City Council
City Council
Wed, April 8, 2026
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Meeting summaryAI-generated
Charlottesville City Council Special Meeting — April 8, 2026
This was a special work session focused on two arts-related topics: an update on the Swords into Plowshares public art project and a presentation on establishing a new regional arts council. No binding votes were taken; the meeting was informational and deliberative. Board and commission roundtable reports were deferred to a future meeting due to time constraints.
Swords into Plowshares: Robert E. Lee Statue Recontextualization Project
Dr. Andrea Douglas, Executive Director of the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, presented on the Swords into Plowshares project — the effort to transform the two tons of bronze from the melted-down Robert E. Lee statue into new public art for Charlottesville. The Heritage Center received the deed of gift for the statue in December 2021, survived a near two-year lawsuit, and completed the melting in October 2023. Since then, the project has moved into its second phase.
After issuing a Request for Qualifications in February 2025, the Heritage Center convened a four-person expert jury (an art historian, a cultural anthropologist, a landscape architect, and a descendant of the enslaved) that narrowed 32 responses down to three finalist design teams, each of which made an extensive two-day site visit to Charlottesville:
Hood Design Studio ("Ring Shout"): Proposes 24 steel rings distributed across the community, engraved with input from community conversations, with bronze inlaid into the engravings. The rings would eventually be returned to the communities where conversations were held. Anchored by a white oak planted in Market Street Park, with the ring shout metaphor — call and response — threading through the design.
MASS Design Group + Artist Dana King ("Charlottesville's True Commons"): Proposes a large bronze baobab tree as a central focal point in Market Street Park, surrounded by pathways reoriented using Adinkra symbols from Ghana. Includes a generative soundscape derived from the tree's own energy. Would involve adding bronze to the existing material to achieve the needed scale.
PUSH Studio Group: Proposes two 25-foot towers and six smaller pillars distributed across six parks, with community members contributing soil to form the banded sections of each piece. Granite from the original statue base would be incorporated into the ground beneath each installation — the only proposal to address the granite. Site-specific narrative text would be engraved on each pillar's interior.
Each project is estimated at approximately $4 million, with the Heritage Center aiming to raise $5–5.5 million to cover contingencies. An ongoing community awareness campaign includes park tours (120 participants so far), exhibitions at the Heritage Center through May 30, and a website (siftcville.com). Dr. Selina Cozart has been hired for six weeks of structured community engagement. The Heritage Center plans to announce the finalist on July 10, 2026 — the fifth anniversary of the statues' removal.
Community input is being gathered through a single question: "Which vision would shape Charlottesville's future?" along with open-ended feedback. As of the meeting, 173 responses had been received. Dr. Douglas emphasized that community input constitutes *advice*, not a binding vote, and that the expert advisory council and jury remain part of the final decision.
Discussion: Councilor Snook raised a procedural concern that the City Council has never formally voted to approve Market Street Park as a location for this artwork, and that all three proposals assume significant changes to that park. Dr. Douglas responded that Parks and Recreation staff were consulted during the design process and never ruled out Market Street Park, and that a January survey showed strong community preference for that location. Deputy City Manager James Priest clarified that the definitive procedural moment will come when council is asked to formally accept the artwork into the city's public art collection, and that incremental steps — including a resolution approving specific locations — will likely also be needed. Council members generally signaled support for continuing the process and were not opposed to Market Street Park in principle, but agreed a formal action should come before the city before designs are finalized. Councilor Payne urged council to clearly signal continued commitment to the project and flexibility on design and maintenance matters. Councilor Fleisher called the project "above and beyond" what could be asked for in response to the question of what to do with the park and the material.
Questions were also raised about long-term maintenance costs once the artwork is gifted to the city, and Dr. Douglas noted that each proposal includes fabrication, installation, and stewardship components, with Heritage Center intending to remain involved even after the transfer.
Vote: No vote taken. This was an informational work session.
Public Art Commission and New Arts Council Feasibility Study
Deputy City Manager James Priest briefly introduced the proposed Public Art Commission, noting that the city already owns a public art collection that requires governance for maintenance, acquisition, and removal decisions. He described the commission as a recommendation body, with council retaining final authority. The commission would also address memorials, creating a public forum for those conversations.
Arts Council Feasibility Study Presentation: Maureen Bondy (Executive Director, New City Arts) and Dr. Jessica Harris (steering committee member; artistic director of Empowered Players) presented the findings of a recently completed feasibility study, facilitated by national expert Ruby Lopez-Harper (formerly of Americans for the Arts, joining by video). The study was funded by the City Manager's office, UVA Arts, CACF's Anna Jean Rowe Foundation, and CACDP, and cost approximately $37,000.
Key findings: Charlottesville does not lack arts activity — it lacks coordination. Existing arts investments (McGuffey Art Center, Vibrant Community Fund grants, festivals) are scattered across city departments with no shared structure. This creates inefficiency, inconsistency, and — critically — tends to reinforce inequities by favoring existing networks. Peer cities of comparable size (Ann Arbor, Boulder, Winston-Salem) all have coordinating structures, whether municipal or nonprofit. The study drew on 464 participants, 49 supporting organizations, 160 resident endorsers, and 60 self-nominations for a steering committee of local leaders.
The study recommends establishing an independent 501(c)(3) arts council — a "fundamental agency" with dedicated funding — that could: manage grant-making to arts organizations, provide a central information hub, lead economic impact studies, support artists facing cost-of-living pressures, advocate at the state level, and eventually take over management of city arts assets like McGuffey. The 501(c)(3) structure would allow the council to leverage private philanthropy beyond city dollars. Applying for that status would take roughly 18 months, providing a runway to plan the rollout.
Bondy noted that Piedmont Council for the Arts operated for 38 years but collapsed partly because it had to compete annually in the Vibrant Community Fund rather than receiving baseline dedicated funding. She urged council to consider separating arts funding from the VCF entirely so it is not pitted against food pantries and public safety in annual competition. She also highlighted that McGuffey Art Center — the only city-owned building without central air — suffers reduced engagement in warm months because of the uncomfortable conditions, potentially distorting data about arts participation.
On immediate next steps: At the previous council meeting, $100,000 in Strategic Investment Funds was allocated — $50,000 split among seven arts organizations whose VCF funding had dropped significantly, and $50,000 to begin standing up a Public Art Commission through a consultant. Bondy suggested that the same $50,000 could potentially cover standing up both the commission and beginning the arts council work if scoped carefully, and that a single consultant with municipal expertise (ideally someone familiar with fundamental agencies and public art programs) would be more effective than separate efforts.
Discussion: Councilor Payne expressed support for the direction and flagged that arts funding within VCF is inherently unstable; he agreed it must eventually move to a dedicated source. He also suggested that the city consider an eventual investment in upgrading McGuffey and possibly renaming Market Street Park to reflect the public art ultimately placed there. Councilor Snook expressed general support for an arts council but cautioned against dedicated funding streams that reduce budget flexibility and noted concern about taking on new ongoing financial commitments. Mayor Wade expressed enthusiasm and noted his recent role as chair of the tourism board, emphasizing the economic potential of positioning Charlottesville as a regional arts and music hub. He asked that music be explicitly included in the arts council's scope. Councilor Oschrin asked about immediate next steps, and Priest confirmed the key action item is the April 20th or 22nd regular meeting, at which council will vote on the Public Art Commission ordinance and a funding resolution.
Vote: No vote taken. This was a work session.
Key Takeaways
Three finalist design teams have been selected to potentially transform the Robert E. Lee statue bronze into new public art; all three center on Market Street Park, with estimated project costs around $4 million each. The Heritage Center plans to announce the winner on July 10, 2026.
Council has never formally approved Market Street Park as the site for this artwork — a procedural gap Councilor Snook flagged — and staff indicated a location approval resolution will be needed before the process concludes.
$50,000 in Strategic Investment Funds has been set aside to begin standing up a Public Art Commission; a vote on the commission ordinance and funding resolution is expected at the April 20th or 22nd council meeting.
A feasibility study recommends creating an independent 501(c)(3) arts council to coordinate the city's fragmented arts ecosystem, modeled on peer cities; the 18-month timeline for nonprofit status approval gives the city a runway to plan the structure and funding.
Long-term, council broadly agreed that arts funding should be separated from the competitive Vibrant Community Fund and given a dedicated, sustainable baseline — though no specific mechanism or dollar figure was committed to tonight.
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
428 transcript segments indexed
Hey, how are you? Good. Yeah, the demos look expected. Yeah. 80/20 of what you usually get. Yeah. But Michael is moving to- Good ... 65. Yeah. Okay. 50 is going great. Just for the day, right? I know.
Push from there and then- Yeah, I understand. They're passionate. They have time. Yeah. It was nice to Hey, how are you? I'm good. Thank you. Thanks so much. Thank you. We are loving it. They try everything.
Yeah. Thank you. We're excited. The whole shindig. Yeah. Going to. Yeah. Yeah. It's working. It's very cool. My goddaughters. Oh, there you go. Mm-hmm. They just showed my goddaughters. I just keep watching all the fun swag.
Okay. Yes. Oh. Yes. Great. Yeah. So they sent me one that had the holes. Yeah. Like text our mom, and be like, "Oh, here's your logo on it." Kind of that. Yeah. This conversation. I know. That's how I know.
They give us mic. Need a security pin. I don't ever have Fair. I'm not really... I'm like the mother-in-law. Church, like the solution trips and stuff like that. Not really. No way. Appreciate you, sir.
Right after we dive in. Good. Of course. Leave them to me. Thanks. Is this one mine? What? Is this one mine or yours? Yours. Thanks. Yeah. I'm just looking at the 18 lineup, and I was like, "Maybe I should take a picture." Maybe I'll zip.
I feel like it's important. I don't know what else to do. One, two, three. Where's your name tag? Just was named. After Andrea left, she was static and- No, it's fine. Oh, there you are. Not moving. I wasn't trying to be snarky about it.
I'm just wondering because I- I'm too wrapped up in this water contribution. This was... Where do you want to stand up? He was next. Okay. Piling magazines to read on my long trip. We need to have every piece of content in something plain.
Do you guys have a copy of the agenda? Is there an agenda? No copies because it's really basic. Then, so after this, you just going to hop on your bike? We're going to ride as fast as we can. Where are you going?
Going to Venable Neighborhood Association. Oh. But it is rude- You're taking scooters? He takes a scooter. I'm analog behind the bike. Nice. Got to ride fast if I was going to beat there. Race. So I think that was from three days.
First time. Marine. Marine. Hi. Where'd you go on your trip? India. 11 days. I just wanted booty bands on. Yeah. The... Ideas to help you. Keep that shoulder safety virus. That's why- Stairs. Were you north or south?
North. And we keep meeting here. Yeah. It seems just a few hours ago. I'm now on antibiotics. Even because they didn't get to see you is all the sorry. They were there waiting for a virus to go away, and maybe it's something bacterial.
What the heck? Mm-hmm. It's a mess. September 32nd. I was just wondering about where we all want to do a report out so the boards of commission can chime in, or do we want to do... I wonder if we could do them at the end so that we could- Go right into this now?
Let everyone have an opportunity to- Yeah. Speak louder. Thank you. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay, because I I don't know if I prepared anything for commission meeting. But I don't know. I don't think I will, because I do not have...
It's 13th. No. I haven't. Yeah. Excuse me. Yeah. It really is my lucky one. Yeah. But I don't think I'm short. I think I talked a lot. Have a lot of this stuff. Props. Yeah. I'm like a well-born kid. Notes, highlighted.
True hearts. You can't make it look like you're doing anything. Did we go? Yeah. We'll get this off then because... Yeah. I call the Charlottesville City Council special meeting to order for April the 8th, 2026.
The purpose of the meeting is to receive reports. No. I'm here now. No, I'm sorry. No. You're doing great. The purpose of the meeting is we're going to be reporting out on different boards and commissions that we have, that we report from, and also to hear an update on the arts and where we're going with that.
The Swords into Plowshares presentation. And so take it from there. I will. Good evening, Mayor Wade, members of council. My name is James Priest, Deputy City Manager. Yes, as the mayor was saying this evening, we are doing some presentations and hoping to have some dialogue with council on topics related to the arts broadly, and public art specifically within the city of Charlottesville.
So we have two primary sections to the meeting today. We have first Dr. Andrea Douglas to present on the Swords into Plowshares project. And then we have Maureen Bondy from New City Art and- You're all good.
Jessica Harris ... Jessica Harris. Thank you. Doctor. Thank you. Yes, thank you. Dr. Jessica Harris, who's a member of the steering committee. And so both of them are with us here this evening to talk about an effort being made to establish a new arts council for our region.
And then I will also be talking about something we've talked about a number of times, which is our proposed public art commission. So without further ado, I'm going to go ahead and turn things over to Dr.
Douglas. Okay. Hello, all. My name is Andrea Douglas, and I'm the executive director at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center. Thank you all for giving me this opportunity to explain what we're doing in the Swords into Plowshares project.
I also want to say that I'm also on the steering committee for the arts council, which is something that I wholeheartedly believe in, and I think that in some ways, Swords into Plowshares can be used as almost a case study for why something like this should be considered.
And certainly, once we get to the place where we're installing something that is decidedly there, and that's a different place to think about how that object moves into our future. So I wanted to just set it up like that.
I wanted to begin by saying that some of you may have already know something about the Swords into Plowshares exhibition that we have on view now at the Heritage Center through the May 30th. And what the goal of that exhibition is, it's one of the many steps that we have taken towards a public awareness campaign.
And I want to emphasize the notion that what we're in is a public awareness campaign that does have a fairly extensive community engagement purpose. But our real goal is to bring as many members of our Charlottesville community to the moment when we actually do have a community engagement process that's being led, not by the Heritage Center, but led by the actual finalist that is chosen to use the bronze that came from the Robert E.
Lee statue to create some new form of public art. If some of you may have been at the presentation that we had on March 14th when the exhibition opened, and I think one of the things that I hope is a takeaway from with tonight and then also from that moment, was the way in which each one of those artist groups believed that they were doing something that would only have to be possible in this moment, in this time, that there would be no other, and that this, for them, was a very significant endeavor.
And that is what attracted them to this project. These are three arts or design groups that are both national and international. And as we start to think about even the landscape of Charlottesville and what kind of objects are in this landscape, it is possible at one point to turn around and say, "Hey, if we were interested in a conversation about contemporary design and contemporary design that involves public space and public art," we already have in our community a Walter Hood, who for 30 years has led the conversation about urban landscape.
We have a-A Howard Yoon at both of those at the university. We have a Thomas Walsh object in our community, and then one of these artists. So ultimately, even as you start to think about what this object does within a larger narrative of place, we as a place have been considered by some of the leading minds that do this kind of work.
The difference between what we're doing and what those other objects represent is that this is an opportunity to deal with the kinds of traumas that have occurred here, both immediate as it relates to 2017, and then as kind of a longer history, and that is what Swords into Plowshares wants to do.
There's a word that we have been using lately, refounding. Right? And refounding as one thinks about ways in which one can take hard looks at a system, and then create a set of ideas or propositions that then shift that system.
And that's really at what the heart of Swords into Plowshares is, right? We will take your articles of war and turn them into objects, plowshares, right? This very immediate and important transition. So just to give you an idea, "They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks." That comes from Isaiah 2:4.
The Heritage Center considers itself not the director of this project, but the steward of this project. I believe that we were given a mandate when we were given that object by the community, and it has been our role to facilitate what will ultimately become a co-created process.
To do that, one of the first things that we did after the melting in 2023 was we created a 12-member advisory council, wanting to lift this project up in a way that said that we were bringing, again, the most experienced minds to this.
So our advisory council is now an advisory of 12. They include historians, curators, landscape architects, therapists, the actual descendants of the enslaved in Central Virginia. And that is an important core value of the project, is to give voice to those who would not have had voice when those original objects were put in our community.
And I also want to say that that doesn't just-- My interest is in having the broadest swath. We understand that Charlottesville's community has shifted in number, and also in makeup since 2017. And so even that narrative around what is the broadest swath is something to be considered within this conversation.
So to this point, the kind of public engagement that the Heritage Center has been involved in has been to do a social history of our local parks with a mind to answering the question, where could an object go?
It includes a community education that we have completed through tours. Thus far, since we started in February, we've taken 120 people on our tours. Right? With almost 50/50 having gone on both of the types of tours.
We've had community meetings, the exhibition now, and then the website siftcville.com, which will be that evergreen site. And on it are all the documents one could find related to this. So the BRC report is there.
The 1998 The City as a Park plan is there, which the notion of outside and parks is a huge value here. And so we have to consider that landscape continually. What's also there is the 2024 report from the first phase of Swords into Plowshares, the period that we call Monumental Justice.
So decidedly a place where people can find resources, find the exhibition, and then continue to engage with the project beyond the exhibition. By way of a quick timeline, again, I include this largely because the people who were in our community in 2017, some of them are not.
So those people who were eight years old in 2017 have grown up and now they're 18 and maybe don't know this or have learned this, not as actual participation, but now this is historic. How do you say historization and historic at the same time?
Nonetheless. Historic. So the timeline, we received the deed of gift, meaning the Heritage Center in December of '21. We prepared the object very quickly thereafter, receiving the deed of gift. We were then very quickly thereafter served with a complaint and then engaged in a near two-year lawsuit, and ultimately able to transform the object in October of 2023.
And since that moment, we have begun to create the second phase, and it's taken us two years to get to that place. So February 2025, on the 14th, and I say that because it's the day of love, so we're putting our RFQ out into the world- Mm-hmm ...
as a gesture of love. And that's when we did the request for qualifications, which is the RFQ. We engendered a jury, again, wanting to make sure that we're bringing a level of expertise that's a four-person jury, an art historian whose interest is in the racial histories of America.A cultural anthropologist who's working on a similar project in New York, a landscape architect, and again, a descendant who is also an educator.
That request for qualifications led to 32 responses, and the jury brought that 32 responses down to the three design teams, which we'll be talking about tonight. They came to Charlottesville and we took them on a grueling two-day site visit where we looked at all of the monuments, we looked at the murals in our communities, we took them to the parks.
They were exhausted, but they came away thinking, "Wow, this is something important." And then we opened the exhibition on the 14th, and as I said, it's going to close on the 30th. Our commitment to this awareness phase demands that we hired Dr Selina Cozart, who is going to do six weeks of community engagement.
I'm exhausted. Somebody else needs to do the talking. So that's where we are with that. But this is the request for qualifications, and I wanted to show you some of the language because it's really important to us.
There are ways in which we would like this object to be in conversation with other things, and there are things in our built environment that are very important, like the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers, the Catherine Foster Memorial Site, both at the university, Monticello's contemplative site, and a planned memorial to the enslaved at Montpelier.
But we also want to see this as a little bit bigger than that. We understand that we sit within the space of a world heritage site, one of 24. And so you can describe Charlottesville as that in-between space.
And all of these other objects sit within that in-between space and largely speak to the condition of enslavement. We have an opportunity to think about this place as from the moment of enslavement into the moment of freedom and civil rights, or Jim Crow, whichever, however you want to describe that.
I prefer the former. But we also said we wanted to ensure that whomever was chosen had experience with speaking to descendant communities. That's a forevalue. They had to be able to do public engagement.
Not every artist wants to talk to people about the things that they want to make. They just want to make them. But that's not what we're doing here. And they have to be able to manage a large budget. Right?
So you can understand how we got to that three very quickly. And who are they? First, and I'm doing this in alphabetical order, is Hood Design Studio, Walter Hood. He has been in the business of design for 30 years.
When I was in a graduate program here, one of the first books was his book on urban design. And most people who do this work read Walter Hood if they're interested in urban design, but he's also designed some really important sites in America, lots of them in California.
But his most recent one is the International African American Museum in South Carolina, where he did most of the landscape work, which is a unbelievably beautiful thing to see. The Lift Every Voice and Sing Park and then the Broad Museum Plaza are just three of his park designs.
And what he is proposing in his proposal, entitled "Ring Shout," is to create an object that is largely located in Market Street Park, but it is in conversation with multiple sites, and those multiple sites include Montpelier and Monticello.
He is interested in this notion of witness. And so what he has done in order to prepare this project is to do a wide survey of all of the trees in the communities. And so what you find in Montpelier, there is a tree that is dated back to 1725.
The first land plat that is issued to Lewis Meriwether that forms that eastern ridge, if you go up Route 20, that land plat is 1730. So the tree is older than the founding of this part of Virginia. Right?
Mm-hmm. And so he has done this, and then the next tree that he's looking at is one at Monticello from 1809 or something like that. And he has continued to look at particularly oak trees, because oak trees have a kind of symbolic representation, both all around this notion of leaves.
What he's proposing is to create a community engagement process that will lead to the development of 24 steel rings. Those 24 steel rings, through conversations with community, will then be engraved, and then the bronze from the Robert E.
Lee statue, which is two tons of bronze, will then be used to create those engravings and those symbols. He then proposes, after a period of time, to dismantle the object and give it back to each one of the communities where these conversations have been had.
In the process, he is causing these particular trees that he has identifiedTo act as then a future place of coming together. So if you know anything about the ring shout, the ring shout is a religious activity that enslaved people used to involve themselves with away from the plantation.
It is a response and call, so whomever is leading the ring shout will make a call and the community will respond. In his mind, these rings then become the ring shout. So the initial tree, which is a white oak, which he will plant in the center of Market Street, will be the call, and each one of these distributed rings will be the shout.
Every single one of these projects is somewhere near $4 million. Every single one of these projects also says there may be some additional cost associated with it. And so our intent is to try and raise five, five and a half million to take care of that contingency.
This is MASS Design or Model of Architecture Serving Society. They are no longer called a design group. They're just called MASS. That's a recent thing. MASS is an international group. They have offices in Boston and in Rwanda.
They are an organization that was created in, oh, gosh, in 2017, I think it is, a little earlier than that. And they believe very highly in this notion, again, of research. And research, again, for each one of these groups, includes going into the community, doing listening sessions, speaking to people who live in the communities that we are interested in.
They have projects like the Gun Violence Memorial Project, which is a moving exhibition, that considers the implications of gun violence from the point of view of mothers whose children have died as a consequence of that.
The Embrace, which is in Boston, which is the bronze sculpture of the embrace of the Kings that is in Boston Commons. More recently, the King Chapel Memorial to Enslaved. And then if you have been to Montgomery, it is the Memorial for Peace and Justice that is at EJI.
For which, in 2018, my colleagues took our jar of soil down to the Equal Justice Initiative as one of the recommendations from the blue ribbon committee. And so this design team did both the statuary there and also the landscape that's there.
And in particular, this design team, because the design team is MASS, which will be managing the project and doing the landscape work, and then Dana King, who is the artist. And what you'll notice is that each one of these design teams has an artist within that team.
We ask the design teams to be multinational and also have an artist deeply involved in the process with them. And so what they are proposing is an object that is a central, again, to Market Street, that is based on the baobab tree, which is a tree that is found in Africa and found in the Caribbean.
It is a tree that people use its fruit for food, use its fruit for making houseware and such. And so, fairly significant for that importance to community. The project also includes a generative soundscape that is recording of the sort of electrical energy of the tree.
So a soundscape that will include the movement of the tree, the sort of kinetic noises that would go along with it. And what they're proposing is to create a Charlottesville's True Commons. So in the same way that you have a Boston Commons, that sort of central meeting area.
There's an interesting thing about this design for me that I wanted to point out, that if you've taken any of our tours, you will understand. Right now, the way the park is oriented, it's almost as a cruciform, that the pathways are diagonal.
And in its original orientation, at that corner there where there's now an apartment, used to be the First Baptist Church, the white First Baptist Church. And so in some ways, there is a kind of symbolism that was established in the former Confederate statue that included a battle flag turned into a cruciform, and then this symbolism as the park presently sits, that is a block away.
So this sort of reiterative symbolism that we don't really notice but is there when you kind of look real hard. What is then now being transformed in that is that whole orientation. And so they're transforming it using Adinkra symbols, which are symbols from Ghana that are ways in which storytelling is done often, that they have moral import.
This is the way a community talks about its beliefs. And so the pathways are an Adinkra symbol, as are the sort of floret-looking spacesThat are also. The main piece of the object, though, is the baobab tree that is created out of the bronze.
Not enough bronze. We don't have enough. Two tons, somehow it is not enough, right? 18 foot. So this process will be an additive process. They will be taking a more pure and malleable red brick bronze, which is what we have, and adding to it so that they can create a more sumptuous and larger representation.
There is some interest in changing the landscape. Notice that here they have steps where people can sit and commune, and what's there now are smaller, not very attractive steps, if you remember, right?
So that. And then is PUSH Studio Group. This one is very interesting. They intend to use six parks. Now, I want to also point out that when the design groups came, we said to them, "You can make one object, or you could think of this as a geospatial object," meaning that this bronze could be distributed through the landscape.
And it seems that each one of those groups, in one way or another, latched onto that idea. So Hood, in the distribution of the rings into various parts of the community. Mass, the distribution occurs through the creation of seeds, bronze seeds, that could be placed in various parks that a community could play on, could sit on, could engage with in one form or another.
And now PUSH has also taken that and has specifically focused on the parks that are part of this history that I'll talk about in another slide. But we talked about five parks. They included one more which they felt was really important to them.
What they intend to do, and again, they're very similar in their orientations. They're designing around environments that respond to the uniqueness of sites. So each one of these organizations are site-specific in their work.
Okay, so what you're looking at are what they're calling towers. They intend to make two towers and then six pillars, which are smaller objects. The towers are being constructed out of a process that they call Art in Action, and that process includes the community engagement, where the community will be asked to bring soil from their various locations and then actually make the forms that form the banded areas in the object.
These are 25 foot. So augmented, again, we don't have enough bronze. The interior of each one of the pillars will include that bronze and will be engraved with a piece of narrative that is important to the site.
So they are looking at Washington Park and Market Street for those pillars, and then for the towers. And then the pillars would then be distributed through to the various other parks. They're also going to use the granite, because remember, we got the whole statue, and this is the only organization that has talked about sustainability and the use of the granite.
The granite will then become part of the floor of each one of these objects. This is how they hope to stabilize it. So this is, as I said, the process that we are engaging in the exhibition was the way that we wanted to be ensuring that the community could interact with these objects and see the design boards in one place.
So this is our education plan. As I said, we have been working on the social histories of our public parks. We did a project several years ago called Mapping C-Ville, and what Mapping C-Ville revealed for us were the racial covenants.
So in the landscape. We then took the 1870 map of all of the plantations in the area and laid that Mapping C-Ville map on top of that 1870. We then took all of the parks in the area and laid that on top, and what we realized were that the 19 parks in Charlottesville, the majority of them, came out of plantations.
And then we also realized that a good number of them had racial covenants associated with it, even either as a consequence of the communities around them that were built and then racial covenants placed on them, or they within the deeds specifically said that these were meant for whites only and Blacks only.
Hundred years ago, on March 22nd, the Racial Integrity Act. An amendment to the Racial Integrity Act was the Public Assemblage Act, right? So the Public Assemblage Act said ostensibly that it's the amendment that says how Blacks and whites can occupy public space and made it illegal ultimately for them to occupy the same space.
So the argument that we're making is at the very same time that Paul Goodloe McIntire is putting in statues, he's buying the properties that then becomesThose places where those statues are. And then those park places then become our public parks.
And ostensibly, by 1926, we have devoted almost 140 acres to white play, and then 12 acres to Black. And the Black community does not get a new park until 1946, right? And more importantly, that the law then says these are no longer spaces that are porous, that we are then going to engage in segregation.
We think about segregation in public spaces, mostly here schools, but we don't talk about what they do in the landscape. We were also driven by this notion that Charlottesville is considered to be one of the happiest places in the world, in the country, because of our proximity to parks.
84% of the community lives within walking distance to a public park. And so these histories became really important to us as ways of thinking about where could this all go. And that's what the tours came, how the tours came about.
So we do tours that explain the public history of the five parks that best describe this narrative that we're interested in. We also do tours about the murals and monuments in the community. So you take statues away, but how does the landscape speak?
It speaks through our public buildings, all of our schools, for instance. It speaks through all of the murals that we have now on our walls. They narrate, right? There is a difference between the mural that is on a private property and the difference in a mural that is created by social practice.
They say two different things. And so all of those things are part of the tours. And as I said, we've had almost 100 plus people come to them. We're going to have those community meetings, but the other thing that we are hoping to have are house parties.
Right? So the idea is you like what we do, so you call three friends and you go, "Hey, let's go have some drinks." Happy to do that. And while we're having these cocktails, maybe we'll go over to the Heritage Center, or maybe we'll just take this handy dandy brochure that has been created.
And I know, yes, lots of words and lots of reading. None of us want to do any of that. But this is ultimately- Particularly with a drink in our hand. Somebody read. All my favorite brunches involve brochures and history.
True. Yeah. And there's pictures. But what we've also included is the exhibition begins with this timeline narrative, right? Kristen Finn and Ezzay Amos, who were two photographers from our community, were deeply engaged in the campaign or reporting on what happened between 2017 and 2023, right?
So we have that as the beginning. Then we have the opportunity to look at the map and then something about the exhibition, I mean, the plans. But more importantly, all of this work leads us to one direction, and that direction is to get advice from the community.
And so we're asking the community to answer either in the exhibition proper, from the website or through this one simple question. And that is, which vision would shape Charlottesville's future? Real simple.
And the second question after that is, tell us what you like. Tell us what you didn't love. We've been open now for three weeks. We've got 173 responses, last count. And once we engage in this, I anticipate that we'll have many more than that.
Most people who have come to the exhibition, who have spent time with us, have been on the tours, have said this to us, things like, "Wow, we didn't know any of this before." Which has been my experience over the course of the last 10 years.
I've been involved in monuments in this community for 15 years, since 2011. Who knew this was going to be my life's work? I didn't. So looking forward, what we're... What are we engaged in? We're engaged in the fundraising for the community engagement.
We want to be sure that we do that first. The cost of the three projects for the community engagement is between $100,000 and $226,000. So we're aiming for the $226,000 mark, right? Our intent is to announce the finalists on July 10th.
That's the fifth anniversary of when the statues came down. Not quite sure what we want to do. So at the house parties, if you all want to talk about what it is that we should do on July 10th and then report back, we're more than happy to listen to it.
I do think, though, that it is something that should be community wide and will need a permit. Sorry. And then finally, we understand that at the end of the day, what our goal here is, is to gift this object to Charlottesville.
And so we have, from the very start of this next phase, been in conversation with Parks and Rec about what are the possibilities. Even in thinking about what parks we would choose, we asked what are the parameters around which we should be thinking.
And what we were told was it should have amenities and it should have accessibilityAnd so when you think about those five parks, they have all of those, plus the narratives that we're interested in. Right?
And then ultimately, I am not a engineer. I spend most of my time on the other side of this process. There are whole technical plans in this thing that I have no idea about. Yeah. And so, my good friend here, James, and others that we have talked to, we hope that they, during this period, will advise us on what is a feasible plan.
Because I think it is very important to know really what we can do as opposed to what we want to do. And so, even though we are going to be announcing July 10th, I think it's important that we begin to look at all three of them now and get some advice about that, just in case I need to bring the jury back.
Because I really believe that Charlottesville can choose what it is that they want. We know that this is a transient community. As I said earlier, there are people who were here in the beginning who are no longer here.
But I want to emphasize, this is not something that we are building for ourselves. This is something that we are building for our children, and for those people who are beyond that, to speak to what we claim to be our stated value of equity.
Dr. Douglas- Mm-hmm ... quick question. Can you clarify how the final decision of the three designs, I know we're gathering comments and it may be part of those house parties, will that factor into- Yeah ...
the- It's through the vote. It's through that question that I talked about. Right. Right? But here, also understand that we are not trying to say, "Pick the prettiest." Right? In each one of these community engagements, for instance, we're doing something every couple of weeks called SIP Focus.
And what SIP Focus is, is where I only talk about one design, and we cause everyone in that room to understand each- Yeah ... and every component of that design, including what all the costs are. What I am hoping to do at the end of the day is bring the most informed community to this process.
That's why this is called the awareness campaign as opposed to the community engagement campaign. Got it. Thank you. I have a couple of... Are you done with your- Yeah. I have a couple of questions. And I guess the first is maybe something of a caution.
I'm always a little bit leery of things that are put up to majority vote. As I reflect on the fact that for the last couple of years, majority vote has led to our Christmas tree being called Oatmeal. Well, let me also first say I didn't use the word vote.
Okay. Advice is not vote. Okay. Right? And so we are being advised, which means that there is opportunity for other opinions. And as I said, we are going to be talking to people who are experts and, if necessary, bring the jury back.
What we're trying to do though is live up to what we promised, which was that this is a co-creative process. And so co-creation means that everybody in the room has agency, right? As I said, as the steward, we have done, I think, the best due diligence to get us to that three.
We didn't say, "Hey, Charlottesville, pick the three for us." We brought to that three some deeply well-regarded, in their fields, experts to the possibilities of this. And I could name names, but I don't, because not everybody wanted their selves to be known.
And so I decided that instead of doing that... But if you ask me off camera, I'll tell you exactly who it is, right? My only point was that- Understood ... I thought I had heard you say that the answer would be the product of the group.
We are looking for advice, and we hope that out of that advice- Advice is fine. I'm all for advice. Is it? I don't want to have you all defer with your expertise to- No ... you know. On my advisory committee is someone who is a mediation expert, but he has been involved in some of the biggest community engagement projects, including the Navy Yard in Washington, DC, and working in the community of Anacostia.
And he said to me, "Andrea, don't use the word." Good. Yeah. Okay. And the second question I have is something that I've been concerned about in this process from the beginning. Sure. And that is, you all come up with your preferred design.
It seems that at least two of them, maybe all three of them, seem to assume that Market Street Park will be largely redone in the design that you all embrace. And, just to be purely decision-making about it, at what level does council get a vote?
It's the council's park. Well, that's why we're here today, and that's why we'll come back and we'll keep coming backRight? We would not be here if we didn't think you all had a vote. I remember. But the issue is, if you are giving us or if your folks produce versions that are-- All three of them assume a use of Market Street Park.
One of the things that we decided a couple of years ago was that we were not going, when we did our parks master plan, was that we weren't going to confront immediately what we wanted to have be the role of Market Street Park or Court Square Park or a number of other parks.
And my concern is that whether we like it or not, what it seems we're doing is putting us in a situation where you're going to have a design that you've chosen that does something to Market Street or with Market Street Park, that maybe the rest of Parks and Rec and government generally and so on, haven't necessarily endorsed.
Well, I can say that when I asked Parks and Rec about the possibilities of the parks, they were made aware of the ones that we were interested in, and no one said no to Market Street Park. We were at- It's not ultimately their decision, of course I know it's not ultimately their decision, but you're asking me about a question of how did we include that in some of your question.
And the question is the answer to that I have to offer is that at no point I heard when it was said, "We don't want to be given a baked cake." Right? I heard that. Mm-hmm. And so we are not trying to do that.
That's part of the reason why we're here with you at this very early stage, right? Co-creation means that we are including everyone's understanding of this. So if that is a delineated no, we weren't given that delineated no from Parks and Rec in the beginning.
We asked the question, what are the parameters? What are the things that can and cannot be done? And no one said to us, "No Market Street Park." So the idea that we would not include that as a possibility to a group of designers to respond to all of the information that is out in the world, had we been told to take it off the table, we would have.
But that's not what we were told when we asked the question. But there's a difference between it not being taken off the table and effectively giving it to you all, giving control over it to you all. And it may be that that's a good idea, I don't know.
But this body, this government, has not said that at this point. No, and nor have we said that those are the locations. I'm showing you something. But again, this process is not the end. This is the beginning.
So if you're saying to me right now, "That is not what we're doing," then I can only hear you- I'm not saying that, okay? And I want to be clear about that. Okay. The point is, this body- Be clear about it.
I want to know what is this- I guess, can I- This body has never been asked. Yeah. I guess, can I interpret? And this might have happened, and I don't remember. Was there ever a resolution that council passed to say, this project can go in Market Street Park?
No. I think when we had extensive debates about which organization we would give the statues to and the disposition of the statues, that my understanding is this process is part of why we voted to- So- ...
give it to the Jefferson School. So, I would contest that understanding, but that's just my understanding. Yeah. I think there's probably... I don't want to assume or speak for everybody, but my hope or guess is that there's probably not an issue with it being in Market Street Park, just a point of order that you're bringing up that we have not agreed to that yet.
Is that- I certainly would not say I am opposed to the idea of using Market Street Park. I also think that a decision like that should not just be sort of assumed on the part of council or on the part of the city government as a whole.
And if we want to have a discussion like that specifically on that question, then that's fine. So would you want to add a resolution to upcoming meetings that says- Yeah ... we would support using Market Street Park for this type of project?
Well, I don't know because honestly, until about a half an hour ago, because I was not in town for the events a couple weeks ago. Until about a half an hour ago, I didn't know what we were going to be talking about today.
And so, I'm not prepared to propose something in particular. I'm just conscious of the fact that council has never- So- ... done anything. Right. So I think that at this point, since you have raised the question, because it was always in my mind.
Of course, most of us have recently got on council as four or five years with a lot of this. I think that- To kind of clear the air so that the public, the designers, like, "Well, what does council want?
Do they want it there or not?" I think we need to make it clear that at least this park isn't in play for this. I think it was always in my mind, but even if we hadn't done it officially. Just like a point of procedure to cross my i, dot a t.
I think so. There we go. I think so because I think Lloyd brought up a good point. We haven't made a decision, or even though maybe a lot of people thought like I did, that it was assumed that it was.
But yeah. Can I ask a question, though? Yeah. Just out of curiosity. So when this most recent park plan was thought through, it was my understanding that there were four parks that were under consideration for this sort of first level of engagement.
And so under those circumstances, wouldn't assume then that if Market Street were one of those four parks, that there was some possibility that it would be engaged in some way? We're not saying that these are the ways, we're just saying these are the possible locations of things.
So there seems to be this sort of like notion that Court Square, Market Street, Washington Park, these parks are part of the park plan with some idea of improvement or change to them or whatever, within the notions of what your master plan is describing.
And I agree with that assessment. This is a question I asked throughout the parks master plan process, and the answer repeatedly, as I understood it, was that these parks, there was a portion kind of earmarked as public art, and that was a placeholder for this kind of process.
So at least to me, there's no surprise about this. It's part of what we voted on in the parks master plan. Well, maybe I wasn't paying attention, but when we voted that these four parks would be treated differently from other parks, I didn't recall that we had made any kind of an agreement about how they would be treated differently.
Only that they would be treated first, number one, because we recognized for various reasons, mostly unstated, I suspect, that they needed to be addressed first. Yeah. So I don't want to spend this valuable time, because in my mind, I'll just to clear the air, just vote that this is in play or the location so that everyone's on the same page.
Can I ask a couple of questions just to clarify? Dr. Douglas, in the three images, if we just had to go with just three specific images for Market Street Park alone, is it your understanding that the design work done by these three firms is that that image is exactly what would happen?
Or is it the piece that is the center of that is what will happen? Well, first of all, let me first point out that these are concept drawings. Right. They are not the end. They are the beginning. That's the first thing.
The second thing is that they are, to some degree, what the proposal would look like, and that within the body of the proposal, it's through the conversations with the community- Sure ... that they would change.
And what you're anticipating to be roughly $4 to $5 million would be more of the centerpiece of the image? Yeah. Not the paving around one of the images. It wouldn't be that, it's the piece in the middle.
Well, it's the piece in the middle, but they are also within their proposals have numbers associated with the alteration of the landscape. I think one of the things that is clear to me about, in particular, Mass, is that the entire piece is that landscape.
Right? It is not the same as with Push. They are putting one object in one place, and the rest of the park. But Market Street is probably the one that has the most intervention by the designs because of the size of it.
So what I would offer the council in just moving us to this point, there has been no commitment of a location because no action has been taken by the body. It has been considered and assumed that there would be an art piece coming back to the city as a result of the Robert E.
Lee statue being donated. That has been an operating idea the entire time that I know that the conversation's been going, and it has not been dismissed in any way formally either. So I do know that there was engagement by the Swords and the Plowshares team with the parks master plan consultant, so that it was some consideration of that possibility.
And because the four parks were selected for... I can't remember the term we're using for those four parks. Master plan. But there are many master plans of their own, their individualized park plans that at least Market Square Park, Market Street Park, and Court Square Park assume that there would probably be an art piece coming related to this action.
And that was an assumption that was left as available because the interpretation that weAs staff we're operating under, is that the selection of the Jefferson School to receive the statue, to recontextualize it and bring it back was going to happen, even though it had not been acted on officially.
So all conversation has been with this notion that there would at least be one park that would receive an art piece. The question was always: what is that piece? And which park? Which park, and will you accept that?
Because that had not been connected in a formal way, and until now, you haven't had anything to see, so there's no reason for you to be able to consider that, which is why we wanted to put this work session together for you to be able to receive this, and then to begin a conversation about it.
And let me say, without having studied any of these proposals, the one that struck me as being probably a very potentially appropriate use of Market Street Park was the one that was shown with the visual from overhead with the baobab tree and all of the rest of that stuff.
And it seemed to me that, that seemed to have been a proposal that thought about Market Street Park and its size and its dimensions and so on in a meaningful way, which is not to say I have an opinion about either of the other two, because I just didn't get the same visual reaction.
So I'm not saying by all of this that I'm opposed, or certainly I'm not saying I have an alternative vision for what I want to have happen on Market Street Park. I just want to make clear that this body, this government, has to make that decision.
From a process perspective, what we know absolutely has to happen is that there needs to be a vote by council to accept this work into the city's public art collection. That's a definitive element of this process.
We understand that to be at the end. And one of the things that we've been thinking about and talking about is, are there incremental steps that need to happen? And in fact, one of those is around approving the location by resolution or some other action, not only at Market Street, but each of these, to some degree, contemplates other public locations.
So we likely need something in that space. The big question has been about the timing of when we bring that forward, especially considering that they're still in the process of finalizing their design- Understood ...
and vision for this process. And I also want to add that that last bullet point says work with city staff. We're not really bringing you anything that you all won't have opportunity to consider at length.
We understand very clearly that this demands that you all have a significant opinion about what it is that is being done. So at no point have I ever moved in a way that said, "This is a done deal. We're putting it in Market Street Park." What you're witnessing is the ways in which that place and space spoke to designers, given the parameters that we gave them to respond to.
There is nothing in there-- I said geospatial, which meant all five, not one, not in any individual space. But as I said, these artists somehow see that as ground zero, and therefore have created a design that responds to that.
They have done extensive research in this community. And I can tell you, in January, we did a survey, and a vast majority of the people who had responded to that survey said they wanted it in that park as well.
So all of that information and that data is out in the world, and what you are witnessing literally is what a group of well-informed people came up with, and they pointed to that direction. That has nothing to do with the Heritage Center.
So, I would look at that as seeing that as information, as opposed to we didn't say you could put it there. That's not what we told them to do. Yeah. So, Sam, at some point, we can work through to make sure we can get the- Yeah ...
download. Again, today was about opening the door to there are visuals finally available. Let's take a look at them and get reaction to it. So you're doing what you're supposed to. You're giving reaction.
Yeah. We've got to get alignment, of course, so that then we can inform as that final selection gets made. If there is any change in direction, it's got to come in the next few months. So I want to get input from comments.
Jen, do you have anything you want to add on the design, the process, or where we are? I highly recommend going on the park tours. They're pretty amazing and very informative, and it seems like this was expected and a process that we've maybe not formally initiated, but asked for, and this is really above and beyond what we could ask for as far as a response to what do we do with this park and this material.
So I feel pretty confident that we'll get through the logistical pieces of it and listen to the recommendations and advice from the folks who will give their input to it and figure out a way to accept the art and manage it.
Yeah. Dr. Douglas, one of the things you mentioned is that you said that the Heritage Center is-- It's not you all. You all are just the steward of this, and I can't imagine anyone else in the community being able to do something like this.
So we're glad that we have an entity like you all to be able to To steward something like this. So, yeah. Natalie, do you have any? Yeah. I want to also thank you for the effort that has gone into this so far.
I was at the pre-exhibition, and it was really great to walk around and see it in a little more up close and to hear what other people were saying, because it is a community effort. And I think the questions that are happening today are not things to be scared about.
It's just we need to do proper procedures to make sure that the space is available as proposed and needed. In the parks master plan, it does say that for the Market Street Park community input summary, that one of the themes from public input was that the art from the melted down statue would be a part of Market Street Park.
Which is not quite the same as a formal ordinance saying, "Yeah, we're going to do it there," but I'm sure that that is something that we probably either want to move up in the work plan. But these are great uses of that space.
I don't know if you're asking for our favorite one today, because I think it's going to take a little more engagement with the specifics for all of us to emphasize that. But, and also, of course, it's not just us that matters, it's everybody.
So, yeah, we want to encourage the community to participate in the feedback. One thing I do like, because in the work plan, sorry, the master plan, there is already a city-proposed tentative Market Street Park improvement map with some trees and landscaping and stuff.
And something that we had already been talking about with the library was making the park kind of engage with the library in a more cohesive way. And so that wedge of stairs, whether or not that's the design we pick might be a good thing to add to the park.
This is something that Dr. Arrigole said that she hasn't said today. And you can correct me if I'm wrong, but each of these design teams were actually given a copy of the parks master plan- Mm-hmm ...
as part of the materials they received before they put together these. That's right. And my guess, possibly, don't know for a fact, was that the last group was responding to that desire. Yeah, that was a nice way to integrate that.
Has there been other direct collaboration with the library at all- No ... for this project yet? No. Okay. No. And thank you for that. We have not done that yet. Yeah. So, yeah. Because I know they had some ideas about how this park could be used, and they could sync up really nicely.
So that might be something to do a little specific outreach in. But this is very cool to see it- Mm-hmm ... have come this far from takedown day. Before I go to Michael, Lloyd, will you finish your questions and comments?
The only other comment I would make, and sort of following on Natalie's comment about the library, is that the other neighbor of some relevance is the Historical Society across the street. I don't know what engagement, if any, might be with them.
They are on our list of community engagement. We've got a long list of people who we see. We've done our node maps, we've done our community list. We've done all of it. And in hiring Selina Cozart, it was so that we would be sure that we had someone who does community engagement here, engaged with that already.
So, understanding that we only have six weeks, so we needed to hire someone who knew what they were doing. And I probably shouldn't have made the specific reference to engagement, but just thinking about kind of what we would be creating, I've suggested for some time that these parks, including Court Square Park, Market Street Park, the Historical Society, the library, Jefferson School, Heritage Center, all constitute sort of an ecosystem of the history and how we present the history of Charlottesville.
And I just hope that folks are thinking collectively and holistically in some way about all of this. And beyond that, I don't say that because I have a specific recommendation. I don't. But just there are a lot of good people, a lot of intelligent people in these places who I think might have some good ideas.
Right. And as I said, this is just community awareness. This is what we're trying to do. When you think that you go through a two-year lawsuit, and then you have to reenergize a community, cause them to begin to imagine a possibility.
This is the reason why we chose this. We didn't just say, "Okay, here's the artist. Go amongst the people and engage." We really have always from day one when we were doing the monument tours, education has been at the bedrock of our process.
And so we are continuing that education. And as I said, our hope is not just to think about this as a singular object. It has to speak to things that are already in our communities. There has to be a dialogue.
Our goal is to erect something that will be just as lastingAnd so it's clear that it's important for us to pull in as many people into this process as possible, but that's not where we are right now. Right now, we're telling you about it because it's community awareness month.
We're telling the community about it because it's community awareness. And when we get to that point where we're talking about exactly what it is that we can put in, hopefully we'll have gathered all of the people that you suggest should be part of this as well.
That's all I had, thank you. I've got one more question, actually. This is a little more logistics, a little less art, which is, if and when the project is gifted to the city, what does that mean for the maintenance and care of it?
And before, as it gets built, how much is our parks engineering team going to have a say in materials, care, that sort of thing that might affect the design for- It's all and all of the proposals have a component of that, and they are hoping to engage with engineering.
I think that that's why we're thinking about this contingency that hard stop at $4 million, but we know that there must be some additional cost. There's always additional. Yeah. So, I think that again, this co-design demands that those kinds of conversations happen.
And each one of the budgets, as I said, has a component to that. So there's a fabrication, and then there's an installation. And then there's even like, what's the community celebration once we're done, what it looks like, right?
But also more like we don't want it to rust and fall apart. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. So, go ahead. What we've talked about is, I believe after the final design team has been selected, I believe there's about a year you're anticipating of further finalizing that design and that we would be engaging staff from various departments with that designer to work through those issues.
Because our-- Yes, absolutely. Yeah. In terms of what happens once the city adopts it into our public art collection is we do own it, and we own that maintenance responsibility and all of that stuff. And so I appreciate- And therefore have the budget for it.
Right. I figured that there's some conversation about- If we wanted to get- Don't make it out of gold ... lower maintenance, then. No. And we're going to be thinking about installation and maintenance.
And I appreciate there's some thought to, is there some way of seeding that ongoing maintenance cost, particularly when you think about some of these that have kind of a, I'm going to call it an interactive component over time.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And, honestly, as a museum person, stewardship is all that we think about, right? You don't even take an object into your collection if you can't do something with it. And so we don't even, as an institution, believe that we abdicate that portion of it completely when we hand it over.
There's got to be some responsibility on the part of a heritage center as well, whether it be to help advise, to do whatever. So, we wanted to be sure that those components were part of the plan as well.
So, that was it. And beginning to have the conversations with city staff, those are the kinds of things that we'll be talking about as well. Great. And I'll note just a final point on that. The accountability moment is when we get to the point where staff, Dr.
Douglas, are in front of you presenting it for your adoption. These are the questions that are asked, and if they aren't good answers, there should at least be a deferral. Yeah. So. Great. Thank you. I heard house party, the cover charge in the future.
If we want it to. Yeah. You can practice, that's how you get ritual. House party, house party, house party. Yeah. Bring back the eight. With cover charge. Don't miss that part. Michael? Yeah. I would just say, I think recognizing that there's going to be more moments in the future when we're going to have to take formal procedural actions.
I do think it's important for today for council to clearly signal that we're still committed to this process, that we are committed to accepting whatever the selection is, and that we're also committed to being flexible in terms of adjusting designs of the parks and taking care of maintenance issues and things like that, and that we're not going to let some very bureaucratic issue kind of hold up moving along with this process.
And I think where I'm at is, I think it's important that we signal that. I think, as was discussed, there's the long history of these statues and how they came to be and how it intersected with the history of race and class in Charlottesville.
And you have the moment of when these were removed, that that was a critical part of sparking a national conversation around public spaces and removal of Confederate monuments. As part of that, obviously our community had people die, and there were people who had lasting physical and mental impacts from the events of 2017.
And locally, it also forced us to have conversations about the local history of race and class and how they continue to play out today. And I think there's a lot of pressures to just say, "Well, let's just forget it happened and move on and have these be parks that could be any park anywhere in the country." But I think it's important that we do have them be singular public spaces that engage with that local history and are places of reflection where the community can meet and engage with this history in a reflective way.
And I think the only way we do that is through this process. So-I hope we very much continue with it and are willing to be flexible and open. And we can bracket this off because this is a whole other can of worms that we don't need to get into today, but something maybe city government can think about is, if and when we accept a donation, do we want to think about having the name of Market Street Park engage with the public art?
Because if my memory's correct, we landed on Market Street Park, this was before I was on council, after a brief online survey that got, like, 100 responses. And I think we can have something that's rooted in local history that engages with, is in dialogue with the artwork that we end up accepting.
So we're lucky we didn't end up with the name Oatmeal for the park? Yeah. Oatmeal. But there were alternatives that were rooted in indigenous history and local Black history, and it landed on the least offensive anodyne option, which is what it is.
So, I think that I've shared my comments. Only other thing I would like to say, that if the outreach plan that Selina is proposing, if that's something that's shareable, that you can share, I would love to see it.
I just think a comprehensive input and outreach is vital for something like this. Yeah. And just once again, I want to say, what we're doing right now is letting people know what's out there. Yeah. The design teams are responsible for this.
Whichever one is chosen, they know how to do it. Mm-hmm. And so we can trust in that, that they've done this many times before. So thank you. Great. Let me go to the agenda, see what's next. You got it, James.
James. Sorry. Public art commission. Yep. This is all his meeting. Yeah. All right. And I'm also playing the technician role and not being able to figure out why I can't vote the next presentation. Why?
Getting this done would be great. So there's two items to this portion of the meeting. One is to talk-- I'm going to talk briefly about the public art commission. Now, I've spoken with you all a lot about this already, so I don't really have anything new to add.
But I'll just say that in some respects, the conversation we just had is a reminder of why we're having this conversation about having a public art commission itself. We own a public art collection here in the city of Charlottesville today, and that comes with a need to maintenance, removal when warranted, and if there's a desire to expand it, there's a process associated with that as well.
And a public art commission would help us manage those elements and create a forum for the discussions that we're talking about in that range of materials and maintenance. But most importantly, what are the things we need to be thinking about as we're considering expanding that?
The public art commission would be a recommendation body making a recommendation to council. Council is always going to be the final decision-maker on whether a piece of art is added to the collection, or removed from the collection, or what have you.
The only other thing I'll note is that as we contemplate a public art commission, we are thinking of that as both art and memorials, because there are a lot of conversations beyond the one we've just had around memorials and what would be appropriate memorials to include within the city.
And we need a venue for that activity, for those conversations, a public venue for those conversations so that other stakeholders who might have a contribution in, or a reaction, or what have you, about what's being proposed have an opportunity to share that in a way that forms the basis for recommendations.
Now, maintaining our public art collection is the most base level of what the city can or should be thinking about in terms of art within the community. Broadening that, when you look at many other communities, they not only are maintaining their public art collection, growing their public art collection, they're doing other things to support the arts generally within their community.
And that's where something along the lines of an arts council comes in. So these two things speak to each other. Independent of our city effort to solve for this issue of maintaining our public art collection, there is in parallel a process that I've been involved in, almost everybody on this side of the table has been involved in, of standing up an arts council, or maybe re-standing up an arts council for our region.
So Maureen, I'm going to turn this over to you, and you can share what that work has been, and then we'll have an opportunity to dialogue around it. Hi. I'm Maureen. I've been at many of these work sessions this month.
And I have been the executive director of New City Arts for 15 years. So in my role there, I have been on the organization side of applying for vibrant community funds. I've also gone through the VAR process for mural approval.
When Andrea was chairing the cultural plan back in 2013, I was chairing a very tiny committee on artist spaces. I wrote this. I'm just going to say this. I'm a GIS and GuideStar girly. I love bringing the receipts to this meeting.
One of which is that the percent for our program, which was brought up at the meeting where James was presenting, there is a document on our study website about the closing of that fund, which when it closed in 2006, it had a $300,000 balance.
And that is good news for you all as you consider standing up a public arts commission that there was easy money to support it. I heard the 1.5% as a potential percent that might go into both commissioning and maintenance for these public works, and I think that's really exciting.
We'll talk about that later. What I'm here today to talk about is this feasibility study, and I wanted to clarify who funded this study. So it was funded by the city manager's office, also UVA Arts, also the fund at CACF, the Anna Jean Rowe Foundation, and CACDP.
And Local Arts. Is everyone familiar with what a local arts agency is? I put a little one-sheeter at your desk. You might want to be able to- What? Say it. Say it? Yes. Okay, great. We're on mic. We're on mic, yeah.
And a lot of the information I'm going to share right now was in the packet that you all received on Friday, but I know you have a lot on your plate right now, so I am going to repeat a lot of that info.
A local arts agency is the coordinating body for arts and culture in a community. It can be an office of arts and culture. In many cases, including Piedmont Council for the Arts many, many years ago, it was a 501 [3] setup with city funding, but also able to leverage private dollars and serve a geographic scope that was beyond the city limits.
It would traditionally manage something like a cultural facility or a cultural center, give general operating grants to arts and culture organizations as well as festivals, potentially give individual grants to artists in our community, notably lead the economic impact study of the arts, which has been brought up a lot.
That is actually a very formal technical process that is led by local arts agencies in contract with Americans for the Arts, and the last time it was done in our community was in 2015. So that is the latest data we have, and that's because that's the last time the PCA was up and running when that national survey was conducted.
And also via central information hub, that's something the local arts agency would do, and create a cultural plan, which was something the PCA did a long time ago. This feasibility study was launched back in August, and we brought in Ruby Lopez-Harper, who is joining us on Zoom and is going to present in a moment.
But something that the grassroots efforts to recreate central coordination have not included in the past was expertise on governance models based on comparable cities to Charlottesville's size. So rather than looking at Seattle or New York with what they do, part of this feasibility study was to look at what cities similar to us, what they do, and how big their budgets are, how many staff they have.
The quotes on the screen, the reason we did all of this is both because of your strategic priorities that I'm going to talk about in a moment, the existing arts and culture assets that the city owns, as well as community members begging us to bring back coordination.
These are quotes from them when we were having our own strategic plan for New City Arts back in 2024. This is what we heard from them. So this just very important context. Piedmont Council for the Arts was up and running for 38 years.
It was structured as the designated local arts agency of Charlottesville and Albemarle, but it had to apply for its own operating support every year through the Vibrant Community Fund. It was not set up as a fundamental agency.
So every year, when it put forward the cultural plan, that was adopted but not funded, and my understanding was that that sort of took the wind out of the sails of their leadership. There was more than annual turnover at the leadership position, and eventually that put their VCF funding at risk, which was about a third of their $150,000 operating budget.
Their original offices were in McGuffey and then moved here to City Space. When that 50,000 was taken away or reassigned, it was set aside for arts and culture coordination and planning. Exactly what this study recently did.
So there was about 52,000 that was in that pot, and then grassroots efforts to bring back an arts council did not use those funds, kind of similar to council's strategic investment fund. It was a little bit opaque how you might apply for that funding and who would lead it, given that a lot of the organizations were experiencing capacity constraints already and didn't have capacity to lead a community-wide feasibility study at the time.
The efforts in 2017 to recreate something also didn't produce a new arts council and also were not based on comp city models or professionally facilitated, and city council doubled the amount of funding for arts coordination and planning to $114,000.
The reason that is important is because my understanding of that information is that there was never a question that an arts council shouldn't exist or wasn't a priority of city government. It was that they wanted a feasible, sustainable, successful structure to be proposed.
And unfortunately, in 2020, during the COVID pandemic, that funding was sunsetted to zero. The other important part of this is that the resources that do exist include why we're having this conversation today, which is the approximately $500,000 for arts and culture organizations that exist through the Vibrant Community Fund, as well as I heard Sam mention something like a quality of life fund.
Mm-hmm. I don't know what that is, but it sounds great. So that's a pool of money that currently exists within human services and is combined with the rest of the pool of funding for outside agencies.
There's McGuffey Art Center, which is in facilities management or public works. And then there is the proposal for a public art program that I've heard mentioned might exist within parks or economic development in the future.
And the impact of these existing resources being not coordinated under one house or one position of leadership is extremely important to understand. And so I'm going to talk about that just for a moment.
McGuffey Art Center, I'm not proposing that we spend this money, but McGuffey Art Center is the only city-owned building that does not have central air. So if you go in McGuffey, last week I was there when it was like 90 degrees, and the staff are sweating.
All of the studio members have window units, which means they can't leave their doors open for six months out of the year, which means that the engagement with the artist is lower in the months where it is hot.
LEAP did an assessment for them last year and proposed that it would cost $1 million for central air. When I was doing the cultural plan back in 2012, the quote I heard was $60,000, so this has been a need for a long time, and now it costs a lot more.
And the reason why I'm bringing this up is because you might, without an arts council, look at the numbers from McGuffey during the hot months and think, "Oh, our community, just the foot traffic is so low.
We're not interested in the arts." When in fact, no one wants to be in a really hot building. Similarly, with the Vibrant Community Fund, there's a lot to say about-- I love Hunter and Reggie, and I've worked with them very closely over the years that we've applied for this funding to try and separate them out.
Because Mayor Wade, I heard you say at the BCF meeting a few weeks ago, the third of 60 people who stood up to ask for money, you said, "You can see how hard this is for us." Mm-hmm. And with arts and culture being bundled within those assets, it's always going to be the case that that funding, without being separated to demonstrate you're already stating commitment to arts and culture, when you have to pit that up against the local food pantry or public safety, it's really difficult, and we don't want you to have to do that.
By giving the $500,000, that is my own calculation for what is being given to arts and culture organizations under an arts council, and there is a phased recommendation for how to do that at the end of this.
You can maintain your commitment while also strengthening the way that that is spent, and supporting arts organizations in this community through a way that is just strengthening the process itself. The application is very technical, and arts organizations can fill out technical applications, but those applications are reviewed by community members who are not professional grant makers.
And so it is difficult for us as organizations to meet every number on the matrix, but then our funding was cut by 70% this year, and we have no idea why. A process being opaque doesn't fulfill your own goals of being a transparent funder of arts and culture, and it is one of the only dedicated sources of funding for arts and culture organizations in this community.
That's a lot to say before I say that the other needs-- This just goes on to say that the needs identified were just like bringing up the study itself, that there's no current comprehensive plan. We were left out of the most recent arts and economic impact study.
There's no central trusted information hub. The creative identity of our community does not match the instability that arts and culture organizations constantly express. They feel very fragile. We also launched this study when we did because it was in alignment with the city strategic plan and because we knew that the city manager's office was exploring a public art program.
And these were the opportunities we saw, providing leadership to the existing assets, strengthening the cultural venues that residents and visitors love, supporting the festivals, exhibitions, and performances that bring in tourists, bolster residents' quality of life, result in positive economic impact, root us in our shared histories, and strengthen our connections, which we just spent a lot of time learning about and discussing.
Ensure that Charlottesville is a place where artists can live, work, and thrive. A lot came out of the study on the cost of living and the impacts it has on individual artists, residents, and organizations.
And also rely on professional expertise on local arts agencies to surface the data that's been missing from previous efforts. This was the study's leadership, so it was important for us that in addition to a professional facilitator, this was community-driven.
We had 60 self-nominations for this steering committee, and you can see that a lot of people that ended up on the committee are very busy. These are local leaders who do not necessarily seem to have time for something like this, but cared so deeply about it that they threw their name in the hat.
And these were the activities that we did. These constitute August of last year through January. So we had 464 participants, public convenings, and community conversations, both in person and virtual, steering committee meetings, targeted conversations, a bilingual needs assessment, a review of all of the history of arts and culture coordination in this community, peer city benchmarking, which was something that had been missing, and the study was publicly supported by 49 organizations and 160 residents.
These are the key findings from the study. We found a very fragmented ecosystem of artists who are desperate for coordination, but they face this additional burden, particularly on those organizations that are operating with limited staff.
I don't think any of this is going to come as a surprise to you. As this relates to the Vibrant Community Fund and James' ask for $100,000 at council meeting a few weeks ago, something we heard overwhelmingly is that as much as people are desperate for coordination, they do not want the limited resources that they experience dedicated to arts and cultural organizations to be reassigned for coordination, but instead they would like it to be matchedSo something we are suggesting in the 11th hour, that is the second reading of the budget tomorrow, is that of that $100,000 pool, you might spend 50,000 on someone who knows something about fundamental agencies, something about public art commissions, something about the Percent for Art program to stand up both a public arts commission and an arts council at the same time, based on these recommendations, which we'll get into a little bit more.
And that that 50,000, I know I couldn't be here last week, but I've watched the meeting now twice. And I think that as a strategic investment, you could spend 50 of that and level up the arts and culture organizations, there are seven of them, whose funding was decreased, partially because, my understanding is that the budget office added numbers to everyone's applications this year so that they could give bonus points to organizations that aligned with their strategic priorities.
But if it is the case that every applicant did that, it actually deprioritized arts and culture organizations because they were the lowest ranking. They only got three points as opposed to the 10 or 15 that were given to public safety, education, and housing.
Also, space affordability and access, the negative impact of Charlottesville's high cost of living, which is something I know you all care a lot about and hear a lot about from other... This isn't just unique to the arts, is what I am trying to say.
This was surfaced over and over again that artists are leaving our community because they cannot afford to live here. Arts and culture organizations who rely on venues cannot afford rent, cannot afford their utility bill, and artists are afraid of being priced out.
Equity, trust, and transparency. Trust has slowly eroded without regular invitations to just be in the same room together, and also with what seems like limited competition for very limited resources.
People want better trusted information about what's going on already. And people are just really burnt out. So these are the core recommendations. I am going to hand it over to Ruby, who's on Zoom, to share a little bit about this process, but I do have actual next steps that might require a vote.
And I want to know, are we ending right at 6:00? Do we have time for voting? Yeah. No wiggle room, but we're not going to vote. We don't vote in these meetings. Okay. Yeah. How do I hand off? Hmm? You could just ask Ruby to unmute, and she could just talk.
Oh, Ruby, can you unmute? Yeah. Can you hear me? I think everyone can see you. You're on mute. Stop sharing. Oh, do you have my slides, Maureen? Oh, yes, I do. They were in the... Sorry. Oh, no. How do I do it?
Share. Okay. Good idea. You would think we would have technology figured out by now. We don't. This one? The very bottom. Okay, great. Yes, I have your slides. Share again. Ruby oversaw 4,500 local arts agencies during her time at Americans for the Arts.
And she's just going to talk a little bit about the comp cities study. Thank you, Maureen, and thank you for the opportunity to be here. The information I'm sharing was the result of a community-driven process, as Maureen covered, grounded in input, steering committee guidance, and comparison to peer cities.
So if you want to go to the next slide. The clearest finding is this: the Charlottesville area does not lack arts activity, it lacks coordination, and that shifts this from a program conversation to one about infrastructure.
As you've heard, the city is already investing in arts and culture through pathways like McGuffey, the Vibrant Community Fund, and festivals. Those investments are distributed across departments and not coordinated through a shared structure.
From an operational perspective, that creates inefficiency, but more importantly, inconsistency in how people access information, opportunities, and resources. When coordination is not structured, it happens informally.
And informal systems tend to favor existing networks, relationships, and resources. That can unintentionally reinforce inequities and erode trust, even when the intention is the opposite. A coordinated structure creates transparency, consistency, and clearer pathways for access.
This directly connects to the city's priorities around equity, access, and stewardship, and it is notable that a community with this level of activity does not currently have a coordinating structure.
Next slide, please. So when we look at comparable cities, similar not just in size, but in similarities to foundational attributes like a strong university presence and historical identity. The models varied across the cities, nonprofit, municipal, and hybrid.
But the function is consistent: coordination. In Ann Arbor, a nonprofit aligns funding, festivals, and communications. In Boulder, the function sits inside government and connects policy and investment.
And in Winston-Salem, a nonprofit provides long-term continuity across funding and programs. The structure varies, but the function again is the same. Coordination, communication, and alignment. That function is what is currently missing in Charlottesville.
Next slide, please.So to do this work responsibly, capacity is required. Across comparable cities, this typically begins with a small focus team, roughly two to three full-time positions. And operationally, those roles often cover strategy and partnerships across departments and the community, coordination and communication across the ecosystem, and administration to ensure consistency and access.
These roles are not about producing new programs. They are about aligning what already exists. They can coordinate and facilitate support and access rather than focus on new programs. Over time, a coordinated structure can support more consistent and transparent management of existing funding as a governance decision.
And in most cities, public art remains a city function while an arts council operates alongside it in a complementary role, typically focused on community projects, sometimes maintenance, skill building, fostering artist development, sharing expertise, and providing support of the city's processes.
Next slide, please. Oh, actually, one more slide forward. So I'll close with this. The work is already happening. The question is how well it is supported. Investing in an arts council is not about adding something new.
It is about strengthening and aligning what already exists in a way that is coordinated, transparent, and equitable, but most importantly, local. Thank you. Thanks, Ruby. I think I'm going to jump in here.
Good to be with you all. I'm Jessica Harris. I'm the artistic director of Empowered Players, which is a local arts nonprofit in nearby Blue Vanna, and I also serve as the assistant director of community research at the Center for Community Partnerships.
Importantly for this conversation, I was thrilled to serve as a member of the steering committee for this process, and I will keep my remarks super brief because I know we have a lot of discussion to get to.
But I just wanted to speak to that last point that Ruby shared about the trust in this process and the importance of it being locally driven and locally supported. Maureen shared that there were 464 participants that offered their feedback and engaged in conversation.
But something that made this process unique, she mentioned those other times that we've tried to do this coordination effort. This process was unique in that it brought artists, arts leaders, arts workers, folks of different backgrounds, perspectives to the table to shape the conversation.
Historically, these conversations stay at that organizational leader level, or they stay at the artist level, but there's not that blending of those two worlds and the fact that all entities are speaking to the same thing.
Coordination is required. Having an entity that stewards this work is essential, and having community leadership at the table is important, right? We know the issues that are here. Maureen spoke to at length, right, the needs that we've felt in our community for a long time, needs that an arts council could address.
And so I want to emphasize the trust that I have in this process that I think a lot of community members also share, with the leadership. New City Arts is a trusted entity, but all members of that steering committee and the folks in this room really have been part of that conversation in moving this work forward.
The fact that local funders are behind it and were willing to invest in the study of what this entity can be speaks to what I believe, is their belief in this process beyond just that study, and how it can be brought to fruition.
And so while it was an important and ongoing and transparent process, it was short, right? Maureen mentioned August through January, and so we really view this next phase as, and I think you'll get to this in some of the next steps, as one of continued engagement, right?
This was a short period of time, but really in the next 18 months, as we look at what this might become, engagement needs to continue. Bringing youth voice to the table, making sure that we're centering your perspectives, getting more community buy-in.
I appreciate it in the earlier conversation, right? It's not like we are unilaterally deciding on a thing, but it is that ongoing, iterative engagement that's going to make it meaningful. And so as part of my role at the center, I'd done some work studying through organizational well-being for arts organizations funded by the Wallace Foundation, and there were three things that were named in that study that I want to emphasize: the shared infrastructure piece, mission alignment, and community embeddedness.
We have found in arts organizations that is the thing that makes them sing, that makes them thrive, that makes a community thrive. And the arts council is one way that we can ensure that is at the table.
But I want to emphasize the process, right? Really emphasize that as well and embody that community embeddedness. And so again, I'm excited to champion these recommendations and be a supporter of them.
But I think really as we move forward, there's so much foundation that's been laid to put this into place, and we're not building from scratch. We're really able to stand on the shoulders of those that have come before us.
I understand this isn't going to-- I'm just floating this as an idea, not a vote. But I know that when James presented at city council, as I mentioned, there was discussion of a strategic investment, and so I wanted to flesh out what that actually could look like.
I also highlighted- Whoa. This is your document. And I have lived in this year after year, when we applied for Vibrant Community Fund funding. And something I just want to say is that something that is true of artists is that as they are, especially emerging artists, is that as they are piecing together exhibitions, residencies, and fellowships, the Mellon FoundationJust produced this study, and we also know this to be true locally, that they are often piecing together gig work.
So seasonal work, temp jobs, one, two, or three jobs, which often precludes them from worker protections and worker benefits that you would experience in a traditional workplace, including health insurance.
And so it is common in other communities, many of whom we talked about tonight, to do things to address the cost of living for them, so that we can stay a community that can support artists, especially emerging artists, who do not just come from wealth.
Because the system is so broken, what ends up happening without direct intervention like rent-controlled housing, rent-controlled studio space, guaranteed income for artists. I'm talking about we're 10 years away from that minimum.
But is that we exclude the artists who are emerging, who are low income, from participating in these systems, and then we have to rely on artists who have trust funds to be the contributing artists in this field.
And so what I want to highlight is that by standing up an arts council and a public art commission, you all are staying true to your mission, vision, and values around equity, around good governance, around good management, and we can make a really good case for arts and economic impact in this community.
It's not one or the other. I also want to add, because I heard this brought up last week, that all of our programs, putting on my New Cigars hat, all of the 60 public events and programs that we run every year are all free.
And the reason for that is so that we are not only bringing in wealthy donors, so we don't actually have any ticket revenue that we rely on for any of our own support. And that is the case with many of the organizations who are supporting artists who are responding to site-specific works in this community to tell stories like "Swords and Plowshares," to use art to talk about Pennhark, to talk about the Downtown Mall, to talk about the history of historic sites in this community.
A lot of that work is being done by organizations who are relying on your support or the support of philanthropy to make that possible, so that we aren't just selling really expensive tickets to events and programs.
I also heard last week that specific to the Vibrant Community Fund, going line by line on arts organizations is never something we should ask you to do. That should not be your job. It is one, incredibly difficult without seeing the paperwork, and also not a big strategic investment in what arts and culture strengthening, and the ecosystem strengthening overall could look like.
And so in order to help you all match what we heard from community members, we are suggesting that the 100,000 that was brought up be divided in these two ways, matched for coordination as well as right-sizing the arts and culture support for VCF next year.
I realize that might not be possible if we're not voting today, and the second reading of the budget is tomorrow. But the other thing I want to say is that by you all hiring one person with really good municipal expertise who understands what a fundamental agency is to stand up these things, what won't happen is that a year from now, we come back as a community arts organization and share again the value of what this could be, and instead, we actually have movement and something coming to fruition potentially a year from now.
I think that when we look beyond that, if you think about the ways that the Food Justice Coalition was set up, if you think about the ways other coalitions in other fields were set up, a long-term strategic investment over not in next year's budget, but over three years beyond that.
If this arts council follows the recommendations from the community and based on your own strategic priorities, is set up as a fundamental agency and 160 each year over the course of three years is dedicated to supporting it.
I think that because of what Jess was talking about in terms of trust, we can demonstrate that the other study funders who supported this process, if you all were to do that, it would absolutely build confidence, and strengthen the trust that already exists in where these recommendations came from to be matched.
And so your all's initial commitment, I think would be a really great step in that direction. And the other opportunities are easy wins. Moving the money that is already given to arts and culture organizations over to dedicated leadership to coordinate those things, and bringing back a percent for our program for maintenance and commissions of public works.
This builds out a little of what that actually might look like. But I want to leave room for discussion and yelling. Yeah. We have about 10 minutes left. And so- Why can't we go over six? Well, we had said that we were going to do from 4:00 to 6:00, so if we want to go a little bit long, I know Jen and I- We can text Jay and just say- Yeah ...
we're late. Yeah. You can-- I have his guy's number. Again. Yeah. Okay. I did have a question. You've mentioned a few times too about building and developing trust. Mm-hmm. Are you talking about trust fund or trust between the city and- No, just trust.
No, no, no. Okay. No trust funds. No. Because I didn't realize that there was a trust issue between, you know, where-- Is there any reason- That's why ... you're saying that or? I just mean that standing up an arts council would require financial investment from a lot of people.
And so when I say you all committing to stand up an arts council as a fundamental agency, as a 501 [3] that has the ability to leverage private dollars, that kind of commitment builds on the momentum that already exists and could inspire trust that was already demonstrated by those people buying into the community.
Okay. So we'll just go down. Michael, I'm going to let you go first this time. I mean, I'm not saying we would make this decision, but I think we do still have the ability to adjust the budget before adoption and could adjust it afterwards as well.
So it's certainly something the council can consider. I guess a question for staff is, just outline how this differs from where we are right now in terms of what we've agreed to in terms of dollar amounts and where they're going.
So, correct me if I'm wrong, Councilor Fletcher, I'm going to look at you. Where did you guys-- You guys made decisions at your last meeting on the arts organizations as part of VCF. Right. And $50,000 was split over organizations, and $50,000 was set aside for a public art commission.
So that decision is effectively- Baked ... baked. And this is all from Strategic Investment Fund. Now, the decision to dedicate $50,000 towards standing up the Public Art Commission is still something that'll come before you all as a resolution.
And I think one of the things as we've scoped that out, we've scoped that out as kind of focused on the key attributes of a Public Art Commission, which are to develop a set of procedures, processes for that commission.
We're asking someone to come in and assist the city in developing those procedures, developing those criteria, and ultimately to identify a staffing model. What's staff necessary? What department does that staff person live in?
And those types of things. And we're going to have a number of conversations in this space. I'll probably want to dig in a little bit more on that and make sure that within $50,000 there is sufficient to add additional scope to support standing up a Public Art Commission, if that's the desire of council.
But that's where we are, and that would then be reflected in the resolution that'll come before you all on April 22nd. Mm-hmm. Your regular meeting, 20. Yeah. I guess I'm just trying to understand with this request that's in front of us tonight, what, if any, dollar amount above that- Yeah ...
is this? This is something we've been back and forth on. Maureen is confident that we can do both efforts within $50,000. We did the-- The study was 37, and we have six left over. Right. So, and- Mm-hmm ...
I think the possibility is there. I think we'll continue to hash that out, and there'll be a dollar figure in the resolution, but it's likely going to be around $50,000. But I guess I'm hearing you, to answer the question from this slide, what is different?
What is different based on today, the percent for the arts does not exist, and the $500,000 over three years out of your Strategic Investment Fund to the Arts Council does not exist. So that's the additional ask above what exists today.
Because $100,000 has been identified for the top line. It may not be exactly how is desired to be used, but that is committed. Yeah, I guess I should have watched the meeting three times. So we spent $50,000.
We knew about the $100,000 because that was pitched. Right. We set aside $50,000 for commission, which you're hoping can set up council. We spent the other $50,000 divided among seven organizations who were 27% or underfunded this season.
So they each got $7,000 additional sum in as they were arts and culture organizations as an effort to bridge and keep them supported until we could stand up the council to take that work. The council The help you out before the council gets sorted.
So we don't have any funding designated to stand up the council allocated right now. Good. So you could take $7,000 away from each organization that we just gave it to, would be an amendment, and put it just to standing up a council.
But I think- Well, we could work through- Oh, no ... do any work through what it would take to do it within the $50,000 that you all have allocated for the public art. Or take the commission $50,000 and split it up to two consultants, whatever.
It would be the same. The same consultant. The ideal would be is with one study. Two things, yeah. I think I was probably most closely paying attention to our own changes with my New City Arts hat on, because our funding has been like $27,000, $28,000 and $32,000 the last three years.
And I think, I guess with the increase that was suggested, we're still only at like $15,000 or $17,000. I don't have that in front of me. Which, I mean, these don't necessarily need to be budget decisions for this year, the FY28 to FY30 ones.
But I definitely agree with that because I think the reality is anything that's in the Vibrant Community Fund, baked into that processes, there's no guarantee that there's even more than zero funding year to year.
So if our council decision is we want to guarantee some level of funding, it has to be moved out of VCF. Yeah. Otherwise, it's inherent that it's not guaranteed. I love Boulder's model for this. Their identical equivalent program.
Something that is extremely helpful from the arts and culture organization perspective is that based on your overall budget, they identify you as a bedrock, a large, large, medium, or small organization.
And then they limit how many grants they give to each and recommend a percentage of your overall that you're applying for. So their total bucket for that program, the equivalent of this $500 I keep mentioning, is $1.5.
But the structures that are set up for organization, the guidelines that we're following for the total amount is just much more clear and also much more strategicin terms of how things are being delineated, because right now there is no guidance on how much you apply for it.
And so if you apply for a really large amount, even if you're rated low, you might still get a lot more than if you ask for a size you feel like is more appropriate. That's true. That's not just with us.
And just to clarify, the Boulder budget is $407 million. Yes. It's much larger. Even- Little bit, yeah. For the city of Boulder you mean? Yeah. So it's a government agency there too. Yes, it's a government agency.
The RMC, yeah. Yeah. Part of their- And I also just want to clarify that the quality of life fund that has become a topic for folks, that's a one-time fund. Yeah. And it's a one-time fund that I've been spending, so it's not $500,000 today even.
But it gives me hope that money can just... That we can have a one-time fund for something. It is a budget pilot- ... that I have been testing its use, and we're now going into our third year of its existence because I've been very frugal in how it has been deployed.
I want to just kind of take away the notion that that is a source because it's a one-time fund from a prior year. That's the number I came up with just mostly for VCF- Yeah ... the amount. It was just for festivals.
I knew that. I just wanted, because the quality of life fund has actually been learned about and it was not intended. Sorry to discover. I had to stance. I understand. It's not your- It wasn't meant to be secret because this is a public institution, but it's not readily available.
I would like to make sure that we're not framing this as a complaint about how VCF goes. Correct. The discussion about a council is not about making VCF better. Right. It is about we need a council to coordinate, and one of the perks of a council could be that we could fold arts and culture out of the VCF process and have the council manage that and get its funding from some stream that we determine.
So- Absolutely ... it's muddying the waters for me that we're- Yes ... framing it around VCF right now. Sure. I-- So. I agree. It's not great. I agree, Suwanna. So. I've got a question about the- Yeah.
Go ... the makeup of the council and the functioning of it. One of the things that we've talked about internally is the abundance of nonprofits in our area. Is the council a way where some of those can coordinate enough to combine?
Does this take away any of the redundancies there, or does this maintain that separation? Does that question make sense? I will say as an organization leader, and my understanding is that it helps coordinate projects, helps coordinate proposals for funding.
It's not closing organizations. It's really allowing for there to be more on-ramps for collaboration and consolidation of efforts, rather than trying to sunset organizations independently. And I think one of the big roles too is this possibility for advocacy.
Mm-hmm. Because as a separate 501 [3] , there are funds that then become available, grants that can be applied for within that scope that then can be used to support arts organizations, that aren't specifically like, "Here's a program grant." There's also other grants that could help with housing, that could help with all kinds of other folks.
And then for me, I think one of the biggest things is the level of advocacy at the state- Boy book. Like at the state level, on Arts Advocacy Day. Having a representative that is deeply embedded in the community and understands this community that can then go and do those kinds of things in ways that government cannot do.
Mm-hmm. Right? It's because cross-organizations- Yeah ... rather than from one person- Exactly ... one organization. Now, let me finish with Michael, and then we'll come. Yeah. Well, I have additional questions.
I know you all had the Venable meeting. Would you want to go first if you need to leave? No, I think you said- I texted him, told him we're running late. Yeah. Okay. Right now in terms of what we're planning to fund, how much of that is for a consultant?
The... The 50 is available. Yeah. That is what we're proposing it for, for a consultant to work with us to define how this program works. And I guess, is there a discussion of whether that can be an organization or individual that's already rooted locally or does it have to be- It was recommended to us by national peers who have been aware of how many that it be someone who isn't coming back to you in four months to try and demonstrate the value of the arts, but is a retired city employee who knows what a fundamental agency...
So many things about local government are so specific to the way that this organization, your organization is set up, that by having someone with municipal expertise to stand these things up, it'll happen a lot faster.
So that's the kind of person that I think we're looking for. Think of consultant as a generic term for somebody who doesn't work for the city- Yeah ... full-time basis. Well, true, but it can go very different ways, obviously, where we end up hiring a national consulting firm, and the product is maybe not actionable.
I think it would be great if it was a local. Like anything else, it's got to go through an RFP process. Yeah. Right. I guess. I don't know. The recommendations you put out here to me makes sense. I do think long-term, we're going to have to consider this pulled out of the VCF, because I don't think putting it there is sustainable.
I think it's important enough, as a strategic priority, we have to have a dedicated funding source that's not always competitive, that's at some sort of baseline. I think what you outlined is a path toGetting us there.
I certainly agree. I think for the past many years, the city has essentially kind of abandoned thinking about the arts in a holistic or strategic way. And so I'm glad we're having this conversation to kind of move us out from that period, because I do think there's just so many opportunities and it's so critical.
Down the road, I agree, there's a lot of conversation to be had about McGuffey. I know in our CIP, the roof replacement is there, but I think there's a huge opportunity to invest in that building, to have it be a much more accessible place for engagement with the arts and the artists who use it.
But that will require a lot of money and Can there be an arts council to- Right. Their lease is up for a renegotiation every five years. And so my understanding is that one of the reasons why they don't ask for significant investments in between lease renegotiations is because it feels so shaky.
It feels like by asking for so much, it could put the lease at risk. And so by having an arts council helping with the management of that building, eventually, just even a point person. I talked to a lot of people this morning.
I talked to Lacey, I talked to Ben, I talked to Jeff, I talked to someone named Jerry. And it was like, "Oh, just send us an email. We'll get a meeting on the calendar." But it was something that McGuffey, about the air conditioning in particular, but it was something that McGuffey doesn't feel confident doing because of all the reasons that you're into.
Right. And so it's down the road, but I do think, if this is established, as hopefully it is, part of that is, I think the city, we have to think about what is our long-term plan for McGuffey going to be, and are we committed to having it be a public space and a center for the arts, or are we going to abandon that?
Which is a big conversation point. And, I think just thinking out loud, long-term, thinking about these funding sources, I think something that came to mind to me is we give over a million a year to the Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Albemarle gives a million on top of that. 99% of their budget comes from Charlottesville and Albemarle, so we're the funders who kind of can give them direction, like, do you prioritize this or that? As part of their budget, would it make sense to think about that being a pool of money that as the major funders, we would say, "Hey, arts is part of tourism.
Maybe some of that money can come from there." Just thinking out loud- Yes ... of possible sustainable funding sources. I love that thinking. I will say that in past efforts when that has been proposed, the risk of it living in a tourism bureau, which Courtney was on the steering committee, so they are fully looped in.
She can't be here tonight. But the only risk is that their absolute economic impact, I mean, the Luke Combs concert that happened on Saturday, we all saw the impact of the traffic. There are these huge benefits that come from people coming into our community to participate in the arts.
We see them go out to dinner, get hotels, pay for parking. But when it comes to the cost of living, the sort of hope that this lives within an independent arts council is that it would also be equally considering the cost of living for the artists who live and work here, and not pricing them out of a community, if that makes sense.
It's considering both as equally as important instead of sending a message that it's really just fall festivals or something. Yeah. And I agree, though, the entity should be independent. Okay. But I'm just thinking of potential funding sources to make it sustainable.
And for now, that's it. But again, I would say, the recommendations, to me, make sense as something that I think we should be committed to and figure out how to move towards. And it's far, far beyond tonight, but I'm glad you brought it.
Rent control, and there has been legislation in the General Assembly to authorize Charlottesville to do it. So, it didn't pass, it's died in committee, but it's not totally disconnected from possibilities.
Natalie? Are we supposed to do anything tonight? Next June. Yes, and I appreciate the presentation. What are the next steps for us to do stuff? The only next step at this point is the item on your agenda for April 22nd, which would be a vote on the Public Art Commission ordinance and the resolution- April 20th.
Sorry, the 20th. At the time, we're all there at the same time. The funding resolution to support the city. Okay. Great. Thank you. DiCianno. A few quick thoughts. First is that, I'm in favor of the general notion of the Arts Council for a couple of reasons.
The first is that I think the city council's job ought to be to say, "This is the size of the bucket of money that we're going to allocate to the arts, and let somebody else do it." I don't think it's something we're particularly well equipped to do, and this matter of tastes, and not a good thing for us to be doing.
The second, there have been some mentions from Michael about dedicated funding sources. As a general proposition, I'm not a fan of dedicated funding sources because that generally means that our flexibility to address other problems gets diminished.
And I think that's not a good thing. The other point that I will make to channel the message that Sam gave to us a month or two ago is that we have, in recent years, things like every year we've taken on another million dollar or so project that we now find we have to continue to fund, and whether that's millions going to affordable housing or millions going to transit expansion or various other things.
The more of these that we take on, the more we run into, I think, long-term problems. And either we have to raise taxes or cut something else that we don't know how to cut right now. And so I'm a little bit leery about suddenly talking about half a million dollars or more.
And so that's just a concern. I don't know how we're going to deal with that. I want to be so clear that I was suggesting 166 over each year for three years, based on what was invested in the Food Justice Coalition, not- There was also a mention of $250,000, $500,000.
I don't get the 500,000. I was trying to figure out what those all were, but anyway, we can figure out about that. And then $250,000 out of the CIP program. Okay. No. That was the recommendation that the percent for every CIP project that is 250,000 or more, 1%- Oh ...
be dedicated- I got you ... public art, and the 500,000 is the BCF pool. I got you. Not new. I promise. Very feasible. Very feasible. I am really concerned about us taking on new initiatives that we're going to find we have to keep- Yeah ...
funding every year. Yeah? Is it possible in the RFP to request or to require that the consultants be regional at least, or? We can build criteria around it. I would consult with procurement as to what exactly we can do, but we can build criteria.
I would prefer criteria around familiarity with the city and its programs and procedures and stuff like that over a specific geographic restriction, but... Yeah, I do think that local piece is pretty critical to the council, at least.
Well, now that they're combining the council and the commission work into one for a consultant, that could be critical. And also reminding us that, just for my small brain, that when we're talking about art and culture, we're also talking about performance, we're talking about space, we're talking about how it exists in all media and verticals, et cetera.
So that is a big task for a council. I think you're not just talking about, is this gallery open? Does it have a First Friday? We're talking about how does live arts work, how does Second Street Gallery work, and other spaces beyond McGuffey.
So I think that opens up to a lot broader of group of participation. Are musicians now part of the arts council? How does that work in this community? Where does the pavilion fit in? And so I think there would be a lot of discussion to figure out.
There's a lot to figure out with that is basically what I'm saying. Knowing that, what's a guess about how long it could take for us to stand up a commission and the council? And when we talk about two full-time staff people, are they existing in the nonprofit of the council or in the city?
Those are questions that are part of the purpose of this study, right? The staffing model is a core element of the whole study. What's best practice? What's the best way for us to do this given our circumstances?
Well, and I think the Public Art Commission, your hope is that it would be up and running within FY27. Oh, yeah. And I think for the Independent Arts Council, the two to three staff that would be housed within this 501 [3] , if it is set up as something like a fundamental agency, its budget would be much larger than what you see here, but it would be able to leverage philanthropy so that it's not only relying on city resources for it to exist, but can also have accountability to you all for the resources that do exist.
The recommendations from the study, which you have a full... There's a whole website dedicated to the recommendations, and you have the full report. It recommends that 501 [3] status be applied for, and that would take 18 months to be approved anyways.
And so that gives us a runway to dig into a lot of these questions and talk to the county about their participation. It also gives us the ability to phase this over time so that we can start small and have some really, really wins and still grow to a broader geographic scope over time.
Add programs, add staff. And again, not rely only on your investment for this thing to thrive. Thank you. That's it. I think that it's a great idea, and as part of the study, I definitely would like for it to include the music also included in this.
I just was in talks with Sam over the last few weeks that I think that talking to the business owners and the community, that I think this community can make a big push, that we're the kind of the arts and music center of this region, and it can be a big economic force.
I am, just for the last few weeks, just became chair of the tourism board, but I think that this is something that can be a financial benefit for the community, and I'm not sure if the study can get that specific, but I think that a lot of people coming out.
I think Greer gave a presentation during the presentation that over 500 concerts and gatherings are done on the downtown mall in any given year, and that's without the really big coordinated push that hopefully something like this would do.
So I like the idea of it. I'd just like to see how it all will factor in as far as the funding for it and how it can-- But I think there are resources in this community that can make it work. But they want to know, just funders in general, what are you doing?
What's your game plan? And so once we have that, I think that it'll be easier to go out and fundraise. This study will not include an economic impact study of the arts, but that's something an art council- Mm ...
can do and often does. Yeah, it is. The exact study you're talking about is something called the Arts and Economic Prosperity study. It is led nationally by Americans for the Arts, and local arts agencies pay $5,000 into it.
And what they do is they send volunteers to every Paramount performance, every Live Arts performance, First Fridays, Fridays after 5, and they ask everyone, "Did you pay for parking?" It's a very analog process.
They're trying to get live data to understand what else people paid for, and it excludes to get admission. So it notably does not include what people actually paid for the show. It's just counting how much they invested outside of that.
And it's like a, this is the-- My brain. Like a chicken and an egg. Without an arts council, we can't produce those numbers, but everyone wants those numbers in order to stand up an arts council. But the last one that they led in 2015, it was for every dollar spent on the arts, $3 was generated for the community, and I'm sure that that is more now.
Yeah. Okay, any other questions or comments? James, what's the next step? Do you just- April 20th. April 20th. Yes. Depending if not the 22nd. We'll talk about-- He can go either on the 20th or 22nd. Sorry, you made that mistake, aren't you?
So, Dr. Douglas, thank you so much for your work, and I'm sorry, Ruby. Yes. Love you guys. Thank you all so much for your time and your input in this. I'm sorry we couldn't vote tonight, but I think that this arts can be one of the drawing points to this community, and I think that we can do a whole lot more than what we're doing.
So that being said, is there a motion to adjourn? Do we want to do our roundtable updates real quick? Oh, yeah. Thank you. I would recommend we move it to a different meeting just because I feel like it's going to be rushed, but I'll put something.
I'm okay if it's rushed. I was just going to read. We don't have to necessarily ask questions, but we're not. What does everyone think? We got to go, James. Oh, you guys got to go? Okay. We can push it.
Yeah. So we'll do it, and then... Do we have to formally move to amend the agenda, but she had told her... Okay. We're not doing so. We adjourn. Yeah. Nice. Is there a second? Second. All in favor, please say yes.