City Council
City Council
Thu, March 26, 2026
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Meeting summaryAI-generated
Charlottesville City Council Budget Work Session — March 26, 2026
This was a special work session focused on the FY27 Capital Improvement Program (CIP) and preliminary budget decisions. The session was the final planned work session before a catch-up session scheduled for April 3rd, where council will finalize budget decisions ahead of the April 15th adoption deadline.
Capital Improvement Program (CIP) Overview
Staff presented the FY27 CIP, which totals just over $47 million for FY27 and $196 million over the five-year plan. The plan has not changed significantly since a fall presentation to the Planning Commission. By spending category, education leads the five-year plan (driven largely by the new pre-K center), followed by transportation and access, then affordable housing.
Nearly 78% of the FY27 plan will be funded through bonds, with the remainder coming from general fund transfers (the city maintains a policy of at least 3% of the general fund going to the CIP) and approximately $2 million in contingency funds programmed in prior years.
Facilities and Schools
A notable change across both school and city building categories is an increase in HVAC repair and replacement funding. The school HVAC line and the city buildings HVAC line were each increased by $500,000 per year, bringing both to $1 million annually. Staff noted that even this amount falls short of total need but is a meaningful step forward. A McGuffey Arts Center roof replacement was added as a new item, described as long overdue.
Parks and Recreation
The parks CIP holds at $500,000 per year for near-term implementation of the Parks Master Plan, which estimated full implementation at approximately $78 million. Staff explained that the low initial allocation is intentional — the focus is on high-impact, low-cost improvements (signage, benches, bike racks, shelter canopies at splash pads) while longer-range planning for major park overhauls continues. Four parks — Market Street, Court Square, Washington Park, and Tostler — still need design and construction documents before physical improvements can begin.
Council discussed the disconnect between the $78 million vision and the current funding trajectory. Staff indicated that future budget cycles will see the parks line item increase significantly, and that an assistant city manager is now focused on better multi-year allocation planning. Grant opportunities are also being pursued. Councilor Snook raised a definitional question about whether small recurring items like bench replacement belong in a capital budget; staff clarified that the account funds larger grouped improvements (restroom rehabilitation, tennis court repairs, trail work, pool work) that meet the city's roughly $50,000 capital threshold and are bondable.
Downtown Mall Tree Management
Staff explained two separate line items for mall tree work: one for ongoing active lifecycle maintenance (routine trimming, hazard branch removal) and one for a systematic replacement program. The larger FY28 expenditure spike reflects planned construction for Phase 1 of a 20-year tree replacement plan focused on Central Place, where trees planted in an old road bed are underperforming. FY27 funds cover architectural and engineering work; FY28 covers construction of that first phase.
Transportation and Access
No major new projects were added. Sidewalk funding corresponds to the previously presented tiered priority list. Council discussed bicycle infrastructure, noting approximately $991,000 sitting unspent in the bike infrastructure account as of December. Staff indicated that a tiered quick-build hardening program — similar to the sidewalk program — is being developed, with community engagement still needed before permanent improvements are made. A timeline of "the next few months" was given for that framework. Bus shelters are funded through the CAT budget with state, federal, and county contributions; a recent bus stop audit assessed the full network for deficiencies.
On traffic signal replacement, staff confirmed that scoping now includes a review of whether signals are still warranted at each location before replacement proceeds, rather than automatically replacing in kind.
Affordable Housing CIP
The main changes in this category are a $700,000 addition in FY28 for 501 Cherry Avenue (reflecting a recent council action) and a reduction in the Carlton Mobile Home Park annual payments now that the loan has been finalized (though a balloon payment is due in 2030). The Salvation Army line item remains as a placeholder pending resolution of the Cherry Avenue development conversation. Staff noted that a Park Street MACA project is funded and waiting to be drawn down.
On the three projects that came through the city's RFI process — Brick Lane (Holiday Inn conversion), the $900,000 project, and POAH (10th and Orland) — staff confirmed that none fit into the FY27 CIP due to cash balancing constraints. Brick Lane declined to adjust its unit mix to meet city parameters. POAH was directed back to UVA to initiate a conversation the city has been waiting for; no outreach from UVA has been received.
Council raised the question of affordable housing payments-in-lieu and whether those anticipated funds should be reflected in the CIP. The city manager expressed caution about budgeting funds that depend on developer timelines outside city control, and suggested holding those dollars as flexible surplus rather than pre-committing them. Council requested a dedicated work session to establish policy around how such funds should be used, including whether affordable housing and transit funding should be treated as linked priorities.
Debt Management
Staff walked through the city's debt projection, showing annual debt service rising from approximately $19.1 million in FY26 to $26.4 million by FY31. General fund transfers to the debt service fund are being stepped up gradually, with the gap covered by drawing down the debt service fund balance built up over prior years. Staff noted that the city's bond rating agencies have reviewed this approach and find it sound. The general fund has roughly doubled in 15 years, which significantly expanded debt capacity compared to earlier projections.
1% Sales Tax for School Construction
Staff briefed council on pending state legislation that would allow localities to use a 1% sales tax increase — dedicated to school construction — if approved by voters in a referendum. The city currently receives the equivalent of roughly 1% of sales (~$16 million/year) back from the state. Staff noted this revenue stream is variable with the economy. A policy framework for how to deploy those funds (all to debt service, or a mix of cash and debt service) is being developed with the city's financial advisor. The city manager noted that a facilities program identifying school construction priorities must be ready before any public referendum campaign can be mounted, and suggested a June 1 target given the General Assembly's special session running through at least April 23rd. The school facilities working group — including both city and school staff — is developing a 10-year plan.
Budget Balancing: One-Cent Real Estate Tax Scenario
Council discussed the pending decision on whether to move from a proposed two-cent real estate tax increase to a one-cent increase. The revenue adjustment (~$1.5 million) accounts for most of the difference, leaving roughly $341,000 still to be addressed. Options discussed included drawing from the citywide reserve and/or the Council Strategic Initiatives Fund (also referred to as the Council Reserve Fund). Council agreed to submit individual VCF (Vibrant Community Fund) allocation preferences and strategic initiatives fund proposals to staff by Monday, March 30, so staff can prepare a consolidated spreadsheet for discussion at the April 3rd work session.
Council also raised the question of extending the budget adoption deadline beyond April 15th to allow more time to learn the outcome of the state's special session. Staff confirmed that a change is possible — it is a city ordinance, not a charter requirement — but practically buys only about two weeks this year due to tax bill printing and 30-day notice requirements. Changing to a later date for future years is feasible and would require moving the tax bill due date and adjusting the revenue accrual period from 45 to 60 days. Council directed staff to explore this for future budget cycles.
Councilor Payne raised two additional potential expenditures for council consideration at the final work session: a participatory budgeting pilot ($10,000–$30,000) and a funding allocation to begin planning for the 10th anniversary of August 2017, including community engagement around permanent memorialization of Fourth Street.
CDBG Application Summary
Staff briefly noted that 11 applicants have submitted CDBG and HOME grant requests totaling approximately $597,000 (CDBG) and $185,000 (HOME). Available funding falls short by roughly $241,000 (CDBG) and $99,000 (HOME). The Planning Commission will review applications within the next week, with formal recommendations to council expected in May.
Public Comment
One community member — who identified herself as a former Charlottesville student now volunteering in schools — urged council to fully fund the school budget as presented, calling it a needs-based budget, not a wish list. She emphasized the diverse needs of the student population, the importance of support staff raises through collective bargaining, and the broader civic value of investing in education. She indicated she would return the following week.
Adjournment
Vote to adjourn: Motion made and seconded; passed unanimously by voice vote.
Key Takeaways
The FY27 CIP totals $47 million ($196 million over five years), with education, transportation, and affordable housing as the top spending categories; no major structural changes from last year's plan.
Debt service is the central long-term constraint: payments rise from $19M to $26M by FY31, consuming a growing share of the general fund and limiting future flexibility.
Council must finalize the one-cent tax increase gap (~$341,000) by the April 3rd work session, drawing from reserves and/or the Strategic Initiatives Fund; individual allocations are due to staff by Monday.
The Parks Master Plan ($78M vision) is effectively unfunded beyond $500K/year for near-term small improvements; staff acknowledged that future CIP cycles must look dramatically different to make meaningful progress.
A 1% sales tax referendum for school construction is on the horizon, contingent on state legislation passing; a facilities program identifying school priorities needs to be ready before any public campaign can proceed.
AI-generated summary from voice-to-text transcript. Not the official record. Verify important details with the source documents linked above.
Additional votes recorded in minutes
Adjourn the meeting
aye 5
Jen Fleisheraye
Juandiego Wadeaye
Lloyd Snookaye
Michael Payneaye
Natalie Oschrinaye
Verbatim transcript available
373 transcript segments indexed
Well, I mean, anything- I don't think scooters all those I was thinking about that while you were talking. Absolutely. All I know is, like, the amount of just standing in that front window looking out, people are, like, popping- You can use the docks to do, like, intersections.
Good strategies. size maybe five dollars and- Rolled down the street or something. That happened to my poor mom. You'd always going to rebalance and then- Learn the- The company wants to do. So I called the police.
When I was in New York. Same thing with Citi Bike, where you would see the Citi Bike truck, where there'd just be hubs where- That's still... It feels so... Yeah. So they'd have to drive the bikes back and redistribute them.
Oh, they do have videos? Here that's probably possible. Or have someone. Great. Right. Yeah. So, wow. So we had a really good conversation with that, and what's interesting- Nobody's out valtaging ...
is that- Which is what was happening What I don't understand everybody, so are in camps. Yeah. How do you think you're going to do anything? City and park your bike. They're in jail right now. For real.
Washington Lot. Now in Boston. Do you think it's kids? That state agreement applies to us as well. Mm. So we- They did not? Our RFE stuff, and then just add ourselves as the county to Capital Bike Share, because we're in the state of Virginia, which gives us And it technically means that it works there as well, or we somehow manage to park it there.
It's a bit of a ride, but- Yeah. You know? So, that was kind of getting a check on that. Is the building out of We think it might be right through the work section. No. You're talking about the average house.
No, I'm talking about... Because we've got to change the board and everything to reflect the changes. I don't- So they both? That's assuming that the code hasn't been changed. So they sent us that price list.
It's kind of complicated. Yeah. It's like percentages of this, and then of that. This part gets paid, and this part gets paid back, and then We still need to go through the motion. So I'm going to get that session.
I do wonder if skewed for us, like- Yeah, and maybe to be in the wasn't there. And we might- I thought you all went out. No. Just kind of as a- Thank John. Yeah, but and I'm not a cook in your cadence group, so Sam and Whitney are probably going to...
Yeah. So, anyway, it was a cool conversation, for such a small place. She said that's a John questions. Well, I'm thinking that May 16th is the last time for the printer. That's what I'm acrossing. Okay.
I have that from Jason, I can tell you that, Dan. Okay, you're asking. Decision has- So- Unless there's a sign that says, "Can't be undone." I have that. We can put that budget Resources going if we need to.
Right. Yeah. I mean, well, we then like the kids in the apartments right past my provisions want to scoot all the way home, but they can't because there's this cluster right there. Does it actually lose power?
Mm-hmm. No, but what I think- More than half ... we're going to have this so it's like we have something like super strict wheel events. Yeah. There's a... I mean, I think that it saying this. It's better than what?
I haven't documented anything. No, Jason. But it happens. I haven't. I'm Jacqueline. Oh. And it is interesting when we look at where that's why I'm like, "What are you watching?" So, I mean, it really is.
Yes, and I spoke to the... So if there's there's a little thing inside. Sorry. Thought would be good. There was a member spot. You're on any of the little wigs to have whatever ends better. Yeah. Okay.
No big deal. Okay. Well, we're in bull breed. Yeah. I think just has, what, two or three free rides a day. I don't know, like, a good amount of people really do need it, and you're not too far from home.
Uh-uh. And they have those things. Oh, I see, here. Okay. So yeah, it's an eye, but they were staying to that record. Right. Once. That's great. Real good. I think it's in his white paper. I'm pretty sure they'll see.
Other than that. But also- It's like that instead of a $40 membership, it's like a $5 membership, and then your first time back. Last little struggle. 13 bucks. Do you guys agree? Or would you like- That's being done, period.
There's some way- Hey, I got one. He's saying that he's more furfur than I am. Yeah. In comparing you all. Thank you. You know that I don't know how to say those little letters. Or it might be that some of our camps.
You just let me know because you know that I need lunch with you. Oh. Yeah. Are you guys that committed to this granny account? Seriously. Yeah. Thank you. Um, I called the Charlottesville City Council special work meeting, special meeting to order.
It's on the FY27 budget. And Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll? Pamela Fleischer? Here. Vice Mayor Osher? Here. Councilor Payne? Here. Councilor snuff? Here. Mayor Leigh. Here. Okay. So I'll turn it over to you, Sam, and...
Thank you. I'm sorry, I was not connected here. Let me get my phone in here. Oh, do we need to talk about some stuff then? No, I'm good. You can if you like. All right. So councilors and members of the public, tonight is your final planned work session.
So we're going to talk about CIP, and we also have an anticipation that you might choose to use some of the time to continue your discussions about decisions that you might make about your strategic initiatives fund, or not.
And then we're also looking for you to be able to help us understand if we need to have next week's work session on the 2nd, and if so, what topics might you be interested in us being able to work to prepare for?
Because that is the catch-up session, so that's the one that we don't have anything planned for. It's usually where we try to make sure that we're pulling the final things together because your vote is on them.
But I'll turn it over to Ms. Hamill to walk you through the CIP. Thank you. So, we're going to talk about the five-year summary, look at the CIP revenues, talk a little bit about the debt projection, the 1% sales tax for school construction, and then just to fully close the loop on all of the sort of city grant processes.
CDBG is one that pulls up the rear in terms of timing, and so we're just going to provide you with an application summary of who has submitted, how much they've requested, and what's available to be awarded.
So we'll talk about that at the end. So, jumping right into the CIP. It feels like we talked about this a long time ago. It was back in the fall. We met with the planning commission to discuss this. Nothing has really changed since that was presented.
At the time, we talked about the CIP plan for '27 is just over $47 million, with $196 million over the five years. If we were to look in terms of dollars spent, education is the highest in this plan, followed by transportation and access, and then affordable housing coming in third.
As you know, that kind of varies from year to year, depending on where projects are. The one thing that's driving the education in this five-year plan is, of course, the additional funds for the pre-K center.
But the graphs on the right-hand side of the screen sort of give you a visual of the categories in which we're spending the money, both in '27 and over the five-year plan. And mostly it's pretty consistent over the five years.
No real change there in terms of category spending. And so, I'm going to run through the next few slides pretty quickly. This is just as a refresher of what's actually in each category. Anything that's highlighted in green denotes a change in the funding amount from the '26 plan to the '27 plan.
There's not a lot of new things that have been added, so most of the things that are in this year's CIP are basically just adjustments to funding based on either additional project information or things that we know about inflation and those types of things.
One thing you'll note on this school slide is that we did receive a request from staff that our funding for HVAC repairs and replacements, both in the city schools but also city buildings as well, that funding was sort of lagging behind the cost.
And so we did make an adjustment there to increase the funding in both of those pots of money. So this is the one for schools. What had it been? a year. Sorry about that, Siri. Moving on to facilities, projects.
Again, the HVAC that we just spoke about, that had been $500,000 a month, excuse me, a year, and we increased that by a half a million as well in each year, moving that up to a million dollars. McGuffey roof replacement, that is something that was new, that was added in this year's plan.
That had not been in the plan previously, but is, from what I understand, long overdue. And so that's been programmed here. For the HVAC replacement, I mean, that's a nice round number. Have we done an analysis about what we need and that's reflected here, or is this kind of socking it away knowing projects are going to come up?
I don't... Do you want to speak to that? You want me to go to the corner or just shoot from here? Good? Go ahead. Okay. A lot of analysis has been done. There's always a running wants on plan, and it's more than a million dollars a year.
So we rounded it to make it easy for you all to sort of swallow. But we could use even more than that. But I think that's a number that'll get us closer to what we actually need to keep things running.
And that's not schools, that's just other- City buildings. Yeah. Thanks. But on the previous slide was the school one. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Moving on to public safety. Not a lot of changes here. As we've spoken about before, many of these accounts are set up as recurring accounts, other than the fire truck replacement and the ambulances.
The rest of the radios and the apparatus, we're funding those in an annual rate to both build up a reserve of funds so that we're not trying to fund the big numbers all at once, but also so that regular replacements can happen, so we don't end up with a big cliff every five or six years as they need to be replaced.
They can do a cyclical replacement cycle on those things. Transportation and access. Again, nothing new here other than the Dominion power pole remediation account. There were some changes in the amounts, and most notably, the additional investment in the new sidewalks, which was based on the priority list that was presented to council with the tier, I think it was one, two, and three projects.
The funds that are here correspond with that listing. Parks and Recreation. All of these accounts were also in last year's plan. Most notably though, in the '26 plan, we only had one year of half a million dollars put in the CIP because we weren't sure what was going to come out of the plan or how those dollars were going to be spent.
We spent a lot of time talking about those plans, and right now we're putting in the half a million a year to try to address some of the more immediate things, as there's further discussions that need to happen with council in terms of next steps on that.
I'll add on that, that we fully expect that going forward budget cycles, that line item for the parks master plan will dramatically increase. We were not able to get to a place of being comfortable putting in any numbers at this time beyond these $500,000 amounts just to be able to say that parks has something available, some amount available to do some projects.
There's still work to be done. Their master plan came in, if I'm remembering correctly- Mm-hmm ... $70 million. Yeah. $78 million for full implementation as visioned. So we know that those numbers need to be dramatically different if we're going to come anywhere close to that.
But we now have an assistant city manager here who's going to be working with the team to try to figure out how do we allocate better over the next five-year cycle. So those numbers will change. This is just to indicate what we're going to attempt to do right now.
So what is the Parks and Rec lump sum account? What does that mean? Those are dollars that they have had for years. It's a lot of maintenance, or replacing sort of small- Ongoing ... ongoing things, benches, signs.
They've used it for various things over the years, but it's basically just a small amount of money to allow them to do small projects as they come up during each year. And they would budget each year.
Their project list would be associated with how much those funds being available and any carryover from year to year. Do they spend it all every year? Pretty close, yes. They, too, probably would say that they could spend more if we gave them more because the maintenance issue came out as a very high priority in the parks master plan, that a lot of what the study produced was we should invest a lot more in what we have and then begin to invest in taking it somewhere else.
I don't know that it makes any real difference. You may be able to tell me that it does make a difference, but I get a little bit of puzzlement when I think of ordinary recurring maintenance expenses being regarded as capital.
And I probably described that in the wrong way. It's not really maintenance as much as it is small, not multimillion-dollar projects, but obviously small projects that need to happen within the parks or the parks' facilities.
So it's not painting and that kind of thing. It's more like replacement of benches or signs or they've used it for some trail work or just a couple things that come up to the top of mind. Do we have any sort of definition as to when something is enough that it is a capital expenditure as opposed to a maintenance expenditure?
If you're replacing, it seems to me that replacing a bench can't be more than $10,000. Mm-hmm. That strikes me as being a regular maintenance matter rather than a capital matter. And I guess my first question is, A, does it matter really which category we put it in?
Does it matter for any accounting reason? Or B, does it matter for, I don't know, sort of definitional purposes? I remember, again, going back to when I was on the planning commission, we had a definition of a capital expense that basically, I don't remember what it was, a minimum of $100,000 or something like that.
But there was a notion that there was a thresholdThat it had to be more expensive than that to qualify as a capital expense. No, it's fair. I'll just answer it from the budget and then accounting piece, and then I'll defer to Evan.
But essentially, we try to look for something that's 50,000 or more, is what we consider capital. And again, I'm not doing this account justice, but, and maybe Evan can, but it's not like we're replacing one bench.
We sort of look at that as a pro. So they might replace all the benches in a park or- Right ... whatever they're doing in a particular area. It is more infrastructure related than maintenance related.
I really don't have anything more to add other than we also look at it as a capital refresh for a park. So it might be replacing a bench, but it's also doing five or six other things. So in that whole capital refresh, that's where it also gets to a capital eligibility.
Is that something that is a bondable expense? Yeah. I mean, it- Okay, so there's a definitional reason to call it one versus the other. Yeah. We wouldn't bond a $10,000 bench, but if we were able to go and refresh the park, that would be a bondable sort of thing that we could look at in total.
But we can provide you with some more specifics to give you some better comfort of actually what they're using this money for. All right. I don't want to suggest that I am uncomfortable. No, no, no. I'm sorry.
I'm just- Yeah ... puzzled. No, it's a fair question. And we'll get you some better details. It's definitely not small expenditures, I can assure you of that, because we have too many things that need to be done.
I know one example would be that we have found ourselves having to go in and do work on restrooms outside of the normal schedule, and that's because individuals have gone in and they've done damage to the restroom, so it takes it- Sure ...
off its cycle. So we have to go in and we have to replace all the accessory pieces in the bathroom because they were destroyed. And that happens way more often than any of us appreciate. We'll get you some info on that.
And I'm looking up some details and actually getting some other information in as we speak. Okay. So it's things like benches, yes. Bike racks, grills, dog waste stations, picnic tables, trash receptacles, water fountains.
And then, some more significant repairs would be like tennis courts. We also have garden plots and pool work. So that's the kind of thing that ends up in that line. May I ask about the trees active lifecycle management?
Is that from the four-point-something million that we've seen for the downtown mall trees? Those are two different ones? Yeah. Yep, and I see one thing on my color coding here. There actually is a new account that I missed.
The city/county park maintenance joint parks. That is for the joint parks between the city and the county. And the county asked if the city could create an account by which we could use that for projects or things that come up during the year.
We didn't previously have that. We had just been budgeting for paving or tree replacement, and so this amount of funds is there to help with those projects as they come along. What does that include? Is this a joint account?
Darnestown, Abbey Creek- Oh, okay ... are the two, I think. So is it a joint account, like we've contributed X, they've contributed X? That's our share. Yeah. That's our account- Yeah ... for our share of the expenses.
And who spends that money? The county, and then they bill us. Okay. Can we check back in about, there are the two line items on here for the downtown mall management plan, tree management plan, and the active lifecycle management.
Howard, what's different about these? I can do this one. Great. So the active lifecycle is that every year, sometimes multiple times a year, we have to go through and trim branches, hazard branches, and stuff like that.
So it's going through and doing that ongoing tree maintenance work so that we don't have limbs falling and damaging property or people. Right? Mm-hmm. The other one is actually the larger project that we did that whole tree management plan for, that is about really over time renewing and replacing the trees up and down the whole mall.
Got it. Thank you. Yeah. Now, I know that we had a presentation on the fact that it was going to be a systematized management plan. I was curious, since we're going to be spending in FY28 at this point, projected to triple the amount in any other year, is there something in particular planned for FY28?
Yeah. What I believe that is, so the plan actually calls for replacement of, we call the groupings of trees bosks. Right. Replacing those bosks- All at once? ... all at once. Oh. And, I don't recall in this instance, but I think that in this instance, I think that involves taking out the trees, taking out the bricks and the soil, replacing that soil, because remember, one of the things we learned is the trees are planted- Right ...
in the old road bed, which- Right ... is part of the reason they aren't doing as well as they ought to be. So taking out the soil, putting in Better soil, replanting the trees, and then relaying the bricks.
So it's a big project for each one of those. Is it thought that we'll do one of those in FY27 and three of them in FY28 or something? Yeah. Well, they are spaced out because the idea is that we don't want to do all the trees at once.
Sure. So we don't take out the entire canopy. I don't- Was that the one in Central? I think that's the one in Central, yeah. We do have- Who has the biggest problem. Yeah. Riaan's online. Riaan's online.
We could have him- Oh, I forgot about that. Great. He's in a better position. Good evening. Yeah. So, how we designed it is was since it's for Central Place, that where we're going to do the vast of trees.
But how we designed it was that the first year is going to be A&E work. So we're going to have to get a landscape architect to come in to design that, and that's why you see the second year is a higher price.
That means it's for construction. So if you look at that, 500 and something in the first year, that's A&E work, and the second year is construction just for phase one. So this project, if you can recall, the report calls for a 20-year plan to replace trees on the downtown mall.
So we are just talking about phase one. Okay. Thanks, Riaan. Sorry, I forgot you were online. With the parks master plan, obviously that is something that lots of people in the community care about and are watching, and it can be transformative in terms of our parks and services.
As you referenced, the cost is 70-plus million, $500,000 a year, and again, you kind of acknowledged this, is essentially not currently implementing it. What is our approach going to be towards working to that point?
Yep, I can answer that question. So, what Parks and Recreation staff did is, we looked at the entire master plan. And we worked collectively is coming up with a 10-year plan of how are we going to accomplish all the projects, and we prioritized it.
What staff recommended was, let's try to look at high impact for the first year or two with low cost, and that's where you get the $500,000 where we are looking at new park signs. Those are small impacts, but high impacts for the community because we did not want to look at a big project.
For example, we have four parks that is called out in the master plan. We just did not want to put all our money into one bucket of, let's say, $2 million, and it takes us four years to get accomplished where the community is looking for some improvement.
So that is what we are looking at, is looking at high impact for the community, with a low cost, and that's where we have the first year of 500,000. As everybody mentioned, signage, redo of benches, adding shelters, or canopies at areas like our splash pads at certain parks that people have been asking for.
So small impacts before we get to the big-ticket items. In the future years for the big-ticket items, again, $70 plus million, is part of that conversation going to be whether or not city council approves an additional revenue source that's just for parks?
I'm just trying to think through what 70 plus million, like, what would it look like to actually do that? You're muted. Good question. So as we do understand, and in the back of our master plan, it calls for, we know that $78 million is a lot of money, but it calls also for staff to look at other opportunities in terms of grants.
So number one, what the department looked at is let's prioritize what is important for the community, which we did, a 10-year plan. Then what we are going to look at is, how do we achieve that in terms of we know that we will not be able to get $78 million directly from capital improvement, but what other grant opportunities we do have.
But in order for us to get there, we have to rightsize our department and the city. Again, we are working in partnership with Public Works, reaching out to their department is to say, "Hey, do you have any resources?" We are looking at the Grants department as to say, "How can we get this?" So, to close up is that we are looking at all these facets before just jumping in and just requesting a lot of funding at one given time.
But we are looking at different stages of how do we meet the goals of the community. And I'll add just for further explanation that direction that I've given as well has been that I did not want to see us placing numbers into the CIP that are not realWe've had a history of that.
Yeah. And I don't want us to slip back to that. So a lot of the effort has been around the idea that if we put the money in CIP in this recurring fashion, then the intent is that it gets spent. So whatever numbers go in there are hard pressed because we have so many priorities that we're trying to balance, that if we put it there, we need to spend it.
We also have the four plans that still also need to be done for Market Street, Court Square, Washington Park, and Tostler. They're big-ticket items just in the plan and the construction documents before we make a movement of change at any one of those parks.
We need to spread those out as well, because we're going to spend a lot of money on designing and nobody's going to see anything. So that's going to take away from actual physical improvements that get to be made at parks as well.
So we need to have a little more conversation about where to place them, spreading them out so that we can see change as well as plan for change at the same time. That's the reason why we took another year in spending more time to try to figure out how to put a true five-year plan together that will look different.
It'll have an ebb and flow to it, where you'll see the numbers changing from 500,000 to well over a million or two possibly. And in the presentation that I made to you, it's why the decisions pending page exists.
Remember, parks was one of those bags of money that is a decision pending that we need to be able to figure out how do we get it fitting to fit in with that bigger price tag. Thank you. Any more questions on parks and rec projects?
Okay, so moving along to the affordable housing projects. This is, again, these were all projects that were in the plan last year. The only real change at this point is 501 Cherry. There is $700,000 that was added to 28 based on an action that you took just several weeks ago.
And the Carlton Mobile Home Park, the loan has been finalized, which allowed us to reduce the amount that we had in the budget last year for those annual payments. But noting that there is a balloon payment in 2030 for that.
And you'll notice that the Salvation Army line item is still there. It is meant to just be there until we know that that conversation is dead at the Cherry Avenue location. I thought it was important enough for us to leave it there until we really started to see how this driver conversation materializes schedule-wise, as well as there's still an opportunity for discussion with the Salvation Army about doing something there.
So I just decided to give ourselves another year before we have to make a decision on taking it out completely. At least it might end up being family shelter or something else. Right. I've asked this before, and I always forget.
Park Street MACA is underway. We funded it. Where does that live in our budget? Is that a surplus that's already allocated? It's been in the CIP last year, I think. Last two years it was funded. But so it's basically funded.
The money's sitting there waiting to be drawn down. It just fell off because of when it was budgeted for. Right, but it's not yet dispersed. Not dispersed. But it's still there. Correct. Yeah. And CSRAAP.
Mm-hmm. That is program with a lot of discussions to be had around it, and I know... Where is that at? And what's the next steps for determining things around CSRAAP? I think it was end of fiscal year.
Yeah. I think we're looking at next update before the end of this fiscal year. Still more work to do, and I think as you know, we've also have staff shortage there that we need to refill positions so that we can get back on schedule with that.
Mm-hmm. But the funding remains the same at the 900,000 as a projection for the next five years. That could change, of course, once we get that work done. That's part of what the original conversation was about, either going up or down.
Honestly, just depending on if we set parameters, that would mean that the contributions would change or if we add more people. So this now just keeps it as a placeholder at the current budget. So that we would say that for the next fiscal year, the program doesn't change potentially, but it could.
Just depends on what that update is. But it's possible that some basic things around how it operates could change. Absolutely. Yeah. Then the final category is the technology infrastructure. The communications technology account, that's a funded account through PEG fees that has to be used on our public access TV Citywide IT infrastructure.
This is an account that we use to help with things that come up during the year or things that are not previously budgeted but we have to adjust for. And then the voting equipment, this is, I think, year two or three of funding.
That gets us to a total for the replacement that will be taking place in '27. And so all of that brings us to a total of just over $47 million for '27 and $196 million over the five years. Any questions on expenditures?
Yes. Bev? Backing up to the transportation access project page, just because it was something that was mentioned when we were talking about parks, where in the small capital projects, bike racks were mentioned.
I'm assuming that is just bike racks that are in parks, not the bike rack program in general. Yes. So in the transportation line item, and I probably asked this before, but just to clarify, what counts as bicycle infrastructure in that line item?
Leah, I think it include-- Do we have anyone maybe who can speak to that directly? I'm checking, seeing. My memory says that includes bike racks. And that's the primary thing I can think of that we've used or have used the funds for.
We've used it also for some of the striping and things for bike lanes. And then I know as of late, some of the VO revenues that we get have been used for the website and the- Subspeaker. Thank you. Yes.
And so I think it's been used for various things. So if we were to have a project that was adding a curb to a street to make a protected bike lane, where would that money come from, likely? It could potentially come from there, yeah.
Okay. And it's not a huge number, which leads me to believe we don't have plans to do that just yet. No, but the other thing that when I think about what you're describing, that's a project that I suspect could get expensive really quickly, and it would probably end up being a standalone project in and of itself, that we would do it in a concert with a larger streetscape project.
Because if we're adding a curb, we're changing on a street, we're potentially changing how the water flows, and so now you've got a bunch of downstream impacts. Yeah. Very true. So for the-- We did the quick builds projects with the idea that we would study their effect and see which ones we wanted to harden and that sort of thing.
Where does that live? So that's something that we've been discussing, is actually setting up, just like we did with the sidewalk program, where we created a tiered sidewalk replacement program. We're talking about doing the same thing with quick builds, where we would take the quick build programs and tier out what can be easily done, what's in the mid-tier, what's in the more difficult tier, and then building out a line where we would pay for those improvements.
Okay. And what's the timeline on putting something like that together? Evan, I know that's something you've been looking into, right? Okay, thanks. Yeah. It's something that we're in process right now.
I would expect that in the next few months, we'll have something. But it's important to note that as part of the tiers that James was talking about, the public engagement portion really needs to be fleshed out.
Because we put these temporary measures out, we've gotten some good feedback, but we haven't gone back to consult with the neighborhood to really get a full sense of whether these are features that we do want as a community.
Mm-hmm. So that's also going to play into the timeline for implementation and hardening of those features. Yeah. That is true. If somehow this process, the tiering system, the community engagement activities happen, and we have that list and it's ready to go before next budget cycle, would it come as a CIP request in like It depends on how much.
It really depends on how much it adds up as. Typically, when it's something that's not budgeted and it's of a certain size, then it's a surplus request. Yes. So that's usually how it would come, and it would just be a matter of what else is being considered for whatever balance of surplus we have available.
If it were a small amount, then usually sometimes what happens is the departments try to determine-- I'm thinking of Mike because he's sitting here. Mike knows that Sam is sometimes undisciplined and will say, "Hey, Mike, I need you to do this," and Mike wants to make me happy, so he'll figure out how to make his lump sum account work for me, and then he'll figure out the impact of it later.
We can do that from time to time, but we're trying to discourage more of that, which is why he hasn't had me do that to him lately. But I have done it in the past. So sometimes If it was big enough that it would come present, we'd allocate as- Yes And just going back to your question on the bike infrastructure.
As of December, there's about $991,000 sitting there unspent in addition to what we have in the five-year plan. So part of that, I think, when Mr. Chambers last came before you was that he has what he needs for right now, but he would be working on a different plan, like the sidewalks.
And so this is why we're not- Putting anything in ... putting much in because we want to maintain, but we don't want- We want to save ... want to make sure we spend it on real projects. Right. Okay. And more than likely, knowing Ben, that is already spent in his head.
Sure. Yeah. Okay. I'm not saying- He-- Yeah ... more than in his head. I'm sure he even has it written down on a spreadsheet somewhere. Well, I know everyone's got a work plan. But what can we do to fast track this?
You're doing it by bringing it up. Great. Consider it forgotten. That. Consider it broughten. You got Councilor Snook to react, so don't do that again. But- But no, that's good ... what I'm saying- It actually is in Old English.
Bring it on. I know you had a reaction to it, yeah. No, bring it on to a result- Yes ... but we can watch it later. But you're in the same spot that I am as it relates to the CIP. I want us to move away from any notion that the CIP is a slush fund, is a savings account, is a place to hold, unless approved by the budget team.
And that savings account component is, we save over a period of time to avoid the cliff that Chrissy mentioned. Those are appropriate moments. Not tuck it away so that I'll have it available to me to pull out and do something.
That's not disciplined behavior, and this is really supposed to be about disciplined management, so that we can use as much of the available resources to do as many things as we possibly can for any given year.
Okay, great. Thanks. I have one other transportation-related question. Are we spending anything out of this budget or does it come out of some other budget for bus shelters? Which we've talked about from time to time, but- Yeah ...
it currently isn't appearing here. It's in the CAT budget. Does it come out of CAT budget? It's in their budget specifically. Okay. I know that we did a... I'm remembering that we gave extra money in the surplus- We did.
I mean, we're- ... for a set of projects, but it is baked into their budget. Okay. Because they get money from the state and feds to help cover part of those expenses. And the county is paying. And the county is paying for some as well.
And we're in the midst of a study. We just saw a presentation on it, Carter, right? Mm-hmm. A beautiful presentation. Very well done presentation. Yeah. Okay. Looking at what are the deficiencies across our bus shelter network.
I need to see that. That was a proper bus stop audit. Yep. What each of them has, what each of them needs. Oh, yeah. There's lighting maybe on the sign, but not for the people using the bus stop. There's a trash can nearby, but it's not really the bus stop.
We need this square footage of pad to remember, what is the pad made of, or is there any kind of right-of-way access? Sure. Yep. Want to make sure somebody's doing something about it. Yeah. Bus stops is a thing for me.
Ms. Kerry made that a thing. Anything else on expenditures before we move on? In any of the categories? What is the historic district and entrance corridor design guideline that's going on? Sure. So, we have design guidelines, which the DAR is meant to be using, does use for their review of projects within those different districts.
And those guidelines are quite dated at this point in time, and particularly dated relative to the more recently adopted comprehensive plan and zoning ordinance. And so they are due for an update relative to those happenings.
And what we did there was, it was 75,000, I think, in '27 and '29, and we just moved it all up so that work could begin on that. And is that basically funding for a consultant? Yeah. And then the commitment initiatives ended, zeroed out in the out years.
Is there a reason for that? It was just because we identified it as a five-year commitment initially, and the goal is to monitor the use of the funds and determine by making further allocations based on using those funds.
So that's still a question. We've had some efforts have been to try to go after big grants. And in going after big grants, we take big chunks of that money and set it aside as the local match in case we get the grant.
We haven't landed the grant yet, so therefore, we have money that has been able to build up. And again, my desire is to have us not have any money sitting for long periods of time unspent. So the part of the reason for not putting anything into those later years is to see what happens over the next few years, because climate is a challenging topic for the federal administration today.
So not knowing what the chances are going to be for being able to do bigger-ticket items, we may have to do more things that are smaller over time, and then that would help us determine Is it a million dollars or is it half a million dollars in those out years?
Plus, it becomes a part of that reconciliation conversation as well. Well, I appreciate that. I definitely would say I think in the out years, the need will still remain- Sure ... if nothing else, for climate resilience, as climate change will still be a thing.
Real. Yeah. The small area plans, is that a similar situation with some of these other items where the amount for implementation is basically 200,000 a year because we don't yet know? It's been something like that number- It's been recurring ...
for a long time. It's recurring. And what we've done is, you'll recall, I think two years ago now, we broadened that. Well, it still has the moniker small area plans. It's really geared towards producing smaller plans and other implementation type plans that support land use planning on a finer scale, and support implementation of the comprehensive plan.
But it's a lump sum that is meant to be used to fund those studies. Yeah, I guess it just... Maybe I'm wrong. It seems like except for the one bridge project, we just haven't really spent money implementing small area plans to this point.
Yeah. Oh, talking about small area plan implementation? Correct. Yeah. So, one of the focuses as we move into our next era of small area plans is really to make sure what will differentiate those plans from previous ones is that they will be a lot more focused on identifying implementable projects that this funding source will be used to achieve.
So, in each of these new plans, we're looking at whether there is a short timeframe that we're looking towards, what are the things we can concretely do within that timeframe, and have a funding source in which to immediately move on them.
So we're doing a little bit of socking it away without knowing what it's going to be for. We are doing a little bit of socking away without knowing, yeah. Well, I'm not trying to talk out of both sides of my mouth, but that is because we have every intention of doing more small area plans, and we had a real request from the public to make sure that there was money available for implementation after the completion of the plans, because we weren't doing that part of it before.
We would do the plans, and then we would have to figure out how do we find a bucket of money to do something, and the plan implementation fund is the reset because that- Is the reset ... was the strategic- Yes ...
strategic something fund. Strategic investment area. The strategic investment area. That was the only plan that we actually created a funding source for, and it went unspent. Councilor Snug used to tell us about it every year.
So we wanted to make sure that we did something different about that, and that's when James requested the combining of small area plans and that fund, so it wasn't just for that area specifically, it was for all plans that we have on the books.
I guess it could be a whole another topic of discussion, and I understand there's been changes, but it just still feels like unclear to me how it's being spent, and I know there's new small area plans underway, but even our existing ones, there's low-hanging fruit items about traffic calming measures and intersections that we just haven't moved on.
I think to the question of how will we harden some of the improvement plans, some of the quick builds and things of that nature. If they're in small area plan areas, then that would be one of the funding sources that we could consider if we haven't already started to maximize it.
I put pressure on anyone who uses those accounts that they have to spend them because the SIA account at one point was over a million dollars with no idea on what it was going to get spent on. So we've been trying to pivot those conversations to let's identify projects so that we can plan to get this work done and let's spend it because the threat that I made was, "Then I'll take away the annual allocation if we're going to let it sit and go." Mm-hmm.
Because there are other things that we can use that money for. Thank you. So there really is an intention that as we complete smaller advance, we're able to move quickly into implementation while there's the momentum in the plan.
Yep. We've even talked about the fact that there are things that could be implemented while you're still in the... If there's general consensus on something, let's do it while we're still technically drafting the plan.
Mm-hmm. Makes sense. And just, sorry, one more. No, press on. So for existing small area plans, the 10th and Page one is underway. That'll be the next one. Do we only have Cherry Avenue as something to implement at this point, or do we consider the Star Hill to be a small area plan, or do we consider that to be this separate vision plan?
I think we- Yes, and? Yeah. From my perspective, Star Hill, if there's a project that we can implement in there, then we should look at it and move on it. There's no reason to not do that, but there's some history with that one, I guess.
That one's before my time.Jerry has specific implementable things. You've got the North 29 one, which is really geared towards big, large scale, VDOT kind of interventions. And then you have the strategic investment area.
To the extent that I can remember, that's the whole list. Mm-hmm. Not to get too in the weeds, but I would say with the Star Hill one, I think maybe this already exists, and it could be dug up. Maybe it needs to be determined, is a final determination of what the environmental situation is at City Yard and the scale and cost of environmental remediation.
Because to me, that's basically the question that the city was about to make a final decision on years ago, and then there was turnover and all kind of things. But basically, the answer to that question will determine, I think, is this actionable or not?
There may be more than that necessary to determine if it's actionable, but yes. I think that's the challenge with that plan is I think there's a number of things that need to happen to figure out. The central element of it being the redevelopment of that site, there's a number of things that need to happen to determine if that's actionable.
Right. I'll say that one of my desires has been, and I've talked to James about it when he was the planning director, as we get the team in place and settled and performing consistently, then one of the desires that I had was to revisit the Star Hill plan and bring it up to small area plan designation.
Because it's missing some components, and we need to complete those components, and then we can conclude that it is equal with the others, because there's no reason to have one vision plan and all the others be small area plans.
And I think that the question about City Yard is a big feature of that plan, of course, but there were other things, and still things probably that could be identified that could be done. Right. Because I wouldn't want that neighborhood to feel left out because the plan didn't meet the box to be checked as a small area plan.
That's not fair to them. They didn't cause that. Right. So I think there's a fixing of that. We just haven't had the capacity to get to it yet. But for the future, there will remain a giant city-owned parcel primarily used for parking vehicles that aren't in use.
And planning all the great work that happens in the city. And purchasing. There's procurement. And procurement is there, yes. I think most of the vehicles there are in use. Yeah. We get your point. Yeah.
Including snow blower in L.A. On that same page, for traffic signal infrastructure replacement- I've talked about that ... is that a list we see? What review is there to make sure that each of those is a place where we still want a traffic signal?
What goes into that? Jim? I can speak to that. Okay. So, there is a list. We are adjusting the process right now. The list that you have there, it's primarily based upon the structural integrity of the traffic signals.
But we want to make sure that when we're doing the replacement of those signals, that it is the long-term, I guess, desire to keep a traffic signal at that location. So as part of the scoping, we have the engineering team looking at the traffic volumes, doing a quick cursory look to see are the traffic warrants justifying the need to keep a traffic signal there.
And if there's, I guess, any doubt whether it is, we would then kick that up to a more detailed study. With that being said, a more detailed study and any change moving away from a traffic signal, whether it be a four-way stop or a potential roundabout, that would be a much more significant project and would take some time.
But right now we are just focusing on FY27, 28 intersections to make sure that those traffic signals are without a doubt they need to be replaced, and they would remain a signalized intersection in the future.
Great. I do want to make sure that we are reviewing- Absolutely ... to make sure that they're all needed. Thank you. Can I stay in the weeds on that for just a hot second? So what if it is a signal that needs to be changed?
So if it's three of the four are a green arrow and the fourth one is an open green, and there's a need to change that light to an arrow from a green, would that happen at that audit or review, or? So I believe that we are looking at the mast arms, primarily the structural elements, and then looking at just the traffic volumes through the intersection.
Where there are questions about- Function ... function, it's something that I'll have to bring up with the engineering team. Thanks. Because I know they've been looking at right turn onlys and things of that nature, so that would qualify as more of an engineering.
And the buttons to switch to no red. I know that's a thing that's been talked about too. Any other questions on these expenditures? Is it not really questions? It's one week. Only one week, y'all, come on.
We can come back. I'm going to go ahead and skip ahead a little bit. So, we've talked about expenditure. How do we pay for this? If we just look at '27, just under 78% of this plan will be funded by bonds.
The general fund transfer, if you recall, we have a policy that we call our PAYGO policy that ensures that at least 3% of the general fund budget is going to the CIP to pay for cash-funded projects. A lot of that, we have been exceeding that policy largely because of our affordable housing items that we have keyed into the plan that are not eligible for bonding, and so they are cash contributions.
In '27, this is not new, I think this was back in '23, we did program some contingency dollars into the CIP to help offset that ebb and flow of the cash contribution from the general fund. And so in '27, we are using just under $2 million of contingency that was programmed in several years ago.
That's not a change. It's been there for a while. And if you looked at this over the five years, the pie basically looks exactly the same. The contingency's a little smaller because this year was the biggest year that was programmed for contingency.
But essentially, it looks the same. And so as we look to debt, part of the balancing act with the CIP is looking at our debt capacity versus what we can afford. For those of you that have been around for a while, you'll recall that many years ago, when we started talking about the Beaufort renovation, we threw out $50 million.
And at that time, we were talking about the fact that that amount of money was going to exceed both our debt capacity and our affordability. Since then, and we'll look at this in just a minute, our general fund has grown at such a rate that our debt capacity is really no longer an issue.
It really does become the affordability piece of it, is how much debt can we afford to pay? Because while issuing debt is easy in the short term, it is something that is a 20-plus-year commitment that we do have to pay every year.
And so if we look at that overall, right now, our debt service, the green graph on the left, if you look at our projected annual debt service for '26, it's about $19.1 million, moving up to just over $26 million by 2031.
Conversely, if you look at the blue chart on the right, this is what we are projecting the general fund transfers to be. And you'll see that this year we're at 15 million. We're not really moving the needle that much in '27.
That was actually one of the budget balancing levers that we pulled before we presented this budget to you. But it takes us all the way up to a potential general fund transfer of just under $26 million in five very short years.
And so- And is there an inflation adjustment built into that, or is it just today's dollars? This is based on what our actual debt... I'm going to show you what's behind these in just a second, but it's based on what we anticipate our actual debt service will be.
Got it. Oh, sorry, I was thinking about the 3%. Oh. Transfer. The 3% is just based on whatever our budget is. Yes. I was not reading the graph correctly. No, no, no. No worries. Thank you. So how are we managing this?
And this, if you were to look at these two graphs, if you went back to this same work session over the last five years, both of these graphs have looked very similar. The way that we're mitigating this, which I'm going to show you the details behind this in one second, is that we have been funding our debt service fund to build up a fund balance for years in anticipation of greater debt service needs, that we're drawing down on that.
We've been using one-time funds to put extra dollars in the debt service fund. And then we also have been working to annually increase the general fund transfer to get that base up to where it needs to be.
So kind of a peek behind the curtain at what makes this up. This is a chart, and one thing I want to always say before we look at this is don't get so hung up on the exact numbers. The idea of this is to give you an idea of what are the pieces of the puzzle that we're working through each year as we look at our debt picture.
So if we were to look at the planning side on the left, and again, anything in black is something that has already happened. So those are real numbers. That's the real amount of the bond issue, that's our real annual debt service, and our real general fund budgetAnything in blue is what we're projecting, and it is subject to change for lots of reasons.
One is we issue bonds based on a cash need basis. So just because our CIP may say that we're spending $47 million in FY27, if we're not actually spending all of that $47 million, we're going to only sell bonds for what we know we are going to spend within two years as our cap for IRS reasons.
And so also every year, the interest rate depends on the market and when we sell bonds and how much we're selling, so that our annual debt service can always change. Right now, the assumption that this chart is using, because interest rates have gone up considerably for a long time, we were basically selling bonds almost for free because it was at 1%, which now we're projecting about a 4%, 4 to 4.5 in the out years.
And then our general fund, basically right now, this projection just assumes a 3% growth, which is conservative when you look at the debt capacity. Obviously, as the general fund grows, our debt capacity also increases.
So this is a conservative view of that. But one thing to note is that from 2016 to 2030 our budget will have essentially doubled in about 15 years. And so that right there is one of the very big reasons why when we were looking at $50 million at one time and we thought we would exceed our capacity was because our general fund was much smaller at that point.
And so as we plan out, basically we do sell bonds on an annual basis. So that bond issue number is sort of a guess, if you will. We've been selling around $20, $25 million. The $40 million in FY28 basically is a consideration of where we may be with the pre-K center, which is why that number is a little higher.
But following over to the consequences of all that on the right-hand side is that if you were to take '27, for example, you'll see that our debt service payment in the third column under the planning, our actual debt service payment is planned at $20.4 million.
However, we're only transferring $15.8 million from the general fund. So we are basically drawing down on the debt service fund balance. And then in addition, you'll note that in '26, that $1.4 million that's in the additional funds, that was basically the gain sharing, the city's share gain sharing that was returned from the schools for their year ending '25.
So because a lot of this debt service is being driven by school projects, we made the decision to put that money in the debt service fund, and that was a lever we were able to pull to not have to budget for as much of a transfer in '27.
However, you'll note that quickly, if we don't have that sort of lever going forward, in '28 it looks like that at a minimum, because kind of the plan is that debt service fund balance is what can we contribute to keep that debt service fund balance either positive or at zero.
You're looking at $2 million increases a year on your transfer to make sure that you're maintaining your debt service payment. So by the time we get to 2031, our debt payment is about $26.4 million, if everything worked out perfectly here.
And we're still transferring not quite that much, but when you get to '32, our general fund transfer is pretty much taking on the full freight of the debt service. And so this just contemplates what's currently in the CIP, with a little bit extra on those back ends, because obviously we don't have a CIP for '32, '33, '34, so it gives you about $60 million in play here.
And again, this chart changes every year. The story is basically the same, but the takeaway is that the debt service is something that we have to manage, but it is also something we have to budget and pay for as we continue to issue the debt.
So does that mean we can't do other projects until the debt service comes down? What does it mean for us as we look at new projects or not look at new projects? So a couple of things is, I think, this is something that we actively manage every year as part of the budget process.
We might not issue $25 million of bonds this year or even $20, so it keeps moving the chart down. I think we also take every time we sell bonds, we look for refunding opportunities to refinance that debt at a cheaper rate, which helps some of this.
I wouldn't want to say, are you limited to $60 million? No, that's not really the answer here, but it does sort of put in perspective that it's not an unlimited supply to continue to balance out $200 million CIPsplans for the longevity.
At some point, as Sam has been referring to, the runway is getting shorter and shorter. And it also depends on your appetite in terms of what you're willing to dedicate in new revenue- Mm-hmm ... or for bond payments, essentially.
But the other thing- It is your cash. Correct. Just remembering that part of it. That's your cash, and that's your flexible money to do other things. So to give you some perspective, before we added the tax increase to the '27 budget, we were talking about you had $11 million of new money.
If you were to follow this chart, roughly $2 million of that, right off the top, would come out for debt service, barring everything here working out perfectly. But we continue to look for additional sources, and different things to do here.
So we are actively managing it, and we share this exact conversation and table with the bond rating agencies. And they're comfortable that our process is sound, and that it doesn't raise a lot of red flags by the fact that we are looking at this and managing it.
But I guess some good news is that, as you know, that at the state level, there is some conversation about the possibility of being able to use a 1% sales tax increase for school construction. Right now, the sales tax that the city collects is roughly the equivalent of 1% of sales.
So sales tax rate is 5.3%. The city gets about 1% of that back from the state, which is, in this budget for '27, we're estimating is about $16 million. If we were to use all of that for debt service, that would equate to about $178 million of debt that could be issued.
The 1-cent sales tax has to be used only for school construction projects. There are terms and restrictions about how and what it can be used for, I think, that are still being discussed. And the other thing to note is that sales tax is dependent on the economy, as we know.
So for the first several months of this year, we were seeing pretty concerning declines in our sales tax revenue. So issuing debt is a fixed, steady payment, whereas we are estimating what we think the sales tax will bring in every year.
So one of the things we are working with our financial advisor on is a potential policy to come and talk to you about what best practices may be. That if we were to get this $16 million, or to get the authority to increase the sales taxes, what does that look like?
Does it look like all of it towards debt service? Does it look like some of it for cash and some of it for debt service? What are the best practices? What have other localities that already have permission to use that 1%, what are they doing?
So we'll be having more conversations about that as time comes, and also as the legislation firms up, so we know what we can or cannot do with the funds. So that will be another consideration for council to discuss going forward, and will impact that ugly table that we just talked about as well, for sure.
So I'll stop there, and what questions do you have? Yesterday, I talked to a group of students at the COM School, and I knew enough about this because this type of question came up. So I sounded like I remember that chart, so I knew I was talking about it.
Right. Impressed with the management. So thank you. One of the things I think about with the chart is, one, essentially taking out 2022 to 2025. Not taking it out, but because nationwide assessments doubled on average, we followed that trend.
That was because of the pandemic. That's just not going to happen again. So in my mind, I just take that out as expecting, going forward, that kind of increase can happen again. For growth? Yeah. For the level of general fund and budget growth.
But I think in a way, just watching what is, again, taking out the weirdness of the pandemic years, every year, watching what is our general fund expenditure budget growth, and is it beating projections, or is it lower than our projections, because that's just obviously going to have a huge influence on- Sure ...
the level of debt we can issue. And we use 3% here to be the most conservative, so that what is the worst case scenario in which you would reach your debt limit? And obviously we're not there. And to your point, our general fund growth has been more than 3%, but that only makes that percentage less.
So it's to your benefit to look at this more conservatively for when we're planning. But also there's a balance to not be too conservative. Yeah, especially because it just obviously compounds over time.
But I know even when we take out the weirdness of the pandemic years, we have beat 3%. Absolutely. You just don't want to overshoot that thing. Can I ask an unrelated question? Obviously, none of this embraces money that we expect to get from affordable housing payments in lieu.
Should that be reflected in some way in this budget? I'll speak and then they can speak. In my opinion, I think that that is a policy issue, or a policy decision. We do know that money is coming. We don't know exactly when or how much.
And I think by not programming it here, it gives council an opportunity to look at that as a singular issue, and gives you an opportunity to decide if you want to use that for something new and great in addition to what you've already contemplated.
Or, as opposed to putting it here, and then putting stuff in, and then what happens two years from now when someone's like, "Hey, I've got a great idea for this $11 million," but now you've already programmed it in the CIP.
So I think it's a policy issue, but I'll back up and let anyone else speak. You probably know what I'm going to say, but I'm reluctant to plan it as though we know it's going to always happen. Sure. So for that reason, I would be more inclined to say that we should adopt a policy that would speak to more of a percentage, that we felt comfortable because our development activity had hit a certain stride, therefore it was producing a series of these chunks of money that we could predict, we could anticipate.
And therefore, we could safely budget some of it in a manner that it would work for this particular exercise. My preference would be that we hold it to what we consider the surplus is capable of doing.
That when you receive it, and you can plan in advance of receiving it, but when you receive it, you can do something transformative with it, or you can do a certain number of things that haven't been able to fit into our five-year plan in the CIP specifically.
It just provides that flexibility to, again, not overshoot. That's what my concern would be, is that we would base our plan on something that we might not get in a certain year, because we're relying, in this case, on developers bringing forward their projects, and something could go wrong with them that's not the economy based, it's just something with them.
And we've tied it to the idea that based on when we approved it through our planning process, we anticipated that two years of construction, we would have it. But if they incurred some moment, we don't have any control over that or any ability to do anything but make the adjustments.
So why go too far too fast in planning what comes of that money with that possibility? That's where I sit. If our zoning code had just been going like gangbusters now, like you want it to be with this blitz concept, and it's just churning out project after project, and we could start truly anticipating what each year might feel like, I'd be all for, let's start plugging more of that in because it's more anticipated what we could rely on.
Well, let's assume for the moment that the only thing we factored in was the money that we expect to receive on, say by January 1 or sometime in the fiscal year for a project already underway. Yeah. This gets back to the question that we so far have not yet discussed, which is, if we get, let's say $6 million in affordable housing payment in lieu kind of money, does that mean that we would go in this fiscal year to $17 million on affordable housing?
Or can we, for example, use part of that money to serve a replacement for other funds? I gather that the money itself has to go to housing, but it doesn't mean we can't reprogram things. And one of the things that I've suggested before is that if we look at affordable housing and transit as effectively two sides of the same coin, which is the way housing advocates look at it, that we might find ourselves able to afford more in the way of transit, as opposed to saying we're going to allocate all of that money specifically to affordable housing, and there'd be $17 million in one year, and maybe three more years go by before it's another big chunk.
But that's the discussion we've never had. Sure. That does speak to the policy that Chris is mentioning. That conversation needs to happen so that we can clearly hear from you what it is that you desire, and then we build around it.
Yep. I can take that as a request for us to plan a work session around that, then we can do that. I think we ought to have some- We haven't booked that ... organized discussion on this matter. Sure. Okay.
You okay with it? Yeah. I think landing at clarity on the question seems So that's all we really have on the CIP. The last thing I had to show you was the CDBG applications. So anything else on the CIP before we move to that?
So you probably know where I'm going, but I use that. So is there anything, what we're doing or where we heading that keeps you up at night? No. I'm always up at night. That's right. That's you or James.
I do. I feel like every year our CIP gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And, a lot of the projects that-- There's no longer the million-dollar projects. They're multimillion-dollar projects.
But I think, we have continued to manage those well. So you have guardrails in place to keep us in place, so that we- We have the guardrails to ring the bell for you when it's time. Yeah. Yes, definitely.
It's that money back slide. It's one of the guardrails. Meant to be. That's right. The constant reminders, that's what it is. Yeah. Are there any questions on the CIP? Any additional questions on this?
Sorry, two final questions. The affordable housing CIP, the Tenth and Ortland project, did that developer submit any request for CIP funding? Were there areas they submitted any requested funding? Yeah.
Remember that was back when I did the budget brief for you all on housing. We had the three projects, Brick Lane, Community... Yeah, I can't remember what it is. It was the- The Holiday Inn ... $900,000.
Brick Lane is the conversion of the Holiday Inn, and then POAH for the Tenth and Ortland. So all three of those were the three projects that came in through our RFI process, where we request for information about a development project.
We went back to all three parties. The $900,000 project was the one that you all seemed as though you would be willing to fund. We did not make it fit into this CIP. We ran out of space because we have to balance the cash component.
I think I asked Christy a couple of times, "Are we there yet?" And she said, "Pretty close," so it wasn't going to fit. So we weren't able to make it fit within FY27. The conversation with Brick Lane was one that they weren't really interested in making the potential adjustments to their unit mix, which then in our mind left that project out of scope for consideration.
It was bigger than the other one anyway. And POAH, we had a couple of conversations with, and ultimately the conversation ended with more of a, "You should go back to the university and have a conversation with them about they need to have a conversation with us." Because they were more or less in a position that they were carrying the university's burden for the conversation that needed to be had with this organization.
So it ended there. And that conversation with UVA has not happened yet? No one has reached out, so I assume he delivered the message. I don't know how they took that message, but no one has reached out indicating that they would like to have any conversation about it.
So, any other questions on this? Before we move on to the 1%, Sam, when you were talking about that, are we working with the schools? And Lloyd had mentioned this, we just need to be prepared to get the message out.
That's his job. Are you talking about for the referendum? Yes. Oh. Oh, I thought you were talking about what to use the money for. Sorry. Yeah, I'm like, "Man, you're really expanding." You're meaning on how to explain what we'll do.
Yeah. That is part of his job. So we've done preliminary work as- No, I'm sorry. Not what we do to get the message out to the public to support this. Is that- Yeah. No, we have not done work on that yet.
Of course, we're waiting to see what comes out of it, because we need the details on the bill being passed as to what the message gets to be. I think what I feel like I was hearing is, yes, we need to make sure that we have a clear presentation of what will come of those funds if we were to allow this tax to be passed.
So that is tying back to Mike's prior work and ongoing work- Yeah ... of identifying what we anticipate a series of projects to look like over a period of time. That would be what would amount to a facilities program.
It's what I've been talking about since I got here. That we should have a facilities program identified for school buildings across the system, identifying what we deem the needs to be, what the project scope could look like, what the potential budget may be, and a schedule.
And now if we were to have a sales tax passWe will have a projected dollar amount that we can rely on every year, which is why I asked Christy to identify what is the debt service capacity that we would be able to rely on for how far we go.
That number exceeds what we preliminarily identified, but when he finishes his work, that number ain't going to cut it. It won't cover all the projects that we know are in that list. And it definitely does not touch a high school and a forming of a new one.
So I can assure everyone that this won't do that. But what I would anticipate being able to clearly do is identify what would be the makings of a facilities program that the public could appreciate receiving something to look at, and have some indication of what would happen amongst the middle schools.
We know that the-- I mean, elementary schools. We know that the middle school wouldn't need anything probably in that window of time. It would be the elementary schools and the high school that would be identified as what that scope of projects could be, over what period of time, and is there a replacement of one of the elementary schools, or a new one would be a part of that factor, too.
Well, I- But I appreciate the fact that you will want to have that. So yes, we know that we would need to be able to produce that. I had said that, I think the last time I mentioned it, that we should have such a plan in mind by May 1st.
But given that the general assembly won't even have a decision on anything until at least April 23rd at the earliest, maybe June 1st is a more realistic timeframe. Yeah, I think the preliminary work that's been done, I think we all would nod that we feel good about what we saw in that work, that assessment work, that we could frame, here are a series of initial projects that we would like to see getting done, and we would put that in front of school board and superintendent, and I'm sure they would concur very easily on a number of them, and that probably would be the initial package that we would put out there.
But that work group does include school staff as well. Right. So it's not just city staff. The ongoing CIP work that we're already doing is going to help us identify things that could be done as well.
We have the school facilities working group. Yeah. Right? That's- True. They would be the ones to finalize what those look like ... doing a long range plan that has representatives from Mike and his team, and the schools department, looking at what the needs are and developing a, I forget, what, 20 year plan?
I was thinking 10, but- 10. Okay ... it can be 20, because there's plenty. There's plenty to do. So, yeah. Well, the 1% is only for a certain number of years. So the last version did not have a sunset.
Really? And I know that at least Michael and I started talking about this issue before we really knew that this had a shot of going forward, because there's just real need in the fact that we have 50-year-old schools that are in great shape, thanks to our team, but they are not meeting the needs of a modern school building- Right ...
in many cases. So the idea was, let's think about what the need is and let's try and think about what a realistic timeframe is for getting that done. What the 1% does is potentially accelerate that timeframe.
It would've been the conversation, we would be still having this conversation about schools construction, whether the 1% sales tax was on the table or not. Because in all of the conversations, we're finding that we're getting things done on an annual basis, but the things cost more.
So we're running out of the smaller things to do, and therefore the money isn't going to go far enough, hence why my question was about a facilities program in the first place. Mm-hmm. So we were going to need to be dealing with that no matter what.
This is a great relief that we will have a source, provided the public agrees to make it available for that particular use. But we should be able to address a lot of need. And in the initial work, we anticipated capacity.
So unless something dramatically changes, I think we have a good course ahead for what to do. Now it's how we pay for it. Okay. CDV, is that one- Yeah. Just real quickly. This is, again, this is still in committee, so no decisions have been made or recommendations.
This is just a snapshot of what has been applied for. I believe there are 11 applicants. You can see the programs here. We have two pots of money. One is the CDBG pot, and one is the HOME pot of money.
The total requests for CDBG was 597,000. 185,000 for HOME. There's an admin portion that comes out of the CDBG pot of money. We don't know what the exact awards are from HUD at this point, but we've anticipated what those are.
And so, like with BCF and other processes, there's always more asked than we have funding. Right now, this looks about $241 million short from being able to fully fund all of- You said million. Thousand Oh, sorry.
241,000. I'm in CIP world. It's okay. All right. And then $99,000 short from being able to fully fund the HOME request. But this gives you some idea of who's applied and what they're applying. And I believe that goes to the planning commission within the next week or so.
And then I think formal recommendations will be coming to council in May. Okay. And that's it. That's all we have. Okay. So any other questions? We'll talk about it next week. Okay. Anyone signed up to speak?
Last week. I know some people came in. Anyone like to speak in the back? Okay. I didn't see anyone. Any other questions or comments at this time we need to decide on next week or- If you all aren't interested in talking about anything else.
Yes. Because we only have one work session left. Do we want to talk about, I don't know if we're all ready to talk about VCF, but do we want to talk about the one cent increase option than what we were presented last week?
Or, there's been some chatter about, for future self. Well, we can do it for future self anyway. Or anything that can help give them guidance for more information we need to help make that decision or not.
So you mean if we pass an increase or support that, it may be more difficult to get the one cent for the school? No, no. What are you saying? I think we had all said we wanted to do everything we possibly could to make sure that a tax increase was necessary.
So one of the options they gave us last week was the take from the strategic initiatives fund, take from the other fund, right? And then, because we had to make up 1.4 million. One, I wondered if we could get a longer runway to see if the state would make its decision by the 23rd.
And that deadline is not really possible in this short period of time, but maybe something we want to look at for future self. So if there were other magic tricks we wanted to look at or if there were other suggestions on that one cent thing.
I think we mapped out the math for the one cent thing, and it made sense. Yeah. Chris is pulling it up as well, so you can just be reminded. It was the revising of the revenue is the bulk of it. So that's why it's not two cents on the real estate tax anymore.
It's now one. Mm-hmm. And then the difference would be... It's like 300 and- 341,000. Yes. Right. Yeah. So we wouldn't need in that, if we do the one cent, we would need to contribute the citywide reserve and- To pull from the citywide reserve- Reserve and the strategic ...
and the council strategic initiatives. Yeah. Or pull more from the citywide reserve and not touch the strategic initiatives, if you all are planning to use more of it for known things. There's room now to do this plan.
Okay. So we're looking for, whether it's tonight or next Thursday, we're looking for you to finalize what scenario we are actually going with for offsetting, for addressing the fact that you're stepping back from a two cent increase on the real estate tax to a one cent increase on the real estate tax.
So again, you're only short the $231,000, because the revenue adjustment is 1.5 million, and that gives you the bulk. To just second and agree with the point Jen had raised. To me, one of the questions is, because of our city code, which we have the power to change, there's a provision from 1974 that we have to adopt our budget by April 15th.
Many other localities in Virginia adopt it May, June, have the flexibility to not do that. We won't know the state's budget until at least April 23rd, so we're adopting it before their special session even begins.
Our school's budget right now that we're basing this off is based off the budget introduced by Glenn Youngkin. And Roanoke's a good counterexample, where they're going to adopt their budget in either May or June.
They based their school's budget on, they modeled the House of Delegates budget and the State Senate budget. The State Senate budget increases their funding by almost $7 million. Their school's budget is about twice ours.
All of which is to say, the General Assembly could very well impact between $1 to $3 million in our budget, which would determine whether we raise the real estate tax rate or not. And one, do we have the space to extend our deadline by any amount this year to, as best we can, try to know the outcome?
And certainly for next year, to not have us be in the situation where we're making a decision without full information that is at the scale of a tax increase or not. So since it's We're already this deep into this year's budget cycle, and this is something that comes up during the budget cycle every year and not that far in advance.
Is this something that you're asking the rest of us if there is a desire to ask our staff to look into it for next year? Is that a question that you have? Yes. Both for next year and also is there any ability to do it this year?
Well, as a practical matter, tax tickets have to go out to people by May 1st or so. Mm-hmm. So I don't know that we have the ability to hold off making a decision until after April 23rd. Unless we decide on a fixed real estate tax number.
Trying to avoid that is kind of the purpose of your inquiry, I think. So, we've looked at it from staff perspective, in terms of could we do it. The answer is yes. It buys you about two weeks, though.
The reason for that is, and I would defer to Jon whether it's even possible for this year or not, but part of what has to happen is, as Counselor Snook referred to, is we'd have to change the due date on the tax bills, first of all.
From, I think, June 5th is the current date. It would probably have to be moved to June 20th-ish. And then we have to back that up and allow time for, one, your approval, and then two, for that information to actually get to the printer and get...
I think there's a 30-day requirement on the bill for the taxpayer, which is why we'd have to move the due date. So I think all in all, by the time we finish it, it buys you about two weeks time on waiting on the state, if you...
So that is, if we were to do that this year, it could buy about two weeks. Next year, making the adjustments, it could be longer than that. Yeah. But I think the question is, our charter says April 15th.
I don't know if we have time to change that for this year, but we could for next year. It's not merely a question of an ordinance. It's a charter. I don't think it's a charter. Oh, okay. My- It is an ordinance piece.
I will double-check that- Okay ... to make sure because right now I'm looking at our code section that says that, "The council shall approve the annual budget and shall make such city levy prior to April 15th of each year." It was 1976, you're close- Mm-hmm ...
when that went into effect. Y'all know me, I love nothing more than amending an ordinance. So, that's completely possible. But as you said, there are practical implications that go along with this that's more in the treasurer's management.
There would just be for revenue collection. There would be a revenue collection impact whenever we make the change. The first year of the change, as basically identified, is that it's going to cross over the 45-day accrual period.
So we would close out the- Which means what? We close the fiscal year. So the first, if bills are due on June 5th, you have, from an accounting standpoint, anything that's collected from 45 days from after June 30th can be accrued back to the fiscal year.
So, that would be August 15th-ish. And if we move the tax due date, you lose two weeks off of that, so the 45 days would short you time. But you can change the accrual. It's an accounting change, but it can be done, and it would have to go from a 45-day accrual to a 60-day accrual.
And finance confirmed that they didn't see a problem with that. So, I think everything was good. So it doesn't affect the... Right now, if things are due June 5th, and we have three-ish weeks before the new fiscal year.
If we get everything June 20th, is that enough turnaround time to get the new fiscal year ready? Well, that's part of the thing of that even if we... There does need to be some, I think we have to provide 30 days notice for how much is due.
So we have to get the bills out 30 days before the due date. So back 30 days up. Let's say we make it June 20th, got to back that up 30 days. And then we've got to allow time to actually get that information to the printer for them to be processed and then mailed.
So, all in all, I think we came down to it buys you about two weeks of extra time. Okay, but that being this budget year, it could be more time beyond that next year. From a staff perspective, I don't think we're comfortable that we could actually get...
I think we're not comfortable that all the pieces and parts that need to happen, that there's much more time beyond that. Because there's a lot of pieces that have to fall into place. I guess you could make the bill due June 30th, but we can't say, "Here's the budget," and then have it ready to go July 1.
So there's a lot of administrative stuff that happens, but it's mostly about processing the bills and getting them mailed, and then giving people time to pay them.So, I think whatever we land on would be whatever it is going forward.
That's helpful. But again, often two to three weeks is the difference between knowing the state budget. Fair. In this case, it's a difference from what, six weeks on the budget, minimum? Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Any other questions? So Sam, do you want to know tonight what- Whatever you can tell me- Yeah ... is what I'm saying. Yes. Because ultimately, what I'm really just advising you is that you have one work session left next Thursday.
In that session, we would need to hear from you the scenario resolution here. We know that you've taken schools off the list, we know that you've taken CAT off the list. At least that's what I read from the last conversation.
So are we going to tap into the city-wide reserve? And to what degree are we going to tap into council's strategic initiatives fund? To what degree to make up the difference that is needed to offset one penny of the real estate tax to go with your revenue adjustment, which is the updated number that Ms.
Hamill gave you last week. So we need a resolution for this, because this is a hole in the budget until we resolve it. And your decisions in regards to any allocations from the council's strategic initiatives fund for VCF candidates or anything else that you wanted.
What is the best-- Since that's a list of things that would be weird to communicate by reading it aloud. I don't know, should we-- Do you want it in advance to review? Do you just want the whole number?
What is the- No, I mean- ... best way to deliver that information to make it easy for you to process and build? We need line item because that's a part of the budget. So the line item usage is what we're looking for.
And do we have to have it? So what we've done in the past with that is, because of FOIA things, you can't deliberate behind the scenes. Right. So your list does need to be discussed openly and publicly.
But one thing we have done in the past is we have had councilors send their list directly to the city manager or to the budget team, and then we come prepared with a spreadsheet where we actually do the math live and in person.
These were the suggestions, and then you all can say yes, no, whatever, and make the sausage that way. That's kind of how we've gotten around that. So you can do that between now and next Wednesday. But- So we can have a slide ready for you on Thursday.
But I would say as much time as you can give us in advance, because there are some times that you have suggestions that don't work because of other reasons, and we would want to be able to have that back and forth with you.
Yeah. Maybe we should move and then your deadline to Monday. Yeah. Well, I mean, in all defense. And- I don't know ... what is the process for, we call it the strategic initiatives fund. Could we change it, the title to council reserve fund?
Doesn't matter. I didn't know if that was a COVID thing or... No. We called it something else before we started calling it that. Yeah, it's been called... Keenan and I were just talking about that today.
Somewhere else it's called Council Strategic Investment Fund. It's been a... Yeah. This is what, whatever you want it to be. Yeah, we can change that. That's fine. And then I guess the final question is, and was there anything else about the budget that you...
I'm looking at you. You be. Is there anything else that you were curious about, wanting to talk about? Was there some consideration that you might be thinking you wanted to bring up to other council members?
Because that would be your last shot. That's kind of why we leave it unplanned in case there's something, but we aren't looking for real surprises either, because we only have a week after that. I had a request for next year's budget.
Love it. So I'll wait for that. We always do an after action- Okay, good ... so we will happily take that and plan that. I think everyone's been working on VCF, and I think we can probably get you the spreadsheets with, probably by end of day tomorrow, but by Monday.
Okay. For sure. Great. That's good because we can then do our work in our budget team meeting in preparation for Thursday. Okay, and that's good. And then that will also answer the lump sum contribution to that.
I think one of the add-ons to that is, again, we won't have numbers for you until Monday's spreadsheet, but a consideration to set aside some of the strategic initiatives fund, again, not a yes or no yet, but has been thrown around for standing up an arts council to handle arts and culture organizations outside of Mr.
Freeze's recommendation for a public arts commission. That's an example of what I'm looking for. Yeah. If there's anything else like that- Yeah ... that we might need to prepare some You know, discussion points or something like that, we need to know.
Yeah. I think something we've had in conversations kind of less formally, but we recognize that there's a need for additional bandwidth in the housing department. And so keeping in mind, if we can't fit it in this year, what can we do to make sure that we have staffing for next year?
You did. By saying that again, you did. Mm-hmm. And we are looking at different ways to just mitigate the impact of not having individuals in that seat. Now we're working with our financial advisor to backfill some analysis perspectives as well and helping us kind of assess where we are.
Yep. But it's a priority. So it looks like we're going to be meeting next Thursday. Yep. Does sound like you're going to be meeting next Thursday. We'll discuss, give you our final decision on the breakdown of the making up the difference in that one cent.
And, um- Let's see ... as usual, spend quality time with VCS, so That's what you call it, yes. Yeah. Yes. Okay. Just a few more things. Whether we do or do not adopt our budget before we know what the state's budget is, we do know what the House and Senate proposals are.
Is there an interest from other councilors to direct staff to model what our budget would look like under the House and State Senate budget, as opposed to the Youngkin budget, which is over $500 million less in education funding?
I'd like to see that modeling. Yeah. I think it is school staff that would have to do that for us, but whichever staff it is- At least we can solve them out. I can get to work on them. Yeah. Well, maybe there's somebody on the school board who might be able to put in a word in.
She was worried now. Just saying. Just saying. I would definitely agree with the point about housing staff. I can send an email with just the PowerPoint presentation that the housing advisory committee received, and that is available online in their agenda.
But, I think it would be a fair summary that their presentation was that our current housing staffing levels are unsustainable and very out of line with how many programs we do. So we just second that, and I think it was like five positions total.
Two of the things that we can reach a decision point on at our last work session, very small amount of budget things, but if other councilors are interested in funding the participatory budgeting pilot program, that's like a 10 to $30,000 total allocation.
And then second, next year is going to be the 10th anniversary of the summer of 2017, whether we just want from, I don't know where in the budget it comes from, again, some amount of money to be preparing for memorializing that anniversary and having the community involved in a process figuring out what does a permanent memorialization of Fourth Street look like.
That doesn't need to be a huge amount of money, but just something to put toward for it. Again, not asking for a decision tonight or anything like that, but those are potentially things others were interested in.
So, Michael, you had explained to us what the participatory is, what that would look like. Can you explain it again? And, Jen can also give a lot of- Oh, is that... Oh, was she- I think it's super cool, but I probably can't give you the down home logistics about it.
But it's a facilitative process of, I've seen it done in neighborhood by neighborhood, of engaging the public in determining what they truly want to spend parts of the budget on, and how that's reflected in their desires.
And Michael, I might be too oversimplifying, so jump in. So it's like the Monopoly nights on steroids. It's a lot of conversation, it's a lot of engagement, hence the fee that comes with it to facilitate those conversations.
But it tends to engage folks in all levels of government and how we operate because they get so engrossed and involved with the decision-making. But how does this... Because I've done countless transportation meetings when I was doing that type of thing, even when I was in school, where you get the same people.
How do you get the... Do you have to be in the room, or is it you gather people that we know really don't come to meetings? Because we could get skewed if a group or whatever sends, get everyone to come to the meeting, but I don't know if this approach has a way of preventing that.
So I would say, Richmond's done a lot with it, and Charlottesville almost did a pilot, and then August 2017 happened, and all the staff left within a period before it was implemented. But their strategy was going to be, you pick a neighborhood, you have 10 to $30,000 total that could be allocated, and they would go door to door, knocking doors in the neighborhood explicitly to try to get people who don't normally show up.
And part of that process would be just engaging with what the city budget looks like for people who haven't historically don't engage. And they did a small pilot, and Just a lot of good conversations came from it.
Right. And I think a lot of people who were never involved in local government were thinking about, "Oh, the city can't plant flowers here because of right of way. Like, I never thought of that." Like that kind of thing.
Mm-hmm. We still have the framework from when we did it before, and we did get as far as having some projects, but you're right, it didn't go further than that. Yeah. So, definitely before we say to move forward with that, I just want to have a little bit more conversations about what it will look like.
We have a local community member who's an expert in participatory budgeting facilitation, so I can ask her what some of that looks like. Yeah. My concern, I just know this community and that if we don't get the people that won't come to meetings, we just won't get the full picture.
I know we can get the input from the people that come because they're going to come, and we'll extract some great information, but it's the people that don't come that I think have some valuable input in it as well.
But yeah. So can I just take it from the top for what our homework is for Monday? So we're going to do the what part of the one cent we want to take from city reserves and/or strategic initiative. We're going to have our input on CYF sorted, your direction, the spreadsheet for everyone's spreadsheet for what they- VCF.
Yeah, VCF. And then, what's our last piece of homework that we need to give to you? Do you have anything else? Anything else? No. Okay. Got it. Thank you. Okay. I think we got it. I think you're right.
If there's no other information, is there a motion to adjourn? I want to make sure you have anything you want to say. I mean, I think, do I need to come up here? Yes. Okay, fine. So, there's no mic here, so I'll project.
It'll be okay. My comments are pretty consistent with what they've always been, fund the schools. I sat in a classroom today at Summit, doing a special reading group that's been convening twice a week the past year, with Ms.
Howard, our youth opportunities coordinator, and some community volunteers. And, I mean, there's a lot of improvement that's happening and important work that's happening with tying communities to our schools, but funding is needed.
And I have watched your conversations about collective bargaining, and I have to say that I think there's still a lack of clarity. And I think that if there are questions for the school board, I would encourage you to ask those questions.
But ultimately, our support staff needs that increase, so collective bargaining is something that we must prioritize. And everything that we gave you was a needs-based budget. It's not like a dream budget.
It's a needs-based budget. Sorry, I should have started with, I'm speaking as a community member and as an individual, but as someone who is interested in seeing money poured into the schools. And so the budget that was presented from the schools was a need-based budget.
And I need us to remember that there are a lot of needs. There are a lot of unique needs with the diverse student population that we have in Charlottesville. And truthfully, the schools could use way more money than the budget that was presented, but I do think that any reductions of that is, it's not doing it justice.
And I'm speaking to you as, again, a community member who went through our schools, is still in our community, and is still working with students and doing that mentoring work and volunteering work, and I know that there's a real need there.
And so this is kind of my final appeal to you. I'll probably be back next week. But to please fund the schools and to give the full amount that was requested. It's really, really needed. And we're talking about bigger city ideas and things that we need to memorialize and all of these things, and I think they're all important.
And I want to add that the best way that we invest in our community is through our schools, and of course, through affordable housing. So I think it's important to make space for all of those things, but to remember that education is shaping our future leaders.
So thank you all for your work. And like I said, I'll see you next week. Thank you. Any other comments? If not, can I get a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. All in favor, please say yes. Yes. Those opposed, please say no.