City Council Meeting   2/25/2025

I'll call our Tuesday, February 25, 2025 City Council meeting to order.

City Manager Banks.

Here.

City Attorney Brown.

Here.

Vice Mayor Fleming.

Here.

Council Member Robinson.

Here.

And Chief Tobiah.

If you would please stand for invocation which will be either a silent prayer or a moment of silence depending on your personal preference and then remain standing for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Okay, we have two special recognitions tonight, but I would like to start with a proclamation.

Celebrating someone very special to us, Mr. Shannon Porter.

Is Shannon here?

Yep.

Your board and your

The board is here as well and some staff members.

So if y'all would stand to support him, he doesn't have.

I don't know.

Did you know about this?

Are you surprised?

I think this is like two months.

I don't even know how we kept it.

Shannon, I have a proclamation celebrating you celebrating your 10th anniversary

with Mercy House.

Whereas Shannon Porter has served as Executive Director of Mercy House since 2014, leveraging his background in education and nonprofit leadership to expand the agency's shelter and housing services.

Under his tenure, Mercy House has addressed systemic gaps in housing services by enhancing shelter facilities to prioritize client dignity

and increasing bed capacity to accommodate larger families.

And whereas Shannon restructured the centralized housing intake program, brightening its reach across six counties and two cities, significantly improving accessibility and efficiency for individuals in need of housing services.

His advocacy in addressing the housing crisis

has engaged stakeholders, including universities, city council and local landlords to promote affordable housing solutions in meaningful ways.

And whereas during COVID-19 pandemic, Shannon spearheaded Mercy House Motel program for medically vulnerable individuals that house nearly 60 people and partnered with other local organizations to provide comprehensive case management and support.

He worked with James Madison University and City Council to establish emergency shelter solutions while expanding Mercy House staff and landlords' relationships to address urgent rehousing needs.

And whereas Shannon played a key role in advocating for and guiding the creation of Harrisonburg's year-round

Navigation Center, which provides wraparound services like health care, education, and job training.

He has ensured Mercy House houses programs integrate seamlessly into the new center and expand services such as on-site housing counseling to create trauma-informed collaborative care for vulnerable individuals.

and where Shannon has been a driving force behind initiatives such as establishing a housing trust fund and advocating for affordable housing projects like Bluestone Town Center.

Recognized for his servant's leadership, he has received awards and served on panels to advance housing equity while empowering this team at Mercy House to advocate effectively.

for systemic change.

Now, therefore, I, Deanna Reed, as mayor of the city of Harrisonburg, do hereby proclaim our sincerest appreciation and recognition for the outstanding contributions of Shannon Porter to the city of Harrisonburg and commit to further his legacy of lifting up vulnerable members of our community.

Thank you, Shannon, for all you've done for the past 10 years.

And we look forward to working with you.

Don't you do it.

Don't you do it.

We look forward to working with you for the next 10 years.

And I tell you, I had the pleasure of being a part of your video when you won your award.

And I told them that you have no mercy

No mercy when it comes down to our most vulnerable people who live here.

So I thank you for coming at me the times that you came at me because you coming at me when you did was one of the reasons why we got that navigation center.

So thank you so much for your work.

Thank you Madam Mayor.

I also appreciate Scott.

I'm deeply honored and I love this community and I just appreciate the work that you all do to make it a better place and we have a lot of challenges ahead but I'm grateful for the fact that every person on this council is trying very hard to make this a better community and I'm just grateful and quite surprised and honored to have this opportunity this evening so thank you.

and you can blame your board and staff members back there for all of this secrecy.

Madam Mayor, just for the clerk, Council Member Robinson has an unexpected scheduling issue.

She has to step out for a short amount of time.

I think the minutes can just reflect when she leaves and comes back.

Now we have Eva.

Hi, how are you?

Alright, so

Now we're moving on to Youth Art Month.

Yes, ma'am.

So we were given these by our students.

We get them every year.

I have a proclamation recognizing March as Youth Art Month.

So whereas art education contributes powerful educational benefits to all elementary, middle and secondary students and whereas art education develops students' creative problem-solving and critical thinking abilities and whereas art education teaches sensitivity to beauty, order,

and other expressive qualities.

Whereas art education gives students a deeper understanding of multicultural values and beliefs.

Whereas art education interlates students' learning and art production, art history, art criticism and aesthetics.

Whereas our national leaders have acknowledged the necessary of including art experiences in all students' education.

And now therefore be

It resolved that support should be given towards our teachers.

As they strengthen art education in their schools and communities, and I, Deanna R. Reed, Mayor of the City of Harrisonburg, do hereby proclaim March 2025 be observed as Youth Art Month and I urge all citizens to take interest in and give full support to quality school or programs for children and youth.

Thank you so much.

On behalf of all of the art educators of Harrisonburg City, we just want to thank you so much for your support.

We have very talented artists, as you can see.

So we are really looking forward to showcasing their hard work on March 1st at the Valley Mall.

We're having our

Art Exhibit.

So thank you again for your support.

Okay, we can move on to our 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.

moved to approve the consent agenda.

Second.

Any discussion?

Council Member Alsaadun.

Aye.

Council Member Dent.

Aye.

Council Member Robinson.

Oh, I'm sorry, she's absent.

Aye.

Adam.

Thank you Madam Mayor, Adam Fletcher, Director of Community Development.

The first item I have for you is the zoning ordinance amendment to two sections of the zoning ordinance.

Both are part of the non-conforming use section of the zoning ordinance.

This particular section of the zoning ordinance can be

Confusing at times, rather complex.

So I will take a rather complicated matter and try to simplify it as best I can for you about what is being presented this evening.

So to get into it here, so this is the specific topic here is to allow particular types of residential structures to remain a residential use when they would have otherwise lost their non-conforming status.

and I'll talk about what a nonconforming use is here in a moment.

But this idea came out of a matter for a rezoning that was at 895 North Liberty Street.

This goes back to August of just last year when an individual who owned the property was requesting to rezone the site from M1 to R8C.

And at the time, Planning Commission had tabled requests and asked staff to draft an ordinance amendment that would have allowed

in particular situations for residential uses to be permitted by special use permit in the M1 district.

And this all came about because at the time staff was recommending denial of this rezoning.

So it was a single family detached dwelling at 895 North Liberty Street.

and it was not only zoned industrially but planned industrially.

In fact, I have maps here to show really where this was and just to sort of put it into context.

So the green star here is just showing exactly where it was in the city here or where it continues to be located today.

And this is North Liberty Street.

As you pass Edum Road, you have the livestock sales there on your left.

You have farmer focus on your right.

You cross over the railroad tracks and you're entering into a rather

and Laura Dent

and Dany.

purchased what they thought was a non-conforming use in the M1 district and when they applied to do some improvements to the property staff immediately does what we always do is we check the conformancy of the site and realize that wait a minute we actually might have a illegal use because what had happened prior to the owner buying the property was that

The use was illegally converted from a single dwelling unit into a duplex to their knowledge.

They did not know this, which sent them down this path of, how do I rectify this?

I don't want to have to move.

And that is because non-conforming use, once it's expanded or enlarged, basically must terminate.

And you must then comply with the existing zoning.

And what that meant for this individual was that they could no longer live in the house that they bought.

which creates a very complex situation.

So the only option for them was to either do some type of a zoning words amendment or try to rezone the property.

So they applied to rezone the property, staff recommended denial being that it was not in conformance with the comprehensive plan and that set planning commission down this path of why don't we try to attempt to rectify this a different manner.

So they wanted us to create an ordinance that would have allowed by application

A property owner in the M1 district will have a residential use.

And we did not believe, after we did our analysis or research, evaluated, discussed and debated internally, that that was really the right option.

And instead, we are proposing to amend the non-conforming section that would allow, in particular circumstances, these types of uses to not even have to apply for a special use permit, not even have to rezone.

but as long as they meet certain criteria, they can revert back to a single family detached dwelling so it's just an administrative approval.

So in this case, for those who don't work in the zoning world and get into a lot of the details, what is a nonconforming use?

So the definition is there on the screen, on the top half of the screen, but casually

A nonconforming use is a lawful use that was established at some point in time, and over the evolution of that site, the rules have changed that makes it nonconforming.

And what Virginia law says is that you can maintain that nonconforming use in perpetuity so long as you do not discontinue it, and I'm paraphrasing here, so long as you do not discontinue that use for 24 consecutive months

or that you don't change it in some manner.

In fact, what we say in our code, and that's on the bottom section, is per section 10321a, essentially if you increase it in intensity in any way, changing the number of occupants, number of units on a site or something that basically changes the status of that site, you also lose your nonconformancy.

And that's really what happened in this particular case because prior to the current owner, the previous owner at some point in time had converted the unit.

So what we are proposing to do is add a new subsection to section 10-221 and there's a lot of text on the screen but I really want you to focus on the highlighted portions here because what we're proposing is in very specific circumstances in the B2 General Business District or the M1 General Industrial District where you have an otherwise non-conforming single-family detached dwelling that may have been expanded

beyond what it was permitted to do, and there are many different circumstances, but just pictured just that's being expanded in intensity, they may continue to operate as a non-conforming single-family detached dwelling, as long as you meet the following two criteria, and that's one and two here.

One, that the total square footage of the structure remains unchanged, and the second is that because there is no established occupancy at times in a non-conforming structure, we created a baseline which is essentially mimicking our UR Urban Residential District occupancy, which is a single family home would be converted to either from a occupant perspective, either a single family

or two occupants.

And that's how the occupancy regulations work in the UR district.

So long as you have a situation where you don't increase the square footage and then you retain an occupancy of it being a single family or two occupants, even if it were an illegal use, you can revert back to a single family dwelling.

What that means from an impact is after staffer using GIS evaluated the city, there are about 110 parcels that have a single family detached dwelling in either the B2 or the M1 district.

So about 110 of them.

Of the 110, there are 40 parcels that are planned for something other than residential.

So 30 of them are planned for commercial or limited commercial.

and 10 of them are planned for industrial.

This is one of the 10 that are in the industrial district.

So 70 of those remaining parcels are non-conforming in B2 or M1, but they're planned for some type of residential.

So really what we're looking at is potential impacts to people having a non-conforming use on about 40 parcels that kind of have a land use that's not really intended for them to maintain a residential use.

This helps them maintain that particular situation.

As part of this application, we are also wanting to somewhat do some house cleaning here with section, subsection D. We want to add subsection D to 10-3-20.

And what this is saying is that nothing in this section, this section being the non-conforming section, prevents

Keeping in good repair, a non-conforming building in which a non-conforming use is conducted.

And this is just codifying what we've always been doing over the past couple of years, or many years in fact, which is to basically explicitly allow people to make repairs to non-conforming buildings, which we've always done, to keep them in good repair.

This just codifies that.

So we just added this onto this particular situation as we evaluated the matter at hand.

We support this recommendation of favorability here to approve it.

Planning Commission did the same unanimously, six to zero.

I know this is somewhat complicated.

I will try to answer any questions you might have.

But this, I think, will help people in some unfortunate circumstances with their residential uses.

We actually wouldn't issue a permit.

That's in fact how this situation kind of became.

So if the property 895 North Liberty Street had not been illegally converted, we still would not have been able to approve a building permit because the structure, the use was non-conforming.

And the way the code is written is that you can't expand a non-conforming use.

One of the quotes that's in your staff report, which I think is a good one, comes from the Albemarle County Land Use Law Handbook.

where it points out, well this information comes from this, basically saying that the purpose of the non-conforming principle is to preserve rights in existing lawful buildings and uses of land subject to the rule that public policy opposes the extension and favors the elimination of non-conforming uses and this is because non-conforming uses are disfavored because they detract from the effectiveness of a comprehensive zoning plan.

Did we know this was coming?

So that's why we're on it now, or did they come to us?

So this zoning words amendment came out of staff's evaluation of planning commission's thought of, hey, why don't you go and make a special use permit option for this person?

And when we played out all of those different scenarios, we still came back to this realization that you will end up with scenarios which will be very difficult for at least staff to support

Resoning sites because they could be in a space like this one which is entirely surrounded by industrial and has continued to be planned for industrial.

So we came up with this option as an alternative solution.

And so this would also, just for these residents, save them both the time and the money

I'm having to go through the special use permit.

Is this administrative approval so long as they meet the criteria?

So I benefit for folks who don't have to apply.

You can allow them to continue using the house.

Are the 10 of the 30 parcels, are they bunched around any particular M1 areas generally or are fairly scattered?

There are a few in this area.

Yeah, there are a few in this area.

I appreciate the work you guys did to really help this single resident, but though it will expand to other folks, but it was quite a conversation at the Planning Commission going through this.

Not so much a question as I'd like to commend staff for coming up with a solution that's both creative and clean.

As Vice Mayor Fleming mentioned, we're not forcing them to go through the special use permit, which is expensive and perhaps nerve wracking if they get it or not.

But to allow people to have a way to stay there that doesn't

What would jeopardize our long-term vision as in if we started scattering residential permits through industrial zones, what if another industrial use wanted to purchase and use that?

Yeah, I think it's multifaceted.

One, Mr. Fleming put it out, which is that

It's no cost to the residents as long as they meet the criteria.

It's just administrative approval.

Our zoning administrator will make that determination.

And the special use permit stays with the property.

It does.

Yeah, so this is something that's flexible enough to let people stay there without

and coding it for the future.

So I think that's a good solution.

Now, when you keep saying in particular circumstances or meet the criteria now, does that mean that it has to be single family, a single family residence with only a single family living there?

I would just go back to only a single family detached dwelling.

We tried to go even a little more expansive and try to think of different scenarios where you maybe had a mixed use building or maybe it was a duplex.

And we kept running into many more complex scenarios and it was a domino effect of how it sort of plays in with our nonconforming rules.

So we just kind of went back to square one.

And you did.

So thank you for that.

I think it's also important that our definition of single family is a little more expansive than just kind of what folks often think of as a nuclear family.

So I think probably a little more accommodating for our particular population of extended family members can be part of a family or guardianship and those types of things.

Another thing I wanted to point out or ask, I guess,

Part of what has given rise to at least some of these situations is the annexation of the northwestern corner of the city from the county where people have been living and then there's a chicken plant in their backyard.

So maybe they like it, they can walk to work, so don't kick them out if you can find a way to help them stay there.

Non-conforming uses are only created through an act of government.

Any more questions?

Thank you.

I'll open this item.

This item is now open for public hearing.

If anyone wishes to speak, please state your name and address.

You'll have five minutes.

Seeing none in person.

Thank you.

Well I'll echo Councilman Dent's thoughts of I appreciate staff putting the effort in to make this work for this family here and of course we'll have potentially other families that might benefit from this as well.

I'll move to

to approve the zoning ordinance amendment to amend non-conforming use regulations associated with residential units within the B-2 and M-1 districts to allow particular residential structures to remain a residential use.

Any discussion?

Council Member Alsaadun.

Aye.

Council Member Dent.

Aye.

Vice Mayor Fleming.

Aye.

Aye.

All right, we'll go into our regular items.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

These are two items, a resounding and a special use permit that this body has already heard once before.

But I will sort of reorient everyone here about the site we're talking about and then talk about why we're here again.

So this is at the the subject property here is at the corner of Lucy Drive and Diary Lee Avenue Addresses that are identified here 290, 294 and 298 Lucy Drive The property is currently zoned R3 and some other zoning in this area here so to the north across Lucy Drive you have commercial property zone B2 and then directly to the east property that's zoned R5 conditional that you can if you're out there today you would see that it's under construction for multifamily units

Long-term plans for this area of the city.

Lucy Drive is kind of that break point, really.

So you have commercial uses to the north, planned for commercial to the north.

And then on the south side of Lucy Drive, you're picking up both mixed use and some different densities of residential.

The subject property itself, however, is limited commercial, which is what the property to the east was before the land use got changed to a complaint amendment.

But when you drive out that

Space Today, you notice a very distinct difference on the north and south sides of Lucy Drive.

So we'll get into the details here about this particular matter.

And then this is an air photograph that is, of course, out of date today.

So we know that the site to the east is under construction, but the remaining portions of this air photograph are much true to what's out there today, mostly.

And then a photograph here taken from Google Earth, so the corner property and the foreground here.

So Lucy Drive left and right in the image entirely Avenue as it extends away from the photograph.

So as was described last May when I was here presenting this case before, the proffers remain the same.

And in fact, as I'll speak to here in a moment, City Council actually recommended, actually voted to approve the rezoning request.

Um, the proffers that are part of the rezoning are just summarized here before you.

So it has to do with the design of the site being that no parking lot can be between the public street and the buildings.

All dwellings front facades would face the public streets.

There would only be one particular access on Diary Lee Avenue.

If there's a, uh, access on Lucy Drive, it would only be right in right out.

And then there are tree planting details, uh, within profit number five.

In May they had a conceptual layout as shown on the screen and at that time I remember pointing out that still conceptual we still had some concerns about the design layout of the lots and the applicant understood that and was recognized that they may still massage the layout and when they get into the engineering phase come up with something entirely different.

But again those proffers control a lot of the layout of the site.

So in May of 2024, these two items were presented to City Council.

The two items being to rezone the site from R3 to R8 Conditional.

R8 is our small lot residential district and then also to simultaneously apply for a special use permit that would allow the town homes.

In R8, you can only have a single, you can have single family detached homes or duplexes by right.

And then by special use permit, you have different options, one of which is an opportunity to build town homes.

City Council unanimously approved the rezoning request but has not yet held its second reading because at the same time City Council tabled the special use permit because of some thoughts for staff to work with the applicant on a condition that would provide landscaping along the rear property line, so paged down in our images, that would be abutting the existing townhomes.

After the meeting, though, the applicant postponed both requests, which is why there's been such a lag time.

So it did not have to come back on a particular schedule as they postponed it themselves to continue to work on some of the details.

Since that time, we have worked with the applicant on different layouts.

We've talked about different conditions, different landscaping opportunities.

They've done their own due diligence as they have had a survey of the property to locate specific things.

So this is what they're thinking the site might look like today.

Still some matters to work through with the design.

But generally speaking, this is the concept.

to have units that front on both direly loosey and then potentially some units interior to the property.

Some things I want to point out on their survey.

So the blue here is outlining the parcel itself.

Again, loosey drive to the top, direly to the left.

There is, if you go out there today, there's a concrete structure that's out there.

And this concrete structure was talked about quite a bit last year.

That concrete structure is part of an underground stormwater detention facility.

The green line here is representing the general outline of how it extends and encroaches onto the subject property.

So those are the northern boundaries of that concrete structure.

So in this image, page down, you can see that concrete structure on the bottom.

Again, these property lines are overlaid over the area, so they're not 100% accurate, but it gives a very good representation.

When you put on the stormwater layer to show everything that's occurring underground out there that you can see,

some of the conceptual things and approved stormwater facilities to image rights.

But you can also see where some of the stormwater is on the bottom as it, pardon me here, as it snakes through the Emerald Drive properties behind their properties into a DI, then drops into a storage facility, ultimately making its way out into the stormwater system throughout the area.

But you're also seeing here are these red dashed lines.

These are easement lines.

And to give an idea of distance here, this red line is 20 feet off of the rear property line.

And that will come up here in just a minute.

So at the time of the special use permit review last year, you might recall that staff did not offer any conditions with regard to landscaping.

The applicant continues to believe it is not in their best interest, so they did not put forth their own condition.

But we recognize that City Council may still want a condition, so we drafted something for your consideration.

So lots of text here, really what we're focusing on here is that a condition would be to maintain a landscape buffer of at least 10 feet in width off of the rear property line.

but also to plant at least eight large deciduous trees and that comes from a calculation that we use in other components of the zoning ordinance where it's one deciduous tree per 25 linear feet of a width.

The width here is a little over 183 feet in linear length.

They would be able to plant those eight trees within the 20 feet along that rear property line.

and I want to call your attention again back to some of the oddities about this area because of the angle of the stormwater concrete structure and that recognizing that that space is 20 feet in width.

So really if you were to approve a condition that is worded the way that's in your packet

of what I just described.

You would end up being at a minimum, you would have a 10 foot separation, but with the ability to have the plantings be within that 20 foot space.

So when we go back to the conceptual layout, they would not be able to have a driveway right on the property line.

It would have to be at least moved in 10 feet because you're going to start to pick up some of that buffer space.

We continue to believe, given the surrounding uses, that a buffer is not needed.

They are of similar use.

They are proposing townhomes.

Townhomes are the adjacent property.

Owners to the south.

Multifamily units are being constructed to the west.

And in many times, you don't necessarily hear us always promoting landscape buffers with similar uses.

It's oftentimes uses of opposite intensity and nature.

So these are all residential uses and of similar residential types.

So I'm assuming if there was a landscape buffer there, that road which wouldn't be allowed, that driveway wouldn't be allowed to be that close there would probably take away one

I'm thinking back to the planning commission.

Was there discussion

about a buffer on parts that aren't the driveway in essence.

So that, you know, in essence, that driveway is just laid out there is, you know, maybe 40% of the width of maintaining a buffer on the parts where they could potentially maintain a buffer.

Was that part of the discussion?

I think we were looking at a different layout then.

It was.

You were looking at a slightly different layout, but still a similar in concept.

I can go back to that earlier.

Oh, you mean buffer on the part that's not the driveway?

Could be possible?

Yeah, I was just curious.

And Chris and I were both saying, yeah, trees, but if it cramps the style of the layout,

Maybe it's not needed, especially since, as they point out, there's already a buffer zone behind the neighboring townhomes.

Is that right?

Yeah, so in this image you can see trees here that are on the adjacent properties.

And I did not include in my presentation the pictures that the applicant provided, but they are in your packet where they're pointing to the structure and then you can see the trees and the images and so forth.

So, you know, the trees on the subject site, most likely that that sort of grove is going to disappear when they go to develop the site.

But many of the trees that you look when you're on dire land, you're looking eastbound here.

These are all on adjacent property on that on the other side.

Yeah, I mean, it looks like I mean, staff and planning approve this without the conditions.

I know the conditions came through.

Chris and Laura, they were the ones that brought the trees of it.

If it's a tree, they don't talk about it.

And if I may?

Well, I was just saying, I appreciate the fact that you, the applicant, worked with you.

And so, and that's what we want, right?

That's, that's ultimately what we want.

Yes, Mary.

And if I may, I also remember that there's proffers about street trees.

So, Bethelung Lyre, Dierling and Lucy.

and as well that the parking lot landscaping regulations apply.

There you go, Laura.

Any other questions?

All right.

Thank you, Ed.

Let's go ahead to council.

Yes.

It is 7A and 7B, and if I can actually put our city turning on the spot for just a quick moment.

So technically, they have not had that consent reading.

Yeah, 7A would go first.

Thank you.

Are we clear?

That's correct.

Okay, but technically we could have the second reading for the rezoning tonight and prove the special use permit and next time it shows on the consent agenda.

Special use permit doesn't have a second reading.

Just the rezoning.

So if you wanted to, what you could do is vote on the rezoning

Again, that would be the second reading.

That would be approved.

Again, be mindful that once that's approved, you know, the special use permit sort of goes hand in hand with it.

You want to be sure you want to approve both.

Got it.

Okay, let's do that.

I guess.

So on that note Madam Mayor, I move that we approve the request from, wait a minute,

BNA Group LLC for the special use permit.

No, no, for the rezoning first, okay.

At 290, 294 and 298 Lucie Drive.

As we already approved once.

I'll second that.

Council Member Dent.

Aye.

Nice Mayor Fleming.

Aye.

Aye.

Any more discussion?

Council Member Dent.

Aye.

Hi.

Okay.

Okay.

We are ready for the, thank you, Adam.

7C, Massachusetts Regional Library.

Hello, Zach.

Thanks, everyone, for letting me speak this evening.

And thanks to Council and Mayor Reed and the public here.

Just wanted to share some of the things that have been going on at Massinutton Regional Library and specifically at the Central Library here in Harrisonburg.

So, just to share, I'll try to be brief tonight, but just to share some statistics, we've seen a lot of increases in the past year, increase of 12% visits to the library in Harrisonburg, and circulation, we've seen an increase of 18.4%.

The most in MRL history.

Our residents love the library.

Our computer used past 10,000 public uses.

We've got lots of Wi-Fi usage that you can see there.

And we've seen an increase in library registrations.

The most important stat here I find is that Massenton Regional Library has saved our patrons over $15 million.

by providing all of the library services that we do at all seven of our locations.

15.2 million, actually.

Thanks to our board, we completed our five-year strategic plan, so through fiscal 2030.

We have already put many pieces of that in place, including increasing our operating hours at all seven branches, and we now open at 9 a.m.

on Friday and Saturday here in Harrisonburg.

We hired a full-time young adult specialist position.

So we've seen an increase in team programming and outreach, especially to the Harrisonburg City Public Schools.

And our full strategic plan for anyone in the public can be seen on our website.

There will be implementing pieces of this and different activities over the next five years.

And thanks to all of our localities as well for their feedback.

We've been bringing people together.

In fiscal 24, our meeting room and study room usage went up by 500%.

That's both because we had a new online reservation system.

Any member of the public can reserve a room all on their own.

And we also added study pods where people are coming in to do, whether it's a study group coming in for you to use a four-person pod or someone coming in to use a personal pod for a telehealth appointment.

We've been seeing a lot of that usage as well.

Programming, our summer reading challenge, we had a 25% increase this past, this last summer, and children recorded two and a half million minutes of reading, 1.2 million more than last year.

Programming and outreach, we reached over 50,000 participants in our programs this year, and that is an all time high as well.

Just to put that in perspective on how much our users love coming to those programs,

The entire Los Angeles County public library system, they had 70,000 participants in programming, and we have over 50,000.

So that's something that should demonstrate how much our residents love coming to the library and learning something new.

Are you service staff regularly visit 31 school and daycare locations?

We had 102 monthly classroom visits last November just to do a snapshot.

of that.

We delivered 1,452 books through Well Baby pediatric visits through our prescription for reading program.

And we've also initiated new adult programming for persons with developmental disabilities.

And we've been providing greater enrichment and education visits to our largest area of retirement communities.

Some of our collections, new things that are going on there.

The Community Gear Library, which of course gives camping gear to folks who might not be just being introduced to camping.

They've seen 257 checkouts and that includes camping kits so that entire family of four can afford to go camping where they might not be able to otherwise.

Our welcoming library collection, we've added dozens of children's titles designed to welcome immigrant and refugee families and to promote understanding of culture.

and we've added financial literacy tablets and programming for children.

It's called Thinking Money for Kids and we've also been working with JMU's Your Economic Success Kids as well.

So, new genres for us.

Our new access cards provide access to online resources and physical materials.

to patrons who may not be able to provide a permanent proof of address.

So those include folks who might be in domestic violence shelters.

We've also seen traveling nurses use these and traveling missionaries as well.

We've also expanded greatly in collecting languages other than English.

We now also have the American Shakespeare Center passes for plays at every one of our branches too.

spreading the word.

We've now got 26 and a half thousand users of our newsletter and our social media reaches more than 7,000 followers.

We do have a couple of challenges that we're facing at the Nasser Alsaadun Regional Library, lest I think it's everything's coming up roses.

We have the rising cost, as every public library does, over the demand of ebooks and audiobooks.

are checkouts for these for more than a 50% increase from the year before.

And many folks might not be aware, but whereas you can buy a physical copy of a book for about $18 anywhere, an e-book is often leased.

We don't own it for all time.

We get basically a license for two years, usually.

And that's often $60 or more.

E-audiobooks, we can.

often get a lifetime ownership, but that is more expensive, $100 to $120 more per copy.

So that's a big challenge for us and for all public libraries.

We can't provide everything to everyone, even if somebody threw much more money at us.

One of our other challenges, and this specifically affects the central library, we're seeing an increased need for library space.

This is, of course, due to collections.

We want to have ad diversity and add all the titles that our patrons want.

We've seen increased visits for the last several years.

And people are seeing the library as a place of community and seeing coming from meetings, conferences, and things like that.

We also have gotten requests from teenage patrons and teenage patron caregivers to have their own space.

We conducted a space audit with an outside party.

that confirmed some of these needs and gave us some suggestions for additional and repurposed spaces.

So that's something that we will be acting on those suggestions in the next coming years.

Speaking of upcoming, the next big thing that we have is our big read in 2025.

We will be reading the book as a community homegoing by Yajiasi.

It actually starts on Friday, February 28th.

We're having a kickoff event.

at the Explore More Discovery Museum, and we welcome all of the public and all of council to come and enjoy with us.

Read together, eat together, listen to some music.

The only downside is you might have to listen to me talk for a little bit.

Along with this project there are art components and there will be a, this will mean we'll be putting a mural onto the wall of the library on the Bruce Street side of the library and we'll be doing a community story quilt as an art project where everyone will be able to contribute and that will be featured at the Quilt Museum later on after it shows at our Rocktown Author Festival.

For a full list of events for the Big Read

which was all paid for by the National Endowment for the Arts along with some sponsors in town.

You can visit our website at the link below there.

I serve on the board so I hear all the good things that are happening with the library on a quarterly basis but if anybody has any questions for Zach?

I'm going to join you on the 28th for the big read.

I've read Home Going.

It is.

Just kind of going back to your presentation a little bit.

One, I'm excited to see the increases that you've had in registrations and use.

For registrations, it's actually increased pretty much across the board, all three localities, City of Harrisonburg, Rockingham County and Page County.

I think I would attribute it to one, us becoming a fine free library several years ago, welcoming people back to the library.

I think we've done a better job of communicating and reaching out to communities that they can get library cards.

That's not just for, you know, if you have small children, you get a library card.

But for college students and folks in their, folks in their 20s and 30s that are young people that are in the city, for example, I think that's, that's an area that we've seen some growth.

And then working with our organizations that welcome new families to the community as well.

I guess the other, you know, and, you know, libraries will never grow out of fashion.

You know, it's their, I think,

Life is becoming a more important part of our community and one, I think, because of the bead grants that might be coming down and I know these are the broadband dollars that are coming down to help do technology training and internet access for folks trying to reach folks who aren't there yet, but if they're not, they're really not part of the economy.

So I guess you guys are potentially going to hopefully

have a big part in training and helping get folks onto the internet who, you know, folks who, I guess at the end of the day, quite aren't there yet, right?

No, we are working with some of our partner non-profit organizations on some of those grant opportunities and trying to expand digital literacy, both in the realm of just the basics to keep people, you know, in economic development

getting people involved in the 21st century economy.

It's a lot of money and it'll be really important for our community in particular to get folks who

Hi, I'd like to share something about the library.

When I came in 2008 as a refugee, I couldn't have a place to access internet or spend my time.

so the library was my refuge actually and to access internet, to apply for things because we couldn't have that time like for the first six months and there was like only one computer and I have a specific time because somebody is should use it and so I have to wait and

I am looking to be

that main source in the city and I wonder here if I found something in other library in other state like they have a room for media like for example if I want to interview a person and I don't need to buy all these stuff or rent it so they have a room designated for that purpose like for broadcasting or things like you know kids now they are willing or they are now what is

They are in need like to YouTube it or whatever, podcasting it.

Thank you very much for that story.

First of all, Nasser, I will add that in our space audit that was a suggestion that was made.

Sometimes that's called a media lab.

Sometimes it's called a memory lab depending on, you know, but it allows people to sort of reformat their VHS or their

DVDs and to digitize that stuff, or do podcasting and things like that.

So yes, that is something that we are, that I would say that our Space Audit has recommended that we explore.

Yeah, I think the space is what, and that's one reason why we got the Space Audit because I found out that Zach really doesn't even have a

Thank you.

This is what we asked for.

We got another organization coming up that we asked for our organizations to come and tell us what they're doing.

Thank you for coming in and now

That's right.

And everybody try to make out on Friday if you can.

Thank you.

Is that Luke?

We can barely recognize you, Luke.

Good evening.

Good evening, Madam Mayor Reed, Vice Mayor Fleming, other distinguished council members, the community, city officials.

We are thankful for the opportunity to be here to talk about what we are doing in the city of Harrisonburg, particularly when it comes to substance use prevention.

My name is Dr. Pete Tondie Hicks Harper, and I am president and CEO of the Youth Public Culture Institute.

and also the project director for Faces for Change and Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act coalitions operating here in Harrisonburg.

I'll be presenting along with Mr. Luke Morgan.

Some of you know him.

And he is the executive assistant for the Youth Public Culture Institute as well as the project coordinator for Faces for Change.

And we are lucky to have our JMU intern here.

Daniel Carlos, and we're excited about the work that he's doing along with us.

Who are we?

The Youth Public Culture Institute is a 501C3 nonprofit organization with locations in Maryland as well as in Virginia.

And our mission is to motivate young people to choose healthy lifestyles and have them to be intrinsically excited about achieving

academically.

Faces for Change is our signature program, as I said, located here in Harrisonburg.

And Faces for Change, we have a focus on prevention and intervention when it comes to substance use.

We focus on the non-medical use of prescription drugs, marijuana, methamphetamines, fentanyl,

and we also focus in on lean.

Now lean is a mixture of the opioid codeine mixed with soda and candy and it's being used here in Harrisonburg among young people.

We didn't start off focusing in on this but we decided that it was important to focus in on it because a couple years ago a young senior

from Harrisonburg High School, fatally overdosed on lean.

And his mother actually has been a part of our coalition, actually presented at our most recent, not youth summit, but our most recent town hall meeting.

Conversations are youth matter.

And she actually was on a panel.

And she talked about the situation when it comes to lean and other substances.

The theoretical framework, if I may, or the core components of how we implement these prevention and intervention strategies is all related to youth public culture with the emphasis on hip-hop culture.

We use the government sanction, the federal government sanctioned evidence-based program, hip-hop to prevent substance use and HIV.

as the bottom line when it comes to how we focus on appeal and how we make sure what we are presenting and using in our messaging when it comes to young people is there.

Hip Hop to Prevent is actually being used in 15 states throughout the country.

Not Virginia yet, but it's actually being used in 15 states throughout the country and we're really excited about

the evidence that has come about as a result of implementing hip hop to prevent.

We've seen increases in terms of perception of risk, knowledge, behavior change, and attitude change.

So that's the bottom line in terms of who we are.

Faces for change, our mission is right there to mobilize public and private resources to prevent youth substance use and reduce mental illness in the Harrisonburg

Rockingham County communities.

We know we value our young people.

Now you might say, okay, how do we fund it?

How do we get the money?

We are funded by two CDC grants.

One grant is $125,000 a year for a period of five years.

We are in our fifth year right now.

So we have to reapply for continuation next year.

And as long as you stay in compliance,

with what you're doing with the federal government.

It's usually not an easy process, but it usually happens.

We are also funded by you all.

So we're thankful to you all unquestionably.

We appreciate sincerely what you are providing to faces for change in the Youth Public Culture Institute.

It's necessary and it is needed.

Now $150,000, then $125,000, another CDC grant.

and we've been fortunate to receive $10,500 from the Harrisonburg City government.

Sounds like a lot of money.

I'm comparatively speaking, okay, depends on how you look at it, but we are still working hard.

Right now we are working on another federal grant to service the city of Harrisonburg when it comes to substance use prevention.

So it never stops.

Local grant funding and the Youth Public Culture Institute

also provides funding and receive funding by donations.

So with that, I'll let Luke take over and continue our presentation.

Thank you.

I'll start off by saying that Dr. Harper and I presented at a conference the other week and we went about 75 minutes, so I'm really going to drag this out to see if I can beat that time.

Welcome back, Luke.

So as Dr. Harper explained, FACIS for Change focuses on few substances, those being marijuana, non-micro use of prescription drugs, lean, meth, and then fentanyl.

And as she also mentioned, we serve to prevent youth substance use in Harrisonburg.

But what exactly is the extent of youth substance use in Harrisonburg?

FACIS for Change relies on both qualitative and quantitative data for measuring this, compiling data from a variety of sources.

And two of our primary sources are the JMU Youth Data Survey and data we collect from focus groups with local youth.

The JMU Youth Data Survey, or YDS, is a collaborative community effort led by JMU's Institute for Innovation in Health and Human Services.

In every two years, they coordinate the administration of the survey to approximately half of all 8th, 10th, and 12th grade students in Harrisonburg and Rockingham.

The most recent YDS released in 2023 showed that 13.6% of Harrisonburg and Rockingham County teens reported using illicit drugs in 2023

and 39.3% of these 12th graders reported it easy or fairly easy to get marijuana.

While these numbers may seem far too high, they're actually down slightly from 16.9% and 46.5% in 2021 respectively.

In January of this year, Faces for Change conduct a focus group with middle school and high school aged youth at the Boys and Girls Club, receive great insight from the youth and they provide some of the feedback here in these bubbles on the screen like their friends like to do marijuana.

Young people are using vapes a lot because they like the flavors or they're stressed out.

and then when they try to go to the bathroom they see someone vaping in their face.

It's always there and they can't really escape it.

So that's what we're hearing from youth in our data is kind of showing similar things from the Youth Data Survey.

And overall the data shows that marijuana, prescription stimulants, non-micro use or prescription drugs are all being used by youth in the Harrisonburg Rockham County.

Those are the top five elicit substances, the ones that we focus on.

Everything that we do is based on deep collaborations with partner agencies, and here on the screen you can see just a sampling of the ones that we work with, including community and governmental organizations, businesses, health care agencies, and nonprofits.

They're all committed to reducing substance use in the community.

These partners include Melina Health Care, the Public Schools, JMU, the Boys and Girls Club, and many others.

And representatives from these organizations consistently attend our meetings and show up to our events to volunteer and support our work.

And we're incredibly grateful and thankful for all that they do for us.

So what exactly is our work that they show up and help us with?

A lot of what we do centers around information distribution and raising awareness of the various substances and what can be done to prevent youth substance use.

We provide information to parents, community stakeholders, those working with youth as well as in the prevention field into youth directly through our partnership with the schools that you can see on the left.

There we are, tabling at the high school talking with some youth and passing on information.

We also have fact sheets like you see on the right that focus in on all of our different substances of focus and we share these with

Community members and gotten in place in local doctors' offices so people who attend those doctors' offices can see them in the waiting rooms and they go for their visits.

We also have developed videos that we share on social media and we coordinate with groups in the community like HPD for drug take-back days you can see at the top to help work with the CSB and the HPD to pass that information to those visiting to drop off their prescription drugs.

and the bottom picture here you can see the Our Youth Matter community conversation which we organized and hosted with the support of our partners.

This event featured community leaders such as the school superintendent, the chief of police and others who spoke with community member attendees about the issues of youth substance use prevention and positive youth engagement.

There's a picture on the next slide of all the panelists from this event as well as a couple youth summits that we've held in the past with

Lots of youth attendees where we work to engage the youth and develop their leadership skills and build up their self-image to help them stay away from drug use.

When we're not actively sharing information or hosting an event, our team is learning and developing our own skill sets and knowledge so we can better serve the community.

We've attended the Community Anti-Drug Coalition of America conference for the past five years, learning about a wide variety of topics from social media use to prevention, developing youth coalitions, engaging youth and how to have successful prevention efforts.

We help conduct community needs assessments, work with partner organizations such as the CSB or the Boys and Girls Club, to gauge youth perceptions, research prevention materials, and participate in local NARCAN trainings.

We also conduct meetings with members of the CDC to ensure that our evaluation methods and substance information are excellent and correct.

One result of our learning and development activities that our team is particularly proud of is our Harrisonburg, Virginia, Shenandoah Valley Methamphetamine Prevention and Intervention Toolkit.

This bundle consists of five components, including a brochure to the bundle, meth fact sheets in both English and Spanish, the toolkit, which is the main crux of the bundle, that dives deeply into a variety of topics surrounding meth and prevention.

We also have presentation slide deck and meth prevention video.

We'll have time and effort and qualitative and quantitative research went into this, and we couldn't have done it alone.

We worked closely with New Seasons Treatment Center and their director for the content in the toolkit.

When we completed the bundle, we marketed it heavily and tirelessly to community members, prevention specialists, and others in the community and beyond.

We had a sponsorship with Harrisonburg Radio Group through which they advertised the availability of this bundle through a radio campaign that aired on their many stations with a heavy rotation of PSAs for at least five times a day.

We also conducted radio interviews and the Director of Behavioral Health for the Commonwealth of Virginia featured this Harrisonburg Meth Bundle on the Virginia Prevention Program portal reaching over 40 CSBs throughout the state.

In addition to sharing the meth bundle statewide and letting people know about Harrisonburg's dedication to substance use prevention in that manner, we're working in other ways to spotlight Harrisonburg as a locality that cares about substance use prevention.

We recently were able to present at the CADCO National Forum which is the largest in the nation focusing on substance use prevention with over 4,000 members attending over the four conference days.

We spoke about our efforts in Harrisonburg and received tremendously positive feedback and we're also featured in CADCO's e-magazine for our work on this meth prevention bundle.

and that QR code.

If you want to look into the bundle, it'll take you there.

Additionally, we share some of our activities with Communities Talk, which posts prevention success stories on their website for organizations and others to see successful prevention efforts across the country.

We're proud of the Harrisonburg community's commitment to substance use prevention and ensuring youth live healthy lives, and we're always happy to share this with others at any chance that we get.

So what's next for us?

Now that we've shared with you what we've been working on and some of what we're doing now,

We have many plans, one of which is to continue our communications outreach through social media, our website, and other methods while receiving more direct feedback from those we're communicating with.

This will help us with our second goal, which is to continue and increase evaluation of impact in the community.

Improved evaluation will help us for applying for additional funds through grants in the future.

Third, we continue to implement the project funded by the city grant funds that we receive, and we're incredibly thankful as Dr. Harper said for these funds that we do receive.

and we continue to work over the next few months to ensure that we meet all the goals that we set we would for this funding.

We also will work to bring in other sources of outside funding, which we're already doing as this is a critical portion of our sustainability plan.

As we increase our use of evaluation and continue our use of data to tell the story of substance use prevention in Harrisonburg, we'll find that Harrisonburg is very competitive for outside funding.

Lastly, we'll continue to make a positive impact in support of drug-free environments in our friendly city.

Youth need drug-free environments and we all play a role in supporting these.

So that's what you can expect to see from us over the next few months or more, and we're so thankful we could be here tonight to share that with you and to share with you what we've been working on.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them now or reach out to us in the future.

Thank you, Luke.

I do have a couple questions.

Dr. Harper, I do believe that faces for change is, I'm probably going to say the

The only organization that focuses on substance abuse with youth here in Harrisonburg?

Prevention here in Harrisonburg.

Of course there's treatment like peer-to-peer, strength and peers and of course the CSB and so forth.

But Faces for Change were basically the foundation when it comes to prevention.

We believe that prevention is the key.

If we can prevent, we won't have to deal with treatment.

So we focus almost all of our efforts on prevention and intervention to a great extent because so many young people are indulging or curious about drugs, are using substances.

Is there a relationship?

Of course.

Oh, no question.

There's a relationship with the superintendent.

April Howard.

We actually did, we met with the superintendent's student advisory board and it was almost like a mini focus group.

We met with them for about an hour and we talked to them about what we're doing but more importantly we talked to them so that we could receive information, we triggered information from them so they told us what was happening in the bathrooms, what was happening around the school, you know, what is happening that nobody really talks about

or what was happening that parents and sometimes teachers are very much unaware of.

We talked about the influence of social media and the impact that social media is having on our young people when it comes to them being able to access substances.

We also talked about how students in the school system are actually distributing substances, whether they be pills,

and so forth.

They provided us with the wealth of information which we use as a part of our grant writing and we use to tell our messaging so that

Are you able to get your information inside of the schools?

Because I know you have two kids and you have all these.

We're allowed, yes, we're allowed to a great extent.

We like more, but we're allowed to a great extent.

When we are at resource, we set up resource tables.

alcohol and drug prevention week community take back day whenever there's we just had a meeting not too long ago with parents about vaping and so forth when we participate in these events we unquestionably have our fact sheets there our posters we have posters that utilize youth public culture for example we have a poster

that has, help me, if I forgot, that has Lizzo, okay, Lizzo that says you are special.

You know, we put our posters, we integrate what our young people and even our Latino artists.

We use all of that to put into posters, to put in our fact sheets, any type of messaging that's going to help a student say, hey,

Who's that?

Look, I can see that and get the message.

And I have one more.

Your two kids.

Can you tell us a little bit about, I know Luke kind of told us what's in them.

How many, how many two kids do you give out?

You've been here for a year.

How many do you actually give out to students?

We love to have more outreach in the schools.

The toolkit itself is a research-based document.

That's the toolkit.

So it's about 80 pages.

There's a lot of information, resources, data, risk involved, et cetera.

And then what we decided is that everybody's not going to take a look at this tool kit.

It's too much.

Who's going to read all that, right?

So we broke it down and that's how it became a bundle.

So now we have slides.

Slides that can be used in the classroom.

Slides that can be used not only in the classroom, but use serving organizations.

Slides that can be used at home with parents, with their children.

So the slides are targeted to young people and can be used with or without adult supervision.

and not only that, we have a video.

A video that can be used by the school nurse.

It can be used anywhere.

How long is the video?

It's about three minutes?

About three minutes.

The video is about three minutes and it gives you an up and close understanding of the steps of methamphetamines, particularly and what's involved if you delve into methamphetamines.

And then we have a brochure.

that speaks to what the whole bundle is about.

And that's available to anybody.

All of these things I'm talking about are available free, first of all, for download on our website.

So we encourage you to go to our website and check it out.

www.harrisonburgva.org.

Right?

Oh, it's right there.

Faces are changed.

Sorry.

you know you just deal with so much of this social media and all that right but please we love for you to take a look at what we have but all of this is downloadable and the state of Virginia is really taking a serious look at this meth bundle in a major kind of way so we're excited about the traction that is getting and of course you know that if anything that's on the worldwide web is available to the world and our social media

Connex have risen our outreach.

You know, we're all over social media.

We're all over thanks to Victoria Riddle, who is our graphics person.

So we want to recognize all the work that she does to make sure that we stay relevant and that we stay on top of what's going on in Harrisonburg and are able to educate the world literally about what's happening in our friendly city.

Thank you.

Yeah, well first we thank you for your initiative and it's very helpful in the city.

It fluctuates.

It fluctuates depending on what drug.

Marijuana is still the most widely used substance in the city.

There has, like you said, there's been a decrease last year.

It's been a decrease.

And then when it comes to substances like lean, there's not a lot of focus on it.

So there's not a lot of data on it.

So that's why qualitative research becomes really, really important because you can't get this kind of information.

And also you have to take into consideration

that oftentimes when young people participate in surveys, they give socially desirable responses, so you're not always getting.

Do you have data like why that thing?

No, we haven't really, except for our little bit of information that we got from qualitative research.

And actually the youth data survey talks about churches.

And some... And I think also what we see is that it's just such a multifaceted problem.

There's so many people working and so many factors at play that we really can't say we did that.

Of course, you are a reason.

Of course, we are one of the reasons of that.

And did you include like in your work, like...

like faith-based centers like to orient people or the parents themselves is that something in mind like besides the schools like for example churches places like people of parents like they know about these new names of drugs and how to deal with them how do they know that their kids are

And I think also if you can

like consider also having teaching something in public schools like as the mayor said about your collaboration with public schools if you consider something like orienting on the youth about their risks behind that I mean something that it could implement in their syllables for example and that's something that you can do it in the future that will be I mean

I'd just like to say we have an MOU with the public school system and we're working on our second MOU.

And right now we have a proposal on the table in the superintendent's office to actually do a spring event in the school.

Right now it's in the high school, a spring event where

We're bringing in folks, we're getting sponsorship, we're talking about the disinvolving substances and so forth.

And I just want to mention one other thing about the religious community, any support or anything that you could give us, because we've worked hard to really, really get the religious community involved, right?

Thank you so much.

Yeah, because I learned about lean through you.

I didn't know what that was, right?

That's right.

And it's, you know, it's something that our kids are doing as young as middle school.

And you know, middle school is sixth grade.

So, yeah, I learned that through faces for change.

Thank you.

Can I just invite you all to come to one of our coalition meetings?

We have a coalition meeting every month.

And it's usually on a Wednesday.

And it's from 6 to 7.

And we stop.

It's just one hour.

And if you can't make it to one of our co… And it's on Zoom.

If you can't make it to one of our coalition meetings, please feel free to send a representative.

I know the mayor has sent representatives so that they can get the full essence of... And if anybody wants to speak at our coalition meeting, we have great speakers, just know that you're invited.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for coming.

Thank you for giving us the information and telling us what you do.

This is what we want.

We want organizations to come and tell us what you're doing.

Good to see you.

Good to see you.

Thank you for coming out.

I hope you didn't miss class.

Thank you Dr. Harper.

Alright, we will go to item 7E.

Good evening, Council Members, Amy Snyder, Deputy City Manager, and I have Penny Naden joining me this evening, representing Kappa Pi.

I am here this evening to present a request from Kappa Pi, which is the International Arts Honor Society at JMU to install a mural inside the Navigation Center.

And at this point, so Kappa Pi is

Like I said, International Honor Society, they have made a request to us to install a lovely mural in the Navigation Center at no cost.

It would be entirely free, which we greatly appreciate.

And I'm going to turn it over to Penny to share more.

This is not the updated rendering.

Hi, thank you so much for letting me speak.

This design was curated with our other artists in our Art Honor Society.

We have over a hundred members and we've worked on murals before.

We previously did a

collaboration with the Mental Health Awareness Club at James Madison University and made a mural in what's called the living room right now.

So we wanted to expand and I'm also the communications assistant at Open Doors.

So I saw that it's a lovely space and I just thought having an extra mural would just brighten things up a little bit.

The idea is to place it in the women's sleeping quarters and hopefully if that

go swimmingly and gets approved, then we can always do more.

But it was inspired by the Shenandoah Mountains and keeping it a little bit calming, but also brightening up the space.

And we would have like a small team of under 10 artists, all students at James Madison University, doing the labor, providing the resources and the painting, and we would be coordinating with the executive director, Nate, to

kind of make a schedule that works for everybody, but we're also open to feedback if this is not the design that works for everybody.

Well, one, I appreciate the effort that you guys put forward to do this, in essence to do this pro bono for the center there.

I trust that Nate and the folks there can do a good job of vetting and determining what's the appropriate

More personal, a home, a little less clinical.

I just did a proclamation for Art Month, so I know.

It's perfect for all the Art Month.

No, thank you.

I mean, thank you for, you know, for doing it and wanting to do it and wanting to provide something nice and calming for our guests at the Navigation Center.

So it says men's dormitory.

It is women's dormitory and there's the location.

So city staff recommends approval.

This does have to be a vote of city council as it is art in a public space.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you.

I'll make a motion to

Second.

Any other discussion?

Council Member Dent.

Aye.

Vice Mayor Fleming.

Aye.

Aye.

Okay, Larry.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mary, City Council.

Larry.

Larry Props, Finance Director.

And some of you may recall last year this, we sort of used this as a little bit of a kickoff for budget.

We, our staff, is well in the middle of preparing, getting ready for a budget proposal here in about six weeks.

And so, same as what we did last year, I'm going to go over sort of the revenue outlook.

in the General Fund, and then Brian Shaw has a presentation on just the general economic outlook in the city.

So, it's good.

Yeah, okay.

OK, I'm going to do this at a very high level.

We're not going to get down into a lot of weeds here.

Same presentation that I had last year, same tables.

What you're going to see is basically two sets of three tables.

The first set is going to compare our current budget to projections for this year.

And then the second set is going to compare

are actual revenues from last year compared to projections.

So the first slide, this is a very high level, and I'll just go kind of walk through the table first.

Farthest left hand column, that's our major revenue categories.

Next column over is our current FY 2025 budget.

Next column over is what I'm projecting

for revenue in those categories for the year, and then the farther column to the right is the comparison of projected versus budget.

On these slides, I'm not going to go down through every single line, but I highlighted in red a few things to point out.

For property tax as the first line, we are running a little under $1.4 million ahead of budget.

I will go over that in more detail on the next slide.

The other two I want to point out, fines and forfeitures, speed camera money, and use of money and property again, that's interest that we're earning on our investments.

Just when I first saw this, I was a little confused because the items that you highlighted, which are to the positive, are in red.

So just for a future reference, maybe make them green, of course.

I initially looked at that thought, that's in red, but that's a positive number, so I got a little confused.

But I guess the use of money and property as well, I'm assuming that

So, yeah.

And we're starting to see that trail off now for a couple reasons.

But interest rates have decreased in the last six months.

And we're also spending down our arbor money.

OK.

Next slide is comparing the same numbers, but I'm giving a little bit more detail on property taxes.

Previous slide, the property tax is a little bit under $1.4 million total.

You can see mainly that's being made up of delinquent real estate and personal property tax collections this year.

City Treasurer and his staff have done a good job of keeping up with that.

It's always better when people pay in the year that the tax is issued.

Bill goes out, but we always want to be able to collect delinquent tax.

Those two delinquent taxes, there's no consistency a lot of times in those numbers.

Some years are up, some years are down, depending on how much we collect in the current year that taxes are billed.

top line real estate we're pretty much right on what we budgeted.

Next slide again is comparing the budget with projected again but this time we're getting into other local taxes and that's you can see along the left sales tax, meals tax, business license, lodging those are the four largest sales taxes running a little over half a million dollars ahead.

Millstacks 300,000 ahead.

Lodging we're a little bit behind.

Not much.

I'll just point out business license.

I don't have that highlighted.

Those were those payments are due March 1st.

So I really don't have anything yet.

Probably another four or five weeks before budget is presented.

That'll be that'll be firmed up.

We're running ahead pretty well.

It's interesting to see the lodging tax go down.

It wouldn't have been what I might have anticipated happening.

We do have some new facilities opening up in town.

They obviously did the research and determined this was a good place to build and open.

Well, I think what you'll see

When I show the slide, it compares it to actual, we're actually above on the head.

We're just behind on what I've projected.

The lodging tax.

Does it include Airbnb?

Yeah, there's some of that.

Yeah, they, maybe four or five years ago, Airbnb started having a lodging tax assessed on it.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing about the lodging tax for it to be under a little bit because, you know, you look at the mill tax, that's up.

So it's like, okay, so people come in here, they're hanging out, they're eating.

Okay, so we'll go to the second set.

And this is comparing, again, same layout.

This is comparing in the left-hand column.

The second left-hand column is the actual from last year.

And again, the 2025 ProjectICOM is the same numbers that were in the other tables.

Here you can see property taxes are running ahead six almost six point seven million dollars and that's of course from the Majority of that is from the tax real estate tax rate increase from this current year On four visits running had a million six and this is then use money and property again that then this is showing We're running behind and that's because of interest rates

Decreased, and also we're spending ARPA money.

And the general assessment is flattening out this year?

We're going to get some growth for next year and that's on, I can't remember, it's like 5% or something going into next year.

I think a little bit.

And what does it mean, the use of money?

What's one?

So the biggest piece of that is our interest that we're earning on our bank deposits.

Excuse me, is some large portion of that the the bonds that we have?

Okay.

That's any interest earnings that we have on our bonds is in a separate bucket with those projects.

And this is not, I'll just say, I mean, we earn more interest than what I'm showing here because we allocated across all of our funds.

All right, so water funds are in some, sewer funds are in some, so whatever we've earned for the month, we allocate it out, so.

All right.

Again, this is property taxes in a little bit more detail.

Just highlighting again, real estate on top, 6 million, that's from the

Well, it's from the tax rate increase plus we had some growth in assessments last year.

And you can see, I didn't highlight this, but you can see there delinquents promote personal property and real estate are up.

Last table, this is a little more detail on other local taxes.

So, the ones I'll highlight here, sales tax for running

about $400,000 above last year, that's a 2.2% increase.

Meals tax, we're running about $800,000 and that's about 4.2% increase over last year.

Before you go to your next slide, I want to go

back.

Can you can you explain the increase?

Because I know the cameras in there, right?

Okay.

So we're there's an increase from 2024 to 2025.

We're just catching.

observation of which line is this oh yeah I mean that's that's I mean remember last year we only had part year right really start seeing any collections until probably November okay all right so just to recap

As of through January, all major revenue sources are tracking to meet or exceed our budget estimates, so that's good.

We're seeing continued growth in sales and meals taxes.

However, they're starting to reflect normal historical growth.

In contrast to the last three years or so, we've seen some fairly significant jumps in sales and meals and lodging and business license that then translated into more

Bunch of revenue.

Decrease, interest rates and spend out of our funds have reduced interest earnings.

And again, just to be clear, we have been, other than about 600,000, we have been using those interest earnings for one time capital funding.

So, if all of a sudden,

Right?

I was going to say we aren't depending on it for operations.

Now for the growth in meals and now more normal, am I reading it right?

Yeah, and I thought about putting a graph in here, so that's okay, but I'm doing graphs anyway.

Yeah, it does up.

Well, some of you may have been during COVID, just saw this graph, and then we had a, how it's starting to do this, and it's starting to overtime, it's starting to get back to, I would say probably 2.2 in sales tax is probably

That's probably the historical growth.

4.2 is probably a little bit high from what we normally would see in years past pre-COVID.

The 4.2, I would just suggest that if you would look at a graph of this, it's still on a declining trend.

So it's not a 4.2 with an increasing trend.

I think that would maybe make sense considering inflation and just increased cost of meals and going out.

Last slide, just looking ahead a little bit.

continued growth in real estate assets values.

Initially, we're looking at a 5.9% increase in assets values for next year.

That translates out into about 3.4 million new revenue for our budget next year, and that's compared to 5.5 that we saw this year.

And then I had this bullet point on here last year.

We didn't act on this, but I did want to

keep it kind of front and center a little bit.

If you recall during COVID, we had a big spike in vehicle values and we reduced our tax rate.

We also got rid of the old vehicle decal, vehicle licensee.

Talking with the commissioner, she's preliminary seen some even further erosion of vehicle values.

We may need to look at that and bump back up our personal property tax rate to remain flat with revenues.

Before COVID we were at 3,050 cents, we're at 3,045 cents, so we're not back up yet to our pre-cap, pre-COVID, personal property tax rate.

I'd like to see our general fund in good shape, you know, and this is where we do our one-time capital projects, just things break, and things need to be fixed and repaired, and so I'm glad we keep up, you know, with a pretty healthy general fund to be able to do that.

I think some of the ways we funded that

And I think you've kept us very focused on that.

We knew that Columny was right.

I'm ready to hear the state of the economy.

Lady Mary Reed, member of the council.

Staff.

Brian Scholl, economic development director.

Pleasure to be here to see you.

I'm going to share a few graphs with you too.

A few statistics.

Try to give you an overview of where we stand on a few things.

Let's start with a few

Population numbers first.

Four years here, we've gained about 2,000 people.

There are 38 cities in Virginia.

We're the fifth fastest growing over that four year period.

Two of those five are very small communities under 14,000 people.

So it doesn't take a lot for those to grow.

Suffolk is the largest.

Winchester had large growth and then Harrisonburg.

So significant growth here.

Let's now look at city and county.

Oh, why don't you help me, Pat?

We're going to look next at the MSA, which is Metropolitan Statistical Area.

Okay, that's for us.

That's the city and county combined.

Is it the entire county or really just the entire county?

That's that's the district that you use for this for the MSA Metropolitan Statistical Area.

That shows we've added 5,300 people during that four year period.

That's the third fastest metro area in the state.

Winchester was first, Richmond second, we were third.

Third out of 11 MSAs.

So we've really had significant growth.

And just look in this last year alone, just this last year in the city alone we added 900 people.

So we're on a roll right now.

And that's going to be very important to us when it comes to the workforce.

That's why we have this employment trend going up here because we have more people moving in here.

We have a lot of job openings right now in the city.

We need people here to fill those jobs.

So you see that significant growth there.

We've added, what, 800 people there in two years in the available workforce and we've added 760 jobs over the last two years in the city.

It's going to be important that we keep the population growing so we can fill these jobs.

Okay, next one.

Here's the unemployment rate.

Pierce made that graph look a little more dramatic than it is, but 3, 3, 3, 5, 3, 3.

But we did, we're a little bit lower than the state average and about a point below the national average.

National average is running at about 4.1.

At the end of 2024, we're 3.3.

That's still considered full growth, right?

Full employment.

You're basically, that's where you're going through your churn of people switching jobs.

When you're getting that low, you're not facing a lot of unemployment challenges.

We need people in here to fill these jobs.

Okay, next.

Business licenses.

Saw a little bit of a drop there last year, but it came right back up in 2024-57.

It's close to our historic average over the last four or five years.

But what I'm seeing with the people in the interest in our launch entrepreneurship program, what I'm seeing in people going to the Small Business Development Center meeting with counselors with their new business ideas, I think that trend is going to continue to go up a little higher.

I think we're going to see more and more business license growth.

Okay.

Let's switch to building permits.

Pretty good, pretty good numbers there.

We did see a little bit of a drop last year, but let's also remember interest rates were still pretty high through

The next slide is what I really want to show you.

Look at the jump in value of those projects, even though the number of permits dropped.

The value dropped dramatically.

And that's not like adding one school.

That's a bunch of small projects.

The largest of those was only a 7.8 million.

So a lot of times you'll see these big jumps when you add a new high school or new middle school.

But the largest single project here was 7.8 million.

So we just had a whole lot of smaller projects added in 2024.

The new fire station is in there.

The self-storage

It's growing up across from Thomas Harrison Middle School.

That was the largest 7.8 million dollar project.

Two new sheets rebuilt.

Yes, this does have.

And Splash Garden is in here too.

Yeah.

Now I want to bring you up to speed on some of the projects, larger projects that make big impacts in this area.

Farmer Focus, this is their newer facility up on Acorn Drive.

That's a 78,000 square foot building, $65 million investment.

I want you all to realize that this company wasn't even here 11 years ago.

A brand new company.

They are now our largest private sector employer in the city.

1,350 employees in 11 years.

They're the fastest growing organic chicken company in the U.S.

They're in 4,000 stores right now.

So they're on a very strong acceleration growth and continue to grow dramatically.

They're looking to expand, right?

They're looking to expand, yeah.

Next slide.

Kerry Foods.

Just beside them there, just to the west.

Used to be Ariake.

Kerry bought that facility about six years ago.

They're the largest organic soup and stock manufacturer in North America in this facility in Harrisonburg.

Caryone's 178 facilities worldwide and this is the largest broth facility here.

They added 48 jobs last year.

Added a new boiler facility about $12 million.

Very much on a growth trajectory here.

Food and beverage.

Food and beverage is just very strong through the whole valley.

And then I needed to show you LALF, our Icelandic bike company, and I think Mr. Banks, from bringing this photo, he reminded me of this great photo we have of the box here, so I inserted this one today.

Design tested and engineered in Iceland from LALF's US headquarters in the Shenandoah Valley, Harrisonburg, Virginia.

That's on every bike that goes everywhere around the world.

Every bike that's assembled anywhere that's shipped anywhere in the world comes out of Harrisonburg, Virginia.

So it's a cool company doing very well.

They're taking up almost the entire ground floor of the DNR building right now.

The new restaurant's going in over there, but the bike company takes everything behind there.

Assembly, distribution, and their showroom all in that facility.

They're up to 14 employees now, looking to add two to four more this year.

So great old company, doing great.

Next slide, Pat.

And then I want to thank you for putting money in this year's budget for us to help our business community.

You all said you wanted us to specifically set aside money to help us help the business community.

So we came up with this entrepreneurship development initiative and we've kicked it off.

We have 29 businesses enrolled.

These businesses are all somewhere between $5,000 and $125,000 in revenue.

That was our criteria.

We selected 29 of those who applied.

We are pairing each of them up with a specialist coach.

We have a company that we hired called Equal.

They're based in Dallas and we picked them because they have a wonderful bench of specialists all across the country.

We're having these meetings by Zoom so you can have your people anywhere, right?

So we might have a marketing specialist in Seattle.

We could have a finance expert in Chicago.

They're assigned by this company based on the needs of that company.

so we're at that point right now where they're being assigned to their mentors coming up with a game plan of how that we can help them grow their business to the next level that's the goal we want to make them make that leap to the next level and grow and grow and grow and hopefully stay here in Harrisonburg to keep adding jobs and revenue right so over the next three or four months they'll be working with those coaches checking off the criteria that they came up with and once they

meet all their goals, they're eligible for a $2,500 grant to help them buy that piece of equipment they need to take them to that next level.

So we're really excited about this program.

It's off to a great start and thank you for helping us make it get off the ground and all this will be wrapped up by the end of June so I look forward to giving you all the updates on that and keep you posted on how we're coming with that one.

30 was the goal and we just had 29 so far and we'll have that 30th before it's over.

And across all different sectors, retail, food, consultants, a little bit of everything.

Well, we're open for business.

We're open for business.

I really appreciate

The efforts to develop entrepreneurs, small business folks here.

This is where we can get the really valuable growth in our workforce here.

One of the things that we really need is to increase wages in the city.

We need to put pressure on our largest places to increase wages.

This is one way that can happen.

Start businesses work in those small businesses.

So I think this is really probably the most valuable tool we have.

I know, you know, these 29 or 30 places may not compare to our largest employers yet.

As we expand this, this is really, I think, going to be our most valuable income generating asset for our residents to get these opportunities here.

I want to say I met Mr. Scholl about these ideas for new businesses and he's very eager to explore more, if any, to increase our new business owners.

I hope looking to work with you.

I was interested to hear that farmer focus the way you characterize it, the largest private sector employer.

J.A.M.U.

Well, I think, you know, we are an attractive area for folks to come set up shop.

This city is business friendly.

I know there's folks who will have their opinions one way or another, but the city is a business friendly place.

You know, I think they look at the potential workforce we have here, our schools, universities, as what they're looking for when they're trying to grow their staff.

Water.

Out of curiosity, are you tracking remote work in any ways?

Hard to track, but we certainly are working on that and we're doing some remote worker attraction efforts, some more marketing efforts on that line, trying to get more people to here.

Kerry purchased Ariaki in 2018 and Ariaki's been here 30 years.

All right, great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

You have before you a consideration of an encroachment of a license agreement for 77 East Market Street.

And council addresses these matters occasionally when someone wants to have a sign or an awning.

I think you've approved a fire escape and maybe an ATM machine that sticks out to the sidewalk.

But when someone, when a private business downtown wants to put up something that encroaches over into the airspace over the sidewalk,

They need to get an encroachment license agreement from the city, and that's what you have here.

Again, if you see the pictures, it's for a business with simplicity.

Council Member Robinson, Vice Mayor Fleming, Mayor Reed

Larry for the next three items.

Larry.

I won't introduce myself again.

So we've got a couple of supplementals here tonight and one reallocation.

The first supplemental

is a request on behalf of Harrisonburg City Public Schools for a supplemental in the amount of $375,000 and these are funds that they have received in local state and federal grants that they've been rewarded since the fiscal year began.

Second.

Any discussion?

Council Member Alsaadun.

Aye.

Council Member Dent.

Aye.

Council Member Robinson.

Aye.

And there's four different revenue sources that we've brought in this year.

The first is $50,000 for the Parks and Rec for this one.

For a $80 donation, $20,000 for Centaire Grant for the Navigation Center, $29,000 for a reimbursement of furniture that was purchased at the Navigation Center.

Thank you.

Any questions?

Madam Mayor, I move that we approve supplemental appropriation in the amount of 188,485 cents as presented by staff.

Second.

Council Member Alsaadun.

Hi.

Council Member Dent.

Hi.

Council Member Robinson.

Hi.

Vice Mayor Fleming.

Hi.

Any questions?

So this is the answer to what I was asking before, that the general fund thing, the use of money is, this is separate because it's particular to the high school, right?

Okay, got it.

Yeah, and the water project as well.

Madam Mayor, I move that we approve the supplemental appropriation in the amount of, what was it again?

We ended up with about $800,000 more in the street part of Rocktown High School construction.

And you said that this was, we came in under.

Or just for the street part of Rocktown High School.

Yeah, it has to be within the same bond issue.

So the only thing we have left is

So that one big bond had both the high school and the water project.

I move that we approve the reallocation of series 2021 bond proceeds as presented by staff.

Second.

Seeing none in person.

May I read?

Thank you.

We'll close public comments.

Well, a couple of things.

So yeah, it's been a couple of weeks since we've been here.

So, you know, we all went.

We're numbers went to Richmond in January 30th for the Virginia Municipal League Government Lobby Day and also Virginia first cities was part of that.

So I appreciated everyone being there and

We're pushing our General Assembly and our members on some of the things we want to get funded here in Harrisonburg.

So I think we made some progress on some housing funds possibly that they can come down here.

But I think we'll see what the General Assembly ends up doing with the budget.

Let's see.

A meeting with early February, with some city staff, some folks from the JMU, from the student affairs group there, and Clemson University, looking at kind of town-gallon relationships there in Clemson, which is where the International Town-Gallon Association was started, is known as one of the kind of the premier town-gallon relationship cities in the country.

So we had a good meeting with them, the staff and with JMU to talk about some things that we might be looking to do here with JMU as it relates to town-gown relationships and student-community relations.

We had a stormwater advisory committee meeting in early February.

Some of the stuff that's happening there.

So we have our HCAP program, which is our conservation assistance program in the city, which is matching grants are really almost for most of these kind of full funding to support tree plantings.

Some of this is impervious

surface removal that folks can apply for grants, you know, generally up to about $10,000.

We have some larger grant projects, but we haven't seen a whole bunch of those.

But we've seen a pretty good increase in the folks who are applying to get some tree plantings done on their property and to get some of the impervious surface removal done on their properties.

So I think let's just look for the numbers I add here.

So in 2023, we had eight projects approved.

In 24, we had 25 projects approved.

And again, these are funds that folks can apply for their property that really relate to storm water as well as canopy coverage.

And so we're seeing an increase

In this year to date, we've had 16 approved already through the first month and a half.

So we're seeing a pretty significant increase in that.

So kudos to the staff for going out and getting folks alerted to that.

Councilman Alsaadun and I were at JMU for a school of business conference, a leading change conference, which was good.

It was the School of Business folks presenting their dissertation ideas.

There were a number of them related to non-profit management, which was interesting to see the School of Business there.

Went to the High School Musical, which is fantastic.

And then something else I want to potentially bring up for us.

You know, I think all of us have seen increased concerns around federal funding.

I don't know if they're called freezes or cuts.

I think we don't know exactly what those are, but we've seen impacts in Harrisonburg already.

We've seen jobs that have been lost.

We've seen federal dollars that are either on hold or potentially folks anticipating they may not get access to those.

The General Assembly set up there was called the Emergency Committee on the Impacts of Federal Workforce and Funding Reductions.

So they actually had their first meeting, I believe, two days ago on the 22nd.

It's a 12-member committee.

Delegate Wilt is one of the members of that committee.

So Tony Wilt is one of the 12 folks on that committee.

They have a goal of issuing a report

on the impacts by December 15, 2025, which will be after this funding cycle and well into our next funding cycle, actually.

So the impacts will have already been felt if there are things there.

They also have, I guess, provision where they can, in essence, move into action.

if there are significant cuts to funding.

So the General Assembly will reconvene if they need to at some point for that.

So it's good to see that's there.

About a third of state funding is through the federal government.

About $24 billion is there.

So if there are cuts, we certainly understand that

There are many contracts and jobs in the Defense Department in particular that we're potentially losing.

So what I might suggest is in the city, I don't think we have a full understanding of what's going to happen here, but our schools, for example, are probably thinking between nine and ten million dollars they get through the federal government.

Probably a little more than half of that is for the nutrition program, but some other really key

Funding for the schools, Title I, which is for districts like ours that could be struggling.

Well, I think we need to be really, you know, concerned about this when we're hearing.

It's hard to know what's real and what's not.

I think IDEA dollars, special ed dollars, I think both those are probably

3 million dollars between Title I and IDEA funds.

And we are fairly required, as we should be, to educate every kid.

But if those dollars go at risk, what happens?

You would hope that those dollars won't go at risk.

You would hope that there's an idea that that's not going to happen, but it's hard to know.

Right now what that is.

And we have other dollars that go to our language or LEP program there.

I know that the schools are, but not only the schools, I mean, we all looking at our federal dollars, right?

Because our organizations are, I mean, I was just, we were just talking about it in our briefing.

I mean,

out of school, we're looking at our federal dollars.

We have to look at our federal dollars, our transportation's in jeopardy.

Right, so we have a lot of transportation dollars that are there.

That impacts our busing, that'll impact JMU and JMU students.

We have a lot of stormwater.

Stormwater dollars that are potentially coming down, so a large bit of that.

So what I want to suggest is that the city manager reach out to Dr. Richards and then we might consider a joint session with Delegate Wilt here to talk about the dollars at risk.

If he's going to be in a fact finding mode, I think this committee is going to be doing that.

Not suggesting what he is going to do, but I think, you know, as the representative, as our federal representative, with these dollars, you know, maybe at risk, in discussion with our representative in the General Assembly who is on this committee to talk specifically about

these dollars.

I would hope that we could get all of those representatives here when our local representatives could maybe convene and talk about these dollars at risk.

So, Andy, maybe if that's a discussion, and I don't know what the schools are or not planning around that, but it would be worth a discussion to see if maybe we can kind of combine forces here.

You know, a December 15th report

on the impacts of the dollar, you know, seems a long way off.

You know, I guess there's a lot that they have, you know, 133 localities to get to and talk to.

But, you know, if there's going to be impacts, we're going to feel it pretty quickly, it seems like.

And we are, right?

Well, so like I said, we've already, I mean, even through the nonprofits would have a school time.

I mean,

Just to note a few, this committee met

two days ago and one of the reports there was from the Weldon Cooper Center and Dr. Scorzioni was presented to them about the employment impact that's going to be happening, you know, 400 or $500,000, 500,000 jobs potentially that are impacted in some way.

So, but you know, if we can jump on this as early as possible to have these conversations, I think it'd be helpful and then get our

Both our state and federal reps responsive to us here to be helpful.

I mean, I'm not the only one that knows he ain't talking to nobody.

He said it.

That's right.

So that's why they showing up at his office in the next week.

Well, you said a lot.

A lot that impacts all of us.

I know those of us that are in the non-profit world, we've been holding our breath for weeks, never really knowing for sure what's coming down the pipeline, but the sad part about it is we're all going to be affected in some way, somehow, through a family member that somehow is affected through a job cut, or a student who loses after school time because there is no one there to

No longer has a job because there was money missing.

So unfortunately it's coming.

I was going to talk about the Town and Gown with Clemson that we all met at.

I think that that was very forthcoming.

I think it was really good to sit down and hear how a town similar to ours and makeup of college students handled some of the very complaints or issues that have come about for us with JMU.

I look forward to having many more of those discussions because it seems like I learned a lot.

We just finished our community connectors last engagement event, the visioning, and I wanted to say or give a shout out to the department heads because I've been to many engagement activities over the years and sometimes it seems like

Everyone's throwing out ideas or wishes and wants of what they want to have done and then we end up with these long lists of things that we know on this side can't be done in a snap of a finger but this was different because we had knowledgeable department heads there talking to community members when they would say and I'm just using this because it's off the top of my head

We want to sidewalk tomorrow or something like that.

Really explaining to folks why that isn't possible so easily and what it takes.

A lot of just regular old community members who aren't involved in what we do don't quite understand how do you get from wanting something to actually make it happen.

So I was very proud to be a part of that and proud of our department heads and our

our city folks here who you know were taking care of it all and allowing Miss Thomas and myself to actually be a part of the community side of things.

I think the community connectors program has been a great learning experience for all of us involved and I think that people are believing that we do in fact want to make a difference here and

We just finished up the last surveys coming in, and we've had over a hundred surveys completed, which I think is just marvelous.

People are talking about it, asking about it, and that's good.

And we all have really put everything into just getting signs out.

We've partnered with Harrisonburg Redevelopment and Housing Authority.

They've been helpful in putting signs out.

talking to people, knocking on doors, putting out door hangers.

I mean, you name it, we've done it.

And I feel like it's been a successful event.

So I'm very interested in hearing about the plan that is formulated from all of the engagement that's happened over the last year or so.

Let's see.

We're having on March the 8th coming up for the International

Women's March Planning Commission on the 8th, the same day as our retreat is the International Women's Day March.

And it's going to start here at 10 o'clock.

We'll march up.

Well, I won't.

But they'll march up to Court Square.

We'll have a hard list of speakers.

And then the following week, we'll have our first annual gala on the 15th.

And because of all of the issues that we've talked about with funding,

We've decided that we would take the proceeds and we will try to pick three organizations locally here in town who've done some stuff to kind of help people that are furloughed or who don't know what it is that's just been done to them but know they need help to try to bless those organizations so that they can help some of the folks we have living in the city.

Black History Month programs have been excellent this month.

I am worn out from all this happening.

We partnered with Harrisonburg Parks and Recreation Department to put on African American history through the arts.

Tomorrow we have our JMU City Liaison Meeting and so I'm looking forward to that and that's just about it What I'm doing I'll tell you in a second I am registering for the CSPDC housing webinar tomorrow at 11 a.m.

Virtual

anybody can do that go to CSPDC.org and you'll see the presentation about the webinar because to backtrack to what I've been doing we had the CSPDC online meeting February 3rd where they presented the regional housing study that includes all of the Central Shenandoah Planning District Commission that's what it stands for that's Harrisonburg Rockingham, Stanton Augusta Waynesboro plus

Bath, Highland and Rockbridge counties including Lexington and all the various towns and cities in those counties.

So I also have put in a request to have a presentation here to city council so we'll see when that can work out on that housing study.

So the question is what does that tell us that we didn't know already from our own housing study?

Well for one thing they delved into the issues of

accessory dwelling units and short-term rentals that we didn't really cover in hours before.

And granted, it's very different in all those different localities, but I'd like to hear some more specifics.

Now, I really appreciate your expounding on the uncertainties of federal funding.

One of the CSPD staffers, for instance, said, this is the first time ever that they've had no idea what's going to happen with the funding because

C.S.P.D.C.

gets huge amounts of money, like $55 million to spread around.

I remember them saying once.

So who knows what will actually come through.

And likewise, I went to the, at the Planning Commission February 19th, we had the presentation of the C.I.P., the Capital Improvement Program

and I raised the question to Adam like how do we know what funding is coming and what do we do?

He said he really couldn't answer that.

So the line for other funding might in some ways be at risk in some of the projects so it may just boil down to which projects do we get funded for.

We don't know yet.

The HRMPO happened February 20th and I'd like to also announce a meeting March 6th at 4 p.m.

at Stone Spring Elementary is the review of the Port Road, Peach, and Neff Avenue local area study where they're looking at the traffic mitigation that may be needed with the growth, especially with all the developments that have been approved or proposed in that area.

So again, that's March 6th, 4 p.m.

What day of the week is that?

It's Thursday, I think it is.

March 6 at 4 at Stone Spring, so show up if you want to.

What else?

Tomorrow, Thursday, interestingly enough, I've got both the EENR call and, uh, wouldn't you know it, a... Am I looking at the right thing?

Yes, uh, Representative Klein is having an office hour in Waynesboro, how convenient.

that's at 1130 at the Waynesboro Public Library.

So I have to think of which hat I'm wearing, my citizen hat in which I would give him a piece of my mind versus being on council, what you're talking about a more collaborative kind of meeting with Wilton and the schools where we could hash out solutions.

Come to that if you'd like, as you say, he's not talking to anybody directly.

He's sending staff.

You know, I should have got him when he was at EMU.

He was actually at a class and I was there.

I should have got him.

That was way before.

in the near future.

No, oh, just to remind us, we're not gonna be here for the next council meeting, March 11th.

We have to talk about that.

Okay, you can do that.

All right.

For the NLC.

All right.

Let's try to be brief.

The first thing that we went to the meeting that Vice Mayor talked about it.

And we also, that was in every month.

and we also did advocacy for our city and we did a great with the other council members and I decided to learn more about how the city is doing with housing, affordable housing and the new business owners so I met with the city staff and I learned a lot

and they were very helpful in orienting me on things and they showed a great interest in helping me as well.

So I went and I met with the Harrisonburg Chamber of Commerce Chris Quinn and Rebecca Cooler and they explained how the

they work and how they are helping also the business owners, small businesses and they show the great interest also in helping in any means for the new business owners and also I talked about, I went also on a, met the Housing Authority of Harrisonburg

and also we talked about housing, affordable housing and how we can support it and I learned a lot about their project, Bluestone and things that the city was great in working with them and how we can also do more.

And finally in February 2nd, we had the meeting with the CSPC

The most important part of this, there are a lot of things, but their study is the webinar for tomorrow.

So really, if you are interested, you can attend.

It is actually not only for Harrisonburg for the region, but what we are interested is our city as well.

So that's all.

Thank you.

For me, I'll make it short.

Black History Month was busy for me as well, did a lot of speaking engagements.

Schools had a very nice program in Luray.

I guess me and Esther Nizer, there were six of us, but Esther represented the county, I represented the city.

It was a great event.

Also, on the road, celebrated 10 years on Saturdays.

We had a big celebration.

I can't believe it's been 10 years for us.

We're also going to be expanding to another location if the federal funding comes down to Pipeline.

So we're in Harrisonburg, both middle schools, both high schools.

Williamsboro Middle School, High School, and then we have one more location that we will announce, but make sure the money's there.

I leave for Harlem in the morning on a train.

That ain't driving.

That would be the NLC

partnership with the Julius Wilson Institute and Harlem Children's Zone.

So we'll be there for three days talking about it's 50 Mayors throughout the nation.

We're talking about executive orders that has to do with education.

from K-12 and Higher Ed, talking about after-school programs, programs that serve our underserved neighborhoods, see what kind of work they're doing in New York, see what some strategies we can bring back here.

So I'll be there until Friday.

And I typically don't do, I'm very careful for my councilwoman that I was talking about.

You know, we have a fine line that we have to walk when it comes to, you know, our voices as members of council, but then how we feel.

And so I will be participating in the, I guess it's over.

Walkout Event, March 5th, JMU Education Department, 1130 in front of Amora Hall.

The students are advocating for education and federal funding.

So I'll be sharing some words there.

I agree with you, you know, I mean,

who was on radio today and we were talking about, we were asked about the funding piece, you know.

Nobody knows.

Nobody knows what's going to happen.

Nobody knows what's going to be done.

We just need to be prepared.

So I know that as a city, we come together.

I said this on the radio.

This is when we need to come together, because this is going to hurt a lot of people if we lose funding.

It's going to hurt our city, it's going to hurt our families.

You know, we talk about the schools and we talk about, you know, the non-profits, but we have a lot of dollars to come to us too.

Our biggest funding is our transportation.

So it's going to hurt us.

And so we need to come together.

We need to talk to our representatives.

And that's Mr. Klein and his staff and Tony Wilt, over Chained.

That's what we need to do.

We have two senators that are fighting for us in D.C.

right now.

And that is Kane and Warner.

They are fighting for Virginia.

But we have to use our voices because this could be very dangerous for our city.

So that's all I have.

I know we have a closed session that we need to get into.

Yes, I'm going, I'm going.

So as Councilwoman Dent was starting to say, we will not be here on March 11th.

The majority of us would be in DC at an NLC meeting conference.

And so we need to, as a council,

to vote to not have our council meeting on the 11th.

I'll move to, um, do you cancel it?

Second.

Any more discussion?

Thank you.

We will not have our March 11th meeting.

Well, this is just in time because this group will, I think, in March begin their work, and it's very specific work and short

Good work, but really important, so I'm glad we are able to fill this up.

I'll move that we nominate James Bird for the full vacancy and Gerald Bland for the alternate.

You better say Tate.

You have a second?

Second?

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

All right.

There you go, James D. Dany did that.

Mother did that.

11V Community Policy and Management Team.

Correct.

Yes ma'am.

This is the community policy and management team is the policy team that oversees the Children's Services Act work here in Harrisonburg and Rockingham and I have been the city representative for many years and transitioned that to part of Ms.

I'll move to give Ms.

I second.

Any discussion?

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Thank you.

Madam Mayor, I prepared a motion to move that the Harrisonburg City Council go into closed sessions authorized by the Virginia Freedom of Information Act.

Anybody want to second that?

That was the motion?

Second.

I'll second that.

Council Member Dent?

Aye.

Council Member Robinson?

Aye.

Vice Mayor Fleming?

Aye.

Aye.