good thing.

And for most part, we are doing whatever we can, especially with the hours.

That is my biggest thing.

I wish you could do until 10.

All city residents have seen the need.

There is a need.

They want us.

We start early, we take them.

They need it because some of our

That's kind of why I'm trying to, if we could, that would be my biggest priority now is for the city residents who would have to go and feel about 10 p.m.

and then that way some shifts would, even with the hospital, be able to kind of get on the bus and go home as well.

You know I'm going to ask about the electric bus potential.

I mean I understand that school buses are a far better, easier application of the EVs because you have a predictable schedule with down times.

I see that you're planning to replace something like 42, 43 buses over time.

Yeah, I'm on a state committee for electrification.

One of the things we have to do is a comprehensive study of our facility to see where we would have the infrastructure.

That's one.

and if you look we just got an EPA grant for school buses and the reason for that is when we did

The initial work we put in for 10.

Infrastructure for 10.

And so now the EPA asked us what do you need?

We said we already have the infrastructure.

All we need is the charger and the bus.

So that's probably why we got the grant.

If you do the work upfront, then it gets easy.

The most important thing is really not the bus.

It's the infrastructure itself.

So once you get the infrastructure right, then the bus comes along.

It's like a gas station and a car.

You don't have a car, you don't need a gas station.

So it's kind of what comes before the other in terms of transit and even school bus right now.

So we will continue to look into that in terms of our facility to see how we can actually get the infrastructure in.

We have to talk to Harrisonburg Electric, see what they can offer us.

They were great working with us.

They put a transformer, they told us we had to pick

R. Reed, Dany Fleming

We got a demonstration grant.

We received the funding.

So we are looking at next summer to see if we can do a pilot for that.

And then based on the pilot then we'll decide what the long term will be.

And if we have to come to city council and tell you what the

Well, that's interesting.

You'll do that in the summer when the students are not here, so then it really will be measuring the use by the working families.

The residents can be the group that really takes to it because we are not just trying to cater to the university students.

Excellent.

Where are we at with the buses?

Where are they, Jer?

They will be done by September production.

and hopefully they'll be driven all the way from California to here.

So yeah, once they get here, I will let you all know and if you want to take a ride and see it, bring one out here and you can, we're trying to think of a day to unveil them.

So we'll think maybe either football game or whatever we'll ask Mr. Banks and you know, get feedback from me and then we can do it.

There'll be 15 of them so it's quite a number.

And the buses we'll have come visit Harrisonburg and eat

and Harrisonburg from California to here, all across the country.

It's a rolling billboard for us.

That was the language I approved.

We have advertising screens inside.

Just a note on the microtransit.

And it'll be looking at the commercial areas as well, where people want to go eat, where they shop.

And it'll be one zone that we'll start with, do the demonstration.

And then if we want to move to another zone, we can't.

One of the things that I think, so as we go from a loop to a bi-directional

Planned.

It also means some bus stop work, right?

So currently, the bus stops are on one side of the street since it loops.

So that's a separate piece of this.

So we'll have to address.

Are there any projections yet on what we might need for additional bus stops?

What we may do is apply for a technical grant and just do a study to see what areas are really needed and then what we'll do is work with public works to see if there are any areas.

They're usually the big aspect of it is right away.

Nasser Alsaadun

and something of a shelter and a light to just make sure if it's something, a bus stop that people use a little bit more in the evening that it's well lit and they can sit somewhere and if we can do that and in the areas that we can have a whole bus stop and a trash can and a pad, we'll be able to do that as well.

ADA, Public Works is working on some ADA plan so we're working with them to see

So I guess there's some potential that based on the ability to put those bus stops in might impact the timing of moving to bi-directional right so that there is a kind of a variable in here that's outside of

of Deanna R. Reed, Dany Fleming

Yes.

Thought that we can get that infrastructure in place, I mean barring some unforeseen circumstances, right?

Carol, can you introduce your team?

Yes.

You always just sit in the back.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good job, Joe.

All right, it's council.

I will move to approve the Harrisonburg Public Transportation's tenure TSP, Transit Strategic Plan, as presented.

Second.

Vice Mayor Dent?

Aye.

Council Member Robinson?

Aye.

Aye.

Well, well, we have Joe Benjamin.

Yes, I've been living in the county for three years and now I'm back in the city.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

I know I don't have to give my address as a presenter, but I'm at 811 Stewart Street, so I'm in the Northwest neighborhood.

I know where you are.

And I'm glad to be back.

Not far, and I have underestimated how long it takes me to get places in the city, so I run a couple minutes late because I think, oh, everything's close, and it is.

Are we glad to have you back?

Yeah.

Glad to be here.

Thank you very much.

here to give you an update on Alice.

We're getting annual updates now from United for Alice.

We took a little break.

We had a little hiatus during the COVID pandemic, understandably, but we're back to annual updates.

And so I've got some new data for you.

And I just wanted to run through some of these slides and give you some info.

You know us, United Way, improving lives by connecting and mobilizing community resources.

We launched our new program Rockbird Cares last fall, and so I'll give you some info about that today too.

Alice, folks, as you've heard already in this meeting, asset limited, income constrained employed.

Just a quick review of just our terminology here, folks who are below the federal poverty level.

Federal poverty level is the same in all 48 states, only different for Alaska and Hawaii.

So it's not exactly accurate.

It costs something different to live in Harrisonburg than it does in New York City.

And so using the federal poverty level is not the most accurate measure.

The Alice threshold is the actual amount that it costs for a household to be able to afford the basics in their budget.

It's based on the number of people in the household and it's specific to the locality where they live.

So when we talk about Alice, it's folks who are, I'll use my hands here, below the Alice threshold, but above the federal poverty level.

So it's folks who are there in the middle.

And so combined, people who are Alice and poverty are considered below the Alice threshold.

And everyone above the Alice threshold is above the Alice threshold.

Alice in Virginia.

So the data that we have, some of it specific to Virginia, some of it is for Harrisonburg and Rockingham combined and some of it's just for Harrisonburg.

So I'll try to identify which ones which as we go through.

This slide is specific to Virginia.

In general, the number of households in Virginia above the Alice threshold decreased by 2% statewide.

And that was split up between Alice and poverty.

So 1% increase in Alice and 1% increase in poverty.

It's just a helpful reference point as we talk about the changes here locally to see that there have been shifts on the state level and so we see similarities and some differences that play out here locally too.

Within the city of Harrisonburg, we actually saw a decline in the population overall by 278 people.

This is based on census data and the percentage, the percentage points of the number of Alice households increased by 2%.

That was 356 people.

The percentage points of people within the poverty level increased by 2% as well.

This is based on census data.

Yeah, so it's between the US census, which we have the 10-year census in hand, and it's also the American Community Survey that's administered on a more regular basis.

The data doesn't tell us where these numbers went or why, just that they changed.

I thought you would get that information.

So we had a little discussion about that last time because the because of the pandemic students were counted differently because usually the question on the census is where do you usually reside on April 1st and based on the pandemic everyone went home March 13th 2020 and so where do you usually reside April 1st was a tough question for some folks to answer but folks are largely back to normal now so we don't know exactly why

or how this changed, that it changed.

Yeah, we can guess.

It's based on specific to the locality.

So that's part of our conversation here and it's part of the data that we bring to you with what we're learning about the community through serving them directly through our program.

So we can talk a little bit more about that.

Just to give you a comparison for the county, in the county, their population increased by a thousand.

Their Alice population decreased by 7%.

and that was 1,352 people.

Their poverty level increased by 2% and that was 1,200 people.

So things are changing in the county as well.

Again, we don't know why, but that's how things are shifting out there as well.

There was a bit of a change in methodology.

Yeah.

The way that it changed, it got more specific.

It used to be that they would go through income levels and sort of an income bracket.

If the Alice threshold fell within the income bracket, they considered everybody Alice.

But they actually broke it up, so they divided those income brackets in half.

So it's even more accurate now than it used to be.

So the shift here could be somewhat from methodology, but it's actually even more accurate than it was before.

Let's see.

I'm losing my clicker here.

Here we go.

So just to see the overall trend here in the city of Harrisonburg, the percentage and number of folks within the Alice population has been steadily increasing.

We have data going back to 2010, but this is obviously based on census data so we could go back even further than that.

But that's when we really started looking at things through the Alice lens.

So this is Alice specifically in Harrisonburg.

Based on race and ethnicity, you'll see that just the number of white folks is very large in the city.

And we have 42% of those folks who are above the Alice threshold.

44% of those are Alice.

Compared with black, Hispanic, and Asian populations, those numbers do differ based on race.

The percentage of folks who are

in the poverty population who are black is 21%.

So that's more than what we see in any of the other races that are listed here as well.

So again, this is based on census data.

So these are folks who answered the census and who responded to the American Community Survey as well.

So this is going to across Virginia when we look at all households.

We see 29% of folks who fall within the Alice population.

When we compare that again by race and ethnicity, we see a larger number of folks who are black, Hispanic, and other races.

And folks who are white fall within 29%.

So folks who are white are on par with the state average for the Alice population.

But we do see more white folks who are above the Alice threshold and fewer who are within poverty.

So there's racial disparities within this population as well.

When we look at key demographics around the actual makeup of the family, this is something that's actually been represented in the data that we're seeing from folks coming through the door.

Families who are married with children do a heck of a lot better.

They have two incomes, and so they're able to provide for that family in a way that a single parent, no matter if they're single female or single male, can do on their own.

So, married with children, folks are doing okay there.

We've got 81% of folks who are above the Alice threshold.

Single female-headed households with children struggle more than any other population.

And we've seen that just directly through the folks who've come through our doors and in our inbox.

Single male-headed households with children are struggling as well, but not nearly as much as single female-headed.

And then someone who's single or cohabitating, so this is an unmarried parent or someone who may be unmarried to a partner who's also living in the home.

So this again is just some of the data that we're seeing come out on the state level and it's mirrored here locally in our community Just to give some perspective 37% of households with children are Alice 76% of those who are single female headed end up within the Alice population and that's more than three times two parent married household part of that is

is really related to the change in tax credits and stimulus payments that we benefited from during the pandemic.

$15,000 worth of a difference for a family with kids.

There were changes to the child tax credit and there was a change within 2020 of the frequency.

They were giving monthly payments for families with children and that made a huge difference for those families.

That has gone away.

We see, I try not to get too bogged down in the actual dollars, but when we look at two adults, if you have two adults with no kids in the household, their Alice threshold is about $40,000.

Individuals, two adults living in a household need to earn about $40,000 to be able to be considered above the Alice threshold.

Their poverty level is about $20,000, right?

If you have two adults with two school-aged kids, so these are kids who are going to school, assuming public school, their poverty level is about $31,000, their Alice threshold is about $60,000.

So two parents with kids in school need to make about $60,000 to be able to make ends meet based on our calculations.

Two adults with two kids under five, so two kids who are not in school, not in preschool, they need to make $85,000 to be able to make ends meet.

And these are very modest calculations that we use for the Alice threshold.

So when you consider parents with kids who make $15,000 less this year than they did two years ago, that's a quarter of their income if they have two kids in school.

A quarter of their income is basically not there, and it was for a couple of years.

but it's not anymore.

It's about a fifth of the income for folks who have kids who are younger.

Those numbers take into consideration that if there is a high day care needs that may cause that two working parents to turn into one working parent

Is there a number?

So the way it would work is if there's one parent in the household, they still need to make $85,000 just to be able to make all the ends meet.

But it would be one parent needs to make that much solo on their income.

If you have two parents, maybe you've got one person making 40 and the other person making 45.

You're right, it would decrease the amount of childcare expenses if you had one parent not going to work and staying home.

So the way that it's calculated out, there's actually a page on our website called Am I Alice where you can enter in different combinations of families and see what would be the Alice threshold depending on the number of people in the household and the age of the kids.

So you're right, there could be a difference in the amount that they spend.

But I'll again say that the amount of money that they estimate in the Alice household budget for childcare is very low.

They assume maybe like $500 a month for childcare.

There are some folks who are paying that.

a week, depending on how many kids they have, right?

So there's some very modest estimates, so it probably costs more than what we see in the data here.

I don't share the dollar amounts because sometimes they're very depressing, and it's not always accurate.

It's very specific to that family.

Alright, I'm going to keep on going here.

So in August of 23, we started the Rockburg Cares Network, and this is

A new program that we don't even have one full year's worth of data yet, but it is something that we have been continuing to serve folks through three different modes here.

We've got information referral.

Whenever anyone contacts us, they can contact us by email.

They can walk into the office.

They can submit a form.

We can text with clients as well.

Our first call is to screen for any eligible services in our local community.

So we look around to see are there other nonprofits that may be able to serve them.

Are they eligible for benefits and maybe not making use of those benefits?

We do a basic screening just to say, what is it that you need and who are you?

What are you eligible for as a household?

And we do refer them onto services if there is a resource in our community that really specializes in the need that they have.

For folks who fall within the Alice population, we have our Alice Assistance Fund.

That's our internal assistance program.

If that family is within the ALS population and they have an eligible need, we're able to serve them directly and help with financial needs.

And those are folks who are helped by some funds that we actually receive through the city.

We have $10,000 that we've received in the past fiscal year and we've received going forward for the next fiscal year.

And we track that directly to city residents that we're able to help.

We have some funding that comes from other sources.

We were getting $5,000 from the county this year for the first time.

We're excited about that.

We also got a grant from Centera Cares, our friends at Centera, of $25,000 to be able to serve folks around our community.

So we've been able to piece together several different grants to be able to operate this program and actually deliver those Alice Assistance Funds.

Right now, those have been up until this month.

They've been entirely grant funded from other sources.

and so the operating expenses and the personnel time is really what's come from within United Way.

I'm curious about something.

I'm being messy right now.

Has your numbers increased?

You keep track of who you serve, right?

We will all cover that in a minute.

They have since, so again, we only have, we started in August last year.

So we only have less than a year's worth of data, but from our December grant report for you and to the June, we did see an increase in county numbers.

Yeah, the increase in percentage and number we have.

Yep.

Oh yes, financial education services.

Sorry, I did skip over that.

This is actually sitting down and meeting with clients.

We can talk through.

We actually use a toolkit called Your Money, Your Goals.

So we sit down with the client.

We really just listen for the first session and say, what's going on?

What are you struggling with?

And out of that, we create a plan.

We could sit down and do a budget.

We could run a credit report on you and actually look through your credit report line by line.

We could talk through debt management if there's a way to pay down your debt faster.

there are certain folks who are saving for a financial goal like buying a car or buying a home and so we're able to sit down side by side with those clients and actually talk through what is it that you're trying to do.

For a lot of folks it's just making ends meet and I will say for a lot of folks it's tough because it's not as if there's a decision that they're making that's

that's making them not have enough money.

It's just they don't have enough income to be able to meet the demands of their life because they've got kids, because they've got a long commute to work, because they've got expenses, because they don't have a great credit score.

And so that makes everything more expensive.

When you go to get a loan, you have a higher interest rate.

And so financial education services is one piece that we're trying to build out more, but it's the most time consuming out of all three of these pieces.

And so it's something that we've been working towards.

and really want to invest more in going forward.

That's probably the most important services, right?

So we do have a bilingual position and actually just became vacant.

And so we are hiring right now for someone who speaks Spanish to be able to offer all of these services.

We do interpretation as well.

Again, with grant funds through Centera Cares, we specifically

Roder Grant to be able to offer this in different languages.

So just for instance, in the last few months, we've worked with a client who speaks to Grinion.

And so we had an interpreter come into the office.

I met with them for three hours one day because it was talking to the client and talking through the interpreter.

and it's not just translating the language, there's a big cultural transition that happens and just understanding car insurance and how does it sounds like a scam, right?

So car insurance, if you get an accident you need it, if you don't, then you're just giving them your money.

So explaining things and in terms that make sense to someone who doesn't live within the US system.

So we do interpretation services, we have a language line that we can also call to be able to

We would have folks actually just submit a request for assistance.

We have some people who reach out to us.

They're not looking for information referral.

They're not looking for Alice's Assistance Fund.

They just want to come for financial education and we can do that.

Yeah.

So we do get a lot of referrals from other agencies who may be working with a client and they identify someone who's like, ah,

I'd really like to sit down and look at their bank statement and see what's going on under the hood.

So we see folks who do get referred from other agencies to actually sit down with someone.

And again, it's beyond what that organization may have time and capacity to be able to do.

Did you guys set up at the Immigrant Summit?

She is our program manager for Rockburg Care.

She actually presented

at the Immigrant Leadership Summit.

And so she did present on that.

She is really the main person who's operating that piece of it.

And yeah, she's great.

She provided some information specifically around immigrants who recently immigrated to the country.

So newcomers, because she herself, her family came through church for the service from Bosnia and actually settled in the local area.

And so seeing your parents struggle with money and seeing your family trying to make ends meet was really her

lived experience that she's brought into the work that she does here.

I learned things just sitting around the lunch table, listening to Deanna talk about stuff we all do in the office.

I mean, I could take that.

I learned things.

It touches so many of us and we don't talk enough about how we get ourselves healthy financially so that we can make those moves.

The city can step into this.

It was called the Financial Empowerment Cities.

I've been through that cohort.

We are a potential cohort to receive a grant for this.

If it's something that the city manager feels that we have some staff capacity to put towards something.

So it's kind of a decision to make.

I think on council and staff, but there's grant money available to move us in this direction to providing financial empowerment services.

In partnering up, we talked with the United Way about this as well.

It's not an entirely apples to apples match in the programs, but the intent and the goal of it are pretty similar there.

Ronald has one of these in place now.

But something we can step into is a city and there are a series around the country that are starting to move in this direction and think of economic development really in terms of residents, how to get folks financially stable, secure, and empowered.

That's kind of them, right?

And that is economic development in your city.

That is how you stabilize and kind of level up.

So it's something we can, I think, decide to step into.

It's a program that really is available for us as a city.

We want to qualify to be able to do that if we think it's something we can implement.

It takes maybe a year or so putting together the partnerships and there's a lot of planning that goes with it.

But it's shown to be very successful in the cities that are doing this.

The program that we would get into is really for cities that are above 50,000 and up, so we just get in there.

We're at the small end of the cities doing this, you know, St.

I know you've got to move on, but we'll talk more about cities, because as we talk about, you know,

mental health, right?

We also got to talk about this and some like for myself, I learned late how to manage like late 40 how to manage money, right?

How to up my credit, how to do that work, right?

And so this is something that will be as Councilman Fleming said that it will empower our residents, right?

Because we want them to go to that to be successful living here in Harrisonburg.

So absolutely.

Yeah.

Our basic criteria before we reach for Alice Assistance Funds, we ask ourselves, will this help someone get to work or stay at work?

Because it does play in not just individually for that family to be able to earn the money they need to afford the things, but for their employer as well.

That's a retained employee.

That's a way that they can keep that person at work so that if someone's coming through and maybe they're showing up late for work,

referring someone into Rockburg Cares may be able to sit down with someone who's not at their company, but someone in our office.

They can talk to you like, hey, I've noticed you're coming in late.

Actually, I've been having car problems.

I don't have enough money to be able to fix my car.

We can screen.

Maybe Way2Go can help you out.

Maybe We can help you out.

And so it's a resource for employers to be able to refer employees in because retaining that job keeps that employer with a person in the role.

And it also keeps that family earning so that they don't need to rely on external support from agencies like ours to be able to help make ends meet.

So definitely.

Yeah, financial education is one piece that I do see we could grow into.

And again, it's time and just capacity that we're getting there.

But that's the piece that we want to spend more time and energy growing.

All right, I'll show you some city numbers here.

All right, so with our civic and community organizations grant, we got $10,000 from the city and we spent it.

We saw, cumulatively, over the course of the last year, 902 household members.

So we go by household members because if you have one individual who reaches out to us and asks for some help and there's four people living in that home, that's four people who benefit from that assistance, right?

And so we had 527 of those folks were city residents.

57%.

This is up from, it was 66% city at the halfway mark in December, and so it actually evened out a little bit, but we're still seeing more city folks than we do county folks by the numbers.

I'll show you here based on the amount of funds that we're spending.

We spent a total of about $35,000 in our first year, so 17,833 of that was for city residents.

So although we see 57% of city residents in our client load, about half of that actually went to city residents.

So it's close, but it's a little bit different.

The largest, very appropriate that I'm here tonight at the same time as the transportation folks were talking, the largest section of the amount of funds that we spent was for transportation related costs.

and this is specific to city residents.

We helped folks, again, our first pass is to screen for other services.

So we do work closely with Way2Go.

We're in regular communication with them.

We sometimes partner with them on clients and we will screen folks to see if they're eligible for Way2Go, they'll go there.

So is that for each

like utilities, childcare, that's how you, that's how you, right, you reach out to other organizations, whatever it may be.

So technically, and on our website, we won't pay rent.

we did an exceptional exceptional situation here starting more recently we don't pay utilities but you see a lot of utilities pay here and the exception that will make is if they have exhausted all other options available so if they've gone to people helping people they've gone to Salvation Army and they've exhausted all options that are available there and they come back to us that's when we consider it and we do work directly with people helping people in Salvation Army to say we know that you've got some funds

Salvation Army has funds directly from Dominion and so they'll help a Dominion customer that ends up being county folks, right?

So HEC doesn't have the same program that Dominion does and so we see a lot of folks who are HEC customers who come to us.

We also help with utility deposits.

That's not something that everybody helps with.

Utility deposits are something that

We are seeing more and more people need help just to get set up in a new house.

Whether it's rented or owned, it's usually rented when we're working with folks.

But not only do you need to pay a deposit, but you need to be caught up on your bill to be able to start a new account.

So we see people who maybe have hundreds, if not thousands of dollars worth of bills that are backed up that they need to catch up on and pay a deposit in order to turn on lights in a new place.

That's who we end up helping with.

No, we don't have that limit.

We have started to put a few limits on folks just because we were starting to run out of money.

So we put a few limits on folks.

It's usually around six months that we would want someone to wait before they come back around.

But we do see folks who are like, tomorrow's six months, can we go ahead and get this started?

Because they know they're not making ends meet what they have coming in.

And so they're relying on agencies to be able to help them out.

I will say we also turned on some disconnected utilities for folks who live in the city.

At our, our December report, we had three households that we turned on electricity that have been disconnected in December.

So this is winter time.

And of those three households, there were 10 kids under 18 who were living in those.

So we, we made an exception there.

We went ahead and reinstated their electric so they could have heat in their home for Christmas.

Right.

So there are some, I just get you spumps thinking about some of the folks that we've helped through

the funds that we have available here.

I've worked with some of them directly, and Deanna's worked with a lot of them as well.

The rent situation, I don't want to get too specific because I could easily identify someone, but it was someone who had worked with another agency.

She and her family, she was a single mom with kids, had experienced homelessness and actually got into housing through the help of a homeless agency locally, and she was having trouble paying rent.

And so, in order to keep her household, in order to prevent eviction,

We went ahead and helped her because she wasn't eligible for eviction prevention funds from another agency in town.

She made too much money.

She was about to get evicted.

Great work.

And I know y'all do this all the time because I stay connected with you.

with all the organizations for working together.

Because that's what it takes for us to be that city for all.

It can all be here and it can all be you.

You got to work together.

I could sit here and tell you stories for every single one of these dollars and it would probably put you to sleep but we had

Mom with four kids living in a car, and she reached out to us because she needed help fixing her car.

She didn't even reach out for housing.

She needed help fixing her car because that was where she and her four kids were living.

And so we not only helped her fix her car, but we connected her.

She stayed at Salvation Army in the family room there.

So we're not just helping with that one thing they're asking.

We're screening and doing everything that we can.

So that's reflected in these numbers as well.

We, on transportation especially, we do help with car repairs.

We help with car payments.

We help with folks who maybe need an Uber back and forth.

We had somebody who was a city resident and he was working out in the county.

His car was in the shop and we were helping fix the car in the shop.

It cost $50 one way for him to go back and forth to work.

So round trip was $100 a day for him to get back and forth.

Lived in the city, worked in the county.

There was no bus line that went back and forth between where he needed to go.

So $100 a day.

He was one of our most expensive clients, but he got to work.

Actually, he was starting work, and so he had to get to orientation, he had to get there his first week, or else he was going to lose that job.

So he still has the job now because we were able to help him out, especially in that first week.

Numbers plus narrative equals data.

For us, we've always had data that we've been able to reach for from different sources, but having stories, having human beings that are behind these numbers now is something that has helped us really tell the story of Alice in our local community.

And so it's something that we're using to continue to fundraise for this directly through the community, through our employee giving campaigns, as well as just grant writing that we're able to do from different pots of funding that is out there.

I can stop there.

We've got an event coming up.

We've got tools for schools.

So this is our annual back to school event.

It's happening at EMU, University Commons, this time around.

We actually kind of broke them all last year.

And so we're not going to go back to them all this time.

We had a line that went all the way down and they were happy to have us.

We were happy to be there, but we were too big for that space.

So we're going to see what EMU can do for us.

We're actually going to use the walking track within Commons.

So we're going to set up some tables around the walking track.

We're going to have vaccines.

So we're going to be doing some school vaccines.

I think I'm going to connect with an SMO about that.

We've got the Virginia Health Department who's going to be out there doing some vaccines as well for older kids.

We have someone from the Blue Ridge Free Clinic who's going to come out and do sports physicals and school physicals.

And we've also got just an open sign up for resources.

Really the main focus for us here is the resource fair that goes along with this event.

School supplies are there.

We know the city and county both have funds

to help teachers and students be able to get school supplies.

We will be collecting school supplies and distributing them through this event.

But the resource fair is something that helps you not only with those tools you need for the classroom, but it helps that family tomorrow and the next day with the connection to different resources that exist in our community.

We are looking for collection points right now.

I think we're going to connect and see if the city might want to help us out and be a collection point so that we can collect some items and be able to distribute them to the kids who need them.

and a local area.

All right.

Well, I mean, thank you for all this.

But thank you for all this data.

It just really informs what we need to be thinking about on Council.

You know, every time we make a decision about how we use our funds, what we're looking to address the needs in our city, you know, I think, you know, being in our city and driving in our city, you don't see this, you don't, you know, right?

People visit our city and say, wow, this is a great city, and it's also this, and so we're not healthy and we're not whole when this exists, and so this really informs us

And how we have to think about our funds to care for folks who can't make ends meet.

And that's not as much more than that.

Joe, thank you.

Thank you so much.

Andy, you want to introduce who's with you?

I have Jim Sacco here, Director of Development.

Go Cubs!

Okay, so Amy, you're next.

Good evening members of City Council.

Amy Snyder, Deputy City Manager.

I am pleased to be here this evening to present to you all a proposed partnership with Centera's Community Care Clinic for a mobile clinic that's proposed to operate in two locations to different city properties.

Here this evening is the Centera team, and I'm going to invite them up momentarily to talk to you all about what is the community care clinic, how does it operate here in the city, what is the model, and have them share a little bit about what their vision is for the mobile clinic.

And then I will come up and speak more to you all about what the request is that Centera has presented to us and what action I'm asking for from you all this evening and what the next steps would be if you do want to prove the partnership.

So with that, I'm going to turn it over to the Centera team to come up, introduce themselves and talk to you all about the great work they're doing and planning to continue to do in the community.

Come on up.

Hi, everyone.

This is Sonny Simo Alta Saad.

My name is Maida Gabemolina.

So we're gonna present a little bit about the program, the whole community care, because some of us maybe we know what we are doing now here in the city and in the county, but community care is more than what we are doing here, so this is why I wanted to talk a little bit more about what we are doing in some other regions.

Community Care is a new model to bring neighborhood level health and wellness services to people that they have been historically marginalized and under resourced communities to improve health, total health.

And since we opened Community Care in Harrisonburg last year, we have seen a lot of

patients, unique patients with different needs and we have identified too many other like barriers that our people or community have like transportation, mental health of children and access to healthy and nutrition food in the community and the family.

This is just some of the needs that we have identified but actually I'm glad to be in this meeting because when I was listening the presentations about transportation, about

about what Joe Benjamin presented.

It's like the perfect connection to what we are already doing now.

So I'm glad to know that we are starting this new era where we are collaborating the different organizations to provide these different resources.

Because I always like to share with people that it's not about what I do or what my organization do, it's about what we are collaborating all of us together to share the resources available.

I mean, we don't have to reinvent

Resources, or we just need to look for the resources and connect them with the community that they really need them.

And that's connected to this slide because part of the research that we did before opening these centers, as I mentioned before, we have different centers and mobile units that they are already working in some other areas, including Virginia Beach, Northern Virginia,

and Richmond and we have our center now in Halifax region but and 20% of the health care services that our community needs are related to a visit to the clinic right to get the immunization to get the vaccines and the physical the annual wellness for our kids but the additional 80% for the well-being is related to the other necessities like

what the necessities that we have identified or that necessities that we learned today from other organizations like the socioeconomic factors, education, employment, income, family and social support, physical environment, I mean having affordable and safe communities, access to reliable transportation, behavioral and mental health of course that's a topic that we are trying to address and

and provide resources to the community.

This is why, again, it's really important the connection that we see and that we have in the city and how we address the necessities by connecting them with the population and the organization.

So what we are doing in community care and why it's different community care than the other practices in town is because we are really working very close with the population

in addressing the social determinants of health or social drivers.

And the social drivers are totally connected to each person, to each family, because it's not the same or the same necessities that we identify in a person that they have language barriers, in someone that they have transportation barriers or someone that they have low income barriers.

So those kind of things, we really take time to learn about those needs.

and find the right resources for them and including, again, where do they live, what is the context, the community context, the social context, the economic stability, education and healthcare access, of course.

And that's why community care, especially the mobile unit, it's a really, really important program for us because it's the way in how we're going to be able to address the necessities in

Nasser Alsaadun

This is some of the examples of the services that we are already doing in some other areas, including the community care center that we opened in two years ago now in an apartment complex.

and this is a neighborhood level program where, again, we're serving people that they live in this apartment complex but they don't have access to healthcare because the near hospital is maybe 30 minutes from where they live or transportation or some other virus that I already mentioned and the other model is the community care, the community mobile care

and this is the plan or the operational aspects of this carries to go where the necessity is to bring care where community lives, where they workshops, where they play, where they work and with this services by providing primary care services

and Dany Fleming

The community center that is embedded in a homeless shelter in Union Mission, this is another program or another center that we have in Virginia Beach.

And now, what is the mission of the centers and the mobile care?

Our community care centers are designed to make accessing healthcare services easy and convenient.

Delivering Comprehensive Medical Behavioral Health and Social Support Services all under one roof right within your neighborhood.

Our clinic here in Harrisonburg, I don't know if you already know where the Welcome Center is.

We are attached to the welcome center and we started doing this in partnership with the Harrisonburg City Public Schools because we identified the necessity of these children that they require vaccines to start the school.

So that's one of the first things that we started doing last year.

But of course now we are seeing

other population including others doing some other services and in two months once we launch our mobile unit we're going to be able to open more of the services that we're going to be doing in the city and in the county.

So these are some of the other details about the different models that we operate at.

We mentioned we have the centers, we have the mobile care units, the school care,

The neighborhood, community health workers and the community health activities.

Mayda will give you more details about the different events and some numbers of patients that we have seen during the last months.

But definitely the model that we are trying to do in the community, it's different because we are really connected to the people that need the services.

Some of the partnerships that we have created, and every day we are having conversations with new partners, with new organizations, with new community leaders, community members to learn about the different necessities, are for example the Immuno Baptist Church, Faces for Change, James Madison University,

We have participated with them in different events including the Promotores de Salud program, the Virginia Department of Health, HCHC, the free clinic to promote and share information about the health care services needed and we are collaborating with churches as well like the Iglesia Nueva Vida Pentecostal to provide community services and assistance especially emergency shelter with this church La Casa de la Salud Latina to promote

educational resources, training, and community resources to our community.

We are in partner now with the MediCov of this local pharmacy to provide low price or access to medication and the diabetes education program at the hospital, at the Central Drug and Medical Hospital.

This is just an example of all the partnerships that we have started during the last months.

But again, we are continuously finding different opportunities for our patients to get access to what they need.

And this is an example of how we design or how we serve the communities, including these different tools or different people that we have to serve them, including, of course,

the services from the North practitioners, the resources that they can have with our community, our workers, the counseling sessions that we are planning to launch in the next months and we are going to start with these services with kids but eventually we are going to offer the counseling sessions for families as well.

and some other, participating in some other programs by doing sessions to address behavioral health in the different communities.

Of course, the service that we have with our medical assistants, regular visits in its center and the educational services that our RNs are doing in these different events, like for example, educate about diabetes, blood pressure,

or Dr.

Each center and each region of course is different and the needs are totally different.

This is why we really identify what are the needs in the different regions because that's how we design the hours, the services that we are going to bring to those areas.

It's, for example, if we go to the Northeast area, maybe people that they live there, they need resources related to nutrition.

But it's not going to be the same with some other areas in the South area because maybe the problem there is transportation or maybe the big issue there is counseling sessions or mental health issues.

So that's why it's really important for us to have these conversations with community members to learn from them and decide together

How it's going to be the approach, how it's going to be the services that we're going to bring to them and having these conversations with people that they already know, the communities for us, it's really important.

More about the social drivers or social determinants of health that we are serving.

And of course, this is different depending on the region, but we are doing financial literacy, food and nutrition security assistance.

We launch a program to educate or to talk about the nutrition and how to cook healthy foods.

And that's something that we're planning to launch here in Harrisonburg as well.

But now we're already doing this program in Norfolk.

We educate people about healthcare, education and career training.

We are participating in some classes with some students to educate them or to let them know about what are the opportunities that they can have in this area or in the state.

when it's about health careers, because sometimes when we hear about health careers, immediately we think about a nurse or a doctor.

But there are too many options that I use my personal example.

I'm not a doctor.

I'm an accountant with a master in degree in public administration.

But I'm still connecting this with the community necessities, with the community aspects of the community health.

There are too many opportunities for all of us, so that's something that I am transmitting to high schoolers and middle schoolers to explore more opportunities that they can find in the medical field.

some of the other resources that we are sharing is substance use resources, the naturalization service support, transportation assistance, housing assistance, domestic and community violence assistance.

As you can see there are too many things that we are doing but again we are connecting people with the organizations that they are already doing these kind of things.

I mean we don't

We don't have to do it ourselves if we already have people like United Way and some other great organizations in the community that they are providing these services.

Now in Harrisonburg specifically with the locations what we are doing to identify locations that we

Have these kind of conversations and we set the calendar with our community leaders, with our community partners to see what is the best day for us to go to a specific location.

What are the needs that we identify together.

And then we have this outreach and learn from the community members and identify specific needs.

and that's how our community workers will have these tools to work closely with these individuals and understand what are the needs and do the right referrals for these community members and connect the community resources available and of course provide the primary care services, behavioral health services, care management and education

and some other community health activities in that particular neighborhood including nutrition program, exercise, cultural activities, recreational activities and more.

And how do we identify like the locations?

This is another way to identify as I already mentioned about the conversations about

the listening sessions and knowing our neighborhoods.

But this is the other way to identify the locations that we're planning to serve.

Identifying the locations with the utilization of the emergency room and identify where the Medicaid members with care gaps and all the locations where we can maybe

Dr.

where we can see the operations that we are doing now in the whole state and of course the Harrisonburg where we have already our center operating and the mobile care that we are going to start the services in this year in August.

And again, this is the locations that we have opened now, the other locations in the whole

State that we are planning to center school clinics and mobile care units that we are planning to launch in this year and next year.

And as you can see, it's a program that is really connected to particular areas depending on where we are identifying the needs.

Hello again.

I would like to share with you a few, one of our stories.

I have many stories in one year, but one of the stories of

One of our patients, or it could be a few of them that do the same thing, but this particular family, they come to our center to find health care for their children, but then they also are now being taken care of the parents in our clinic.

During the summer, they had to walk to our clinic.

Winter, they had to walk to our clinic.

They walked three miles away from their house to the clinic.

So I believe that us bringing the model bus to those neighborhoods, to those communities, it will actually deal a little bit with the transportation issue that some of the families have.

We have tried to find different ways to help them with transportation.

But I think that this part of the centaur care model, it will be very beneficial to the families, especially when they have more than one kid, when all the family needs care.

So I believe that this will be a great way to have here in Harrisonburg to help the community.

Also, I would like to mention that on the past year, we have seen more than 700 patients, unique patients.

And we also have provided about 1,700 vaccines to the school, required vaccines to the city schools.

So we're able to bring those children back sooner to school and they don't have to wait.

You know, for two, three months in order before they can go back to school And anything else?

I think Amy is going to come up I think this was, so last year Sylvia and I did a community health care

And we had the mobile.

We had that unit but that is the bus that we are using in Richmond actually because our unit is being refurbished now so this is why we haven't started with the services here but hopefully it's going to be ready by August and that's why we are now defining all these locations

It's the same program.

Because that's fabulous.

You walk into an actual doctor's office, it's just mobile.

And to be able to come to the community.

The same thing that the school does with the mobile cafe, right?

You come into where the need is.

Yes.

Yes, the bus has two exam rooms, of course, and a space to do the registration.

And it has refrigerators for vaccines.

So we're going to be able to do primary care services, including drawing blood and do

some counseling sessions if we have to because we have again we have two rooms and one of them is gonna be like the main room for our nurse practitioner but the other one is gonna be like a multi-use room for including for someone that might need like a session with our cons but with our community worker to

It's not a free service for all of us.

If people already have an insurance, what we do with them is that we connect them with their network because we are trained to have these services for people that they don't have insurance and for people that they need to apply for financial assistance.

A question.

So thank you for that.

It's a fantastic looking program.

A lot of it is really intervention and prevention care.

Getting to people which will lower the costs.

even more importantly, catch people before something becomes critical for them, right?

Can become debilitating for them.

Sorry, two questions.

One, from what you've done before, how often do you catch

and other folks in catch needs that they may not have known or had been reluctant to get care for that becomes critical in keeping them from becoming incapacitated in some way.

And the other part of it for me is, you know, when we say lower cost, it's actually lower in cost for the insurance companies, right?

I mean, when someone needs to get serviced, the insurance company will cover the cost generally.

Are they contributing?

Actually, thank you for asking that question because this is why community care, the preventive part of the program, like attending all these other 80% of needs that our patients have so they don't have to go to the emergency room, it's critical for us, it's crucial.

What the insurance or what the insurance company is doing is that they are supporting us.

They are giving us all these materials.

They are funding the program.

That's how they are contributing with the community.

So this might be an opportunity for us to

Yeah, definitely.

I can encourage more.

Yeah, actually, our program is we are working hand-on-hand with the Center Health Plan.

And of course, we are under this Center corporate, but we are partners with some other programs, including the diabetes education program, the hospital,

And I just want to mention, you say, how many times have we catch, you know, so we are doing community events.

And so in these community events, we're bringing screenings like blood pressures, BMI's.

We also doing A1CNOWs, which is the Blue Coast check for the last three months.

So we're able to find and

refer these patients.

If they already have a primary care physician, refer them back to them, follow up with them.

And then if they don't, we will offer these services for them.

We have the financial assistance application.

Everyone, regardless of who it is, can apply for financial assistance.

And it depends on different things in income and situational.

They can be granted full financial assistance.

But definitely we have seen the needs in the community to be

Education, especially in diabetes, especially in, you know, high blood pressures and coronary diseases.

Your community engagement is incredible.

Y'all are showing up everywhere.

You can tell that it has increased, right?

Y'all were just at Juneteenth.

You were our primary donor sponsorship on that, but you're showing up everywhere.

This is just going to increase that.

I mean, to actually have a unit that comes into the

into the neighborhood.

I don't know how long it sits there.

I know when we did it with me and Sylvia, y'all were there, it was like four or five hours, almost all day, that we had that unit available for folks.

So, I mean, I know, Amy, I know you got to come up and do the pitch, but yeah.

I know at times, Centera gets

a bad rap on some things, right?

But this, your community engagement, people seeing people that look like them, and breaking down that barrier of, oh, I can at least, you know, there's not a language barrier, there's a, you know, feeling comfortable with being there, being able to be seen, just because you're showing up at community events, because now you're, you know, you're doing something like these units,

Thank you.

For us, it's really important to have these conversations again with people because that's how we can really connect with them.

Personally, I like to be out there and enjoying having these conversations with people where they are.

I cannot imagine working

I am part of the team.

In your report, the one line that stood out to me was that you take health care to the streets and so that's a lot what Mary Reed has just been talking about but just meeting people where they are and when we say that

and we a lot of times think about, we think about marginalized groups of people socioeconomically needing that help but also in your report which was like ding ding ding to me was one of those marginalized groups of people are the elderly and it says that the average age is 50 and then I looked at your ED visits by payer

and so then I noticed a high number of Medicare payments and so

I think it's essential that people remember that old people, also old people, the elderly, also need to be met where they are from mobility issues, transportation barriers, so also to know that, you know, we are watching out for that group that's often forgotten when we think of meeting folks where they're at, we're thinking about, let's get children immunizations, let's do this, let's do that, I'm thinking about sports physicals,

My grandkids are that age.

But then I think about my mom.

If she was home in her own home, something like this would be a benefit to her because she doesn't drive anymore.

So she could get, you know, have access to you, find out what she needs, possibly get a referral somewhere else.

So this is a wonderful presentation.

Thank you so much for mentioning that because that's why we are already trying to cover different areas and actually with the events or with the pop-up clinics that we are doing because we are doing events, pop-up clinics, about too many things and not just because we want to be there or just because, oh, I will set a table now.

is because we are identifying these needs and connecting them.

Because that's... and the other big difference with community care and other practices, we are taking time to really make sure that we understand the needs of our patients.

I mean, we don't want to have the same numbers that other practices and see 20 patients a day per provider.

That's not our goal.

We are... if we see

6 patients a day because we are really going to make time to understand them.

That's what we are going to do and that's the different thing for us.

And with elderly people, this year we went to this place mouse house, to Barona mouse house, because again,

You don't say no.

I have invited you all to everything and you show up, right?

And so that's what I can appreciate with the work that you're doing and the community engagement that you're doing.

And the devil is a lie.

I'm not elderly.

It says 50.

So I know that Amy has a ask What I really appreciate is that you're covering the 80% of needs as well as just the 20% of health care specifically Especially for things like diabetes where so much of it is dependent on the environment the behavior the food that they can get

So I really appreciate the holistic care you're giving.

Y'all were at Juneteenth checking for diabetes and blood pressure, high blood pressure while we were sitting up in there eating pork and everything.

But we were getting a check.

So the request before you all is Centera has asked to be able to locate the community care mobile clinic on two city properties so at Ralph Samson Park and there's a map in the attachment that shows you where exactly it is not in the large parking lot but on another one and then at the homeless services center when it opens this fall.

and so we're seeking city council approval to proceed with the partnership.

What that would entail is that I would work with the city attorney's office and with Centera to develop a space license agreement, so a formal legal document that outlines the partnership and addresses all of the things that attorneys like to see addressed like liability and terms of use.

and then we would also work with Centera to develop the specific schedule for use of the location center.

That's something that Mayor Reed asked me earlier today.

What is the schedule?

And those are things that we would work out in as part of that space license agreement.

The other component of this that I want to make you all aware of is there is a financial component as well because we were very fortunate to have been recently informed that we were

could be awarded a centera cares grant to partially cover the expense associated with the mobile clinic locating on the homeless services center property.

There is a $20,000 cost to upgrade the parking lot and add in a power station so that the RV can be there for more extended periods of time because it wasn't incorporated into the additional design.

And we were partially funded for that expense.

Correct.

Yes, that was one of the things that that we discussed with the Centera team that the location of the homeless services center is is wonderful because of the proximity to

the clients and other individuals who'll be using the services at the center, but that it will be open up for the broader neighborhood because it is a very walkable location.

There's lots of homes in that proximity, a lot of foot traffic too, as we know up and down Route 11 and location on a bus line.

Is this a $25,000 commitment?

We got 20 or is it 20?

So, and I misstated earlier, so I apologize, Mary Reed.

The cost of the upgrades is $20,000.

We were awarded $20,000 for the Centera Cares Grant.

However, a portion of that grant is also so that we can add electricity for the community paramedicine vehicle that is community paramedicine programs also going to be located at the homeless services center.

They will have access to this, right?

We also have access to the suitcase clinic.

They will be running out of there as well.

And then the paramedics.

So they will have, right?

Am I correct?

Yes.

They will have all of this access, right?

For the center, the campus or whatever we don't call it.

You know, I'm on the campus, homeless campus, but then absolutely for the neighborhood.

So with those spots determined, well so they actually aren't that far apart in the geography of the city as well, those two locations.

Locations but also seem to make sense But I also think as well.

um because I'm thinking the mobile the mobile cafe has a route right and if you follow that route you're hitting those neighborhoods in need but are you able to um connect with the apartments because like right now I'm thinking of Harris Gardens right would you be able to connect with them and see if they would allow

And after that, we are going to do phase two to identify some other areas.

Or if they can walk to one of these locations, it depends.

That's how we are going to be evaluating the different hours.

Now the schedules that we will

There are some power requirements that sounds like for your site and setting as well, right?

This is something particular for the homeless and this is why we are going to have this power station because with this power station we are going to be able

I was wondering about that, because I was getting a little confused, so you're going to charge at the charging station, but you don't necessarily need to have a certain type of electricity at every station that you choose throughout the city.

We have a permanent parking lot at the hospital where we will be charging the bus for the other locations.

This is why the location at the homeless center is unique.

Sure.

And this is, I guess, is a good time to say that I am working with open doors on

They'll be a community meeting in late August that I'll be sure to announce and will broadly advertise that we'll be specifically focused on sharing with the community and with the clients who will be served at the facility about what the services are going to be and what the operating model will be at the homeless services center and featuring all of the agencies that are going to be partnering.

But in terms of medical provision that's going to be there, so there's, you know, this

hopefully approved potential partnership with Centera and then the suitcase clinic for the homeless that is a long-standing partner with Open Doors is going to be utilizing what we're calling the clinic space.

It's more of a maybe a nurses office type of setup that is in the facility and they're going to be continuing to provide the services that they have historically provided.

I think they might have a staff member that they're going to be dedicating

to do I think some community health work as well.

So that's going to be excellent.

They're again going to continue working in the evening hours and all with all of the wonderful partnerships they have with JMU students.

And then the community paramedicine program is going to have a dedicated office in the facility where they're going to be based out of the facility but still going out into the community.

to provide their services, but they'll have a dedicated presence in the facility and have that opportunity to interface with the clients who are there, but, again, still out serving our community as well.

Those are some of the partnerships.

There are even more partnerships that are still being developed and OpenDoors is really the lead on those, but it's going to be very exciting.

Approve the proposed partnership with Centaur Community Care Clinic Mobile Clinic.

Roll call please Pam.

Vice Mayor Dent.

Aye.

Council Member Robinson.

Aye.

Aye.

to the tune of $236,000 that project.

Lo and behold, hit rock along Mount Clinton Pike and we need some additional funding to keep that project moving forward.

So I can try and answer any questions that you might have, but I think it's pretty straightforward.

Any questions?

It's odd, Rockingham County, how many projects we have to address Rock Town for a reason.

Well, I'm impressed that you've completed three projects under budget to the point that we can move those funds to another project that needs it.

Well, I got great department directors.

I didn't do any of this.

So it's a reservoir street project.

We maintain some small funds there over the past many years because Mr. Hartman wanted to ensure that there were a few things taken care of.

that is now passed.

The culvert replacement you may recall at South Dogwood that we had came in under budget and we completed that to the tune of saving $150,000 and then the repairs and refurbishment to the MLK Junior Way Bridge over the past two years.

So yes, thank you Madam Vice Mayor.

Well, Madam Mayor, I move that we allocate funds in the General Capital Projects Fund for the Mt.

Clinton Pike Project as presented by Mr. Banks.

Any more discussion?

Vice Mayor Dent.

Hi.

Council Member Robinson.

Hi.

Hi.

We will now go into other matters.

Comments from the public, limited to five minutes, or matters not on the regular agenda.

Evening.

Hello.

There.

And the council members.

My name is James August Horsing, Jr.

I've lived in here in this community for quite a while and I'm interested in doing a memorial for the city and I'm not asking for the city to give me any money.

I'm raising the money by us veterans that want to show off this at 33.

Action 33 and can I put this up closer to you?

I want to represent all the people of the nations that have come here to Harrisonburg and had their children and raised whether or not they went to James Madison EMU and I want to place these flags on this granite over at 33 and 247B.

The only problem I have, I need a request on finding out who owns that property.

because they're destroying it with all the construction and everything developing the bridge and all that.

And I'm interested in placing this as a memorial to the city with all the nations that have come here and opened up the business and put their children in school.

So us four veterans, I just found that

Coast Guard wants to get involved with this also, but we want to give it without asking the city to fund us any money.

We'll raise the money ourselves.

We're just interested in finding out who has that partial property so we can continue to get this granite ready within the five years program that we're project up.

So this is what my request is, is asking the city to tell me who has this property that we can put this as a memorial.

Thank you.

So if you can stick around a little bit.

We'll have the city manager speak to you.

Okay.

Got it.

Just happen to have the person here.

Yeah.

So you can take and thank you.

Hey, Ruby.

Everybody remembers Ruby.

Hey, Ruby.

So when you come into the city, you get to see what this looks like.

And if I miss a flag, your flag will be put on this.

So it's nobody's going to miss out on it.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Stick around.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Is there no one in person?

One moment, please.

Thank you.

Vice Mayor?

Well, I was not here along with Councilmember Fleming last time because we were both in Rancho Cordova, California for the National League of Cities summer leadership meeting as I'm one of the vice chairs of the Energy and Environment and Natural Resources Committee.

And we learned a lot from each other for different projects we've got going on all over the country in different environmental needs such as wildfires in California and flooding in Minnesota and everyone looking to increase their proportion of renewable energy and electric vehicles and so on.

So it's good swapping stories as well as some

Really excellent presentations.

One on hydrogen as an alternative fuel for vehicles for heavy trucks and industrial.

And I've mentioned that to Gerald Gattobu here before and he just said, no, we're not going to try that.

It's too expensive and requires too much infrastructure and the safety is still iffy.

Plus the question of where does the energy, it takes a lot of energy to compress the hydrogen.

and where does that come from?

Is it green or gray or blue?

Anyway, so non-starter but an interesting trend to keep track of.

One major topic also was PFOS, you've heard me talk about before, PFAS, long chemical name, something like poly, floral, alkyl, substances, that the so-called forever chemicals that are everywhere

and they come from things like nonstick pans, firefighting equipment, raincoats, even anything that's impervious to water.

But the problem is then they're suspended in water everywhere.

And the EPA is coming out with really strict regulations for how it has to be cleaned out of the water down to one part per trillion.

And they've never had that degree of micro requirement to clean it that closely.

Everything else is

Parts for Million or Billion at most.

And the analogy they said is that's like one drop in the rose bowl.

So the question is if they're issuing that regulation, where's the funding to get it that clean that's very expensive and almost impossible to get it that pure?

And what NLC has been advocating for is municipal liability waivers such that

If our water system tries to clean it and doesn't get it quite clean enough, we can't be held liable for that to get funding for it.

So that's one of the major pieces that the NLC EENR committee is advocating to the federal government.

We had a really cool tour of a huge stormwater basin that's created in Rancho Cordova, apparently.

it's desert most of the time but when it rains it flash floods so they have this enormous basin that in normal times when there's not a flash flood filling it is a wonderful wildlife habit there were egrets and ducks of all kinds and bike paths around is too hot to ride a bike that day but anyway there it was so and then there was a joint session where Dany's committee you can talk about was also on

Cyber Security of Water Utilities that we had our expert, but Richie, speak of a couple of meetings ago.

So we're sort of already on it, as usual.

OK, so closer to home, just today I went to the EPSAC Focus Area 1 work session where we're hashing out what we want to propose as municipal net metering policy.

and that's kind of a misnomer because the idea is we're not going to do net metering as in the city just gives away the electricity we produce as the model for the Turner Pavilion.

That so that we don't hit the cap sooner so we don't take away the capacity for other residents and businesses to use solar in the community.

And as a sort of, you know,

Highlight cap to that and I went out to see the solar being installed on the public works building and that building is going to be net zero and I believe they said they are also applying for the elective pay.

I'm not certain about that but Tom Hartman was talking about some of the requirements for federal funding that are similar to that.

I wonder if we could

Sure, it could be, I know.

All righty, I didn't go to Rancho Cordova.

I stayed here in Harrisonburg.

and was fortunate enough to attend a Gay Street Reconfiguration meeting on the same day that was hosted by Nina on the same day that the city held a Come View Your Splash Pad in Ralph Samson Park meeting at Sims.

And so I was amazed to find out that the splash pad that is gorgeous is going to be free.

So I kept saying free.

Nasser Alsaadun

Nice event.

Nice event.

Hate to see Chief Warner go.

But we were there to support her and to let her now know how important she was to our city and how appreciative we was of her time here.

I attended the NAACP's Juneteenth celebration at Oakdale Park where Esther Nizer was the guest speaker.

Great turnout, great event.

went to a retreat last week with the Chesapeake Bay Trust, talking about partnerships.

was based on building relationships and partnerships of community-based organizations and how their missions tied together, but also how that mission tied to what Chesapeake Bay Trust is interested in, and that is environmental, wildlife, all of those kind of nature things, and how we can work together, even with stormwater management, I mean, you name it, it's in there, and how we can all work together through our missions to also

Deal with what we say we're gonna directly deal with but also the intersectionality of those issues Wonderful time.

Um, I took a little hike that they said wasn't a hike It was just a wall down a hill and back up three and a half miles later Ten thousand mosquito bites later.

Well, before I kind of do my update, there is one issue I wanted us to think about and address as a council, maybe to give city manager banks some direction, and that's on a population survey research project we can potentially do with Weldon Cooper, and no city manager banks has been in contact with them.

But in essence,

You know, we're growing.

We're growing, you know, zero to five school-age kids, workforce, seniors.

It's really important that we get some very, some more accurate numbers, dig deeper into some of those population numbers now.

Weldon Cooper does do, you know, basic population numbers for every locality in Virginia, but they also offer the opportunity

to dig deeper into those numbers.

I think that's really important for us, for our schools, for our seniors.

And so, you know, Andy has met with and talked with Weldon Cooper and then the expense towards that.

Yeah, I know that several council members had talked to me about that and I also saw the benefit in doing a

A deeper dive into the population analysis as well as trend data for the City Council considers policies all the time, whether it's affordable housing, capital projects like new schools, and a whole host of programmatic and service delivery considerations that would benefit from better understanding the demographics of our community.

So I reached out to Dr. Sen, who's the head of the data sciences portion of the Weldon Cooper Center.

She's provided a scope of services that we're reviewing at an estimated cost.

And I have talked to Mr. Propst and he and I are coming up with a plan on how to potentially fund that.

Well, yeah, I certainly support us doing that.

I mean, we just have to, do we all support it?

I support it.

Then I'll come back with those details for approval because it'll either be a reallocation or supplemental to cover the costs, which an initial reaction from Dr. Senator Weldon Cooper was, I think, around $75,000.

Yeah, I think that'd be really helpful for us.

So, yeah, it's been a busy couple of weeks.

So, in one thing, I know we have Chief Treby here, on June 2nd, we had a fire department promotional ceremony.

It's always a great event.

And it is kind of the firemen, firewomen who are there, really there for their families.

It's a great ceremony because the firefighters don't take a lot of accolades, don't tend to want to put a lot of attention on themselves

but their families can see how important that role is in our community and see major banks gave really quite a stirring and eloquent speech.

It was very meaningful I think for folks there so I appreciate you doing it.

So over the last couple weeks beginning of June I was at the International Town Gallon Association so it was kind of our first

trip up there in College Park.

We're now a member.

JMU actually has been a member for a year, but we went up there together, so I went up with Dr. Duran Allen, who is the Associate Vice President for Student Life.

Jeremy Hawkins, who does their off-campus life in housing, and two other staff members there.

We went through a number of presentations and discussions with

and other folks who were in university communities.

So there's about 400 and some folks at the largest conference they've had up there.

It tends to have more university participation than municipal participation, so I think they're hoping that we might help with that.

So I was there as also a representative of the National League of Cities to help make some of that connection with them.

One of the interesting presentations, there's a group called Off-Campus Partners, which facilitates off-campus housing really for many universities across the country, if not most.

And it's a large organization.

Some of the University of Tennessee was giving a presentation.

And at one point, they ran a video, and I was asking the JMU folks, are you a participant in this?

as I was sitting in the video came up and Jeremy Hawkins, who's from JMU, was the very first person on the video because it started here at JMU, is now used all over the country.

So it's just a program that matches students in housing off campus and then tries to connect them to the right services there.

There's some really interesting

presentations there.

One that was really interesting was Michigan State University in East Lansing.

Michigan State has done a data mapping with all their students to find exactly where they are, map them all out on a map.

And then they kind of lay over that calls they get for police intervention or whatever services they get.

And one of the things they learn with that data

is that in one particular area where they had the most calls for intervention, and they were able to see who was living there, and it was almost exclusively, but pretty predominantly, sophomore boys.

Which was a great bit of information for the university, right?

To understand here's where we need to do some work in intervention and education.

So I don't mean to disparage sophomore students, but it was a great data project that helped them identify, okay, we need to pull them in, give them education about the importance of being in your community.

And so that was, I think, 2018, and it's had a significant difference in what's happened there over the last six years.

So a really good presentation on community land trust.

that was there, something for us to dig into, which was interesting that Community Land Trust, its origins was in the civil rights movement in Slater King and CB King in Georgia, where the folks who started that.

Ms.

Nick Winston, their last name was King.

Yes, we had the NLC meeting in Interim Rancher Cordova.

The group I was with, the Finance Administration and Intergovernmental Relations group that also did some UCC planning, University Community Council planning, which Mayor Reed is now a member of.

So a small group of us actually sat and met with the Director of the U.S.

Census.

That was really a fascinating meeting, Dr. Robert Santos, about 12 of us.

And he came in with a team of three or four folks, three folks.

One, I was so amazingly impressed all the NLC staff were participating.

I was so amazingly impressed at how down to earth, how much he paid attention to what we said, listened, took notes.

All of us had a real sense that when we said something to him, he was going to take it back.

Find ways to resolve, implement, and give answers to us.

One of the issues that came up for all the folks there was undercounting in our communities.

He certainly recognizes and acknowledges that the 2020 census significantly undercounted a number of places.

We would be a prime example if some place was undercounted.

The next census is in 2030.

R. Reed

They have six areas they're kind of looking at to test for undercounting.

And for those, or for hard to count or undercounted populations, a lot of which would be here in Harrisonburg.

So it's something we'll be able to step into and dig into here in Harrisonburg and help them really in 2026, how to think about becoming more accurate in the 2030 census.

So I think we all recognize that Harrisonburg is probably undercounted in the census, which has significant impacts.

on the funding we get.

I was at an Urban Institute Policies to Expand Equitable Oriented Affordable Housing Summit.

It was virtual, it was a DC summit, but it was a virtual summit.

And again, I won't go through all that came through that, but I think I'll send around some information about that to folks.

There's some interesting information there.

We had, in Vice Mayor Dent, is the chair of the Harrisonburg Rocking and Metropolitan Planning Organization, so we had a meeting this past week.

We did approve, as a group, the six applications that Harrisonburg and the HRMPO are going to put in for smart scale transportation funding.

So there are two applications for funding that the HRMPO is putting in.

and then there's four additional ones that Harrisonburg are putting in for that.

Two of them, one is for the extension of the Greenway to the Bluestone path to Rocktown High School and then another potential project is South Main Street to do immediate

as I know I've heard some folks asking about that path, particularly the Rocktown High School.

And so Tom Hartman in the Department of Public Works is putting in for funding for those projects.

Of those six projects, I think Tom mentioned somewhere in the 40 to 50 million dollar range at this point when they put them together they'll have a figure that comes out.

But just because it's an idea of how expensive

These transportation projects are.

And while we want to dig in as much as possible to be a bike pedestrian friendly city and to address all sorts of transportation concerns and issues all over the city, they come with a hefty price tag.

And so what we're usually dependent on is the ability to get the state and federal funds for these projects.

Tom and his team are just amazingly successful in doing that.

But there's also only a certain amount of money they can get for that.

So hopefully we can have some success in these projects.

And it's under a new smart scale scoring system.

We'll see how that works.

Generally, we lost some ability to get some money for state transportation funding through this new scoring system.

So I think that's about it.

Mark your calendars in October for October 15th.

I think we have a VML conference.

So there's a JMU Regional Summit, what used to be called the Regional Economic Recovery Series.

That was maybe two years ago when that was last done.

So I was part of putting that together.

I'm part of the team again.

This putting together this Regional Economic Summit, the JMU Department of Research and Economic Development Innovation.

Office is organizing this.

It's a summit for the entire Shenandoah Valley from the north down to Bath County, so it's a pretty large footprint.

Folks are coming in.

They'll be dealing with housing, workforce, early childhood education and transportation are the four issues.

I'm on the housing side for that.

Pulling together speakers and workshops.

Then we'll have in October.

Partly to allow for some networking, needed networking among folks, but to really do a lot of information sharing about the needs in those areas.

I think that's about it.

Thank you for filling in on HRMPO.

I forgot to report on that, and that's true about the SMART scale.

They've really changed the criteria, so they emphasize

Bigger projects.

Okay, you want big projects?

We've got big projects.

Two of our biggest needs, right, for that.

But kind of in the current iteration, it's made a little more difficult for us.

June 16th was successful at at Pale Fire.

Centera was our primary sponsor.

Because of them we were able to feed about 300 people for free.

We had two vendors.

So great turnout for our new location.

I was not able to attend the Going Away celebration for our chief.

I was in Winchester at the

Virginia Historic and Landmark Register Committee meeting for the Ida May Francis House.

So we got approved.

That is our Green Book House here in the city.

So we're off to the next approval, which would be the National Registry.

So we're excited about that.

Councilman Today we were at a dedication ceremony for a new mural as you can see there's a lot of murals that are popping up on the side of our beautiful murals this one was on the side of Magnolia's right on Water Street and it's called release and it's in honor of

Yes.

And so this was in his honor, his legacy.

So we were there today.

And I have been invited to participate in a summit

called Engage Every Student by the U.S.

Department of Education in D.C.

mostly to support and talk about out of school time.

So that'll be coming up for me in a couple of weeks.

And that's all I have.

Do you have a manager?

No, ma'am.

Is that your charting?

No.

Are you sure about that?