City Council Meeting   7/22/2025

...all on what's been happening with the Community Connections Project since I was last here earlier in spring, winter.

We are at the end of our grant term with the work of America.

It's been two years.

We're technically finished with the grant, but the activities continue.

and the community.

Ah, mic.

Thank you.

Now everyone can hear me in the back.

Just a reminder for those who maybe it's your first time hearing about our project.

We are one of 15 cities that was chosen by Smart Growth America for the Community Connectors Program.

This is a grant that is through Smart Growth America and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

So our activities are 100% grant funded, which is fantastic.

And our project team is not only city staff, but also members of the community.

We have the Northeast Neighborhood Association, Shenandoah Valley Black Heritage Project, Harrisonburg Downtown Renaissance, and Harrisonburg Redevelopment and Housing Authority.

I don't yet have a picture of our full project team.

That's something we need to add very soon.

So we have been meeting pretty much every single Friday for the last two years hard at work on everything I'm going to talk to you about.

So the focus of our project is addressing the harms related to urban renewal in the city.

And you'll hear more about the history of urban renewal in Harrisonburg later on in the presentation.

And one of the pieces is focusing on divisive infrastructure that was created as a product of urban renewal and in particular Mason Street, which will tie into some of our activities you'll see later we've been working on.

So our program that we designed locally, and all of the 15 cities have taken different avenues, different shapes of what they've done, but what our team decided on were four things.

One, to create the city's first ever small area plan for our neighborhood, which is the Northeast Neighborhood Small Area Plan, to address community needs, engage the community on what they want the neighborhood to look like, while also understanding the harm and loss related to urban renewal.

Facilitated community dialogues to promote broader understanding, healing, reconciliation, create that space with a facilitator for individuals to share with us about what they experience with urban renewal and how that trauma still exists in their lives here in Harrisonburg and their memories of Harrisonburg Historical research and that team is here and will present after me the research they've done into urban renewal on our behalf and

and then also a community-led demonstration project to temporarily change Mason Street.

So our project team created this mission statement together that our focus is on rebuilding trust between the Northeast neighborhood residents and the city, repair past harms and reconnect what is today's Northeast neighborhood to the heart of the city, to the downtown.

And that we will prioritize in our work the needs, wants and desires of the neighborhood community members as we

consider and scope out future investments.

So that is really baked into all of our work.

We have had neighborhood pop-ups.

The pictures on the right are at First Baptist, which was our first location to engage people on our work.

We went to National Night Out and the African-American Festival.

The small area plan, CH Planning, is the firm that is doing that work.

They're going to be here in front of you all in August with the final plan.

We have had hundreds of neighborhood residents who participated either in person or by survey in the development of this small area plan.

It has been incredible engagement on behalf of the community.

The survey received 102 responses, which is a pretty significant percentage of the neighborhood responding to that survey.

So again, it'll be presented to you all at the end of August, and it focuses on transportation, sustainability, parks and recreation,

All types of quality of life features, public safety.

So really leaning into what does the neighborhood want to see in order for it to be the most vibrant for everyone who lives in it.

And just here are some pictures from our various input meetings.

As you can see, SIMS was packed by people in attendance and individuals were really engaged.

So we have had four different community input meetings, three of them at SIMS and one virtual.

We also, with the support of Smart Growth America and their technical assistance, had a Complete Streets Leadership Academy.

This academy is what produced what you have driven down on Mason Street, those temporary changes.

It was a process where city staff, our technical experts, our city engineer who's here tonight, got into the room with residents of the neighborhood and business owner.

a pastor in the neighborhood, members of the Bicycle Coalition, a really diverse group of people who learned about how do you design infrastructure that is for everyone, not only for cars, went through three trainings on how do you design that infrastructure, what are those principles, and then did a walk out of the corridor, held an open house that 20 community members attended, and then the pictures that you can see on the right are

What I love about the one is it is the community members with markers drawing out what they wanted to see on Mason Street.

That's that bottom right corner.

Nowhere in the picture do you see our our city engineers because they were like we're gonna step back and let the community design this.

And then it turned into with the support of outside engineers and our own engineers this concept sheet on the left which then turned into

The Complete Streets Demonstration Project.

So then our public works crews pictured here, as well as our transportation planning staff, they were enlisted to become people who painted sidewalks, went out and made the changes in early July.

And you can see what those changes look like on the right.

Looks like a construction zone because you have to use what you have on hand, which public works is cones and bollards and all those things.

This is temporary, so it went into place July 7th and it will come down the first week of August, so for a month period.

We have been collecting data, quantitative data, so we have data collected before on vehicle counts, vehicle speeds, number of pedestrians crossing at intersections, and then they this week are doing that same count as a comparison so they can see the impact of the changes on

vehicle counts, vehicle speeds, and pedestrians.

There are actually cameras up in the intersections to capture the number of pedestrians walking, and our folks will be watching the videos and counting how many people are walking through.

So there's a lot behind the scenes that our public work staff is doing.

And then in addition, we have a community survey that is currently out.

There's a link here.

There are signs all up and down the corridor.

We want the community to let us know how they're experiencing it.

Completed more than once so maybe if someone drives through the corridor They drive through it and they experience it one way and then they walk through it and they experience it a different way We want them to be able to go back and take the survey and say as a pedestrian I really liked blank as a driver.

I did or did not like this So it's open for multiple responses We want this to be a community driven project because Mason Street was created in a way that was the complete opposite of that

It was not based on informed information from the community.

It was top down.

So if we're going to change it, we want to hear from the community first.

It is temporary.

We've been asked the question of, is the city going to do this long term?

Do you have the money?

This is a test.

We don't have the money right now to do it long term.

We want to see what happens.

We want to see how the community experiences it.

If it goes well,

will look at avenues to make all our portions or even something completely different permanent.

And then I wanted to share this with you all if I can get it to play because I think it's awesome.

This is drone footage we have of the corridor and just how you can see the changes with the whole left side or west side now shut down.

Now I need to get out of it.

Okay.

We also had a block party.

So in order to invite people to experience North Mason Street in a completely different way, we had a block party on the, I think it was the 12th of July.

I think we had around 400 people was our guest who turned out in the heat of the day.

It was a very hot day.

All the rain thankfully missed us.

but it was an awesome event full of kids activities, a touch of truck, Parks and Recreation put basketball hoops and soccer goals out for people to use.

We had a lot of partner agencies that came like Sentara and the Department of Health and different congregations in the neighborhood OCP to have different activities and get information out to the community and then we used it as an opportunity as community connectors and you can see it on the bottom left to educate people about our project

Urban Renewal and why we were changing Mason Street and also how we were changing it, which is again a community informed approach.

It was super fun.

It's an awesome day.

Another component of our project, as I mentioned, is facilitated dialogue and the purpose to promote broader understanding and healing and reconciliation.

This has not yet started.

This is the, I would say, the transition component of our project.

that will begin, our anticipation is it will begin in August after we had an opportunity to change Mason Street, hold a block party, get the initial draft of the small area plan out into the hands of people and have the historians present.

So we wanted to do more of those tangible things and then sit down with community members who want to in a facilitated space.

Public Service, and a member of the Institute for Engagement and Negotiation.

So first I wanted to thank Amy and Councilwoman Monica Robinson for support and discussions through time leading up to this event and into our work beginning in August.

Just a minute about me.

I'm a 36-year retiree of Virginia State government, mostly in natural resources work.

I'm a certified mediator with the Virginia Supreme Court.

and just have done lots of facilitations and projects such as this.

And I wanted to just offer one insight, if I could, for all of you.

I, with Frank Dukes at the university, help with the reconciliation work with the city of Charlottesville.

And I look across the state of all the projects with communities that we've done, Hampton, Petersburg, Hopewell,

And now Harrisonburg, let me just offer this to you that you all should feel very, very good about the progress and the work that you've been doing and has been done so far.

Charlottesville was an 11-year project, which resulting in the Enslaved Laborers Memorial at UVA, if you've been to Charlottesville, and grounds there.

And by the way, I feel a little bit like an alien coming across the mountain to JMU territory.

I hope that's forgiven as we move forward.

So let me, and I just, to emphasize just this work, this healing, this trauma that has occurred through urban renewal work and community disintegration, if you will, takes a long time.

And some folks may or may not ever recover, some community members, but you've got to start and you've got to work at it, and it's not a short term.

situations so your work has made great progress so far.

So I encourage you to keep it up and we're glad to be a part of this project.

IEN, the Institute for Engagement and Negotiation itself is a 44 year old institution.

We were historically in the A school under urban planning and design.

Just last July we began a relationship with the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service.

So we do about 20 projects a year.

We have a staff of seven.

I am a consultant staff person, not a full time staff.

But I look forward to working with the city, the city staff to advance the thinking and the community involvement on this issue.

Welcome.

Thank you.

Glad to be here.

Appreciate it very much.

Thank you.

Our final component is historical research.

Our project team felt it was really important to expand and better consolidate the documentation of how urban renewal impacted community members here in Harrisonburg and business owners to try to fill out the story even more.

We know there's been some great work already done to document this history.

but to do it on our behalf of the team and to also create an inventory of all of the documents and where they're housed because that is a question we had of where do all these documents live.

So now we know, or at least we know as much as they could find.

So our historical research team is here and David and Stacey have joined us all the way from New York.

We're thrilled that they responded to our proposal

They come with extensive experience and research in urban renewal.

This is one of the focus areas of their research as historians.

So they come with that wealth of background and knowledge about urban renewal nationwide that they brought that context here locally.

and particularly helped in knowing exactly what documents we need to be looking for because there is a set list of what HUD required.

So with that, I want to, I guess I'll pause.

Does council have any questions about the Community Connectors Project and our work?

Okay, with that, I'm gonna invite Ann, David and Stacey up to share with you about some of their findings

It'll be a briefer version than the two hours that they gave last night.

Thank you Amy and it's an honor to present before you your honors.

The three of us have been researching and writing about urban renewal from a publicly engaged standpoint.

We view our research and scholarship as being focused on public engagement and not other academics.

So we've given tons of outreach and outreach presentations around New York State about how to conduct this research.

Before I get into the presentation, I want to say that one of our major goals is to empower people in communities like Harrisonburg to learn about and do this kind of research.

Thank you.

So this slide is available as an attachment to the online meeting minutes, I believe, or the agenda, rather.

So I'm not going to dwell too much on this, but what I want to say is that Harrisonburg was not alone, that there were 1,200 municipalities around the country that participated in the federal urban renewal program between 1949 and 1974.

The statistic I do want to leave you with is that we estimate between 1.3

and 1.5 million people around the country were displaced for all of these projects taken together.

And that 60% were classified by the US Census as non-white.

White could include Puerto Ricans, which is very important in a city like New York City.

But that said, the majority were non-white and the majority around 60 to 65% were also tenants.

And what we know of the demographics also is that

Relatively speaking, proportionally speaking, the poor and the powerless and the elderly were the populations targeted for these renewal projects.

If you take urban expressway construction into account, not a factor here in Harrisonburg, but these figures are doubled and we estimate around 3 million people were displaced for these projects.

The legislative history, the takeaway I want you to come away with from this slide is that the federal government changed the legislation in 1954 to move it away from the mission of improving housing conditions for people living in substandard housing to emphasizing private investment in downtown redevelopment projects and it's not an accident that the city of Harrisonburg became interested in federal funding for urban renewal

after the passage of the

allowed cities like Harrisonburg to only pay a quarter of the cost.

So the two projects here, one was two-thirds funded by the federal government, the second one was three-quarters.

Essentially this was free money and very few cities turned it down.

Even though a city would have to cover a third or a quarter of the cost, this was still an attractive pot of money for cities around the country.

So that's why Harrisonburg,

was attracted to the federal urban renewal program.

Here in Harrisonburg, the goals of urban renewal were, and both of these projects, by the way, were adjacent to each other, and they were around 47 acres taken together.

The goals were to create more parking, to widen Mason Street, and this is what Community Connectors is trying to reverse,

and to expand Harrisonburg's commercial district into the northeast neighborhood in order to preserve neighborhoods to the south of the commercial district and to eliminate substandard housing.

I want to pause for a minute and explain what the federal government meant by substandard housing and how that definition could be used by local officials to declare areas blighted and ripe for targeting for clearance.

Substandard could mean, or let me start with standard.

The federal government defines standard housing as having central heat, indoor hot and cold running water, a private bathroom with a toilet, a sink, and a tub, and a kitchen with appliances like a refrigerator and a stove.

And a dwelling unit that did not meet any of those requirements was classified as substandard.

and a city could use that definition saying oh look we have all these substandard dwelling units to justify the seizure of properties, relocation of residents and businesses, the demolition of the structures, the clearing of the land for private developers.

So effectively in Harrisonburg and again around the country this is a similar story.

The goal is to turn a predominantly black residential neighborhood adjacent to downtown into a white commercial district.

And this is a playing, oh, by the way, let me go back up.

This is Efringer Street circa 1957.

So you can see some of the houses that were torn down for urban renewal.

This slide here is a planning rendering with parking a motel, a supermarket,

restaurants, office buildings, a department store, and possibly a park.

It was created by Davis and Associates in 1959.

Plans like this may or may not have gotten realized, may or may not have gotten built, but these plans were often used to build support among the public for urban renewal projects before the bulldozers started tearing things down.

And again, this may not have been actually what would have been built, but kind of a rendering used for public relations purposes.

So what did the city of Harrisonburg do?

Demolished 181 buildings to clear over 40 acres, 225 dwelling units were demolished, 23 businesses, and two churches.

215 households or 710 people were displaced.

Most were African American and most were tenants.

And we have to emphasize how this disproportionately affected the African American community here.

Over half of the people displaced were African American

in a city where this community was only 6% of the total population.

So that's a disproportionate, severely disproportionate percentage compared to the population of the city as a whole displaced for urban renewal.

And again, about half of the African American population were forced to move.

We know that in the national context, this is the same story.

So again, Harrisonburg's story with urban renewal maps onto this larger context.

We also want to emphasize the black homeowners, although they were a relatively small group, played an outsized role in opposing urban renewal plans and indeed were successful in opposing a third of planned urban renewal project around Washington and Johnson streets and that project was voted down unanimously by the city council in 1964 as a result of

I also want to note that the African-American community opposed urban renewal from the beginning, from the planning process in 1957 onward and I just want to quote from a June 1959 hearing

Erasmus and Lena Stevens urged HRHA, and this is their quote, not to take from us that which we've acquired over years of hard work and thrift.

The back story here is that it was more difficult for African-American families to own property, acquire and own, and pass down property to descendants than it was for white families.

Edward Black, a member of First Baptist, which was taken for the R-16 Wolf Street project,

And he was a former R4 Northeast urban renewal project property owner added at this meeting It would be a shame on the sight of God to take a church to widen the street So where did former residents go Miss Snyder alluded to federal reporting requirements and in other localities that we have looked at where the urban renewal records are intact and

Residential relocation files will tell us in fine grain detail about the households relocated.

Everything from ages, relations, and names of family members, how much the family earned, what their sources of income were, how much they paid in rent at their soon to be displaced or demolished dwelling unit, what they were going to pay for rent in a replacement or a new standard unit that the housing authority relocated them into,

Unfortunately, we have not been able to find those records so we cannot say for this entire population of 710 people where a lot of the people move to.

We know that many moved into public housing at least 52 urban real display C's were

members of the first generation who moved into the two public housing projects.

Public housing here, 100 units intended to be segregated, but we don't know why segregation did not occur.

It could be that there were just simply too many African-American displaces from urban renewal.

It could be that federal fair housing requirements had changed.

We just don't know why that was.

We also want to acknowledge that

Compared to white households, there were fewer housing options available to African American families who were forced to relocate.

Urban renewal helped and harmed cities depending on your perspective and your role in the community.

So nothing is ever all good or all bad.

In Harrisonburg, urban renewal sparked a commercial expansion

Downtown investment increased dramatically in the immediate aftermath of renewal.

Sales of renewal land, in fact, more than covered the city's cost share, that one-third or one-quarter cost share.

The sale of urban renewal land exceeded the city's obligation to the federal government to repay the funds, and the city defrayed most of its local obligation through non-cash projects, infrastructure projects,

The city was only out $21,000.

This is in our report.

$21,000 in cash for an urban renewal project that was well north of $1 million.

Urban renewal led to construction of public housing and Harrisonburg is unique or unusual in this sense.

In a lot of the other places we have studied, public housing projects were not ready.

while people were being displaced.

In most places, including Harrisonburg, urban renewal created or worsened housing shortages.

In Harrisonburg, however, public housing was available to some of the displaces from the urban renewal projects.

So that's a credit to HRHA in that sense, that the public housing was ready.

Even though, I'd like to point out, that only 100 units of housing were available,

that 215 households were displaced.

Do we know if, if, because I was thinking about this last night, but to be honest, I was just so overwhelmed.

Um, your honor, I'm not,

What the Redevelopment Housing Authority had charge of both public housing and urban renewal

So there are fewer bureaucratic barriers between agencies than we've seen elsewhere where you have a separate housing authority and a separate urban renewal agency.

And we also do know that HRHA's board was, and I believe still is, appointed by the city council.

We can't say to any degree of certainty whether there was a lot of

How do I put this?

Collaboration between city council members, HRHA staff and board, and the city's political and business elite.

But we suspect that was the case.

Does that answer your question?

Yes.

A wonderful thing about public authority and public agency minutes is that you just get a list of the motions passed.

You don't get a sense of the debates that took place during meetings.

You do get a sense of that when there are journalists from local media present who are taking notes.

So the importance of local media in telling this history is very important.

And I want to acknowledge the role of the daily news record in covering HRHA and City Council and Planning Commission meetings in this period.

I think it's important too to know, like Mayor Reed was saying, I always thought that.

because the city council had to pull together the board for this new HRHA who were going to be the instrument that implemented the urban renewal program but after that then what were they going to be doing so to me it just follows right into suit that we finish this up and then we say hey we're needed you have to you know follow through with

now taking care of this new population of folks in our projects.

And so I just always thought that's how it was.

But it seemed like in the Daily News record that it was constantly working hand in hand with two entities, one formed the other, and kind of went back and forth, even with the definitions of what would be slum and what would, I mean, just seemed to be together.

They sent, City Council sent a

That could very well be the case as impartial researchers who are coming from outside the community.

That's not something that we're comfortable saying.

The urban renewal agency or the public housing authority in particular communities was composed entirely of the mayor and the city council.

So it could be worse.

But I would expect in a city of Harrisonburg size to be a lot of conversation among business leadership, political leadership, appointed and elected officials about redeveloping the city.

engaging community elders, getting that community memory out there because that is an important way to get this kind of story told alongside, you know, the Daily News record coverage because this is not something that's going to be covered in official government records.

So I think community memory and engaging community elders and their children is an important way to get that story out.

One thing that I think is important to remember is between 1955 and 1965

The planning engineer, the head of the planning department, the employee of the planning department, was also the executive director of the housing, redevelopment and housing authority.

So it's no surprise that some of the records related to urban renewal have ended up at James Madison University in the papers of Robert Sullivan, who was the planning director after

Among the owners of renewal area, rental property was one of the city's most notorious slum lords.

We are not going to name names, but if you look at our report, you will be able to essentially reverse engineer the identity of this person who also benefited from the construction of Valley Plaza.

The immediate aftermath of urban renewal was to create a commercial district

With of course ample maybe too much parking and this is a map that shows Some of the businesses that went in you see WT grant The Safeway and Goodyear store among other businesses and This if you look at a pre renewal map and a post renewal map You will see how this area changed from largely residential to largely commercial and parking

So the main way that urban renewal hurt Harrisonburg is that the African American population bore a disproportionate share of this loss, not just in the numbers of people displaced, but also in the effect on community and community institutions.

And the way that we characterize this is that the African American population bore the sacrifice for creating this commercial boom, temporary commercial boom in Harrisonburg.

We have some unanswered questions because the documentation that survived is quite frankly insufficient to answer these questions.

For an urban renewal project where the entirety of the records survive, we get the residential relocation files that I described without those we're unable to find out how owner occupiers, tenants, business owners were harmed financially.

Property acquisition files are also missing and those would tell you

Not just what the city paid, we have those through the deeds and the condemnation cases through the county courts.

But the acquisition files contain multiple appraisals of properties that explain or show what condition the properties were in and what characteristics or amenities they had.

So without those files, we really can't determine financial harm on a case by case basis.

We can't identify all the people displaced by urban renewal and we can't know where a lot of them moved in the absence of these relocation files.

Without the acquisition files, we can't tell whether owner occupiers or absentee owners were financially harmed by seizure of property.

We don't know in the absence of relocation files whether as elsewhere in the country was typical that relocation translated into higher rents and longer commuting times and higher transportation costs for the people relocated.

We do know that nationally that was the case, but we can't tell if that was the case here in Harrisonburg on a household basis.

We don't know, but we suspect that urban renewal played a role in the decline of Harrisonburg's black population, about a 10% decline between 1960 and 1970.

That's what forced displacement does to a community.

It feels like that was the case.

Yes, and again, this is where We have not recovered.

And the African American population in 1960 was 6%.

So yes, that would be a strong indicator.

And again, this is a reason for doing more community engaged

So can you kind of speak again about what files exactly are missing?

What are you missing?

Where are they missing from?

They're missing from us?

Are they missing from HRHA?

Your Honor, that's a good question.

HRHA would have had as the agency responder the authority public authority responsible for carrying out the urban renewal projects.

They would have maintained the records.

Ordinarily we would see that an urban renewal agency or public housing authority that their records would also be maintained by the local records management officer and I don't know how that works here in Harrisonburg.

What I can say is that according to Virginia state guidance for local records management officers that redevelopment and housing authority records can be confidentially destroyed three to ten years after agency last action.

So it would have been within

We saw that often in the areas that we've researched in the Northeast.

We've also seen that the records, in full or in part, have existed because either people forgot about them or the local records management officer realized the value of the records to tell the community's history.

So we don't know without an independent audit of HRHA's records, the planning commission's records, and the city's records, whether those urban renewal records still may exist somewhere.

We also estimate that the relocation and property acquisition files, given the scale of Harrisonburg's projects, is probably around 10 cubic feet.

So it could easily be somewhere behind something.

But we can't determine that without an independent audit of the city's and the agency's records.

Yes.

For some of those records used, a JMU student who did a research project, were some of those records used for that

Christi Kendall and David Aaron Price and ourselves saw different sets of records.

Not wildly different, but different enough to make us think that maybe there is, maybe there are more records somewhere.

We can't say for sure.

Because again, the answer could be,

HRHA could legally dispose of these records three to ten years after final action or Maybe the records do exist in full and people just have forgotten about where they are or somewhere in the middle some of the records exist and The rest don't and we can't say for sure without an independent audit of the city's and the agency's records.

In some records that

No, Ann and Stacy were on site doing the research at HRHA in March.

I don't believe

What Mr. Wong told us is that some materials had been donated to JMU Special Collections and we did find a very small collection of documents at JMU but between looking at what was at JMU and what,

We were presented with when we went to HRHA we realized there were some documents that previous researchers had seen that we had not.

And so we were hoping that there might be some additional records because the records we were allowed to review were not in great condition or not really well organized that we were hoping that there might be some additional

I also want to add that we have included a full inventory of the records that Ann and Stacey did find when they were on site in March and that is one of the appendices of the final report.

So you will get a sense of what survived and what Ann and Stacey were granted access to.

It does.

I don't know if you can actually answer this question or not, but could it be your recommendation that there needs to be an audit done to find those records?

Yes, and this moves on to our key recommendations, which is a thorough search of HRHA document holdings.

We would also add

that a thorough search of the community development records as well as any other records in possession of the city or agencies and public authorities that work closely with the city.

And again, I don't know who is the local records management officer in Harrisonburg.

and what state records guidance the RMO, the records management officer adheres to.

So I can't speak further to that.

But we do recommend, and I want to emphasize this directly, we do recommend an independent audit of city and public authority on public agency records related to the history of urban renewal in Harrisonburg.

Does that answer your honor?

Okay, thank you.

Can you can you state that because you you kind of stated that in the beginning yes to explain before you started out Before I address that I want to get to the second key recommendation Which is the community outreach have alluded to this and I just want to want to re-emphasize that to answer your question directly your honor Sometimes we give public presentations around New York State which is where we've done most of our research and

People have this idea that the federal government came in and pointed out areas of a particular city and said, you're going to demolish that, you're going to rehabilitate those houses, you're going to leave these houses alone.

That this is a top-down, the federal government bureaucrats coming from Washington DC and telling cities what to do.

That's not the case.

The federal government provided most of the funding, but urban renewal was done by local officials, planned and implemented by local officials, not done to by the federal government.

So I think that's an important point, and thank you for reminding us of that.

Local officials voted to take federal money.

This is an active process on their part.

The way that it worked in Harrisonburg

There was a two-step process.

There was a public referendum, and the vote was very narrow.

The vote was roughly 40 votes out of 2,000 votes, so 51 to 49 percent.

So the referendum was narrow.

The city council, if I'm remembering the news coverage accurately, was unanimous in voting to carry a renewal forward.

And they had urged citizens before the referendum to vote in favor of the referendum.

So this was local.

The public, the community was not behind it as fully as local elected and appointed officials.

But yes, this was something that the city of Harrisburg that the elected officials wanted to carry out.

And this was not something imposed on the city.

This was something that elected officials decided to go forward with.

Who would have been allowed to vote at that time?

I mean, there were hundreds of people who cast their vote.

Yes, they did.

One point that I want to make, attended to what Dave is talking about here, is that

The community was completely uninvolved in drawing the boundaries of what the renewal area, the take area would look like.

This was true for the first project, the second project, and the third project.

One thing I wish we could find, it's possibly out there, it was all ready to go.

The community stopped

I

and then we were getting ready to do another section which was Washington Street and Johnson Street and then we were getting ready to do another section after that which I believe y'all said last night was Norwood Street.

What's so odd, when I think about urban renewal and the link to the planning

along with the development of the cloverleafs that lead folks in and out of cities.

That cloverleaf 81 cloverleaf there is that direct link to downtown.

If you were to exit on or off, you would be going right down to downtown Harrisonburg.

Excuse me, I have a question.

You've talked about this is a scenario that has happened throughout the country.

Councilor Dent, I will directly answer your question after I return to the vice mayor's question.

The referendum passed by 1% margin.

We also know that the Voting Rights Act had not been passed.

We also know that the African American population was 6% of Harrisonburg's total population.

We don't know.

So the margin could have been big enough to defeat the referendum.

We don't know.

And with more time on site, we could probably answer this question whether

There were barriers for African Americans to vote in place that made it so that the referendum passed narrowly.

That if African Americans have been able to vote in the same proportion as white residents, that the referendum very well might have failed.

But we cannot say that for certainty without knowing the local history of voting rights in Harrisonburg.

Does that answer your question?

Yeah, yeah.

If you look in the newspapers, I'm sorry, if you look in the newspaper following other

significant events in African American history in Harrisonburg.

For instance, when George Blakey ran for office, we had people within the Democratic committee itself trying to drum up other folks to come in and run against him so that he couldn't be one of the candidates.

But then if you look further in other records that are listed in the DNR, you would be flabbergasted at the low number of votes.

Literally less than 10.

To answer that while we're on this topic and I will answer your question, Consul Dent, I apologize.

The newspaper coverage of the DNR's coverage of the referendum does have the vote breakdown by war.

So it would be possible perhaps with some more research to say if African Americans with these barriers to African American voting and political participation were still present and had those barriers been removed that the referendum very well might have been defeated.

Consul O'Dent to answer your question, in other places yes, public opposition did stop urban renewal projects or at least make

to change how they operated.

In one case that we're aware of residents of a Hudson River community in New York State contacted their congressman and said the demolition is going is going horribly the relocation is going horribly come into Kingston and investigate and

the congressman who represented Kingston was able to get HUD to stop funding, to cease funding Kingston's urban renewal project until the city of Kingston had fired its urban renewal agency board and its executive director.

So there are cases, Charleston, West Virginia was the same phenomenon, oddly enough the same executive director.

So there were cases where public opposition was able to change the trajectory of urban renewal projects.

We have the theory that because of the massive publicity campaigns that municipalities engaged in, that public support was broad but weak until

Yeah, I want to go back to the missing information.

Counselor, that's a two-part question and I will try and address the first part.

We can't inquire into intentions of people

who are dead.

Well as historians actually we can, but not in this case because again the state records management guidelines do permit redevelopment of housing authority records to be confidentially destroyed three to ten years after a program's last action.

and the last action, the financial closeout of both their renewal projects was done by 1967.

So at any point from 1977 onward for any reason whatsoever, those records could have been destroyed without violating state records management guidelines.

They're also really boring records to anyone except us.

We think they can tell amazing stories, but there's a lot of federal forms.

There's a lot of checklists.

There's a lot of stuff you have to get through to get to what we think is the good stuff to tell community histories.

So I could very easily see a records manager or someone in the city government saying, you know what, these are really boring federal forms.

So no, I don't, I would not want to say that their destruction was intentional to hide the history.

Second part of your question, excuse me, I don't remember it,

I don't know like do they will they change anything you think that if oh yes yes totally if those records exist we would be able to tell who is relocated where they move to whether they financially harmed and ie they paid higher rent for owner occupiers we would know whether they were able to build a new home for less than or equal to the cost of what they were compensated for

We know that in the African-American community the sense is that that answer is no, that families were not paid enough to build new homes.

But we would be able to determine that with evidence and with a high degree of specificity.

We would be able to assess financial harm to individual households in ways that we cannot without those records.

We did write an article on using urban renewal records to advance reparative justice.

We're happy to make that article available.

Did you find anything in your, when you were doing your research?

So the fact that they had the next phases on deck.

Yeah, they talked about 50 more and I think part of the

The newspaper is that the plan was to demolish or possibly repair the majority of the houses that were in the Washington Johnson area.

And because they were demonstrating all these substandard houses, I expect most of them would have been demolished rather than rehabilitated.

And they were also talking in that same area

You know, that we kind of figured out the boundaries for.

They were proposing 50 units of public housing.

And Stacy's right.

The response was, we do not want to replace private housing with public housing.

And again, it's area homeowners who really took the lead.

They sent a petition to the city, which we did not find, but that might be something you would find.

if you went through the record saying, you know, we don't want our houses demolished.

And remember, these are people who had connections to other urban renewal areas, you know, and who'd seen or personally experienced, you know, displacement and dispossession before saying, we don't want you to take our homes.

We will repair our homes.

And what I found interesting, what you said last night, which I already knew, but when I think about that comment and thinking about the third and fourth section is R4, R16, we had primarily renters.

Okay, so we had a little bit of people about trying not to take our homes or kick us out of our homes, even if we don't own them.

But then over on Johnson and Washington Street,

Some of the businesses and some of the large landowners may have benefited from urban renewal, though they had no say in planning it.

Did you find in your search of the Delhi News record, I was looking at one article, was it in particular talking about

The folks from the First Baptist Church, they were fighting to not, you know, sell.

But there was also a family, I believe it was last name Klein, but not spelled the same as Klein.

And at the dairy bar that we visit today.

Right, the plumber.

Yeah, they didn't disclose the amount of money they paid, that they received in the Deli News record, but they disclosed the amount that the church received in the Deli News record.

I don't know if that's because it was probably the homeowner versus a non-profit.

I'm not sure why.

We just don't know enough and of course we're not going to know, we would know the payments that they received if we actually, if we got the reloads, yeah, the records.

I don't believe so without having access to the final report, the spreadsheets, and the raw data.

I can't answer that question specifically.

I do want to return to an issue with the deeds when the city sold

or bring up the issue, I'm sorry we haven't addressed this, when the city, when HREHA sold the land that had been cleared to private parties.

In many cases the deeds simply said for $10 plus other valuable considerations.

So the only way we know that how much HREHA sold the cleared land for is through a progress report from 1964 and some newspaper coverage.

Usually deeds will say, we'll give a fixed dollar amount.

But in cases, for whatever reason, the parties to the transaction do not want to publicly record how much the land changed hands for.

You will see language like a dollar plus other valuable considerations or $10 plus other valuable considerations.

The U.S.

Department of Housing and Urban Development or its predecessor agency before 1965 would have to approve the sale of land to private parties, the sale price of land to private parties.

So there would be correspondence about this with the exact amounts.

I don't want to give the city council more reason to think that HRHA or city officials

We're deliberately hiding information we can't, again, inquire into why some of these things look the way they do.

Just so you know, in Virginia now and every deed I've, almost every deed I've ever looked at, I've done a lot of title searches in my career.

It's standard to say for $10,

and other good and valuable consideration.

And sometimes there are revenue stamps which allows you to reverse engineer the sale price.

I don't know where you at at your presentation.

So the community outreach

That's your next step, right.

We will have a discussion as city staff on how to move that forward in our city manager's course on vacation and I'm on vacation next week, but we will absolutely connect on how do we go about that.

I've had a good conversation with Mr. Coleman

So let me just say, this has been incredible.

The work that you all have done has been incredible.

Last night was the first time that I have participated and been in front of you.

I know Councilwoman Robinson and Ms.

Thomas has been working along with

Amy and Michael.

Y'all been doing this for two years.

But it was, for me, it was overwhelming to hear and listen to what your findings were.

And Andrea, I didn't mean that you've been a part of it too.

There was a moment that you were showing

on the list of people, the names.

And I was kind of caught off guard because I saw my family's name there.

And what, and I know we're not unique to the other cities, but I can only speak for Harrisonburg.

A lot of the people, the families are still here, you know.

And so it's haunting.

It's hurtful, it's sensitive, but this is why, you know, Karen is always pushed in the neighborhood, especially when it comes down to HRHA, because of this, right?

Because we knew that this history is there.

And there was a time where the community members could be a part of the HRHA board.

because of this, right?

And so I appreciate the work that all of you have done to do this because this, now that, I mean, you are literally speaking our ancestors, right?

You're speaking for, you're telling their stories from the grave.

And then when you think about that there were 6%

Black population, and we're 7% now.

I can tell you we have not recovered from this.

Because we know that HRHA put together 100 units, but there was 200 people displaced.

So people had to leave.

They had to go somewhere, so they left, right?

And they didn't come back.

Why would they?

Why would they?

You have a different council now than you did back then.

You have people on this council, myself, Councilwoman Robinson, who actually live in the neighborhood.

I live on the other side of the neighborhood.

She lives on the other side.

But we live in the neighborhood, right?

And so it hits us differently.

At least it hit me differently last night.

You have been working on it, so you kind of heard it.

But this council, we have the opportunity to do something that has never been done before, right?

And I'm hoping that we do.

We need to do this independent audit.

That's got to be done.

We need to find out what happened, right?

And then we have to start the process of healing those harms.

And so I'm pretty confident that we all feel that way, but I can only speak for myself.

But I just want to say thank you for coming to Harrisonburg and working with the community

and with the city staff.

And thank you to the city staff.

It wasn't HRHA, I see some board members sitting here.

It wasn't you all, but it was HRHA.

And so we're the people that are in these positions right now.

And so we need to do something about it.

All right.

We're gonna go to our next item.

Matthew.

Thank you.

Have a safe trip.

Y'all driving back to New York?

Have a safe trip.

I'm well.

My name is Matthew Houston.

I'm the city engineer in the Department of Community Development and tonight staff are presenting an updated bond cost estimate spreadsheet tool to City Council for adoption.

The City requires private developers to post infrastructure bonds as part of subdivision approvals to help ensure that public infrastructure gets built.

The City also requires private developers to post bonds for completion of public infrastructure and installation of erosion and sediment control practices before site plans begin construction.

If a developer were to default on their responsibilities, the bond would provide funds to the city for us to complete the work.

The city provides a spreadsheet tool to allow a straightforward and consistent way of determining bond amounts.

But interestingly, the last time unit costs were updated in the spreadsheet was 2014 and

construction costs have increased substantially since that time to the point where unit costs in the spreadsheet are now unrealistic.

Staff are concerned that if a bond needed to be called it would not provide adequate funds for the city to complete the work.

The city would then need to pursue further reimbursement in the courts.

So staff have updated the bond cost estimate spreadsheet tool using increasing the

on a unit cost basis across the board drawing on several sources to arrive at the new unit costs.

In order to evaluate the effect the proposed unit cost increases would have, staff analyzed seven development projects of varying scales that came under bond within the last three years.

And the increase in bond amounts under the new proposal would be between 123% and 250% for those projects.

Staff sent a memorandum to local engineers and developers outlining our proposed changes and solicited comments, and we received no comments.

Staff proposed that the new bond cost estimate spreadsheet become effective on August 1st, 2025, and that any bonds put in place before that date would remain under the 2014 values and remain unchanged.

Yeah, I have a couple.

Thank you for putting this together.

And I think, one, there's a liability this city is carrying for these projects that I think needs to be addressed.

I think that's what you're speaking to potentially, right?

So 2014, there's a rate very different than that rate would be today.

So I think it's important to address that.

Yes.

One Is this the situation in other cities in particular?

Do you know have you looked at other cities particularly ones that are growing, you know at a fast rate have they Traditionally kept up their rates and updated their rates.

I don't know I think that'd be I'd be interested to hear how it's working other cities if we could and You know, I know that

You said you didn't get feedback from folks you solicited, but I would be interested in doing a little bit more outreach to find out from folks if we could to get feedback and so more specifically reach out to find out the impacts that they might have with these increasing rates because it will impact development projects and then for the money they have to account for.

That levels up your interest in getting more direct feedback about that.

I think at the end of the day, if you're going to do a project, you have to be able to cover that liability.

You can't pass it on to the city as might be happening now.

So I think it is important that we cover this.

So I do agree that we obviously need to update for the reasons that, you know, to cover our cities and the liability there.

So what am I hearing?

Because we have to do a, we're supposed to do a vote on this.

I'm just suggesting maybe just to the next meeting to see if we can get some additional feedback from this and also to see how this worked in other municipalities, what their updating process is.

Okay.

So if, go ahead.

Yeah, we would need to change the effective date since that would be... Until either the beginning of the following month or the beginning... The beginning of the following month or, you know, pushing a couple months out, however you'd like to direct us.

And how long do you need, like in two weeks, do you think, now?

I probably am not going to promise being back in two weeks.

Yeah, let's go with me.

I think, why not, you know, we do need to update these things without a doubt.

So I'll make a motion to move the adoption of the new call spaces for bond estimates to the second meeting in August.

Any more discussion?

So the second item, staff were presenting an amendment to the erosion control and stormwater management ordinance to address an issue raised by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality.

Council enacted the current ordinance last summer, and in that ordinance, staff recommended and council adopted a provision treating a duplex residential structure the same as a single family detached residential structure.

And this allowed

a simpler process for complying with the state regulations and called an agreement in lieu of a plan.

Staff's rationale was that a duplex residential structure was of a similar scale and potential environmental impact to a single-family detached residential structure and that treating them the same could provide relief for someone who was interested in building one duplex residential structure.

However, in this spring DEQ wrote the city a letter

and they found that including duplex residential structures was less stringent than state law and the state stormwater regulations allowed and localities cannot have an ordinance that is less stringent than state law.

Any questions?

I think we really have no option.

I will say that, you know, I looked at this and I had a conversation today with the Virginia Municipal League.

I think we should actually put a motion, find someone in the General Assembly to actually add this language into the state code.

We might be able to do that because if we can add those duplexes there, it will save developers costs.

So I think we could

I agree with staff's assessment and I see an engineer in the audience shaking his head that you know the difference between a single-family home this duplex you know they're virtually the same the language didn't account for that in state code so I think you know we should make an effort to change the state code to add

Well, I'm just curious if we were successful in that, would we just add this phrase back in if it were allowed, I suppose?

Back in.

Yeah, sure.

I move to approve the amendment to the erosion control and stormwater management ordinances presented.

Second.

Council Member Dent.

Aye.

Council Member Robinson.

Aye.

Aye.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right we can now go into other matters comments from the public limited to five minutes.

I had been advised by Pam Ulmer to reach out to the City Council last week about concerns that I had brought up about two recent

Accidents that have occurred on Stone Spring Road.

We were actually involved in one of the accidents.

I was awaiting westbound traffic on Stone Spring Road to turn into my driveway.

I live at 780 Stone Spring.

I've been a property owner there since 2019.

And while awaiting westbound traffic, I was rear-ended from behind by a distracted driver who was later charged with reckless driving.

I just dropped off my 15 month old to daycare, but I had my little one month old in the car.

So it was quite a terrifying situation.

And then just on July, so that occurred on June 25th.

And then on July 17th, there was a three car accident on Stone Spring Road.

Again, a car awaiting westbound traffic attempting to turn into Manor Drive, the cul-de-sac there.

So I reached out, I sent an email to city council.

and then I also reached out to the Public Works Department and spoke to Tom Hartman to determine if there had been any recent traffic studies completed.

To help inform myself more about the relocation and expansion of Stone Spring Road, I had seen a STARS report from VDOT that back in 2009 the average traffic was about 9,000 vehicles on Stone Spring and I believe that was more towards Erickson.

In 2018, I think it was 13,000 cars, average daily traffic eastbound compared to 19,000 cars westbound.

And then at the intersection of Stone Spring and South Main, 23,000 average daily traffic vehicles.

That data was back in 2018.

In my brief research, I didn't see anything more recent, but I'd also come across

Rockingham County Chapter 8 Transportation Guidelines that had spoken about their expansion project and continuing off of where Stone Spring Road goes through the city and into the county and that their recent plan for installing a traffic light at Stone Spring and Stone Port has been delayed by two years.

They had originally talked about that installation of a traffic light due to

on the increased traffic over recent years and accidents specifically.

But that the delay in my understanding was because of the continued development of the area that they're trying to see how it'll best serve the area once more has been developed.

So my concern is, I know that's the county, but it's our city's portion of the road leading into that county and I feel that it's related to commuters not adjusting their speed coming from the county.

There's a mile per hour change from 35 within the city limits to 40.

That's right in front of my house.

I can tell you subjectively that people are not driving 40 miles per hour, that people are speeding as determined by the reckless driver who hit us.

But I was wondering if the council could help with just measures,

to help instate a more recent traffic study to determine if more additional signage needs to be posted, if we can possibly consider a mobile radar unit.

From my talks with Tom Hartman, he had mentioned that mobile radar units could be something that the Transportation Committee puts into place.

Sorry, let me just see if I can quiet him a little bit.

But that the mobile radar units store speed data to determine if it's worth allocating resources to spend $10,000 on a consistent radar sign that would flash at commuters, reminding them of the speed or if it's just additional signage needs to be posted.

He was going to bring it up.

I've written it down at the transportation committee.

They meet on August 13th.

So he had reached out to the Harrisonburg Police Department to see if they could dedicate a cruiser for increased presence for more regular monitoring.

He mentioned the mobile radar unit.

And then I think I was encouraged that if I wanted to attend that Transportation Safety Advisory Commission meeting on the 13th, that I would be allowed.

You and your neighbors.

I live in Manor Drive, so I have this problem.

Okay.

Okay, well, I'm glad to hear that.

It's something that I wish I wasn't validated on, but...

And so to then see it happen again just last week with a three car.

Three cars, yeah, I saw that.

Turning onto Manor Drive.

And so what the city can do to help emphasize residential safety along that road because average daily traffic volume has just increased tremendously over recent years.

So thank you for hearing both of us.

But just wanted to put it on an official record somewhere.

Because as a mama bear, I feel like I'm going to keep on following up until I hopefully see a change or get some answers.

Hopefully.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

I would like just to bring up a couple things, if I may.

I was talking with her about Little August, he's precious.

I think he's too much older.

It says to give your name, I'm Wayne B. Wanger.

I was almost arrested once because of Wayne F. Wanger.

I don't know what he did because I looked at the thing and I saw he lived in Dayton and I told the policeman he put his billy back.

He wasn't

I've lived in Harrisonburg all my life.

I didn't realize they're bringing the things that hurt people, the crowd that's here, because they're from New York.

And I've lived in Harrisonburg my whole life, except when I studied accounting and business at Blacksburg.

And otherwise, I was here.

And Tommy Tucker hired me to run his Howard Johnson's, and I started doing that and did it for 34 years.

and a poor thing died before I could buy it from him.

He was making deals to all of his managers that he would finance because all his stuff is paid off obviously I was their authority for it.

But I missed that opportunity so I went to work for the Rockingham Memorial Hospital and was out there for 17 years.

So I've been here a while and I think our town is beautiful.

One thing I wanted to bring up was

If you go into any community, even Forest Hills, there's a run-down house.

And I come down Wolf Street all the time, and now I get on Mason, which I do not like, but I'm not supposed to talk about that until next month.

That's right.

But that Mason Street needs to remain four lanes because of the big trucks we don't want in downtown Harrisonburg.

When I was a kid, you walked down Main Street, and it was two-way traffic and a car.

I mean, the trucks just went up there.

There was no 81.

and now it needs to be three lanes but they're holding off to another year or two doing it some places but not here.

But I love Harrisonburg and I love you and I've seen you and stopped to talk with you while you're walking your doggie.

I just, certain things happen and I don't know why

But the one thing I wanted to bring up that I saw on the paper was talking about putting apartments down here at Lindsey Funeral Home.

I assume he's gonna close up and Mrs. Lindsey was one of my teachers.

She was at Waterman School.

I walked with her, we didn't have school buses back then.

and when I was 12 and 13 I delivered the daily news record in the very place we're talking about was torn down to all the homes and then one guy was kind of lazy and he gave me 75 more daily news record places and expanded on up over to Washington Street and so forth and I didn't realize that people weren't treated fairly or

I sure do not like that road the way it is now, and I hope we never have it.

Those trucks, we don't want them on Main Street.

We want a clear street where, you know, it can get through to the mills or wherever they need to deliver furniture or whatever.

I'm going to have to shift you to, you want to talk about the department, the apartments, right?

Yes.

I love the building of Lenzies.

The Lenzies built that in 56 or 57.

they had a big tour there and everybody went through and it was beautiful and they ran a nice thing and Bucky Lindsey would come to your home when a relative passed away and he's tall and he'd fill up on top to see if you dusted over the door and I noticed he was always doing that when he would come to visit us because I had a lot of aunts and uncles that left us but and then I realized my father said you see what he's doing all the time when he's here and but anyway that's it

That building is beautiful.

The costume and all, it matches the bank across the street.

It matches the next street down.

And it's very peaceful.

And I'm trying to figure out how they can, talking about four bedrooms and 40 of them, that's a lot of people in there.

And my wife said, she thought that something that was built for commercial, I mean for people who work down

It would be a wonderful place to live but to put a big student complex there and tear down a really pretty building that is an asset to the community.

It helps the church look pretty.

It makes the next parking lots look pretty.

but something like that and all those people because down there across from Hotel Madison they put up a fence and do all kinds of weird things behind there at that one building.

I've had a neighbor who was driving a truck that slowed down because of the stuff he saw and somebody ran into the back of him and it had to be a police inspection about that.

It wasn't his fault that he slowed down.

People drive faster than 25 anyway.

and I had wonderful customers and I loved my customers.

Even the lady that wouldn't pay me every week, she would hide.

She wouldn't answer the door.

We had to collect back then.

You didn't pay a year ahead like we do now.

And I took advantage of that.

I got saved 30 some dollars by going down and paying for the next year when they had that cookout thing.

Tell you about a couple other things.

Your five minutes is up?

I tell you what, you can tell me when I'm walking my dog.

Alright.

Okay, we'll talk then.

Alright.

Okay, thank you.

I walk slow because a guy dropped a log on my foot.

Take care.

Is there anybody else?

One moment, please.

You are now live with City Council.

Fucking Barry, City Council.

Get my address.

I want to talk about HR.

Uh, someone to please stand here.

Now we're going to get another doc.

Here's a, there's nothing.

I'd like to see the community.

I have a steering committee.

I hope we can get the right shape in year 15.

I'll talk about that.

I'm waiting on the W service.

1C, Beth Hoyt, we want the paperwork related to the internal revenue services.

And once we get that in hand, they will do four to five years, right between $70,000 and $75,000.

So we're going to be able to complete that with the 501C.

We're going to run ads in the paper, raise a lot of money.

And then 60 to 90 days.

It'd be called the Breckenridge National Food Drive.

I was born there on my fourth year, three of us were born there on this road.

If a local police is not involved, we're going to step up that road.

We'll cut them a check.

We'll cut them out of the fast-fixing papers.

One year in the board room.

What we're only going to do is keep them in the community.

We're going to help other

Thank you.

Any other callers?

On July 11th, we met JMU new president And we welcomed him and talked about a great relationship between the city and JMU That was a great presentation by the staff and

and also I organized the different cultures and backgrounds that we have here in Harrisonburg and the unique that we live in and we want to extend it also to be the same thing at JMU.

July 16, we had HDR Board of Meeting

Thank you Second meeting with the GME president.

I was really impressed with the

his both experience from the past of dealing with communities and his vision for the future that he can bring here.

So that was a really positive meeting.

Then last week, Vice Mayor Fleming and I both went to the National League of Cities summer leadership meeting, which is for me it was because of my long standing participation in the Energy, Environment and Natural Resources Committee.

and we had some really powerful presentations including from the local director of the water and power utility of Columbus, which was interesting.

All about water, it's a huge city and they have multiple water sources and what was most interesting to me was she said she's also the director of a small municipal electric

Power utility that's powering some 20,000 residences plus all of the utilities the wastewater and the water drinking water treatment That's a good idea.

We ought to have me and she said that gives her a lot of flexibility for renewables solar and wind and other Other renewable energy so but the most pertinent and urgent thing that I raised with Amy and

Deputy City Manager and City Attorney yesterday was the much tightened timelines in which the direct pay, the tax rebate essentially for cities is being retired very rapidly.

As in, if you want to buy any EVs, make sure they're, and get direct pay credit, 30%.

Make sure they're in service by September 30th.

I mentioned that to Keith yesterday, Keith Thomas, and there's some question as to what we've purchased and what it's eligible for and so we're looking into that.

So that's one of the unfortunate effects of the recent big budget bill, whatever the thing is, that it's phasing out very rapidly some of the beneficial climate action that was done in the previous administration.

a big source of angst for us on the Energy and Environment Committee.

But we're doing what we can and over the fall we'll be revising our policy recommendations to the federal government.

In other news, tomorrow and Thursday is the Resilient Virginia Conference right here in Harrisonburg

and I gave them a mistaken location before.

It's actually in the newly renamed King Hall, formerly known as ISAT-CS, the big tall tower building on the east campus as you're going up Carrier Drive across 81.

So that's all day Wednesday and Thursday.

I'll be speaking with Keith Thomas and Shana Carter, particularly about the EATS program of certifying

local restaurants with green practices.

And I'll be talking more generally about the environmental action plan and our community goals.

I think we're part of a case studies series on resilience in action in local communities.

So I'm pleased to be participating in that.

So I think you can still register online.

I don't have the website off the top of my head, but you can just show up and register there.

That's all Just want to mention we had a successful box party the other weekend and saw a couple of you there Councilmember Dent was there and Vice Mayor Fleming.

It was it was great.

It was a nice Turn out I've heard nothing but good things people were very

Impressed with the street and then also got to tour the Ida B. Francis Green Book Home and I had a special tour by Deanna's father and I'm telling you I was really impressed.

I was just so moved like you said about last night to be a

Amongst or just hearing about our history even when it's harmful and hurtful.

I still want more to know more and then just hearing Mark Solomon at the time and your father talk about this home and just what it meant to him to be caretakers for these folks and to see these documents and the care put into preserving all of these

little bits of information that other people might think is irrelevant and we're just, you know, biting at the bit just more and more and more.

I told Mark Solomon at one point, we have to stop talking because I think these people behind me want to get through.

So if you guys ever have the chance to tour, I would suggest that you do that.

We have an HRHA liaison meeting coming up.

In addition to

Harrisonburg, Rockingham Social Service Advisory Board meeting coming up.

That one's this Thursday.

Great time with President Smith sitting there.

Just amazed at how it seems like we're already on the same page and that I felt very positive about being able to build on that relationship and maybe get some positive stuff done for the students as well as the citizens of Harrisonburg.

Well, the grant that we have, the Southern Cities Economic Initiative, we're continuing to meet with Brian and Pierce to talk about that project and developing that project and working with our main contacts with Annie Casey Foundation, so kind of developing the scope of that and where we're going to take that.

We were at the conference in Columbus last week with Councilwoman Dent

One of the real values I'm finding with the National Legacy staff is with so much change happening across the full breadth of all the federal agencies and programs we're connected with, it's hard to keep track of what's happening where.

So the NLC staff is doing a really good job of monitoring what's happening, where real funding cuts are happening, where anticipated funding cuts are happening,

where there are opportunities to kind of push back on that.

So it's been helpful.

At the end of the day, you know, it's chaos and we don't know much about what the full effect's gonna be.

I think some of the things that, you know, the CDBG grants look to be safe.

So it looks like we've gotten that full funding, which is helpful.

Whether that's the case in the future is hard to know.

But I think it's very clear that there's some other funding cuts that are going to be coming down.

Housing cuts, I think, are pretty clearly coming.

And I think if we have 1,000 vouchers, I think there's some percentage of those.

And I've heard 10%, 15%, 20% that could be at risk.

And those are folks that then don't have options.

and so that's something that we have to think about as a city.

Displacement, yes.

Displacement there for that.

I think, you know, with the University Communities Council, you know, there's certainly federal funding cuts to universities that are happening.

For cities that have those universities, it's not just cuts to federal funding to universities, those dollars are staff

So those are staff getting cut at those schools that live in your city, that have families in your city.

So we had a long talk about the impacts those federal grant universities have on communities.

It's not just penalizing the community, the university is penalizing the communities.

So NLC is doing a research project looking at

Those impacts that are happening locally, it's an important message to send back.

The other thing that happened for universities, lots of talks about the endowments universities have an 8% tax is now going to be placed on those endowments.

Again, that's not only a harm to the universities.

And most university communities have relationships with their university where they're getting funds for projects, for pilots, for payment of taxes, for contributions, a full range of things.

Those dollars come from the endowments.

And so that could put a lot of pressure on a lot of university communities like ours in a relationship with, in this case, JMU on those dollars that

have been coming to us.

You know, they're going to be sending some percent up upstream.

Eight percent's a pretty hefty tax for them on that.

So tomorrow I'm leading.

So VML is putting together its legislative agenda to present to the fall conference to take the General Assembly.

Full day Zoom meeting.

So first I'll be leading the

infrastructure, transportation, environmental quality group there.

So, you know, folks across the state.

Not a whole lot of change in our policies, VML policies on that.

You know, lots focused around water, water treatment, storm water, making sure the state is putting money out for that, so a lot of push on that.

And then transportation dollars, making sure there's equity

and pushing transportation dollars out, so we'll be pushing hard on that.

We'll be having one of the state delegate, just drew a blank on his name, from Henrico talking about speed cameras.

So he's coming, a delegate who's led the charge, he's going to lead the charge in the General Assembly.

So we'll have quite a discussion about that, I think, tomorrow.

I think that's it for me.

I'm trying to think of what's coming up in the week.

I don't really have anything because I was on vacation.

I had my sorority Delta Convention in DC.

That was a lot of social action.

When I got back, I spent time advocating for our after-school programs and summer learning because our money got frozen.

And so we didn't get our money to run programs.

And so I was working with Brandis from NLC and Blair from VPOS and actually had some conversations

Lieutenant Governor and then we got our money released.

So a lot of people came and spoke out.

But we're still fighting because as you were talking about housing, after school programs are in jeopardy.

Nonprofit organizations are in jeopardy if they are funded by the 21st Century Grant because in the

and the bill, the bill, it's being cut.

So that means that our local organizations like Boys and Girls Clubs, Big Brother Big Sisters, Second Home, On the Road, we're in jeopardy.

So just fighting a good fight.

We did have a Parks and Rec meeting scheduled for last night, but it was canceled so that we could

attend the event last night.

And I believe Thursday Way to Go will be celebrating their 20th anniversary.

So they're having something.

I think today Mercy House did a ribbon cutting for their new playground.

And sorry to miss the block party, but I was in D.C.

That's all right, we partied for you.

I heard my father talked about you, he talked about you today.

I was like, really, yes.

I was like, did y'all have that much of a conversation?

Yes.

So, that's it.

So we are, no?

Brian's in the back?

Okay, yeah.

Second.

Do you need a motion to that effect?

So moved.

Second.

Second.

Oh, that was a motion.