City Council Meeting   11/12/2025

I call our Wednesday, November 12, 2025 City Council meeting to order.

Council Member Dent is absent.

Council Member Robinson.

Here.

Chief Tobia.

Here.

And Captain Monaghan.

If you would please stand, if you wish, for a moment of silence or silent prayer and remain standing for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Thank you.

Okay, I want to thank my city manager over here for allowing me to use his glasses.

I can't find mine right now, so we're too close.

We just want to be doing this.

Okay, so we have no special recognitions tonight.

We'll go into our consent agenda.

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

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

So moved.

I'll second that.

Thank you.

Any discussion?

Councilmember Robinson.

Aye.

Councilmember Alsadun.

Aye.

Aye.

All right.

We ready for our public hearings, Adam?

Thank you, ma'am.

Adam Fletcher, Director of Community Development.

I have two slides to discuss for you here this evening, both of which will be familiar to you in different ways.

So first, the rezoning at 2410 Reservoir Street.

This is a request from Valley Housing Trust to rezone property

That's 20,479 square feet, give or take, of property zoned R3 to R5C, R5 conditional.

Therefore, proffers have been submitted, which is what the C indicates.

The property is zoned R3.

It is surrounded by all R3 properties.

There's many different housing types in this area of the city.

You have townhomes, duplexes, multifamily, and some other dwelling units further to the south.

Long-term plans for this area of the city, really a mix of different types of densities is really sort of at a breaking point.

So it's kind of hard to tell in this image, but the property is designated mixed use and then is surrounded by properties that are designated for medium density and medium density mixed residential.

Those two earlier or later categories anticipate somewhere around 15 to 20 units an acre on the residential side.

Excuse me.

And for the mixed use designation, when you're outside of the downtown area, we anticipate about 24 units an acre.

And if you're familiar with the city of the city, it's fairly built out.

There's a few remaining undeveloped parcels, which the site is itself.

But this is along Reservoir Street here near the intersection of Stonewall Drive.

So this site was one of the properties that was part of the program that the city put together after the housing study was completed for that we've identified as the city's surplus city property dispositions for residential developments.

This is just one of those properties and in fact you all have already acted upon this particular site back in August.

You all had given approval to approve the disposition of this property to Valley Housing Trust represented by Mr. Frank Gordon back on August 26th.

So that approval had already taken place so long as they can secure their zoning applications.

But just some information here on the screen showing that the offer to buy the property was below the assessed value but in return the plan was to provide five multifamily rental units which is what is being discussed here this evening.

and the affordability which these would be affordable units at 80% AMI for 30 years and then some conditions associated with that.

So they are trying to go through that process they're trying to complete their steps so they can move into the next phase which is to begin building permitting.

and they have proffers that they submitted with their application for this property.

Those three proffers are on the screen before you that the dwelling units would be for one bedroom or efficiency units.

The second is that they would limit occupancy to a family of no more than two individuals and with that proffer that means they get a reduction of parking for one space per dwelling unit.

and then the third is a maximum of five dwelling units are permitted on the property which is important to understand with regard to the entrance which is what a lot of the conversation was.

Remember that this the conceptual site layout is not proffered so when I show that image here in a moment just just remember that there could be some flexibility although I know Mr. Gordon has done quite a bit of work to work out the details of where he wants to build this building.

But as you read the staff report you would have seen some conversations about the entrance to the site and that the entrance, the current entrance, which I have outlined here, is in the functional area of this intersection.

This is important because based upon VDOT's road design manual, specifically appendix F,

Staff was able to determine that no more than five dwelling units could be built on this property without moving the entrance, and that's because it's within that functional space.

If you're familiar with this area, the median in this area, that black line there showing where the median is, will then determine whether you have a write-in or write-out scenario.

Because they're limiting it to five

units.

They're allowed to maintain the existing entrance.

They've proffered to maintain it at five units, but if in the future somebody wanted to build more than five units, that entrance would have to be moved further south, and that's based upon that manual from VDOT.

So then once it moves out of the functional area of the intersection, it then becomes an automatic right in right out because of the median strip.

But because they're limiting it to only five, we were comfortable with allowing them to maintain the existing entrance.

The conceptual layout here is shown on the screen, showing where they plan to build the building and the entrance right off of Reservoir Street.

If you know the property, you know it's somewhat of a bowl shape, so it kind of goes down and goes back up.

The low area is where the existing sanitary sewer is, so there's some confinement about where the building can sit.

Mr. Gordon has already taken that into consideration and shows a conceptual layout showing where the parking spaces would be provided, where the sidewalk would be constructed in front of the buildings, and then as it extends out to the Reservoir Street sidewalk, which is all great and accessible for folks that might be residing in these units.

It's on, so there's bicycle and pedestrian facilities along Reservoir Street, there's a nearby bus stop, so all is great for accessibility for units that are also to be affordable for those that want to reside in the city.

We offered a favorable recommendation to Planning Commission to resend the site, and they did to you as well unanimously.

Note that the vote was five to zero because Chair Ball recused himself from the vote.

But it was unanimous at the time of this application review of Planning Commission.

There were only six members.

Yeah.

If you go back to the picture for the entrance, I have a problem like how

So we highly encourage people to never turn left.

In fact, we want people to always turn right regardless of where the entrance is located.

This conversation came up at the Planning Commission.

We reached out to Public Works to talk about any potential solutions and there was some ideas about placing a one-way sign that would be on the median so when somebody is exiting from the property that they would be reminded to be only turning right, so one way, so southbound on Reservoir Street.

Yeah, because that area is like high traffic and I know I know it very well I mean just recommending drivers not to go to the left.

I think I don't I don't think it's enough because it's very dangerous I mean to go to the left because he's not going to Obey actually the sign just I was the initial sign but if it is like I

From a city, for example, he will be ticketed if he is violated.

Yeah, that was my question, because I know it came up in the Planning Commission.

The signage was what came out of Public Works.

Are there any other provisions that could extend

Well along Reservoir Street, the extension of the median.

I think it would be complicated due to the southbound movement from Stonewall Drive to be able to make the turning radius so you're making it more of a right angle if you extend those pylons.

But I don't want to speak for Public Works.

Any other questions?

Okay, thank you Adam.

I'll open this item up for public hearing.

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

You'll have five minutes on this item.

Good evening Mayor Reed, council members.

I'm Frank Gordon of the Valley Housing Trust.

Appreciate an opportunity to speak to you.

I appreciate also Mr. Fletcher's thorough explanation of what's involved.

I would like to offer a brief comment on the rationale for going to R5 because obviously a lot of this size is already, from a density perspective, adequate for R3.

However, unlike, there's a difference between R3 and R5 zoning with regard to Article G, which is the parking section of the zoning ordinance,

In R3, if you ask for reduced parking, as would be the case if there was going to be an R3 rezoning, then you would have to demonstrate where you would add additional parking if in the future the council decided that was necessary.

In reviewing the site plan with city staff it became apparent that and that would have to be based on the presence of this large municipal sewer easement you see in the middle of the lot would require it to be in the rear and that would require travel lanes of a minimum width to get from the front to the back.

These units are also already very narrow so

The only way to make that feasible would be to reduce the number of units from five to four, which on its surface is unfavorable with regards to the production of affordable housing.

But in addition to that, going from five units to four units would make the property ineligible to apply for funding through the Department of Housing and Community Development.

So going to our 5C designating this one bedroom or efficiency units automatically allows you to go to one space per unit without having to provide this

And that is the purpose, the rationale for the rezoning.

So I think I saw you were going to look to do the affordable and special needs housing grant in the spring, March or April I guess when that comes up, but otherwise you had funding secured but that you're hoping to get this grant obviously which would be helpful.

What I would say to that is that the regional housing study from the Central Shenandoah Planning District Commission which is funded by Virginia Housing

strongly recommended that communities in the valley, including Harrisonburg, do their utmost to leverage state available funds with local funding because their point is given the need of affordable and special needs housing that you have, trying to do it with local capital only is not going to provide the necessary number of units.

And so it is important for communities in the valley to not only

involved themselves in trying to leverage financing through state resources, but to increase the rate at which they're doing that in order to return these dollars to our community.

And so that is to be the rationale for applying for that.

On the flip side, there are certain fixed costs associated with applying to DHCD involving certain studies, market studies, you know, for market housing plans.

There's many different documents and plans and studies that have to be done to apply.

And if you're going to advertise all of that study money over a large number of units, then it could make sense.

This is very close to the margin of doing that.

And as I indicated at the time of my application, Valley Housing Trust has sufficient funds on hand to complete this project if state leverage funds are not obtained.

And so, personally, it's a very close call as to whether to pursue those or not.

the project will not suffer from an absence of financing in the event that we decide not to apply to the state level for funding which of course brings with it many burdens as I mentioned and those make a lot of sense on a larger project like Bluestone Town Center

Market Commons, something like that, you can advertise those costs over a large number of units.

It makes a great deal of sense.

The smaller that gets, the more difficult that is.

So I haven't ruled out or in applying for that.

It's still under evaluating the costs associated with doing that.

But I think what the essence of your question is, if I don't apply for or don't receive that, do I have the money to build this?

That's good, and I think it just points to the challenge when you're smaller in housing and community development, really that problem rests with them to kind of solve this for smaller developers, but it won't be solved before you apply.

And, you know, I think that nobody makes a greater mistake than who does nothing because you can do only a little is, you know, a famous saying, and I think it applies to housing, particularly with regards to this lower end of the income spectrum.

Thank you Frank.

Thank you.

Do we have anyone else?

Seeing none in person.

One moment please.

Thank you.

All right, I will close public hearing on this item.

I'll make a motion.

I can't pull up.

Let me see if I can pull it up here on my screen.

I'm not connected to the network.

Well, I'll start.

Second.

Well, I mean we've said it before when Mr. Gordon's up here, thank you.

for doing this work.

This is really difficult, challenging work.

We want to encourage small local developers, but you're up against a lot of obstacles in doing that.

You know, the state funding doesn't always work towards these projects.

It's a problem.

I think we actually, you know, the General Assembly will be starting in January.

Yeah, I do the same.

I appreciate your willingness, actually, to take care of this project and make sure that affordable housing is a priority.

And I really request that you take care of the entrance.

It's very important.

There is a way that you can have a concrete island in the middle to enforce and to go to the right.

Anything can be safe for the families that are living there.

The next request is familiar to you, I'm sure.

In fact, about four months ago, I stood before you explaining this exact same resigning request, and you all had gone through the actions to approve it.

Unfortunately, after reviewing some files, staff realized that there was an error in advertisement that occurred in July prior to the Planning Commission public hearing.

for this item in a separate item and therefore we needed to go back through the steps to correctly advertise it which we've done and have re-heard the item again at Planning Commission which occurred just last month and so I'm for you again just to bring this item back to you to ensure proper procedures have taken place to allow the property owner to rezone the site from its B2 designation to the B1 district.

Just for the record, it is quite rare for us to make errors in advertisements.

I'm going to think in my over 21 years, I might be able to count that in one hand.

And it just so happens it happened recently.

So just to sort of reassure you of our steps there.

So, nothing has changed since July, and so I don't want to waste your time, but I do want to at least remind you of the application.

And if there's any questions about this, if there's something I didn't cover or you want reminding of, please let me know.

But the site is literally just across the street at 320 South Main Street.

It's currently zone B2.

You can also see in this image there's some hatching on some of our other red parcels here really on the east side of South Main Street.

That's an indication of those properties had also been rezoned and in fact these properties were rezoned from B2 to B1.

So the orange to the red which is exactly what they're requesting here this evening.

So B2 to B1 and there are profits associated with the request.

This area of the city is planned for mixed use and it again is in a transitional space here where we have mixed use planned along South Main Street.

You're starting to pick up neighborhood residential to the east along Franklin Street.

Anything you see that's in the purple color is owned basically a public entity and government owns it.

So mixed use in this particular case really does kind of align with the Comprehensive Plans Land Use Guide and rezoning to be one.

And then an aerial photograph of the site.

Image taken from South Main Street looking at the property.

Back in the summer we were discussing how the size of the building and the types of uses that go into the building really impact the parking for the site really.

So different uses have different requirements for parking.

By rezoning it to B1, it eliminates their parking requirement entirely, although they do continue to plan to provide parking.

And if you recall, in actually reviewing the staff report, it was way back in 1960 when the front addition was put onto this, that it was at that time that the city was requiring them to put the parking in the back, which is what exists today.

They were requiring 20 spaces, but they now currently have 22 marked.

Now those 22 marked spaces which are shown in this image do not meet the design and construction standards manual for design criteria.

In fact, there's no outlet.

So this is a one-way in, one-way out, angled parking.

So if you pull in like most of these vehicles did, except for the two on the left in this image, you would have to back all the way out into the right-of-way.

If there are vacant spaces, of course you can turn around and maneuver on site, which is what we want you to do, so that it creates a safe space for people when they're maneuvering on Federal Street.

The applicant had noted that once they had gone through this review and we had talked to them about this they were planning on removing those first two spaces because those are the first two parking spaces that literally when they back out of the parking spaces they're backing into the street and that would at least help ameliorate some of the concerns but does not entirely remove them from any of the other awkward traffic situations that are created with this setup.

Again just a reminder that

If it's rezoned to B1, there are no parking requirements at all.

So if it remained B2, and depending upon the uses that went in there for retail or for professional office, you would get a range between 16 to 24 spaces.

It would be practically impossible if you tried to use the current B2 and tried to convert it to a restaurant because that's one per 100.

So you're looking at 40 some parking spaces which wouldn't be possible.

So it kind of really limits them under the B2 category for medical or retail.

If they resume to B1, again, no parking requirements.

So they could potentially have a restaurant in that space.

Of course modifications would be needed to the building.

The proffers that they submitted, one that no drive-through facilities would be allowed on the site, so they would be prohibited, which is something that we appreciate, being that it's in the downtown district.

No parking lots or a travel lane would ever be provided between the street and the building.

You know, when you look at it today, you think, well, it couldn't take place, but if somebody wanted to redevelop the site entirely,

that proffer would prevent a parking lot and a travel lane between the building and a public street essentially indirectly pushing the building closer to the street again what we'd like to have in the downtown district and then the third helps the city and the applicant to not have to do a traffic impact analysis at this current time which is that

The third proffer being all traffic generating uses should be limited to a combined total of 100 vehicle trips in either the am and the pm hour.

What that does is when they submit a building permit when it comes into our office the very first thing that the zoning inspector would take a look at is oh there's proffers on this property what is the use that they're trying to put in the building

They would check to see what that building is, check with Public Works to run the calculations to see if it does trigger the TIA.

If it doesn't, they can continue to move forward, but if it does, then we pause and say, hold on, the use you're wanting to put in here might generate more than the vehicle threshold, and we need to evaluate this a little bit closer.

So it's a good catch-all for both them and for the city.

Do we have any questions?

So I will open this item up for public hearing.

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

You'll have five minutes.

Seeing none in person.

One moment, please.

Thank you.

I will call close public hearing on this item.

Second.

I think just you know on the no parking requirements we have that discussion in this city and I think you know this particular spot seems to make sense for that and I think that's not an issue I think you know we have some of our other sister cities like Falls Church and Richmond and they've gotten rid of parking requirements but very different cities than ours I think that's a

Councilmember Robinson.

Aye.

Vice Mayor Fleming.

Aye.

Councilmember Alsadun.

Aye.

Aye.

Our item for 7A, discussion regarding communications to federal representatives related to community safety.

And I wanted to kind of give some context to this and then pass it to our two other council members to speak.

Tonight, council, city council, we will,

discuss an issue that strikes at the heart of who we are as a community.

The recent violence and deeply troubling actions carried out by ICE agents in our city.

These incidents have not only harmed individuals and families, but they have shaken the sense of safety and belonging that we have worked so hard to build in Harrisonburg.

So we are a city that believes in dignity, compassion, and justice.

Every person who calls Harrisonburg home, regardless of where they're from, where they're born, deserves to be treated with humanity and respect.

What has occurred does not reflect our values, nor does it represent the kind of community we aspire to be.

So tonight's discussion is not about politics, it's about people.

It's about standing up for our neighbors who are living in fear.

It is about saying clearly that violence, intimidation, and disregard for human rights have no place in our city.

We feel that we can no longer be silent,

when our residents are living in fear.

As leaders, our moral obligation is to protect all who live here and to use our voice to call for justice.

Harrisonburg is a community of hope, of welcome, and of courage.

And that is who we aspire and will continue to be.

So I'm going to open the discussion up to our council members.

I know Vice Mayor would like to go first and have a discussion about what we want to do as a council moving forward.

And I have to say that I'm very proud of my colleagues for wanting to do this in a public forum, putting it on the agenda to discuss because we get phone calls and we hear the distress in our community.

and not everybody who has our roles are accessible and will take this on like we're doing.

So I'm very proud of us right now, of what we're trying to discuss and how we're trying to at least let our community members know that we,

stand with them and that we are not supporting what is happening to them almost daily in our city.

Thank you, Mayor, for allowing us to have this discussion here.

Here's our Giza Caring community.

We are neighbors who look out for each other and after one another and that's what defines us today and it's something we continue to build together.

It's also why the recent actions of federal immigration enforcement agencies have struck so deeply at who we are and who we want to be.

So our community is experiencing fear and disruption.

Residents stopped in their neighborhoods, children left frightened and unintended,

families living in fear.

That is unacceptable.

I do want to acknowledge the fear and pain many in our community are feeling right now.

These actions we've seen do not make anyone safer.

They wrote trust, divide families and threaten the stability that keeps our city strong.

They harm our families, children who are part of our Harrisonburg family.

Our immigrant community is not separate from us, it is us.

Immigrants are part of the family and fabric of Harrisonburg.

This city was founded by immigrants and it remains an immigrant led city today.

People came here seeking opportunity, safety and belonging.

the exact same reasons people come here now.

They make our city healthier, more vibrant and more sustainable.

And when they are targeted or made to live in fear, every single resident is harmed.

Our whole community becomes less safe, less whole and less human.

A few weeks ago, I went with a young woman to the ICE facility, where her father, a longtime member, valued contributor to our community, had been taken and detained.

He was in extremely fragile health.

She had to bring his medications to them.

She wasn't allowed to see him.

As far as I know, she still hasn't seen him.

I don't know if and when she will ever see him.

It actually brought something from my family's history.

My mother was a teenager when her father was taken by the Nazis into Stalag VII during World War II and she never saw him again.

And I share that not to draw a comparison but to remind us that family separation

anywhere for any reason leaves deep wounds.

And here in Harrisonburg, we are not divided into an immigrant community and everyone else.

We are one community.

When fear and separation reach one part of our family, all of us feel it.

The distance between those living this drama and fear and those who may feel safely removed is not as great as it may seem.

as a council member.

I share the deep concern that every member of this body and every and so many of you in this room feel tonight.

The fear our immigrant neighbors are facing is not abstract.

It's immediate, it's personal and it's unjust and we must make it clear we stand firmly against the terrorizing of our residents by immigration and customs enforcement and homeland security investigations.

We also have to be honest about our limits.

ICE and HSI are federal agencies.

Local governments have very little legal power to restrict or control them.

So we cannot give false assurances about the powers we do not have.

That would not make anyone safer.

What we can do and what we must do is protect trust, safety, and accountability within our own systems.

So our first duty is to ensure that our local police officers and first responders fulfill their mission only as guardians of public safety and providers of emergency care.

They have no role, no responsibility, and no training related to federal immigration enforcement.

And let's be clear, it would be irresponsible and dangerous for us to send our own officers into the community without proper training.

Yet that is exactly what is happening with ICE and HSI.

They're entering our communities like ours without the preparation, the standards, or the accountability that we require of every local officer here in Harrisonburg.

Therefore, our federal and state officials have the responsibility to ensure that training for these agencies meets the highest professional and ethical standards.

The same level of training accountability that we demand from our own law enforcement.

So I think we need to be communicating our deep concern directly to our federal and state representatives, our congressional delegation, our governor and the attorney general, the incoming governor, the incoming attorney general, and ask for a full investigation into the practices of federal immigration enforcement in and around Harrisonburg.

We have reports of ICE and Homeland Security stopping residents with children and leaving those children unattended.

Stopping cars and leaving them in the streets.

Creating traffic safety hazards.

Using levels of force that would not meet the standards expected of any local law enforcement officer in Virginia.

That is unacceptable.

No agency should be allowed to come into our city and endanger our residents through inadequate training or oversight or disregard for safety.

So I hope we can ask our federal and state officials to clarify the standards under which these agencies operate, to investigate their practices, and to affirm that they share, those officials share, our conviction

that no Harrisonburg resident, no matter their background, should live in fear of law enforcement acting without accountability, training or basic human respect.

So I appreciate and I know we're not shying away from these difficult conversations or actions on this council.

And I know that no member of this council lacks courage or conviction to protect our residents, our friends and neighbors.

I also want to recognize and thank the many residents who have stepped up swiftly and courageously to support our immigrant families.

Their actions are both necessary and critical.

There's little precedent for this work, but they're doing it out of love for their neighbors, their city and the community they all call home.

They're standing for democracy, liberty and justice for all.

Those are values we pledged to uphold at the start of this meeting.

So this is an uneasy position.

We don't always know what the consequences will be when Council pushes back against efforts we have little control over.

And we know that our words and actions, if misinterpreted or distorted, can lead to real harm for the very people we're trying to protect.

We know what we don't accept.

We know what our community finds unacceptable and tolerable.

but the most effective and responsible response is not always clear when the stakes are highest for our most vulnerable residents.

So I will, we will stay open.

We'll keep this conversation going because I don't think this ends tonight.

Harrisonburg is still becoming the city we aspire to be a compassionate, inclusive and courageous city.

So I want to thank my council colleagues for allowing me that extended time for these remarks.

We as government officials have a responsibility to our most vulnerable citizens.

And I think what you said

is saying we are willing to be responsible by asking those above us to hold these agencies accountable.

Everything that you said in that letter, I think, aligns with what we came up in our mission when we had our our

Retreat.

I wholeheartedly agree with everything that you've said and I too believe that the conversation isn't over.

This conversation will be continued until oversight is where it needs to be and where folks are doing what they're supposed to be doing and not stepping outside of those boundaries.

And those who have the most control over that oversight, which are our representatives,

are standing up saying that's enough or that's not how we do things.

And until that happens, I think things may continue, unfortunately, as they are.

But we want our citizens in Harrisonburg to know that we are behind them 100%, that we support them.

We do not support

people being treated inhumanely.

We do not support people stepping outside of their boundaries, leaving kids in the street unattended, frightened and causing extra trauma to the lives of others.

And so I'm very appreciative that you took the time to write that, Danny.

I feel like it says everything that I would have said

had I been asked to write something like that to speak to the situation with ICE in Harrisonburg.

Yeah, I want to thank the council members, Mayor Reed and city manager and Mr. Brown on having encouraged actually movement towards our people and

As actually a migrant, I feel the pain when they took you away from your parents, from your family.

A friend actually who had been detained and took from his family.

And his daughter, nine years old, like more than three weeks or more, still crying every single day and asking everybody why.

What did my father do?

And I know him.

He's a great man.

He has a PhD and no criminal records.

And he's working hard.

He wants just to be a peaceful person with his family, raising his kids here, taking the education and obeying the law and paying his taxes and everything.

Just he wants to be safe with his family.

That's all.

and the return is that he was treated inhuman.

Why?

For nothing.

Like is that like something that's too much like to be treated as a human?

Is that too much?

It's like we know that this country well known of human rights and how people are treated and all other countries are looking at this country as a role model.

We ask that people who are like the ICE agents like beat as a vice mayor said like to be trained how to treat people I mean this person is not criminal so he has to be treated in the way that he deserves

So, my last word is that we, as City Council, we stand with all individuals, with all their families, that we stand with them as much as we can.

So, Vice Mayor, I don't know if you want to do the ask, but we have, we know that, as you said in your remarks, that we have limited authority

when it comes down to federal agents.

I mean, there's really nothing that we can do.

But we want to make an ask on behalf of council to our city manager.

Yeah, I guess, City Manager, if you could draw up a response from City Council kind of reflecting our concerns about the federal agents that are in Harrisonburg, their actions as it relates to the safety concerns we've identified.

families and their Children, Children being left on the road.

Um, the hazards that are created by those officers, how they interact with our residents, if they're doing it in ways that would meet the standards.

Our own officers adhere to, um, any request to investigate

the actions of ICE and HSI here to provide us a response to that.

So that's the request of council city manager?

I most certainly can.

I will work with Mr. Brown and our team to put together a correspondence, a letter directed to, I believe you said, both the state and federal officials conveying counsel's concern about the conduct of federal law enforcement in the city.

I think something else that maybe we can do as counsel is also reach out to

Well, I'm actually going to take it a step further.

Yes, we should definitely reach out to our city colleagues.

Because so, you know, Harrisonburg and Rockingham County, we border on each other.

And so some people may think some things happen in a county.

They think it's happening in Harrisonburg or it happens in Harrisonburg.

And, you know, we we we blend too much together.

in certain areas.

And so I'm going to challenge our colleagues in the county to do the same because we need to protect individuals no matter if they're in the city or if they're in the county.

Agreed.

All right, everybody good?

All right, thank you so much.

We'll go to our next item, 7B.

So every four years we come to you with a

having to adopt our emergency operations plan.

Last time we were here was in 2021.

If you remember, we were still trying to come out of the pandemic.

This is a joint document between the city, the county, and JMU.

We've been a joint document with the city and county for about 12 years.

Eight years ago, we offered the universities the option to also come on board.

JMU took us up on it.

Bridgewater and EMU felt based on how our emergency operations plan was and what their requirements were, it was easier for them to do their own document.

And so that's how those two universities were doing as part of the process.

We're required to do this by both federal and state code every four years.

The requirements under state law give every locality the authority to create emergency management.

In fact, they're required to once they hit a certain size.

And every disaster starts locally.

It also ends locally.

And when you talk about events like a pandemic, events like hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquake, terrorist attacks, we're the ones who respond first and we're the last ones to leave.

And sometimes that takes years and years.

So under the state code we have to have a director of emergency management.

We have to complete this review every four years to make sure we're up to date with requirements.

Generally it takes three to four months to go through the document.

We have generally four to six people who are reviewing it from all the different organizations.

What this document allows and addresses is how we handle local emergencies.

And I think everyone here was a part of the local declaration that we did earlier this year.

And to do that, that was allowed by state code and we had to have a special meeting to be able to move forward with that event.

And that's what this document helps to do.

It provides those definitions of what we're going to do and the resources that we have.

It also gives us some flexibility that if we have a large event and need to do emergency procurement, we have that ability.

It also gives us the ability to ask for help from other localities, from private industry and from the state.

Generally, though it's not always required, we find ways to work around it.

You generally have a local declaration and a state declaration and then a federal declaration.

Within the city code, we actually developed the Office of Emergency Management, and that's where this document currently resides.

That's who's responsible for updating it.

The Office of Emergency Management is also the one that helps coordinate those planning efforts related to emergency management and disaster planning.

Within the Emergency Operations Plan, it's divided into four sections.

We have the basic plan that outlines basically the authority and the powers.

We have the appendices, which provide a lot of information that goes into the back sections.

So with the basic plan, you have the purpose, you have those key concepts.

We talk about what the city is, what the county is, and what JMU is, how many students, how many citizens we have, basically giving that description.

We talk about the roles and responsibilities, who's in charge of what during a large disaster, and basic concepts of operations.

This document is not often used as a day-to-day manual of what we do, but it helps to guide when we have large events.

Within the appendices, we have definition of terms.

We talk about the succession of authority.

So who's allowed to make that declaration?

How does that fall during times of disaster?

And it provides a sample declaration that we use when we actually have to write it up.

Within the chain of command for the city of Harrisonburg, we have a director of emergency management.

That's the city manager.

The deputy director of emergency management is the deputy city manager.

And then for day-to-day operations, you have the emergency coordinator, which is the fire chief, and the deputy emergency coordinator, which is the administrative officer, which is my role.

And basically, I'm responsible for the day-to-day operations to make sure we get all the paperwork right.

Emergency support functions.

This is sort of how we have our emergency operation plan set up, and it's sort of designed on who's responsible for what, and you'll see within your presentation there's actually 17 ESFs.

1 through 15 are actually federally defined.

16 and 17 are actually specifically for Virginia.

It's specifically military support and then volunteer and donation management.

Donation management is a huge issue when it comes to a disaster.

One of my favorite stories in relation to that was during Hurricane Andrew in Florida.

They talk about the tractor trailers of winter coats that were sent down from Minnesota.

They don't really need winter coats in Florida.

So what do you do with those?

You'll notice within the document we have primary and secondary agencies.

Those agencies are listed as the primary responsible department within that ESF, that emergency support function.

We also have secondary and support agencies.

This is not always an inclusive list.

There are many resources we can use within the city that may not show up on this document, and this doesn't preclude us from doing that.

But it helps provide a template when you aren't having to deal with this every day.

What agencies can I call to kind of help me through these different kind of areas?

We have our support and incident annexes.

These are specific kind of things like flooding, like tornado responses and how we would handle those type of emergencies and where we can get them.

It also talks about some resources when it comes to debris removal on determining how much debris do we have after a storm because you have to figure out where it's going to go and how it's disposed of legally.

And that's basically how the emergency operations plan works.

So, thank you.

I know you had a question.

I'll come back.

So, I didn't read through all 250 pages there.

That's okay.

Amazingly impressive.

Well, luckily we have a lot of help in doing this.

The state actually provides us a review as well and identifies areas where we can improve on.

So just one question, this is really a curiosity for me, but when I look at the primary and secondary agencies, I look through the documents, see the hospitals mentioned there many times, right?

and emergency folks are going to the hospital.

They're a key part of or an integral part of responding.

So in the emergency operations plan itself, they would generally be a consulting agency.

But within the emergency support functions, for instance, during the pandemic, our lead agency was the Virginia Department of Health.

So the hospital was a supporting agency, but they're not listed in that document in that way.

It doesn't preclude them from participating, which they do.

And in fact, they have their own actually emergency coordinators that

And again, this is an overview document.

It doesn't change what we do from day to day.

We do.

So one is within Harrisonburg and Rockingham County, and in fact I have a meeting tomorrow morning, we have the Emergency Management Task Force.

You may hear the term LEPC, which is the local emergency planning commission.

Back after 9-11, this area created an emergency management task force to talk about and sort of head up responses to similar type of things.

The anthrax scare came out and all of that and actually the chair of that at the time I want to say was Dr. Carroll from the hospital and he chaired it

for almost eight years.

Robby Simons took over from him and then I've been the chair now since 2008 of that committee.

It includes the hospital, it includes the free clinic, it includes the, I'm going to get this wrong, the healthy community, the HCHC or whatever over on Port Road as part of it.

It also includes manufacturing facilities within the city and the county, all first responders from the state down through the local responders including a couple federal partners with the EPA.

So they participate with that.

In addition, from an emergency management standpoint, we have a, uh, every other month meeting with all of the local coordinators between Harrisonburg, Rockingham State and Augusta, Waynesboro.

Yeah, and then, I mean, just since we're on the topic, I'll share with Council, both Ms.

So I know you said that the other two universities have their own, I guess, emergency... I think it's called something different, but it's in essence their own version of their emergency operations plan.

We haven't in the last two cycles.

But in those cycles, the person who was responsible for it hadn't changed.

Now, Bridgewater's just did, so we may reach out again.

And EMU's, they may be willing to do it.

They were, EMU was very hesitant just because of the amount of paperwork on top of what they felt they already had to do.

So just so you know, JMU for instance, they are a huge part of our emergency operations plan.

In addition to our emergency operations plan, they have to by state code develop their own plan on top of it.

So what some of the universities have done is said we just want to do that one piece and it's completely It's a more operational based day-to-day.

How do we do this?

Alright, I just want to make sure.

Sure.

So we, I was looking for Michael Parks.

There was a campaign, he disappeared, he was here at some point.

So there was a campaign that we started two months ago, three months ago, called Neighbors in the Know.

We have a system here that covers the city and the county.

The program itself is called Everbridge, but we call it Harrisonburg Rockingham Emergency Alert.

And residents can sign up for it.

It provides either text message, phone calls, or emails anytime a notification goes out.

The type of notification you would get would be a shelter in place.

When you sign up for it, something new that has come out

In the last two years were weather alerts.

It will provide you warnings for any storm that comes through.

You can sign up for watches.

I will say it's 67 different alerts you can sign up for.

Do not sign up for all of them.

Some of them go off daily, middle of the night, 4 a.m.

I wouldn't sign up for those.

But it provides that information.

Most recently, we used it on Virginia Avenue.

Some people may have seen the county has used it recently.

But it's a way we've used it for water issues, where we've pinpointed specific houses down 33 West in that county when we had to have them hold off using their water for 12 hours.

and so we encourage people to do that.

They can search Harrisonburg's website for emergency alerts and there's a sign up spot.

Not everyone has to sign up though.

If you have a landline, if you have a certain cell phone carrier, our subscriber will automatically opt you in so that you will get that.

Now it doesn't guarantee everyone will and the advantage of signing up is you give it a specific address.

Okay, because the last alert that went out, I got it and I was unable to explain to others why they didn't get it right.

and so they thought it was some special privilege.

And you can send them to the website for that specifically.

Something that has changed over the last 20 years is the transition from landlines to cell phones.

You know, we had a system called Reverse 911 for years and it was specifically designed for landlines.

There wasn't a subscription service, it just did it and to tell a story on myself back in 2012, we decided we were going to test the system for a tornado warning.

and we put out a test.

And it rang, I want to say 72,000 phone numbers between the Shenandoah-Rockingham County line and the Rockingham-Augusta County line.

It rang Steven Toyota's 32 phone lines.

So we will not be doing that again.

Well, you know, whenever I get the opportunity to have you stand before us and me, we have to thank you for all the work that you do.

I'm happy to do it.

You know, because you have gotten us through so much, and it's just an incredible job that you do for the city and for us and keeping us safe.

So thank you, Mayor.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

All right.

Just a point of clarification.

Second.

The next two items on the agenda are replaced here at the request of the Harrisonburg Redevelopment and Housing Authority.

The authority wishes to undertake a couple of different

housing development projects and under state law before they can do that they need to get the consent and authorization of the local governing body so the and that's what the two resolutions on the agenda are tonight the first item 7c is to consider adopting a resolution authorizing and approving the purchase and renovation of

227 North Main Street Harrisonburg into a mixed-use housing and commercial development by the authority and that's the old Glen's Fair Price location.

I know that there was a liaison meeting at some point, HRHA and us.

I'm not on it anymore.

Who was on it?

Me.

Certainly.

Good evening, mayor, council members.

Michael Wong again, Helmsburg E-Development Housing Authority.

Our goal and desire is to build 16 units of between 400 and 500 square foot apartment living complexes.

This will be at the Glensfield Place on the top floor of the building.

We are proposing that in addition to that to expand that space of that building.

The three reasons why we are doing this project.

One is the need for affordable housing and additional units.

Secondly is the housing authority is looking to expand some office space and we could construct office space at the building.

And then thirdly, the reason why we kind of looked at this project in the first place is because of our renovation of the line we ran that's building.

That's a 60-unit senior housing, also with people with disabilities.

Apartment complex was built in 1993.

It was the second low-income housing tax credit property that was developed in Virginia.

So it has a long history, but it's in tremendous need of renovation.

We tried about four years ago with financing and developing a renovation plan.

Unfortunately, our bid proposals came in almost 300% higher than what we had initially estimated.

No, the purpose is to renovate the line we were building, but as we do that extensive renovation, we would need to relocate some of our residents from the space.

And so having the Glensville Pikes building right beside it, and we all

The proposal is to develop those units first so that we can relocate those residents into those units or provide them a housing choice voucher if they so desire.

Okay.

Yes, we partner with Hillsboro Downtown Renaissance to hold two community meetings.

We ended up canceling one community meeting because we had very little interest in attendance.

Yeah, you know, in this state and age and affordable housing, it's really sometimes it's the size of the project is really makes you eligible for financing and favorable financing options.

And so we found, we identified that if we did not add to the overall project size of just the line we ran at, we were very challenging getting financing available.

But by purchasing and renovating,

and do an adaptive reuse of the Glensfield price.

And we also propose doing renovations at the JR pipeline level, which will include new windows, new doors, new flooring in that apartment space.

None of this is grants.

This is a condo revenue type of financing that we obtain from the units and the office space will be used to pay off the renovation costs.

It is the size of it.

Well, historically, line weaver has been problematic in terms of criminal activity, loitering, been very evasive to neighboring businesses

So I know currently you have, I believe it's still this way, you have a full-time person who helps to maintain this building.

It's like an on-site apartment manager for lack of a better term.

Is that person then going to assume management of this additional building?

And if so, how, I mean,

Is there an expectation that this problematic behavior is going to decrease?

What are we doing to ensure that we not just have more apartments with an increase in problematic behavior?

Well, I know clearly COVID impacted our residents.

And during that period of time of COVID, we did have some behaviors and issues and challenges with the residents.

And that was mainly due to the abrupt disruption of services that was available to our residents.

Since that time, not only in addition to the full time,

property manager that we have on site.

We have one and a half positions in regard to supportive services in which we have service coordinators that we hire our fire value association independent living.

that assist our residents in regard to connecting to valuable resources.

We have also engaged and provide contract services to strengthen appeals to provide recreational activity services to help people keep active and be able to

channel their energies and positive behavior.

We, as I stated, we'll have office space down there, so we'll have additional staff that will be there in the Glensfield Place building.

So that's also, we believe, will assist in regard to being proactive and addressing any client's negative behaviors.

and we have not made a decision.

We go to the current property manager assuming these 16 units or we have an additional person to support that.

I'm talking about the inappropriate

Often criminal in nature, activities that occur.

We all know, I guess because we live in the neighborhood, I guess we see more than others.

There's a lot of activity associated with line weavers that is negative in nature.

and what I'd like to see is that brought more under control.

I don't know how that would be done.

I'm not suggesting to you how to do your job.

What I'm saying is we have a problem at Lime Weavers and in my mind what I'm seeing is a problem that could possibly be exasperated.

because of the additional 16 units.

And then also some of the elderly that live there have been vocal about not feeling safe in that environment.

I don't know if this riffraff is hanging out and not actually living there at Line Weavers, but there are some problems and I'm not seeing

I'm very happy about the 16 additional units, but I don't necessarily know or can trust you that they're going to be handled in an appropriate way.

We live in the Northeast neighborhood and we're very intentional now about trying to

Clean that neighborhood up.

And with that small area plan, there has been a lot of concerns about safety.

And one of those concerns is, can you walk past Live Weaver and not be

I'm not seeing a plan for handling the problems that are currently happening there.

I'm just seeing this wonderful plan about how we can

You know, expand office space and add to housing which we desperately need.

But there's a problem there.

Again, property management is the key to handling lease issues associated with a residence.

And we've been very active and prompt in regard to once a behavior has been identified and addressing it.

that has increased in regard to the number of evictions to residents over there, which is appropriate if they aren't willing to file the rules and comply with the lease agreement.

But it's a process that occurs in addition to if a person has a behavioral issue that affects another resident, it's a 30-day notice to at least let them know of being able to mitigate that issue.

and it could take another two months after that to go through the court process to have someone evicted.

We had someone assault someone at one point and they appealed it to the Supreme Court and so they were still going through adjudication but that took almost a year to get the person evicted from the property.

And I know there are a lot of folks with mental health issues.

that are at Lon Weaver currently.

But I'm just concerned, unless that property management is going to be there after hours, I'm just not feeling it.

We, you know, historically, we've had tried security officers.

No, it wasn't because of that.

It was because the ability to be able to actually be able to address a certain behavior was not that spontaneous.

Well, of course, I'm supporting everything that you said.

The one thing that I do see that is encouraging is if you do get

to develop what you're trying to do at Glenfair Price is the fact that you're going to have offices there.

And so because that's always been the problem.

It needs to be more of you down there, right?

Because not one person can't handle what's going on in Lime Weaver.

And it's been, Michael, you know, it's been going on for years.

So it's not just happening.

It's always been happening.

It's too much in and out.

It's too much people letting other people in.

Happening at night, the drug activity.

We know.

I live up the street.

I'm by there every day.

I drive by there every day.

To have more of supervision down there is probably the best thing that you can do.

The issue is the nine to five might work, but it's what happens after five.

Right.

And so, I mean, I don't know what everybody else wants to say.

Me and Monica, you know, we're in the neighborhood.

There's always been a problem there.

And, you know, if you add additional apartments, I'm with her.

I'm, you know, is that going to create more problem?

But I do like the idea of you having staff there.

I think that's needed.

Like if you have staff there,

It seems like one of the issues, apart from that, is that both those buildings are in desperate need of rehabilitation.

So you had a plan at one point, I guess, and that fell through and I remember that, that the cost escalated so significantly.

Are any of those plans related to additional security or safety for staffs or any of the planned rehabilitation of either of those buildings include anything about entrance

Helping with entrance into the facility, money would make that safer for folks or less likely to have those.

Safety is kind of, you know, something of a priority that we have all the time.

They're all challenges just because of the number of emergency exits that we need to have within the building.

And we do have a challenge at times with residents that let unauthorized people into the units, and then we have to address that behavior.

We are not going to ever be able to control that for all residents 100% of the time.

And so, you know, unfortunately we have to, you know, evict them from door housing if they do continue to do those types of behaviors.

but there's nothing specifically other than making the energy, you know, units more livable and we do find that when the units are livable, people take bell kill of the units.

I do think the idea of making the units more livable, as you say, upgraded, will have an effect on folks to take better care of the units and to think more conscientiously about those units and I know how difficult it is to get money

for housing that supports the population of folks that are there.

That's not an easy pot of money to get access to to do something that would be sufficient for those buildings.

Did you, so was this, was there a plan presented to your board around this?

Oh yeah.

Is that something that could be presented to council so we can kind of see the totality of the plan?

Are you asking about building plans?

Are you talking about the financing concepts in regard to working through the underwriting activities for the funding?

That was really what we focused on versus building plans.

Yeah, I'm thinking more concept plans.

I mean, I trust there's probably not someone I think has a better idea of how to secure financing and get it done than you do around here, so I'm less concerned about that.

But it's more the concept plan for council to see, for

residents and folks on that north side of Harrisonburg to also view it and give feedback for that plan.

This is a different route getting to us, not through planning, but coming directly here, so there's not really a public vetting part of that or viewing of that to give feedback.

If counsel desires, yes.

I do, yeah.

I support your concerns.

Yes, we'll make it possible.

We have a preliminary concept plan.

And you're talking about the Glensfield-Pice building, right?

Yes.

Yeah, so does he know, like, do you know, like, what they are requiring for the next time, right?

I believe so.

And I think really kind of the idea of moving staff there, giving additional staff oversight over the buildings potentially.

That sounds like that's at least some concern and just your response to that.

Okay.

Thank you.

All right.

All right.

So we're going to table this item.

All right.

Is there any more discussion?

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Thank you.

This is a similar situation, but I believe this is one that council is probably more familiar with, the Bluestone Town Center development.

And this resolution would authorize the authority to move forward with really two sub-developments, if you will.

one each on two different subdivided properties.

One is for is to construct and operate 62 residential units designed for the elderly.

And then one is to construct and operate 83 residential units.

Okay.

Thank you.

Any questions?

No.

No, this makes sense.

This is moving forward on projects that we've already approved, putting housing that we would like to see in place.

So I'll make a motion that we adopt a resolution authorizing approving the senior and affordable housing developments in the Blue Sandtown Center project.

Any more discussion?

Councilmember Robinson?

Aye.

Vice Mayor Fleming?

Aye.

Councilmember Alsadun?

Aye.

Aye.

All right, Item 7E.

Liz?

Good evening, Mayor, City Council.

I'm Liz Webb, Housing Coordinator, and I'm here with an update

on the Neff Avenue site, which we had last discussed about affordable housing development.

Let's see.

Available housing for all is a core feature of your vision for the future of Harrisonburg, a future with high quality affordable housing that's available and accessible to our community thanks to planning, partners, and innovation.

Just a refresher on how we got here.

We, the city did a housing study in 2021 that helped us understand housing needs and some potential housing solutions, including using public land for affordable housing.

My position was created in 2022.

In 2023, we obtained a site study on two of the larger city-owned parcels

that were identified in the housing study as having potential for affordable housing development.

And we worked on coming up with a strategy for how to move forward with that.

When we brought that to you last year, we recommended that the land itself serve as match for the project.

And then with your support, we began drafting an RFP.

What we issued was technically a development opportunity because as we learned we were not planning to buy or sell anything which sort of threw us off for a minute.

But the land was offered at zero cost in exchange for new housing with long-term affordability and we were seeking a developer to make that happen.

We published the development opportunity in July.

We were able to lean into some of the lessons we learned during the ARPA

We took applications through September and it took several weeks to review everything.

Our goal was to identify a highly capable development partner able to deliver a high quality affordable housing project.

And we wanted proposals that could demonstrate that they had the chops to deliver.

And so this is what we were looking for in our materials.

and we included in the evaluation criteria really looking for a significant contribution to affordable housing, a realistic financial plan, awareness of our particular market needs.

We also wanted to let developers tell us what they could do and really speak to what we were seeking without us telling them exactly because we wanted to lean into their expertise.

We received 12 responses.

Local, regional, and national developers, including those from private sector and nonprofit, a range of different proposals.

We spent quite a bit of time looking through them.

And I'm excited to be here to introduce you to Penrose.

They are a nationally acclaimed development and property management company.

producer of mixed income housing.

They've been around for over 50 years.

They've been in Virginia since 2019.

They have some projects in Newport News and Alexandria that are really demonstrating, you know, movement into this area and this region.

There were a lot of features in their proposal that our evaluation team was really drawn to.

their decades of experience in larger metro areas and in Virginia and projects that really reflect a sort of diversity of style and capabilities based on the market that they are coming into whether it's, I mean they're going to tell you about all this, but you know turning a movie theater into senior housing or you know something new

like a whole range of things and styles and they brought together an experienced team of partners for this effort.

They also maintain property management in-house and have been doing so solidly for decades.

Their financial plan is strategically phased, looks to maximize available funding streams with resiliency as related to competitive and sometimes changing financing sources.

Their proposal was really very thoughtful and highly responsive to our requests.

They saw something in what we laid out that was both our vision and more than our vision.

And so I'd really like you to hear it from them and get a better picture about why we are so excited to introduce Penrose to Harrisonburg.

So I'm going to bring up, okay, Patrick Stewart and Pat Bateman.

Okay.

Pat and Patrick.

Oh, look at that.

There you go.

That's fine.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, members of city council.

My name is Patrick Stewart, regional vice president with Penrose.

I'm here with, I'll say it.

Pat Bateman, senior developer with Benrose.

We are deeply honored to be here, to be considered for this opportunity.

My one concern is that I'm afraid Liz may have done a better job introducing us than we will do for ourselves, but we'll try our best.

We're just really thrilled about the opportunity and to be able to come into this beautiful city.

All of the legwork that you all have done and the commitment that you've put into prioritizing affordable housing, putting a plan in place, figuring out what the tools are in your disposal and making that happen.

And so to be able to respond in that kind of environment is very exciting for us.

So I'm going to try to talk briefly about who we are and at the same time try to operate the PowerPoint.

Walk and shoot gun at the same time.

So who is Penrose?

Liz covered some of this but we are an organization with a national footprint but really a local focus.

We've been in existence for about 50 years.

We are at our core.

We're a multifamily developer, also an owner and operator.

And as Liz mentioned, we have an integrated management company in-house as well.

We are a mission-driven multifamily developer.

Historically, and again from a mission standpoint, our focus really has been in affordable housing.

So we've done a good bit of mixed use and mixed income housing, but affordable housing really is at the core of that.

We, for me personally, have been with the organization for 13 years.

Every time I say that makes me feel extremely old, not least of the reasons being that I have a 13 year old, one of my four kids, but I've been around with the organization for as long as he's been alive.

So we are many things.

The thing that I would want to kind of highlight off of this slide is we are community driven.

We want to be great partners.

It is an honor that I take seriously personally as we do as an organization.

Anytime we come into a community where we have not worked before, we are aware that we have a lot to prove.

And we take that seriously.

My goal is to come out of this process with everybody feeling like they made the right decision.

And so we certainly have our work cut out for us, but we believe that we're up to the challenge.

When we talk about community driven, what that means for us is

We use these words collaborating with local voices to realize a shared community vision.

So that is about bringing our expertise to bear and helping the community get to the point where it wants to get to in terms of affordable housing.

Oh, went ahead.

My role, Pat's role, we are supported and have the benefit of a larger team within this region.

So we focus specifically in Virginia, Maryland, and to a lesser extent, D.C.

As a company, we are headquartered in Philadelphia, but we really have a network.

We're kind of organized around regions, and this is our team that's based mostly out of Baltimore.

Elsewhere around the country, we have regional offices more or less up and down the East Coast, expanding out in the Midwest and the West Coast.

I talked about being headquartered in Philadelphia.

One of the things that means is that we're based in Baltimore, we're working down here in Virginia.

But we have the ability to pick up the phone and interact on a daily basis with our senior executive leadership, the president of our development company, the president of the management company.

If there's an issue at one of the communities that we've been involved with, I can pick up my phone and call Marsha, the head, the president of our management company and talk about what we have to do to address challenges.

So

It's really about having a team, but having that full support of the organizational sort of infrastructure and that shared expertise.

And again, being a larger organization, we really want to look and feel like a smaller operation and be accessible.

I can leave my card, Pac can leave his card, leave our cell phones, everybody knows how to get in touch with us.

In terms of the communities that we serve, it's down at the bottom, but there really is a diverse array of communities, people with diverse needs that we serve and we take great pride in serving.

families, seniors, veterans, people experiencing homelessness, youth transitioning out of homelessness, people with disabilities, people in the LGBTQ community, and so for us it's really about meeting the needs of residents that we serve.

I'm not going to go into all this, but when we talk about mission, vision, values, it's really for us is about we're an organization, we're full of people who care deeply about what we do, how we do it, following through on our commitments, being good partners, doing things the right way, and having a positive impact.

These numbers actually are a little outdated and we don't need to go into each of them but really we've actually developed in our 50-year history north of 27,000 units of housing across 350 different properties.

We do have a little bit more than 500 employees.

$2.9 billion, that's now $5 billion in terms of the total value of the assets that we've developed and managed over time.

The one thing I want to highlight about that is every single dollar within that is one that we have as a company had to guarantee, whether it be through financing guarantee, completion guarantee, et cetera.

So we backed that.

That level of financial capacity,

is a testament of our ability to get shovels in the ground and get the job done.

and I also want to note that we own and manage the vast majority of communities that we have developed.

In the last couple years we've increased our focus on what's called ESG, corporate responsibility.

This to me really says a lot about transparency and accountability.

We're gonna put our results up there.

We publish this report every year.

Happy to share it with City Council if that's of interest.

But it tells a little bit more of a story about what we do and the impacts that we have outside of specific projects that we develop.

A big part of that is sustainability.

My favorite thing about this slide, I mentioned that I have four kids.

each of whom takes showers for probably you know at least twice as long as they really should have and I'm the dad who's outside of the bathroom like knocking on the door hey you've been in there for three and a half minutes come on so water conservation is big for me we most of our property is now using this ion

It's a leak detection.

It's also software.

So it meters and measures water consumption down to like the gallon level.

And it's really cool if you have a leaky toilet, a leaky faucet, it will identify the specific spot where that's happening and can not only save money but prevent overuse and waste of a shared natural resource, which I think is very cool.

So again, sustainability is a big part of what we do.

Part of the way that shows up in specific projects is through different levels of green and sustainability certifications.

These are just kind of a handful of ones that tend to show up in our projects.

The highlight for me here is that these are evidence not only reducing the environmental impact of our developments but also reducing utility bills which translates into lower housing costs for residents and increasing affordability.

and then at the bottom a little bit of a different theme but we are a for-profit company but we are very focused in providing a great resident experience in terms of resident engagement and services.

We have a couple years ago attained certification under the CORS program which is

Very challenging to obtain and is actually not that common for for-profit organizations to obtain.

But it speaks to our focus in terms of community impact, resident success, and resident engagement.

And then a little bit about our foundation.

We started several years back and it's just about trying to find ways to amplify our impact.

And the foundation is one of those ways.

In terms of how we go about development, I just want to briefly highlight, I put out some numbers, right?

27,000 units, 350 developments.

Each of those developments is an opportunity for us to learn and improve and learn lessons.

And so if something goes right, we want to make sure we do that again at the next development.

Not so great or if we get some feedback from our management and maintenance personnel that says like, you know, please don't use this particular brand of refrigerator or whatever it might be.

We have a design standard that encapsulates all of that experience and it's something that we review annually with our people.

So it's just one of those unique things that you get when you're working with us.

And with us you get kind of what I would say the cumulative value of all that experience.

So that, in a nutshell, is Penrose.

We're going to move on and talk a little bit about the development team that we have assembled.

It's not just about us.

We enjoy working with capable professionals, and we have assembled, we think, a really excellent team to make this happen in Harrisonburg.

Good evening and of course thank you for having us.

I led the effort to put together the response to the proposal and the strength of the proposal was due to the team that we put together.

The architect, general contractor and civil engineer all have more than 25 years of experience.

And what I think this team brings is national experience and local expertise, especially important in the areas of civil engineer and the architect.

I want to call out to Sentara Health as a financing partner.

I know you're all very familiar with Sentara.

We worked with them on several redevelopments at this point and they provided and on those projects they provided below market financing to the project which allows us to essentially leverage more debt and offer a better resident experience overall.

So they've offered a soft commitment to this project to participate in the development team and also in line with the Healthy People 2030 report

Also potentially future services, future more involvement within the development itself to the benefit of residents.

Also calling out Innova Services Company.

They're our construction administrator.

They work on all of our projects.

They really do a good job of bridging the gap between the architect and the contractor and making sure that we're providing the best possible development.

And then, of course, Pender is a management company, been around for 40 years, managing 17,000 units across all the markets we talked about, will be the backbone of the community for decades to come.

So in particular, what we set out to do first and foremost is really understand the priorities of the City of Harrisonburg in our response.

So we sought to address concerns within the 2018 Comprehensive Plan, the 2021 Housing Study, the Regional Housing Study that was done, and the Healthy People Report.

So for example,

One of the things we looked at was seeking to address one of the main concerns of the 2021 housing study, which was the inability for a family of four making less than $60,000 a year to live within Harrisonburg.

So in designing the development plan and the affordability that we're seeking to provide, we're attempting to deal with that issue.

One of the big things was understanding the challenges of the site.

The Neff Avenue site has a 90 foot grade change.

that creates challenging sight lines, it creates issues with local transit, and we sought to connect the site as much as possible in keeping with also the connectivity plan that was published by the city.

Another goal within our response was provide the ideal concept for the community and trying to be sensitive to local scale.

local contacts, the neighborhood that's immediately behind the site, and provide the best experience for residents and architecture while maximizing the usage of the site and attempting to meet the goals within the proposal published by the city.

Finally, as mentioned, leveraging local partnerships, specifically Sentara, and national relationships to maximize return to the city of Harrisonburg.

This slide, which we put together with Liz's help, is essentially to show, again, going back to the 2021 housing study, show the incomes of residents and families that might be able to actually live at this redevelopment.

So I'll say this with, you know, the development plan is still very much in process, what we can build, what we're trying to build.

But this slide is attempting to show, if you look at the bottom, a single earner job supporting a family of four.

We're seeking to provide housing for office clerks, maintenance techs, teachers, police officers, firefighters.

So as we work toward a development plan, a feasible development plan, our goal is to provide housing for, of course, the people that need it most, but also members of the community that are integral to the community.

Thanks Pat.

So we just wanted to take a minute and walk through a couple examples of projects that we have completed.

These are all examples of work that we've done out of our office and from our team, not all in Virginia, but they are for the most part.

So just a couple examples.

So this is called the Residences at North Hill.

This is near Alexandria in Fairfax County, Virginia.

one of the highest income jurisdictions in the entire country.

And for that reason, and due to the rising cost of living, it was just extremely important to be able to do more affordable housing.

Not to get into all the details and all the challenges, this is a project that was built during COVID.

All the challenges that came along with that.

This is also a total of 279 units across five buildings that were built all at the same time.

Total project cost of about 130 million dollars.

14 different funding sources and one very cool thing I think at the end of the day we were able to build this alongside market rate townhomes that are that have all sold and sold in the range of like north of six hundred seven hundred thousand dollars

right next door to 100% affordable housing for families and seniors, which I think is very cool.

And it speaks to the potential of housing to integrate within the community regardless of what the rental payment is per month.

And so that's the outcome we're going for.

High quality, it looks great.

It is a really successful community that people, I think, are proud to call home.

The next one, this is in Newport News, an initiative that we've been partnering with the Newport News Redevelopment and Housing Authority on through HUD's Choice Neighborhoods, Choice Neighborhoods Initiative, sorry.

This has been done through multiple phases.

We're actually just about to start construction on the fifth phase.

All in all, it's gonna total 236 units.

What you're looking at here is one of the buildings in the first two phases.

were originally called Carrier Point because of the proximity to the shipbuilding infrastructure.

Through a community engagement process with residents and the city, they actually hit on this new name for the community, Lift and Rise.

which is kind of an allusion to the role that housing can play in supporting better outcomes and success for residents so we have now completed the first four phases of the project and like I said are just about to start the fifth phase in downtown Newport News and then I'll cover this one

Glen Arden Hills.

This is in Prince George's County, Maryland.

This is a partnership with a county agency, the Redevelopment Authority.

Way back in the day, 15 years ago, this used to be over 600 units of deeply subsidized rental housing.

It fell into disrepair.

HUD took it over, foreclosed on it, and then the county put it out for an RFP.

We responded with a team and a number of partners, including a nonprofit partner.

put together this plan with concerted input from the community.

One of the neighbors was a single family community across the street.

They had lived through, you know, the history of this highly dense apartment community and wanted to see the density actually reduced.

So at the end of the day, we reduced it to 424 units, excuse me, which was a mix of market rate and affordable housing.

family and senior housing rental and actually for sale.

And so Pat is leading the charge on rounding out the remaining 70 to 75 single-family homes and the site work that goes along with that.

So this last project, calling it more of a case study because we see a lot of alignment and similarity to the Neff Avenue project.

It was a project in a historic town of Easton, Maryland, which is a small town on the Eastern Shore.

And so the Housing Commission put out a RFP similar to this one that we responded to in 2019.

This project faced a lot of challenges.

It was nearing closing and construction start kind of at the height of COVID.

So shortly before we closed and started construction, we had a financing gap of over two and a half million dollars, which as you can imagine, poses a significant problem to us.

Further, there were a lot of eyes on this project.

It was central to a historic district in a small town, and we did a lot of community outreach.

We did a lot of planning with the local community, and the architecture was trying to be very, very sensitive to the local neighborhood.

In concert with the single-family homes that were across the street, there were townhouses at the front of the development to be sensitive to that scale and then these larger, call them walk-up garden buildings on the backside of the site that step down in order to further connect with the architecture of the local community.

We just celebrated the ribbon cutting last week.

It was a great event.

We had a lot of local support come out, a lot of elected officials.

Again, a small historic town faced a lot of challenges with being sensitive to the context of the neighborhood, providing the neighborhood something, a very, very thoughtful solution to bringing housing back.

I failed to mention this was a

existing public housing development with 50 current residents and we solicited their feedback throughout the entire process and we designed the project around them so that they could all return at the end of the day.

Thank you.

So with that, I'm going to ask Liz to come back up and close us out.

I'm really excited.

The slides look great.

We can't tell.

So I want to just get a feel for how we're feeling about this.

This is where we've reached so far based on what we've heard from your priorities in terms of what the city should be doing for housing and affordable housing.

And so with your blessing, our next steps are to proceed with

contract negotiations.

As we move forward, there would be lots of opportunities.

There's public hearings that would be tied to bringing a contract and any potential rezoning.

Those are already built into land use and legal

and then we are going to work out the details of public engagement that go above and beyond because this is our site and so we know what we want to see in terms of how we connect with the community, how we inform the community,

You know, how we have, you know, the ability to move forward with the narrative about what we're doing and, you know, and show progress there.

I think I just got a little, anyway.

So, I just wanted to, yeah, make sure that this is the direction that we're moving in.

So if y'all can come back up, please.

Thank you, Liz.

We can see how excited you are about this, and I can understand why.

Often we get developers that come here and want to do a project.

And they say all the right things or what they think they want us to hear, right?

And then they don't come through with the project, right?

I think for the first, well, I'm not going to say for the first time, but for me personally, I wrote down some of the things that you were saying.

Great partners, community driven.

You want everybody feeling like they made the right decision.

I don't know how many times you said community throughout your presentation.

I really feel like you mean it, and that's important to me when we talk about affordable housing, right?

I don't know your, I wrote it down, your tag says bricks and mortar, heart and soul, which I kept looking at that, right?

That heart and soul piece.

and so I really feel like that you will be great partners for Harrisonburg and what we're looking for.

Your work is incredible.

The fact that that one housing project that you had, people were displaced and then you made sure they came back, that did it for me, you know, because we don't hear that.

We have people that come and they kind of know each other, one of us, they know what we want.

But you don't know us.

And you just said, for me, you said everything that I would have, that I want from a developer.

And so I thank you for that.

I don't know how much you got from Liz, but I really do feel like this is who you are.

For me, we have approved so many projects, right?

The majority of them, the shovels don't even hit the ground.

And so, if this comes to be your project for us,

I want to guarantee that the shovel's at the ground, because we need that.

We need people who need affordable housing.

And you're providing housing for the people that need it the most, especially here in Harrisonburg.

So I appreciate your vision, I appreciate your presentation, but what I appreciate the most is that you are telling us who you really are, and that connection, that community, getting input from the community, being great partners, that heart and soul is what sold me for you.

So thank you.

Yeah, I'd like to say,

What got me was, if you said community engagement one more time, I was just going to get on the screen because that's my thing.

I was very impressed with the displacement and then you moved them back in, too.

So that screamed to me the opposite of anything urban renewal.

And it's just, you know, moving those folks and giving them a better place after.

It's like the piece that was missing in urban renewal.

You're promising to do that with the ones development, but and they could afford to go back.

Yes, exactly.

They could still afford to live there.

But a lot of times we have developers who come in, but they don't stay as property managers for long.

They come in, they make money and then they're gone.

I like the way you said we could be in your community for decades to come.

So to me,

and it's like everything that you said you're going to do, you're going to be here to do it.

Other than just having this development, giving this to us for a little bit like, ha, ha, ha, ha, we can do this and then I'm out the door and then someone else comes in and we're like, oh great, look what they left us with.

So I think your work looks great too and I like how you took an account with one of the projects, what the surrounding community wanted and they were,

wanted you to take down some of the density, to go down in numbers, but still provide a significant number of houses, but take that down a little bit.

And most, I would think that most places would be thinking about the dollar amount and would be saying, let's keep it up, let's keep it up.

So I'm very excited to be working with you guys to see where this project leads.

I really like the connection with known partners like Sentara, people that we know are good partners.

You know I echo that and I know Liz had 12 proposals and a lot of them were really strong proposals so you elevated to the top of that so kudos and congratulations for doing that.

This was a competitive process for us so we got through that.

I believe the Newport News project was a large economic development project for the area there.

I know the council members down there, so I talked with the council member Vic down there, and she was probably pretty involved with that project.

And they're very happy with what's happening down there.

So, yeah, looking forward to the negotiations going smoothly.

Yeah, I welcome you here in our city and I hope it will be your first step here and then you will have more businesses here after people seeing you and I see that some properties have just developed like without management so are you looking to manage this property as well?

Yes.

Okay.

All right.

Back to your concern, Mary.

Are we going to see them starting out now?

Could we have something like a conditional, like they have a period of time?

If not, we'll move to another bidder?

Is that something that we can have this?

Like they have certain time, like six months, a year?

If not, if we didn't see any?

Well, and I would just jump in and these gentlemen can probably clarify or Mr. Fletcher in the back there.

I believe the state has certain requirements that actually extended the opportunity for residential development because of the challenges surrounding financing and development.

But that's why we will be negotiating a contract.

And I'm certainly looking forward to sitting across from you guys or sitting with you guys and working through those negotiations.

And we are the landowners.

Correct.

We're an owner and a partner in this.

Right.

So all you need is for our blessing.

Is that what you need, Liz?

We don't need a motion or anything.

We can just say go forth.

Is that what you need?

Well, I think everybody agrees.

Yes, ma'am.

So thank you so much for, I heard you've been here since early afternoon, so thank Patrick and Pat.

Thank you for being here.

And Mayor, if you would allow me just one second to thank Ms.

Webb for her leadership on this effort.

Of course, she is our first housing coordinator and has done an amazing job of translating Council's vision into stepping into affordable housing within a fairly short period of time.

and the challenge of recognizing that with these two parcels of land, those are our biggest bite at the apple of making a real change in the affordable housing environment in our community.

So, Ms.

I don't do anything alone.

There is like so many, so many people have been a part of this process and will be from the city.

And you've met with some of them.

You'll meet with more of them.

It really, it's everybody's expertise and, you know, support.

Thank you.

Ms.

Webb, I have a question for you.

You said that, you mentioned that there were like 12 companies, right?

How did you pick one based on you?

We had evaluation criteria with points on them based on experience, based on a conceptual plan, based on alignment with local priorities.

There was an evaluation committee of city staff from different departments and we looked through and we scored all of the components of all of them.

and I would say from when we did the ARPA housing fund, we got a lot of experience collectively as how to do that and how to take in applications for something like this because this is different than anything that we've done before.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you all.

Thank you.

Come on up.

And for me.

Good evening council members.

Amy Snyder, deputy city manager.

I am so excited to be standing before you tonight to present to you a request on behalf of Oasis and Ms.

Kampf and Sarah Locke on a display, permanent display of the community mosaic project on city property.

I have been working behind the scenes for several months now, having to keep it under wraps.

You all might also have been approached by people asking, where are these beautiful mosaics going to go?

So we are requesting this evening for city council to approve the installation and display of the 80-ish, there may be a little more than 80,

mosaics on the fence line of the alleyway that is between Black's Run and Water Street parking deck.

Public Works or as we like to call them our public art department has evaluated the location.

They are in support of the location.

Oasis will

has volunteered to complete the installation with the oversight of our public works department.

And just to show you where this is, you may recognize this fence line, which is a newer installed one by the city, but wood, which makes it perfect for installing the mosaics on it.

And it would likely, because there's 80, run the whole extent of the fence line.

And bring lots of color and joy to the space.

So with that I'm going to turn it over for them to share more about what is the Community Mosaic Project.

That was a wonderful recap of what we did.

The project started in February as a way to celebrate Oasis' 25th birthday.

We put it out to the community that if you wanted to have a panel, tell us what you, how you would display what you like best about the Harrisonburg area.

So this one is from the housing authority.

We had churches, we had book clubs, we had the library, we had city employees, we had the fire department.

Eighty-some different panels were created in this mosaic fashion.

Sarah was in charge of grouting all of them, which was a huge job, messy job, huge, messy job.

And then she was in charge of the installation.

They're currently on display at Oasis right now.

But they're coming down Friday, I think, right?

Yeah.

So if you haven't seen them there,

Hopefully you'll approve our request to put them on the fence and you'll see them all there.

This project started out as let's try to beat a Guinness World Record for a number of people doing mosaics.

The Guinness record is 1,866.

So we applied to Guinness.

and they came back and said, sure, give us $13,000 and we'll consider it.

So we said, well, we're not going to mention Guinness anymore, we're just going to do it.

And we had over 6,000 participants working on mosaics from one person, some mostly we weren't happy if only one person was going to do it, but we do have a couple.

This one had 24 participants, and we always had a panel at Oasis.

And those 200 and 300, as our visitors came in, they were asked to participate.

So JMU had three panels.

One of the classes took it on as their project.

They helped us with a fundraiser.

EMU did a gorgeous panel.

Well, we deliberately spent a lot of money buying this weedy board, which is used to make showers and stuff, so it's weatherproof.

Do you need to clean it frequently?

I don't think so.

at Market in Maine that's been there five or six years and it's still vibrant.

Glass doesn't fade.

The color doesn't fade.

So that's still vibrant.

It hasn't been vandalized.

We did a little plaque.

So, all you need for us is to approve it, Amy?

No, I got it.

Oh, look at that.

So this is at Oasis right here.

Where?

Lolitas.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So just so anyone listening, how long are these on display at the Oasis until?

They're coming down this Friday.

This Friday, okay.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Second.

Any more discussion?

Councilmember Robinson?

Aye.

Vice Mayor Fleming?

Aye.

Councilmember Alsadun?

Aye.

Aye.

So we will work with Public Works on timing and what they like.

All right, Adam.

So come on.

We're trying to get through here.

This item is a downtown outdoor dining and encroachment request.

This comes from the Black Sheep Coffee Company here at East Market Street.

So the red box is indicating where Black Sheep is located there at the corner of East Market Street and North Federal Street.

What they are requesting to do is have four tables and eight chairs along East Market Street, so page down, and then two tables and four chairs along Federal Street, and then they also have some planters that are out, and all of this would be occurring in public right of way, so on the sidewalk, so they're going through this request.

to really bring themselves into compliance to get the appropriate licensing in place.

So they've had some chairs out there.

You can see the planters there outside their door.

What you can't see in this image is along Federal where their chairs are to be located.

There is one thing I want to point out.

So on this screen are the conditions that staff had come up with with regard to being able to allow this to take place.

So the condition along East Marcus Street is essentially saying that you can't have the table or chair be more than 30 inches from the face of the building and then when it's adjacent to the fire hydrant that's there no more than 24 inches from adjacent to the building.

Keying in here on number two along Federal Street, this text comes from the draft license that was part of your application and I noticed there was an inconsistency here in this number two.

So this again is saying along Federal Street and remember on Federal Street that's where the shared use path is, the extra wide sidewalk.

This is telling us that the table should be no more than 30 inches from the building.

And then it goes on to say that there's a minimum unobstructed width of 10 feet.

I believe it's actually supposed to be nine feet.

And I would hope that you could give us some flexibility just to double check this.

So if you do wish to approve this, that you give us the flexibility and the licensing to do the condition to be either nine or 10.

I believe it's actually supposed to be nine feet.

And I think this is just a typo because in the staff report that was, excuse me,

provided to you, we explain the reasons why it should be nine feet.

So I just would like that flexibility.

And then the third condition is that if we do experience any safety issues, anything like that, that we would be able to bring this license back to you and just reevaluate it.

I don't want to get into the specifics of this.

This image was provided to you.

What this cross section is doing is explaining all of the ins and outs about the complexities of the restrictions in space along federal streets.

And if you look at the bottom there, we even laid out that it's supposed to be nine feet unobstructed in that space.

I think the confusion came through whenever the measurement with the bike rack is that when you put a bike next to the bike rack, it starts to shrink the space down to below 10.

You're supposed to have 10, but we were comfortable with creating some flexibility here because we knew that pedestrians and bicyclists that were coming through that space would already be slowing down because they're coming to an intersection with East Market Street.

and so we were comfortable with the nine feet.

So I think it was just an error in the draft text that was sent to you.

Quick question.

So federal is one way, you know, going north.

Going north from that intersection.

On either other side of it, it's both ways.

Well, so the shared use path is both ways.

Yes, sir.

Yes, sir.

So was there talk about having anything that would demarcate, you know, kind of where the path

I can bring that up.

Especially for folks, servers coming out there and whatnot and understanding that there is going to be a

you know a cross-section of folks on bikes and servers so something that delineates that a little more.

Any more questions?

Thank you.

Second.

Any more discussion?

Roll call please Pam.

I'll move to approve Council Member Robinson as our delegate and Council Member Alsadun as our alternate for the conference.

Who seconded his motion?

Second.

All right, no discussion.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Thank you.

Thank you council members.

As part of the Eastern Raw water line project, the city owns a small parcel of land on Goodsmill Road and on that parcel we constructed a pump station for use of the water line.

and Shenandoah Valley Electric Cooperative is going to provide power sits to that operation since it's in the county and they realized that they actually need an easement from the city to cross the parcel to provide the power and so what you have here is a request to approve that easement since this is serving public property we don't need to have a public hearing we could just do it on councils vote

Thank you.

I'll make a motion to move to approve the easement for Cinevoli Electric Cooperative.

Any discussion?

Councilmember Robinson?

Aye.

Vice Mayor Fleming?

Aye.

Aye.

All right we can now go into comments from the public limited to five minutes or matters not on the regular agenda if anyone wishes to speak.

Take your name and address.

Y'all want to speak?

All right thank you.

The meeting should not pass without noting yesterday's WHSD story ranking Harrisonburg number two in seasonal affective disorder.

Coming in the wake of negative electoral campaigns and a supplemental appropriation doubling the budget of the Child Services Act, introspection on our contribution to despair in our residence is due.

We can congratulate ourselves with as many murals as we like, but the truth and the universe can't be plastered away or erased with FOIA fees.

On a different note, speaking as Secretary of the Harrisonburg Martin Luther King Jr.

Nearly a decade and a half ago, when few knew me and not as any more than a mild-mannered researcher, I sat in city council.

And unlike these days, I was not alone.

I had brought someone to see what city government was like.

In the council discussion, council member Charlie Schmelt addressed the audience about some progressive asks they had.

I think business gardens.

and used the term you people.

Subsequently, I subsequently raised the matter with him about how I felt to see the person that I had brought here themselves referred to that way.

And he was so sorry.

Not only that, he put his money where his mouth was.

And some time later, he took a very difficult step of standing up to his friends and to influential people in his circle.

and cast the pivotal vote to rename Cantrell Avenue to Martin Luther King Jr.

Way.

That was not a symbolic gesture.

It was a real act of trust, of love, relinquishing and handing over power to which you all are living testimony.

A few weeks ago, while riding my bike, I saw a white haired fellow in the walker and I called out to confirm it was Charlie

I greeted him from the bottom of my heart, and we bantered a little about city council.

He then mentioned my bike, and I replied by telling him what an inspiration he had been to that person I brought those years ago, when they would see him on his bike.

And he said, with a sincerity that even a politician can't feign, that that made his day, that really made his day.

To which I replied with my appreciation of him, that they don't make them like they used to.

I'll be more than happy if someone on current city council proves me wrong.

This year, People's Day, the commemoration of our street renaming, is Monday, January 19th, noon to three, on the single historic block of Martin Luther King Jr.

Way.

Please register on the updated website MLKJRway.org and thank you so much for your time and bending the rules a little bit

Having heard Vice Mayor echo my reasoning on parking, I'm hopeful that my day of being proven wrong may come sooner rather than later.

Thank you.

One moment.

Councilman, do you have anything?

I presented at the Watershed Forum this previous weekend.

That was a blast.

Also participated with Blue Ridge Nursing Home, Trick or Trunk and their Halloween party.

That was different.

I really enjoyed that.

Did a tour for EMU, Deanna Dearing's class, Power Systems and Justice,

and we will be deputy city manager and the mayor and myself will be on the panel to continue that conversation tomorrow evening at 7 o'clock at EMU.

And that's it.

Oh, and also went to the retirement party today and several of us were there.

Had a blast there as well.

Yeah, well, I think, you know, I recognize that today Battalion Chief Larry Warner had his retirement party after 40 years.

Impressive.

Serving for the Harrisonburg Fire Department.

He had a lot to say, as he always does, about his time here, but, you know, it's

Someone, a public servant we have who is just so deeply connected with the community, so deeply committed to public service, and you hear him and it just comes out of him.

It's hard to imagine how he's going to retire after all that time here, but that was a very nice event today.

Gee, I appreciate being there with you guys.

I met earlier in the week with Deb Cook who is the Chief Innovation Officer, Instruction Officer at the Harrisonburg City Schools and she was giving me the AI guidance and plan the city schools have put together for staff and for students and for parents and it was a really impressive

and a document they've ended up with in the city schools.

They're the first district in the state of Virginia to put together a comprehensive plan around AI introduction into the district.

It's a thoughtful way that has guardrails and protections but also wants to encourage innovation among staff and make sure that students can safely do it as well as be able to

enter into the world that is coming down on them.

They have, you know, we can't keep them away from these tools.

This is part of the world, so I was very impressed.

We had last week, city manager, myself, Virginia First Cities had our legislative board meeting

So, that legislative agenda has been put together.

.

Oh, wait a minute.

I don't know how to stop that.

Sorry.

Once that is finalized, I'll send that out to the rest of council members so they can see the legislative priorities that Virginia First City has just taken on, you know, as these happen.

They recognize that not every city will have all the same priorities out of this, but it's a good bit of guidance for us.

I think most of the stuff there is stuff that we concur with.

Oh, and I also last week launched for Virginia kind of the first university community council in Virginia.

So we have a number of cities in Virginia university communities that joined a,

We had a Zoom meeting last week to talk about how we can talk and collaborate on issues specific to university communities.

Housing is obviously one of the issues that comes up quite a bit.

Transportation is another one.

Student behavior and how we deal with that in the city.

How you have pilots and university contributions is a topic.

It looks like that group will continue to exist and move on and share ideas, share best practices.

And I think folks were happy for that group to get launched.

So I think it will eventually be housed under the Virginia Municipal League.

And I'm hoping I can turn this over to someone else who can organize it and carry it on.

So I pulled it together, but I think we'll find someone else for that.

Of course we'll be gone for the National League of Cities conference starting Tuesday.

For me, I only have a couple of things.

I attended the NAACP state meeting, was on the panel for their Friday night event.

It was a good panel discussion.

And then I was with Brian Schull and I did the ribbon cutting for the new seven

That was a good time.

So that's all I have.

We'll be together.

The three of us will be together tomorrow night on our panel discussion at EMU as well.

So that's it.

I know you had something you wanted to talk about.

Very quickly, Madam Mayor, and I appreciate that.

I took a call from the schools administration this afternoon and very late in the afternoon and a bit of a timely issue.

They are wanting a letter of support for a competitive grant application through the Virginia Department of Education that would allow the

return of potentially up to or reimbursement of up to 20% of approved capital projects.

As you know, we actually apparently did this about two years ago, a letter of support from city council signed by Mayor Reed and that allowed them to recoup some costs with Rocktown High School construction.

While they do not have a major construction project, as you will see in the upcoming CIP, they do have ongoing capital costs associated with replacement of HVAC units and a whole host of different things across the elementary schools, middle schools, and even a substantial chunk of renovating Harrisonburg High School.

What they are asking is if we would be willing to provide a letter of support again.

And so this evening, and I apologize that this was not on the agenda, but again, the deadline is before the next meeting in November.

If you all would support me working with the superintendent and his team.

I can prepare a letter of support.

The one we did in 23 was literally four sentences.

I totally agree.

Boards and commissions, we have a 0.2 plus an alternate board of building code appeals, and we have three applicants.

How many do we need?

And they are the two that we're appointing for full terms.

Okay, can I do it?

Okay, I move that we appoint Helen Mometh, I don't have to pronounce her last name.

Momo.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Thank you.

We do.

I did prepare a motion.

I'm sorry, who made the motion?

Oh, you made the motion and Dany seconded.

Vice Mayor Fleming.

Aye.

I will have made that motion and can someone second that motion for me?

Second.

Thank you.

There we go.