City Council Meeting   9/23/2025

I'm going to call to order our City Council meeting September 23, 2025.

Roll call, please.

Mayor Reed?

Present.

City Mayor Trebek?

Here.

Deputy City Attorney Russ?

Present.

Here.

Council Member Dent?

Here.

Council Member Robinson?

OK, we have no special recognitions this evening.

We can go straight to our consent agenda.

I was going to say we have a public speaking class here right from JMU.

Is that you all back there?

Welcome.

We'll go 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.

Move to approve the consent agenda as presented.

Any discussion?

Well, just to note that the consent agenda, as often does, includes several special events.

The Race to Beat Breast Cancer, Saturday, October 25th, the Skeleton Festival, October 25th, and the Veterans Parade, Sunday, November 9th.

So it's good that we have those in the consent agenda, but it's worth calling them out, I think.

Councilmember Robinson.

Aye.

Aye.

We have no public hearings this evening.

So many things in my life.

I wish I could do that.

Well, good afternoon.

Thank you, city council and city staff for giving us this opportunity to address youth wellness.

Your foresight in serving citizens for the use of ARPA funds shows a great concern for the citizens in our community.

Our advancing mental health equity through out of school time project has been a great way to explore providing service to those who need us most, which is the future citizens of our city.

So I am Sandra Quigg.

I serve as the CEO of Boys and Girls Club of Harrisonburg, Rockingham.

And I'm here today to give you an update on this project and tell you about the origin story of the grant, our five grant totals, grant to date outcomes, challenges and changes based on what we have learned from implementation.

The origin of the grant, the idea to serve youth mental health needs came about post COVID.

Oh, right.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our clubs were open during most of COVID.

In fact, we reopened on May 2020 and served as academic support centers with club hours running Monday through Friday, 7 a.m.

until 5 p.m.

for about 18 months.

Big learning lessons for me during that time was the very first day we reopened at one of our clubs.

A young person came in and spoke to a staff member and said there had been abuse at home.

And we are mandated reporters, so CPS was called in.

And it highlighted to me the safe environment that our clubs provide and the importance of our clubs in that world.

Post-COVID, when the rest of the world joined us, we discovered a big increase in challenging youth behaviors and the corresponding staff challenges to provide youth what they needed.

Our anecdotal experiences were soon corroborated by studies.

We decided to pursue a pilot program to provide kids with tools to deal with their frustrations and anxieties born from a year of sheltering and decreased socialization, and to give staff better insight on positive behavior management and trauma-informed training.

So we then connected with James Madison University's Madison Center for Community Development, led by Amanda Tay, Director, and Lily Peasley, Associate Director.

Lilly brought in graduate assistant Anna Garst and Dr. Caitlin Owens, licensed clinical psychologist and assistant director at the Medicine Center for Community Development to figure out how to make this vision come to fruition.

Why Boys and Girls Clubs?

It takes a whole village.

Why Boys and Girls Clubs?

It's because we are in a very unique position.

We serve one of the largest populations of after school youth serving 600 to 800 on a regular basis, well, annually.

We serve the widest range of any provider.

We're the only ones that serve ages 5 to age 18.

We focus on the whole person, not just academics, not just play, but youth development where the social emotional needs are considered and made a focus.

And then we have daily interactions with caregivers.

So we bridge the gap between parents and school.

So goal number one, increase capacity.

The approximately $125,000 grant from the city of Harrisonburg takes a three-prong approach.

Assist the youth, assist the staff, and assist the families.

To do this, a coordinator was needed.

We hired a mental health advocate to train staff, work directly with groups of youth to work on coping skills for anxiety and stress, and then connect family with the appropriate resources.

Graduate assistant was contracted to assist the mental health advocate and collect and enter data.

And then we had a strong collaboration with Harrisonburg City Schools to coordinate staff trainings.

While hiring a mental health advocate, we worked simultaneously with JMU and Lilly Peasley to research what other Boys and Girls Clubs nationally were doing on this front and help us choose a curriculum.

You can introduce yourself better.

Hi everyone, I'm Anna.

I'm a graduate student at JMU and I'm working on a project both with implementation and evaluation.

So one of the biggest kind of components of the project was directly working with youth to help build skills related to mental wellness.

So the curriculum we chose when working with the mental health advocate was C-Learning, which is an evidence-based program that works to build

Skills related to compassion, resilience, attention, and interdependence.

And what makes it unique is that it approaches skills related to personal, social, and kind of systematic contexts.

So some of the activities include mindful eating, mindful walking, some storybook reading, different drawing practices, things like that.

and in addition it's complemented by the Too Good for Drugs program that has been at the club, has been offered at the clubs for several years now and that's more focused on healthy living and reducing tobacco and substance use among youth.

So between the two we really have a well-rounded approach for improving the health of club members.

In addition to serving the youth directly, it's also important to wind that scope a bit to serve the families and caregivers of the youth as well.

So throughout the year, the mental health advocate offered consultations and help them, refer them to the appropriate services throughout the community, whether it's basic needs or mental health services, things like that.

and she also made an effort to go to various parent engagement events after clubs to directly interact with parents as well as implement a kind of a brief survey to gauge what support that they need.

Most recently, an aspect that I was involved with was I went to the summer orientation at the Sim City Club and was able to meet the parents myself and give them an update on some of the work that we've been doing so far.

And in addition, the Behavioral Health Wellness Program at Harrisonburg-Rockingham Community Service Board, who's a supporter on the project, they came in to interact with parents as well and set up a wide range of resources for them and this was

really well received by parents, so it was great to see those connections being made and kind of further support them.

And beyond all of this implementation that we're doing, a big component of it is tracking the data throughout the year to gauge what the club needs are as well as whether the programs affect it, what are some of these outcomes.

So as Sandra kind of introduced, the Madison Center is responsible for that program evaluation, helping with survey dissemination, data analysis, data auditing, and so much more.

In this past year, we piloted the integration of A-REC Group, which is an online

data tracking and evaluation system to streamline data collection and data storage.

So all in one spot, it allows us to track all of the youth outcomes, what from their surveys, attendance, implementation, observation, all of those outcomes all in one place across multiple programs and across all the years, which is really important going forward for sustainability of the program.

So goal five, which is engaging stakeholders and promoting sustainability.

We are leveraging this grant to seek out other funding.

We have proposed at least seven other grants.

We've won two which are listed here.

We continue to pursue

All right, so throughout the year we've been tracking kind of a wide range of outcomes.

Some that are measured more systemically and some that are more qualitative like through observations and focus groups and we could spend a whole 30 minutes going over all of those but just to briefly outline some of the data that we've collected so far.

So we, for outcomes for youth grades K through 2, we implemented the, or used data from the Too Good for Drugs survey, which is a staff-reported survey, and it measures constructs like personal, social, prosocial, and inappropriate behaviors.

And at pretest, at the start of the academic year of 2024, we saw that

Personal behaviors were the most prevalent concern.

However, when comparing at the end of the year in 2025, we saw improvement in personal and pro-social behaviors, which is really great to see.

In terms of data for grades three through 12, we administered a different measure that's a self-report, and that measure is emotional problems, conduct problems, hyperactivity, peer problems, and pro-social behaviors.

Notably also at the start of the 2024 academic year we saw that hyperactivity and peer problems were the most prevalent.

In fact almost half of the youth at the clubs fell in the abnormal range for peer problems which is definitely really important to note especially as we further design programming going forward it's definitely a need that we want to make note of.

In terms of improvement over the year

we did see improvement for their overall score on those measures as well as hyperactivity and a decline in emotional problems which is great to see.

In terms of some of the staff outcomes at each of the trainings we implemented just a brief survey at the start and the end and in terms of their perception of understanding there was improvement of understanding of each of the topics which is great to see that these trainings are hopefully kind of doing what they're supposed to do.

However, they did note just some challenges related to actually implementing these strategies including limited time, resources within club settings, part-time staff knowledge just because of their lower working hours and capacity.

It's hard to include them in all of the trainings, right?

So there's that disparity in the knowledge for part and full-time staff.

and also some frequent staff turnover makes it hard for some of those trainings to stick, which is important to keep in mind going forward.

Lastly, in terms of some of the family data we collected in that brief survey, families noted the support they need is related to helping their child be safe in a digital world and coping with anxiety.

So these are just some of the outcomes that we've more explicitly measured, but one really unique position I'm in being in

Helping with both implementation and evaluation is I get to actually see this change, right?

I get to be with the youth and see how they're handling some of the activities.

In fact, one last year we did an activity where I gave kids this like kindness gem to represent something that they're grateful for and they got to take it home and

use it when they're dysregulated kind of like another grounding practice for them and when I was back at clubs this summer not only did some of the students remember it but they some of them even mentioned having it by their toothbrush which I thought was really cute and some even had it in their backpacks so it kind of shows that even a couple weeks later they still had some of these things in mind which

For elementary schoolers I think is pretty impressive.

And this summer another activity we did was I had them write down examples of positive talk and we made a positive talk bag and I had them leave it in their classroom so whenever they were feeling dysregulated or upset about something they could go to the positive talk bag and remind themselves of some things that they can tell themselves.

One day I had a third grader come up to me and she was just kind of not having the best day and she was like I think I need the positive talk bag right now and I was like of course and she went over to the positive talk bag and she pulled out a few examples and she read some off to the side and then took some home with her and I think both of these are just pretty impactful to me to show that

The kids aren't just remembering some of the things that we're doing in these lessons, but they're actually using them and implementing them several weeks and even months later.

So the future directions.

Pilot grants allow us to learn.

The two challenges we ran into are turnover in the mental health advocate position and the need to work one-on-one with more young people.

So I'm going to address the second one first.

We have changed, instead of hiring a full-time mental health advocate, we are utilizing a graduate assistant

Right now it's Anna, but we are utilizing the graduate assistant position to create a family wellness navigator.

That allows us to overcome the turnover that we were seeing in that position and it's someone who can coordinate the grant, gather data, and work directly with youth as Anna has illustrated.

We believe the mental health advocate pay was not substantial enough to attract experienced and committed professionals.

So we had people come for short periods of time and then leave.

So I am also an assistant professor at JMU and so part of my role there is training future clinical and school psychologists.

And so one issue that we have is finding school-based placements for our students to kind of gain experience.

And what we also know at the Boys and Girls Club is there's a lot of kiddos that need a little bit more services, right?

They need more individualized support.

So a perfect partnership right there.

So I have students looking to get hours and get experience, and there's a need.

So we're kind of bringing these two together with this new funding source so that students will be coming to the sites and providing services for students in need.

So it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

And my understanding, as I'm sure you know, that's a limited time funding has to be all spent by the end of 2026.

But then you answered it saying that was, you're leveraging that initial funding to seek other grants.

Correct.

And that was the intention all along because I wasn't really sure how this would work.

I personally didn't have a lot of experience.

I knew there was a need.

I innately knew there was a need, but I didn't know how to make it happen.

So that's why a pilot grant is ideal.

And also to identify kind of what are some areas for growth within the program that we already have, which is where the kind of more intensive therapeutic services and kind of focusing a little bit more on parenting supports and things like that have come into play.

Well, I'm going to tell you, and I don't have a question because you know I can talk about this all day, but I'm so proud of the work that you have done and are doing because what you're doing is you're showing the importance of out of school time programs, right?

And how we are more than just an after school program, right?

Whenever I'm speaking, wherever I'm going, and I talk about out of school time, I always say you can't have this education conversation without including us, right?

Because you're proving it right here.

When you get

your students from school you're continuing on what happened at school so the fact that you're dealing with the trauma that kids are having in school and at home you're dealing with them as well and so this pilot proves that case that we're so much more

and just an after school program.

And so, I know that the funding piece is challenging right now, especially on the federal level.

If people don't know, you know, we're not written in that bill, Trump's bill, out of school time, summer learning is on the chopping block.

And we need to advocate that we need those funds in there for this reason.

So good work.

And during COVID, right?

If it wasn't for our Boys and Girls Club opening up during COVID times, there's so many families that wouldn't have any way of learning during those 18 or that time frame 18 months.

So you know I got you.

I'm going to definitely fight for it because you're proving it in this work how needed it is for us to be

filling in the gaps for our families.

So thank you.

I had great experience with the Boys and Girls.

My program was at Lucy Sim Center for years 2016 to 2020 before the COVID we closed.

So it was like a new board.

So whenever I have anything like need of any question or anything like I reach out to Boys and Girls and they were very helpful.

and I saw them how they were caring staff and community to their kids and my kids actually were looking at them and some of them were signed up with your program after they saw that

activities that were available at Lucy Sim Center and games and knowledge that they were gaining at that time.

And yeah, I honestly like the way that you guys, you directed and you manage it.

Yes, sorry I almost coughed through your entire presentation.

It's wonderful and I apologize.

I'd like to piggyback off of what Mayor Reed said.

A lot of times when people talk about daycare centers, they throw Boys and Girls Club in there and I just scream and holler.

And I think it's so much more than just daycare.

You know, I mean, it does provide a place a careful a place where we care for our Children.

But that trauma that you guys are often addressing that child that you're helping to continue to learn is year round.

I mean, what about the summer?

All the learning that occurs in the summer?

I hear it.

I hear all the fun, the giggles and stuff from my bedroom window of you guys out in the park and at the basketball courts and

Boys and Girls Club does so much more than just babysit and I wish people would be able to recognize the importance of the centers all over and this is one of the ways that you guys are taking it to another level and being

quite strategic with it.

You know, hey, we don't have money to pay for XYZ.

But what we do have is we have higher organizations of learning that we can partner with to still provide those services.

So I am so glad that our kids are blessed to be, you know, in your care

and so much the Chiefs of Police and most of the cities were there and including community-based liaisons in all those cities and a lot of data a lot of discussions and almost every single discussion moved back down working with youth who are isolated

who have the pressures we all know about being online, compounding social pressures that come with that.

Every discussion came up, the lack of community health we have because of that and the significant need to address that as kids move up and age up.

And so hitting kids young, developing these pro-social skills, these skills that deal with the isolation that gets pushed on them pretty heavily and how else do they know how to deal with that, right?

They have no context unless there's someone there doing that for them.

All that work, every discussion boiled down to this, right?

These pro-social behaviors being taught how to develop those.

And I was looking at these outcomes here, these grade three to five outcomes, there were some pretty significant

With either the data that you collected or kind of the results of the stuff you did, is there anything that was striking to you that kind of went counter to what you might have thought was happening?

I'm trying to think in terms of what we previously thought.

I'm not so sure.

I think definitely the statistic about the prevalence of peer problems was the most striking to me.

It wasn't presented here and wasn't presented on the flyer that I gave you guys, but while almost half of the youth were in the abnormal range, an additional, I think it was like 20%, were in the borderline range.

So we have a very slim proportion of kids that are in the healthy range for that.

So in terms of, like you said, with social media and navigating that I think is definitely a big problem.

And also in terms of identifying youth for services, we saw a lot of internalizing behaviors in the data and when we looked at the

Kids that were being referred for services or written up for conduct reports it was mostly kids who had those more conduct problem externalizing behaviors and so we saw in the data there's a lot of kids that are struggling internally within themselves that we're not serving and we're not meeting those kids we're not not meeting the needs of those kids so I think definitely going forward using this data we're gonna see how to how to better target those kids who may be struggling internally

Another question.

Are you able to connect any of this with, you know, obviously a good portion of any kid's day is in school, right?

And how well they're doing there.

Are you connecting any of this data to how kids are progressing through school?

So we haven't done like direct connections with like academic outcomes but what one of the things is like we've been in pretty much constant contact with Harrisonburg City Schools and now we're kind of pulling in Rockingham County Schools to kind of broaden the reach right and expand to more clubs but what is also going to be cool about this next phase of the project is that referrals can come from the schools so

That's amazing.

That is amazing because I know how tough it is on the road when we were in the school.

It's tough to get that type of information from the schools.

You have to work with the guidance counselors and the principals have to approve you getting that data or that information, but to be referred to you

If they're a member, that is amazing.

Yeah, that's probably the best thing I've heard tonight.

That was one of our big things is like how do we fill the gap of like what is happening is like families are seeking out services.

They can't find someone.

Transportation is an issue.

Money is an issue.

So how do we bridge that?

And so that's what kind of this big focus is is now services are on site.

There's no transportation.

They don't have to take them anywhere.

It's covered.

It's free for them.

I'm going to do a shameless thing here for you, Sandra.

I'll be in D.C.

October 14th speaking at a national convention that's specifically talking about federal funding and what we're going to be up against with this bill.

Can I use some of your presentation

and use that when I'm speaking on the 14th, that I'll get it out there.

We'd like that, but more importantly the kids would like it and kudos again to the city for allowing us the opportunity to try it and experiment because we didn't start out with let's provide direct service, we didn't think that was possible but then you

Do you have any plans or ideas of how to connect with the parents, right?

So you've identified kids and you see something, you say, hey, this is something a parent needs to understand, you know, how to address, right?

It could be screen time, it could be any particular behaviors that, you know, they may not have the skill or you may not know that's an issue.

Yes, so parenting is like my expertise.

So we have been kind of trying to collect data from the parents of like, what is the best way to get in contact with you?

Is it, do you want one-on-one coaching sessions?

Do you want, you know, tip sheets?

What kind of, what is

What is reasonable, right?

So collecting data on that.

We also collected some data on like what are you looking for?

Like do you need help with managing screen time or dealing with disobedience or you know what are some of the difficulties that you're facing in the home?

So then we also got data on that piece.

and that it wasn't, we didn't get as many parent participants in kind of collecting that data but we have some baseline ideas of how to do it and then again it's going to be a little bit of trial and error, a little bit of creativity to figure out how do we reach the parents but what we know is they have to show up at pickup, a help, right and so is that time a time where Anna can connect with them for just a few minutes to you know talk through some tips and tricks for something that they've

One other comment I didn't touch on before is what I love about this is what you're developing is emotional intelligence in kids, which has been broadly shown to be the greatest indicator of success in life.

And you're addressing it a little differently, like emotional problems, hyperactivity, peer issues.

Did you guys know you were that good?

I knew they were.

Yeah, I was going to say that.

I mean, we thank you because I love when people come back, when organizations come back and tell us how they use the money.

And this is one that I'm absolutely, I'm sure we all are absolutely proud of that we

Thank you.

That is going to be a really tough act to follow.

I don't think I've ever had to raise the mic.

Going up a little bit.

I can do the podium too, just a little.

Mayor Reed and members of council, you are one of the few local elected bodies where I know all of you and have had the good fortune to work with all of you.

The concept of putting together this presentation and going around our entire region was to help members of local elected bodies who don't see as much of us if they're not on our commission or an MPO board to know a little bit more about our work.

In this case, we're well known to one another.

Okay, there we go.

So we recently published our FY25 annual report.

It's been a few years since we've done that.

And that publication served as a good reason to come visit with all of our locals.

And so I'm going to walk you through some of the highlights of that to talk a bit about what we've done in the past year and then at the end wrap up with where we're headed at this point a quarter of the way through FY26.

As a refresher our region has been around as a as a planning district as a commission for 55 years now nearly 56 and We serve five counties five cities and 11 towns in the central Shenandoah Valley We are the largest PDC by area and one of the most rural in

And I think the really big takeaway from our investments in the region report for FY21-24 is that we brought $93 million in state and federal funding to this region by way of grants and programmatic funding.

I have a staff of 15, counting me.

Most of those folks are planners.

A handful of them are JMU MPA graduates or graduate assistants right now.

So we love them too, so I'm really glad that JMU is here today.

And then of course we also have our administrative staff as well.

In FY24, we had a big year.

We brought in $35.5 million.

So that was just that fiscal year alone.

But looking across that five-year reporting period, that was $2.5 million for housing, $3.5 million for resiliency work, which is emergency operations, emergency planning, and environmental programs.

Transportation, of course, is the big one, $69.6 million.

A lot of that funding is to the Harrisonburg, Rockingham area through some sizable smart scale projects.

And then economic development and community planning, $18.4 million.

Excuse me, just highlight that first number, please.

For every $1 that our member jurisdictions contribute to the Planning District Commission in your per capita dues, we bring back $98 in return.

So I will note that it's typically a little closer to

70, 75 dollars in return, but with the success of those transportation projects, it went way up for that 21 to 24 reporting period.

It might be slightly more modest when we rerun the numbers for the coming year, but thank you for letting me brag about that one again.

As we all know, and my staff has spent a lot of time working with you, members of council and your staff, we are growing our housing program.

We were thrilled to complete our regional housing study earlier this year, and we also assisted 11 first-time homebuyers around the region.

and completed the investment of that $1.6 million in those 48 affordable units through the Virginia Housing, PDC Housing Development Program.

Those first time home buyer programs are both down payment assistance as well as loan reduction programming through SPARC.

So we combine those as often as we can to help people get into their first homes.

On the transportation side, we are the only PDC in the state to staff two metropolitan planning organizations, but I'm focused here on Harrisonburg-Rockingham MPO.

This past year, we worked with members of the Technical Advisory Committee and a consultant, VHB, to evaluate some safety issues along Port Republic Road in the vicinity of Bradley Drive, Hunters Road, Devon Lane,

where we have seen a lot of growth both residential and commercial and saw an uptick in a lot of crashes of those intersections so we identified some improvements there and of course the next step will be in the next round of smart scale or highway safety improvement program or perhaps even revenue sharing to implement those.

We also have a small but mighty rural transportation program, and we used the funding from that this past year to do an inventory of our rural jurisdictions and identify 120 electric vehicle charging sites, which was one of the barriers that they identified to feeling comfortable pursuing funding to install AV chargers.

And then with our neighbors to the south, we are nearing the end of an update to their long-range transportation plan, their 25-year plan.

For Harrisonburg, Rockingham, we also have been for the past year working on an update to the travel demand model, which

For anybody other than Councilwoman Dent and Vice Mayor Fleming who don't sit in on those board meetings is a computer model that helps us estimate which roads in the region are going to experience a lot of congestion in the future based on where growth is going to occur.

So we're very glad that some very smart consultants in partnership with VDOT work with us and local staff on that.

It's a big lift.

Moving on to our resiliency programs.

We have been working on a pretty interesting, at least a new to us, partnership with Bath and Highland Counties, our two most rural.

and we identified some funding through the Department of Homeland Security to help them upgrade their radio communication systems.

Bath and Highland are in part of what's known as the quiet zone around the Green Bank telescope.

in West Virginia.

And as such, they really struggled to adequately communicate with one another during emergencies.

So this $2 million grant upgraded or was part of a process to upgrade their radio communications for emergency operations.

We also receive annual funding from Department of Environmental Quality, DEQ, as part of the Watershed Improvement Program, or WIP.

This year we were able to tap into some additional funds and send $300,000 to the City of Waynesboro for their South River Preserve project.

That took a disused DuPont cracking, falling apart parking lot.

pulled up all the asphalt and reseeded it with a wildflower meadow as part of a huge riparian buffer there along the South River and adjacent to their South River Greenway.

This is a picture of Harrisonburg that was part of our needs identification process for our regional all hazard mitigation plan, which has also been a large part of our work in the last year.

That wraps up.

in December and from there we launch into a floodplain resiliency project and we'll be closely following the city too in hopes that they are successful with their FEMA application as part of the Helene recovery money to do some flood mitigation of their own.

And

This is less Harrisonburg oriented, but because it is a part of the program that the PDC runs, I am going to brag a little bit on the transit system to the south, Bright Transit and the Afton Express.

That is fixed route transit for Stanton Augusta, Waynesboro.

It does travel into Rockingham County.

It stops in Mount Crawford and Bridgewater and Dayton, and then it does travel to JMU on the Blue Ridge Community College shuttle.

And we have now completed four successful years of running the Afton Express commuter service over the mountain to Charlottesville.

That program grew 16% in ridership last year for over 19,000 passenger trips.

And that program has been so successful and so valuable to UVA that they have decided to cover 100% of the cost of their students, faculty, and staff riding.

So it is free.

for anyone with a UVA ID to get on that bus.

And that is in addition to what they were just contributing as one of the match partners.

And they were already a large match partner on that.

It is.

I feel like I see it all the time when I'm going back and forth to Charlotte.

So I'm wondering if you want it.

I mean, it's great.

Like you get on that bus and we'll pick you up at five o'clock in the morning and you can go back to sleep or use the free Wi-Fi to do whatever or read your tablet.

It's been tremendously successful.

I remember I was there at the ribbon cutting.

So that's four years ago now.

We also got to cut the ribbon.

I've had few opportunities to wield big scissors, so I was very excited last August when we cut the ribbon on our Lewis Street transit hub in downtown Stanton.

That was another disused, cracking, in bad shape parking lot that we acquired during the pandemic so that we could assure that that would continue to be our transit hub for nearly all the bright transit routes.

We applied for federal and state funding for that.

It ended up being just over two million, but today we have an expanded, well-lit, beautifully landscaped, ADA-accessible transit hub that also provides overflow parking free of charge to visitors and residents of Stanton.

That's one of those projects, right?

It's always the brick and mortar ones that people notice, obviously.

It's rare that I go anywhere instant and don't have somebody say like, didn't you build that parking lot?

That looks great.

And that's always really nice to hear.

Thinking about economic development and community development, Harrisonburg is a CDBG entitlement community, but with the exception of you all, Waynesboro and Stanton, the rest of our region can apply for competitive community development block grant funds.

and we've been very engaged with the little town of Goshen in northwest Rockbridge County.

They have had planning grants and now an implementation grant to create a community center adjacent to their town hall and that's going to be an ongoing project.

We supported the development and administration of several Go Virginia projects around the region.

One of which is featured here.

That is a project down in the city of Univista working with the Advancement Foundation on this Virginia Innovation Accelerator.

So that building was a disused cigarette paper production plant.

and the Advancement Foundation acquired that and with Go Virginia grant funds as well as I think some IRF have slowly but surely renovated it and converted it to a maker space production facility.

Multiple small makers and creators and small businesses are in there using that.

So looking ahead, slash what we're up to this fiscal year, we are going to continue to address housing stability and supply.

We recently learned that we are going to be receiving about an additional million in change for our SPARK program to continue to help first-time home buyers lower their interest rates.

And we also were successful in receiving another round of the Virginia Housing Development Grant

Thrilled that two out of those three projects are in Harrisonburg.

It's been such a pleasure to work with your staff on that.

We're going to further improve Afton Express service by tweaking the schedule this fall to better align with shift work schedules and get people dropped off at the bus 10 minutes before their shift starts and also try to address some of the peak afternoon demand in that schedule.

We're going to continue to advocate for regional transportation priorities to the CTV and our state agency partners to assure that our priorities are what we hopefully can fund through the competitive grant programs.

will be creating a more resilient region through the completion of that all-hazards plan and starting that floodplain resiliency planning process as well as water supply plans for this Upper Shenandoah Watershed Region as well as the Upper James which is the southern part of our region and continue to support local and economic development initiatives in partnership with Go Virginia and our smaller jurisdictions.

So I just want to conclude by saying that we're your planning district commission.

We were formed and exist to serve our member jurisdictions and we pride ourselves on being responsive and innovative when it comes to finding funding solutions and ideas to address your needs.

We recognize that Harrisonburg is our largest jurisdiction.

You are well staffed both in number and capability.

Again, not a question, just a thank you in retrospect because several of us were at the solar barn raising on Saturday for one of the newer houses on Souter Street.

And I remember it was partly a CSPDC grant that enabled us to do that development along with Habitat for Humanity and Give Solar.

One, thank you for the amazing job you guys do.

It's really invaluable for us and I really appreciate the regional focus that happens here.

We don't get a lot of opportunities to think

you know, and work in the regional capacity, but it's really important for us to do that.

You know, we're often a little more well-positioned than some of the other towns, you know, around us, but we're all part of the same ecosystem.

So, you know, you kind of help us plan together, think collectively there, that's so valuable, and certainly,

You know, we certainly welcome the idea of expanding regional transportation here.

Something I think we'd all like to see and benefit our region in general.

A lot of folks come to Harrisonburg to work.

A lot of folks from Harrisonburg need to go out past the city limits.

So I think that's the next important thing for us to see if we can make some progress there.

I know that you mentioned the spark

dollars and I know Liz Webb who runs a program here is seeing a pretty significant increase in the folks who have been participating in that first-time homeowners program there so that's really been exciting to see and to get folks into that their first home.

It was interesting you know I saw the the affordable dollars the add the 1.6 million or so for the 48

Nasser Alsaadun

That's about $35,000 just to make that unit affordable, which could be, what, 15% of the total cost of that unit, potentially.

I don't know what that is, but around that.

And that just shows the challenge of getting folks into affordable housing, that without these funds, where does that money come from, right?

That's a significant amount of money per unit there.

And of course, the CTB stuff you do for us, you know, smart scale is what allows us to do all the transportation stuff we do in the city.

I think we were like $50 million last year.

Quite impressive, all the work that you do, all the

The different areas, you know, you think transportation is the big one, but just to sit here and even just briefly glance through this book and just see throughout your presentation the many different ways you touch the lives of so many here in the valley.

And I just want to say great job.

Great job.

I remember talking with Laura when I first,

I sat in with the CSPDC meetings and saying, my God, there's just so much, Lord, there's so much to comprehend.

And I just never realized the amount of money that flowed through the valley.

I didn't realize the

The work that you all were able to do, how you searched specifically for funding to help out in specific areas, and I was impressed.

So I just, Laura said, just listen, and then when they ask you, you know, for you to vote, if you're with it, then you agree.

So I just sat there.

because I was always in agreement because it was always so great.

And so I learned a lot that first, um, two years, um, sitting in and then I realized how much I didn't know as well.

So I'm so very appreciative for your work.

And thank you for that.

All right.

Our last report.

You ready?

I'm Tom Deng, Deputy Director of Community Development.

I'm here for a little brief moment here to share with you that staff had identified an error with the public notice for the length before it went to Planning Commission.

In fact, that error had caused that public notice to not get advertised in the local newspaper.

And as we have said before, when we identify an error, we will work to get it corrected.

And know that this rarely happens.

In fact, I can't think of this particular error happening before in my tenure here with the department.

But in this case, what this means for the link, as well as the other item that was on that agenda, which was 320 South Main Street, which is the rezoning where most people know where the Green Hummingbird had been located.

Both of those items will have to come back and go through Planning Commission and City Council for public hearing.

The 320 South Main Street item is on schedule to be presented to Planning Commission again on October 8th and then it will come to you all as City Council on November 12th.

As for the link, you'll hear more about that shortly, but it will also have to go through that process.

Additionally I wanted to share that we are making efforts to increase awareness about the Planning Commission meetings.

Already right now what we have been doing is posting notices on the website and there is an email list that people can subscribe to which they can get notified but I'm working with staff on how to improve awareness about those email that

The ability for people to subscribe to that email list to get that notification, as well as posting a notice on social media, Instagram, Facebook, to notify people when the agenda for Planning Commission meetings have been posted.

So very similar to what you may have seen for City Council meetings.

The image that comes up and it says the agenda is now available will do the same thing for Planning Commission as well.

That's all I have.

Good evening, Mayor Reed, members of council.

Just a quick update.

Knowing what happened with the publication, you know, sometimes they say when life gives you lemons let's make lemonade out of it.

It does give us an opportunity and some time to run more

thorough and lengthy community engagement facilitated process with respect to link which is what we've been tasked to do by City Council and we are enthusiastic about that process so after our public hearing with City Council on August 12th we've been working with Mr. Banks's office to identify local facilitators

We almost have them identified to lead that, and we know it's important for the facilitators to lead that process, not the applicant.

We will certainly resource the facilitators and run through that program.

So we're ready to kick that off.

Since the matter will have to be republicized and go through a full set of Planning Commission and City Council hearings, that gives us an opportunity to run that engagement process, to thoughtfully change any proffers that might be necessary, and bring that fresh to Planning Commission for a full set of hearings with the public.

What does that engagement process look like?

Again, I don't want to tell the facilitator what to do or the applicant doesn't want to tell the facilitator what to do, but it's likely to look like what the city would go through in terms of a large

public works or street program process or ordinance change where there's an online presence and notice, an ability to give feedback, public open house meetings.

We want to broaden the engagement.

So this isn't for the link and against the link.

This is a wider community conversation that we now have the opportunity to engage in.

There are certainly identified groups who have been very interested in the project.

We will have smaller group facilitated meetings with those identified folks and anyone else who has an interest.

In terms of the likely timeframe, given that we have our facilitation team almost in place and ready to go, we've been doing a lot of work over the last five weeks to be able to kick that off with information broadly available to the public.

In looking at what the city facilitation processes have looked like in the past I would expect that to be about a six to eight week process Which would then be republicized and go through the public hearing process sometime this winter.

I know I know the applicant

was anxious to have a resolution.

I think folks in the community are anxious to have a resolution, but it is a signature.

It's a significant city project, and the more information that you all have as council members after an engaged facilitation process I think will be valuable for both council and the city at large as we work toward those goals.

So that is my report.

I want to thank Mr. Banks and his office for

for being a coordinating effort for us.

I thank you for explaining that in detail.

I think for me, my

My concern is that, and it's not really a concern, I just want to make sure that people are aware of those facilitations and when they will be.

So that, you know, whoever wants to be a part of that can be a part of that.

So, it necessarily, for multiple reasons, is going back to Planning Commission.

That is correct.

We want to inform any proffer changes that we bring before Planning Commission with that facilitated engagement process and community conversation.

So we are not going to rush that process until we have the information

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay, we will now go into other matters.

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

Please state your name and address if you wish to speak.

Do I just speak now?

Okay, I thought someone was pressing buttons up here.

Sorry.

Right.

You'll have opportunity.

All right.

Thank you.

Your honor.

How are you?

Oh, council members, I just wanted to mention

That's Wayne B. Wanger.

I live in Harrisonburg at 641 Broadview Drive and he cut my yard yesterday.

It looks pretty nice.

and July Mason Street was closed up and I think that was blocked off and it was to me very uninviting to go to the post office or whatever and I think it was done for a reason because of things that happened back with the renovations of Harrisonburg and I mentioned before I was a paperboy back then so I had no authority to

know what was going on or change anything but I had a lot of wonderful customers and I do remember that the neighborhood needed some work because some of the houses were older and I'm very ashamed that our whether it be some kind of planning commission or whatever didn't look after the people because it was mentioned that it was a hundred people just disappeared and I'm against anything like that because

I think our Harrisonburg is a wonderful place and I've always enjoyed being here.

and I just wanted to mention that that New York firm that took care of this thing.

I don't think that people who have been loyal to Harrisonburg or have lived here all our lives should have to suffer because it's something that some group did without building Harrisonburg and getting them houses like she was just showing the houses that to be built.

It looks like there's plenty of them now because I go to every park every day.

I usually attend three different parks and walk my dog.

I do take care of it and I love my dog.

I'll have to show you a picture sometime or bring her with me.

but I'm sorry about how that redevelopment all took place but I don't think that people today should suffer.

There should be a big plaque put over in the lobby that tells who was in charge then and why it was done like it was when the story finally comes out because it seemed like they were very vague about the story as to how it all happened but I was remember I was delivering papers one morning and there was a huge from Rock Street to Wolf Street there was a huge

Plant that cleaned the bags, you know where seed is delivered now they had big trucks are all over between Liberty and Main Street and They delivered and put it in feed tanks But back then it was delivered in bags and the bags came to this plant and were reclaimed and then sent back I assume and you know new seed in it, but

One morning there was smoke coming out of the building and I could hear the sirens.

And what it was, a man had crawled in one of the back windows of the place and took a nap on the feed bags.

But he smoked a cigarette early in the morning and set him on fire.

And there was a big fire there.

I don't think it destroyed the building, but it was a pretty good-sized fire.

I kept delivering papers there.

Can you talk about it?

I can't bring it up?

You can't bring it up.

Well, I'll mention one thing.

Out on North Mason Street, I think Rose's is closing.

I was told they were going to move up to the parking lot where that other store just went out.

Everything's going out, going out, going out.

Have a good night.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Dr. Kashecha, 257 Fairway Drive.

I just have a message today.

I've been talking quite a bit with members of the community.

And I'm talking about community support.

Earlier, President Trump was addressed as Trump by one of you.

And when we talk about the cuts that the budget is going to suffer, they're bad.

They're bad cuts that we're going to get.

And so hopefully our city is not going to be impacted by that.

We've seen plenty members, leaders in our community that are going to be working against that.

And so I've been talking to members across our city and for Democrats I'm a Republican, for Republicans I'm not Republican enough, so I'm there swimming.

But what I hear is when I try to invite people over they're afraid to come because we know what's happening in our community.

Not done by the Harrisonburg Police Department but done by ICE.

So it's kind of hard for them to get out of their homes and come over and join our meetings.

But one thing that they would like to see is us, I mean all you guys, to reach out to leaders within their communities for you guys to understand what they need so they can be led in a better way according to our members.

Meaning, if I stay within my group and I only talk to my groups and people who are going to vote for me, people who are going to donate to my campaign, or people who have the same interests as me, I will never be able to learn what I need.

And to be a leader, we know that we have to go to places that we don't want to go.

This is why I talk to independents, Republicans, Democrats, and everyone else.

So this is an invitation that they are extending.

They are saying that I can come over here and speak.

I'm not campaigning, and my opinions are on my own, not on my employer.

You guys know who I work for.

but they would like to see more of you within the neighborhoods knocking doors and talking to them and asking what do you need you're afraid of what what is happening one of the main comment was there is plenty of pictures on social media with people who think like us what does it mean I don't know so I'm gonna leave that message with all of you

Your job is very difficult.

You need to leave the city and 50,000 people in it.

And that means Democrats, Republicans and everyone else.

So whatever that does to you, it's up to you and whatever you want to do with that information is also up to you.

Hopefully we're going to see you in the neighborhoods, knocking on our doors and talking to all of us.

Anyone else?

Seeing none in person.

One moment, please.

You are now live with City Council.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Panayotis Yanakudos, City Resident.

And I would like to reaffirm discussion that I think has been going on about people talking to each other and re-invite folks in the room.

I think Mr. Wenger as well.

to get in touch, do get in touch, and let's talk about these things outside of council chambers so that we can bring more coordinated, processed ideas to the chamber.

And what Professor Kije has also said.

And in that spirit, I have something to report based on input that I heard at our last meeting.

So recently, I took the bus from the transfer center

and the roses hub, transfer hub and there I noticed based upon what I saw at city council that there were multiple people in wheelchairs and one wheelchair got onto the bus or I got onto the bus of one of the wheelchairs and I had the opportunity to observe and sure enough the bus driver fumbled with figuring out where where the hook was for the back

and there was an advocate who helped the bus driver find what to do and they tightened up the front and that was evidently something that they were not practiced at and indeed I watched the wheelchair swing around just as Mr. Sheets had said.

So afterward, fortuitously enough, the folks got off at the same stop as me.

The bus had some difficulty aligning the ramp

Finally, it did do so.

And when they got out, I asked them if they knew Mr. Sheets, and they didn't.

If they'd seen this testimony, they had not.

And so I asked them what their experience was with wheelchairs on the buses.

And remarkably to me, the story they told was exactly the same as what you heard from Mr. Sheets.

The same frustration, I could see the emotions welling up as they described it, and the resignation to, okay, the bus is already moving, I can't talk, I'm not going to try to correct anybody.

And then where does the frustration go?

And seeing the potential build for conflict.

and then a searching for where the conflict should be placed and trying to look beyond the bus driver, knowing it's not their fault and looking even further back to, well, you've got to talk to the supervisor and when do you talk to the supervisor?

And training.

But as we reflected on this, what became very clear was that it's not the bus drivers, it's not the supervisors, it's not the training, it's what job were people hired for?

which comes back to vision, to the city's vision.

What do we think our bus service is?

So if we have a vision of the city, which is a city for all that is run as a store, for example, then we're providing a service and people are hired to drive a bus and the wheelchairs and the bike racks are extras

and it makes sense that when you hire somebody for that job, you train them for that.

It's not the supervisor's fault.

What's the alternative?

The alternative is that it is a government that is owned and governed by the people, the MLK vision.

What does that look like?

In that case, a public transportation bus system is to directly provision the public, not provision the employers who the city manager meets at the country club,

and then hope that the prosperity will trickle down but to directly provision the public so that all of us are at an equal dignified baseline and then in that case the purpose of a bus is first and foremost that person in the wheelchair who is restrained from full dignified participation for example being able to go out to dinner was an example that was given to me by

by that lack.

When you get hired to take people without transportation around in dignity, the first thing you learn on the job is how to handle the wheelchairs and how to handle the racks and how to handle the folks who are marginalized and the interpersonal issues.

Then you take them around on a bus youíre driving.

You see the difference, but Mr. Sheets has very eloquently, and as I said,

have completely heard the same thing, the practical impacts that our vision of the city has.

I don't know if I've used up all my time yet, but I again invite people to contact me.

Many of you know how to reach me.

The small area input plan, input for the city went its own way, kind of like our fifth ARPA input process, and we really had a mobilization there that is wanting to talk to people.

But one more thing I would say.

When you have a different vision of the city, you can see that obviously when there's supposed to be an input process for a big apartment complex, the city manager doesn't talk to the developer and talk to the facilitators.

The city manager's job in that case from our vision is you have convening power.

Announce that there's a meeting on this date.

Caller, your time is up.

Caller, your time is up.

Caller, your time is up.

Caller, your time is up.

Caller, your time is up.

Caller, your time is up.

Caller, your time is up.

Caller, your time is up.

Caller, your time is up.

Caller, your time is up.

Yeah, thank you.

Well, I had two events.

First one, all the city councils where they're witnessing the opportunity that we have a climate change action which is implementing the solar panels and

Shout out to Jeff High.

He invited us and we saw how the climate change action will be implemented in our community.

The next one I was invited to for OCP Gala and

That actually a place where people are being served, our community members and raising the attention that how we can help them and support them as well.

Thank you.

Councilwoman?

A bunch of things have been happening.

It seems like September gets back to school energy even if you're not in school and all of a sudden more meetings happen.

For example, a couple of weeks ago right after our meeting, the next night was the Levitt AMP last concert of the season, the wonderful Ukrainian band, I love Ukraine,

and the good news is we get another three years.

So that's great that that's going on.

Last week, I chaired the HRNPO because the now chair was absent and I brought forth for Tom Hartman who wasn't there that we had approved an application for a safe routes to school grant.

So, and I said that's one of the easiest things to vote for.

You want to get more money?

Sure, go ahead.

and immediately after that was the Erickson Avenue study where they're looking to mitigate some of the traffic snarls with more development coming and so on.

Last Friday, September 19th was the first day of early voting and I saw our registrar Mark Finks and his whole department in a very busy mode because it becomes voting season really and voting happens here in City Hall.

And also on that day, oh gosh, we had the CSPDC consultant meeting that morning where they're looking for feedback for how are they doing.

They're doing great as far as we're concerned.

We heard the presentation from Ann Cundey of Central Shenandoah Planning District Commission earlier.

Also that day I went to Charlottesville for a bike tour of some of their housing developments.

They're building a 12-story student apartment building right next to campus and so they have some of the same issues that we do and a lot of engagement that way.

As Nasser said, we did the solar barn raising and

and I hearken back to the ribbon cutting for that project that was a collaboration between Habitat for Humanity and now Give Solar to provide the solar to the residents who have built and own their own homes, which is a great development.

And I was particularly amused to see pictures of me in previous solar barn raisings.

the one that Mayor Reed and I did with Charles Hendricks at Eastern Mennonite High School and gosh where else, the one on Virginia Avenue that was also a Habitat and Give Solar and then there's the one that Shenandoah Black Heritage Project that Monica's office did

So I love seeing that grassroots efforts that we will be renewable energy no matter what they say at the federal level.

We're going to do it our way.

So that's all great.

And finally I went to an event for First Step and heard a lot about the great work they do to help survivors of domestic abuse in crisis and try to help them get housing and

and they have a new housing facility that they for good reasons don't tell us where it is and that's fine because the people who are needing them need to be safe.

Today Vice Mayor and myself attended the real race equity and leadership council meeting and I would say

The focus was on ensuring that cities stay committed to equity even in the shift.

Spend a lot of time just with folks sharing how they're changing, reframing the language, talking about support and resources that are needed, navigating risks, political, legal, financial.

Should we speak out?

Should we not speak out?

Then hope and well-being.

The Community Connectors had another engagement meeting this past Saturday where Mike Foreman from UVA

who came over and was able to help move conversation around the goals in the small area plan, the priority levels, high, medium, low, and one of the things I noted was that

At each one of these events, we see different folks from the community coming out.

People are really engaged.

I spoke with Amy a while ago and I said to her, did you think that this was going to do what it's been able to do?

and she said no and what it's done and see that's really just built bridges it was in the community with those groups that have historically stayed away from one another and really made people come out and say hey I do want to make sure that we live in a great community for all and this is what I'm willing to do and where do you need me and what do I need to do in order to help the process

City Manager Banks and myself did the radio show this morning with Jim Britt and of course the majority of that was focused around we can't talk about it tonight because it's on the agenda but the link.

I thought the show went great.

Well, like I mentioned earlier last week, Virginia First Cities and then the UVA State and Local Government Policy Clinic had a forum on violence prevention across Virginia.

about 15, 10, 15 chiefs of police, city council members from some of the larger cities there.

A number of those cities have gotten grants to do some additional work, wouldn't have been available to us based on kind of the criteria for those grants.

But one thing that was really striking to me in talking to some of the chiefs,

In Norfolk, I heard they normally have about 700 officers on staff and they're about 200 short.

Richmond, I think, was about 150 short on officers.

Most of the other cities, Hampton, Suffolk, you know, were short on their officers.

It just made me reflect a little bit on kind of the work that's been done here in Harrisonburg to

fully staff our department not only with the resources and the money, but creating an atmosphere here that connects our officers to their community and for them to seek this as a place they want to settle down and be in, which I think is important for us.

They come from our community.

What else?

Most of the stuff has been talked about.

We had, and Mayor Reed might want to talk about it as well, I think I spoke at the Pride Festival.

We had at the Turner Pavilion, which I thought was really a great new place to have the festival.

I think having it there felt, I think, more secure as a place to hold the Pride Festival, it seemed.

Like there were more vendors there this year.

I thought the attendance was fantastic the energy there was was really It was it was great You know for folks to to claim a spot downtown that they may not always come down to And so to have that be you know our downtown turn up a very familiar was Was a good move to move it down there, so I

First I want to acknowledge our downtown library.

They were awarded the Virginia Library of the Year.

by the Virginia Library Association.

So very proud of that.

I get a chance to serve on that board through city council.

A couple of speaking engagements I had this week, I was at the Virginia,

Economic Developers Conference, Association Conference with our Brian and Pierce.

So I think it was over 300 that attended that conference, one of their larger conferences, attended conferences at Hotel Madison.

This morning I was, I spoke at the National Cave Association

So, I know.

And it actually was lovely.

About 200 people at Hotel Madison.

It was hosted by Lou Ray Caverns and Melrose Caverns, but they had it here.

So, I thought that was real, it was real nice.

African American Festival, 29th year.

Great attendance, great food, great music.

I spoke at Pride, same thing.

I think it was a better location.

A lot of people, great music and people there.

So I was very well attended.

Give Solar.

I was with Councilman Alsadun, Councilwoman Dent, Vice Mayor at that event.

Luckily, I didn't have to get up on the roof like I did at E-M.

Charles Hendricks maybe did that, but I did have to lift up.

Y'all two world

I was on the scaffolding on the second level.

I'm at the bottom one.

Yeah, I was on the bottom handing it out.

So that was that was a good time as well.

And then tomorrow, um, tomorrow evening I will be speaking at the Gun Violence Prevention Summit.

No, ma'am.

You too.

All right, if we don't have anything else, it's 8.35.

We're going to close this meeting.

Thank you.