Name: Charlottesville City Council meeting, Jun 1, 2026
Start: 2026-06-01
End: 2026-06-01
Location: City of Charlottesville

City Council

Mon, June 1, 2026

Agenda PDF Minutes PDF Watch Video

Agenda items

Vote records

Discussion summary

Transcript

Meeting summaryAI-generated

Charlottesville City Council — June 1, 2026

This was a full-session meeting that included an afternoon work session on community grant-making and participatory budgeting, a closed session for CRHA board interviews, and an evening business session with public hearings on utility rates, children's services funding, and transit capital projects. Public comment was notably dominated by concerns about unhoused residents and the Free Bridge encampment.

Work Session: Investing in Community — Grant Programs Overview

Grants Program Manager Taylor Harvey Ryan gave an overview of the city's eight grant programs that fund nonprofits and community partners: Intergovernmental/Contractual agreements, Fundamental Organizations, the Vibrant Community Fund (VCF), the Charlottesville Affordable Housing Fund (CAHF), Housing Operations Program Support (HOPS), Community Development Block Grant (CDBG), HOME Investment Partnerships, and a Small Business Energy Efficiency grant. She noted the city is tightening application timelines so all funding recommendations reach council during budget season, and has launched a unified compliance model with quarterly reporting, executed grant agreements, and more systematic site visits. Applications now go through a software portal called Neighborly.

Work Session: Vibrant Community Fund — Discussion of Future Direction

Department of Human Services Director Misty Graves and Human Services Planner Reginald Allen presented updates and facilitated a wide-ranging council discussion about reforming the VCF. Key updates included eliminating the previous $75,000 site-visit threshold in favor of risk-based, targeted site visits coordinated with the grants office. Allen emphasized this would reduce duplicative visits while improving oversight equity across all funding levels.

Council members raised substantial concerns and ideas. Councilor Snook was most pointed, arguing the VCF produces a fragmented patchwork of small grants with no strategic coherence — citing over $300,000 spread across 10-11 after-school programs with no coordinating vision. He proposed organizing funding around a small number of focus areas (such as re-entry services or mentoring), with oversight bodies modeled on the Housing Advisory Committee, and making larger, more coordinated investments. He also questioned whether the nine strategic outcome areas function as any meaningful limit on eligibility, noting virtually any nonprofit qualifies under at least one.

Councilor Fleisher proposed a tiered model: Fundamental organizations receiving predictable annual support; a "collective impact cohort" funded on three-year grants all measured against shared outcomes (e.g., closing the academic achievement gap); and a small innovation pool for one-year bets on new programs. She also pushed for arts organizations to be separated from VCF into an arts council process sooner rather than waiting until FY29.

City Manager Sanders was direct in stating that nonprofits need to hear a clear message that VCF funding is not guaranteed year to year, and that the review process is transparent and fair — pushing back on the recurring claim that the process is flawed when organizations don't receive expected amounts.

Staff indicated any major structural changes would be communicated to nonprofits in advance and implemented no earlier than FY29. For FY28, arts organizations will be pulled out of competitive VCF consideration into a separate review panel. Arts and cultural events will remain with the city manager's Quality of Life Fund. The Arts Council is still being developed, with a target of fall 2026.

*No binding vote; this was a discussion to inform future redesign.*

Work Session: Participatory Budgeting

City Manager Sanders presented the history and framework of participatory budgeting, noting the city set aside $100,000 for a pilot in FY2019, did some neighborhood outreach, but never followed through. He outlined a proposed timeline: idea collection August–October, proposal development November–February, voting in April, with project implementation in FY28 or FY29.

Council expressed broad support for moving forward, with an emphasis on the trust-building and civic engagement value of the process — not just the project outcome. Councilor Payne stressed it should be done in a way that can be repeated and institutionalized, not as a one-off. Vice Mayor Oschrin raised concerns about representative participation and whether neighborhood associations are truly reflective of the community. Several councilors supported an RFP to bring in an outside facilitator, given the city's capacity constraints. The proposed budget was roughly $100,000 to cover both the facilitation process and project implementation.

*Direction given to staff: proceed with planning participatory budgeting for FY28, likely via RFP.*

Community Matters — Public Comment

Multiple speakers addressed two dominant themes:

Unhoused residents and the Free Bridge encampment: Several community members — including advocates, a current encampment resident, and neighbors — described dangerous conditions at the Rivanna River encampment: no drinking water, no bathrooms, no waste disposal, and no fire safety equipment. Speakers criticized the city for failing to deliver on implied commitments to provide porta-potties, and accused police of conducting "wellness checks" that residents experience as harassment. One speaker noted the city's encampment consolidation policy is itself causing overcrowding. A current resident described a fire at the camp that took more than 30 minutes for the fire department to reach. City Manager Sanders later confirmed that adjacent property owners have denied access for porta-potty placement, that Cosner Brothers declined to help, and that the city is now looking into a willingness expressed by the Rivanna River Company. He reiterated that the riverside location is not a tenable long-term option.

Housing and development equity: Speakers including PHAR Executive Director Latricia Gals argued that density-focused development is being concentrated in historically Black and low-income neighborhoods rather than distributed city-wide. Another speaker criticized two recent luxury student housing projects (Fifeville and LB Collective) as not contributing to affordability, noting developers paid buyouts to avoid affordable unit requirements amounting to roughly $10 million in foregone fees. One speaker described a refugee family nearly losing housing despite reaching out to every city resource.

Immigration: Representatives of the Love Thy Neighbor Coalition, an interfaith group, called on council to continue opposing harmful immigration enforcement practices and to protect immigrant families.

Carbon offsets: A representative of the Community Climate Collaborative urged council not to renew the BP carbon offset contract, citing specific projects she characterized as funding fossil fuel expansion rather than genuine carbon reduction.

Consent Agenda

The following items passed unanimously (5–0) without discussion:

Ordinance repealing Chapter 3 (Amusements) of city code (2nd reading)

Easement donations to VDOT for Route 250/Route 20 improvements

Right-of-way donation to VDOT for a roundabout at Route 631 and John Warner Parkway

$356,805 appropriation to Streets and Sidewalks operating budget (1 of 2)

$6,300 reallocation to Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs for FY27

$123,600 DCJS Victims of Crime Act grant appropriation (1 of 2)

$20,000 VDSS Family Assistance Management grant appropriation (1 of 2)

Vote: 5–0

City Manager Report: Human Rights Commission Annual Report

Director Todd Niemeyer and Commission Chair Heather Roberson Gasin presented the 2025 annual report. Niemeyer outlined the commission's structure and its dual role addressing individual discrimination complaints and systemic policy change. He noted two staff vacancies — a Policy and Impact Analyst and a Community Outreach Specialist — are currently being filled, weakening outreach capacity. The commission's 2025 focus was housing access and stability; 2026 focus is broadening to economic stability across protected classes. Niemeyer confirmed the city's attempt to enter a Fair Housing Assistance Program (FHAP) agreement with HUD was denied — both because the city's ordinance protects gender identity and sexual orientation, which the current federal administration opposes, and because HUD stated it now prefers to work only with state-level agencies. Council members asked about better formal dialogue with the commission; the chair expressed interest in more regular communication and invited councilors to attend commission meetings.

City Manager Report: Building Inspections Delays

Deputy City Manager James Ruiz reported significant backlogs in building permit review and inspections due to sudden loss of two inspector positions, extended medical leave, and a surge of large projects. The city has two on-call inspection firms contracted but not yet certified; one additional plan reviewer begins this week. Staff held a 7 a.m. meeting Monday with 60–80 members of the building community to explain the situation. Plans include loosening third-party inspection policies and reassessing staffing needs in the next budget cycle. Councilor Payne voiced support for third-party inspections and a culture of flexibility in code interpretation.

City Manager Report: Homeless Services

City Manager Sanders reported on a visit to Chapel Hill, where city officials described the importance of coordination among service providers. He noted the Community Foundation is working with the local continuum of care on an operations plan for Holiday Drive. The city is focused on encampment protocols and leadership alignment, and Sanders is meeting with Holiday Drive business owners Wednesday and with PHAR later in the week to discuss a potential overnight shelter at Holiday Drive.

Public Hearing: Utility Rate Changes — Gas, Water, and Sanitary Sewer (1 of 2)

Deputy Director of Utilities Jason Mackley and Finance Director Chris Cullinan presented proposed FY27 utility rates. The combined increase for the average city customer is approximately $9.54 per month across all four utilities, compared to a $12.84 increase last year. Key highlights:

Water: Revenue requirement up ~$2.5M, largely driven by the city's share of RWSA operations and debt service. Proposed monthly service charge increases from $10 to $12.50 for a standard residential meter.

Wastewater: Revenue requirement up ~$1.4M. Same service charge increase.

Stormwater: Revenue requirement up ~$906,000, driven by capital project costs and debt service.

Natural gas: Revenue requirement down ~$1.3M due to lower natural gas commodity prices; a $600,000 credit from a Columbia Gas rate case settlement is being passed through to customers via reduced rates.

Staff noted water and wastewater rates have risen approximately $600/year per average customer since 2019. Projected annual rate increases of 8–9% are expected for several years as RWSA's Community Water Supply Plan projects come online, representing a $77M city share of a $264M regional project.

A significant debate emerged over BP carbon offsets: approximately $300,000 of gas utility revenue is budgeted to purchase carbon offsets through BP. A community speaker presented research arguing the specific projects funded — including a wind farm powering an Argentine oil field expansion, cookstove projects with known measurement problems, and a members-only private hunting club forest — are not achieving genuine carbon reduction. Multiple councilors, including Councilor Payne and Councilor Snook, expressed reluctance to renew even for one year. City Attorney confirmed the legal question of whether the city must spend the offset money on certified offsets (versus local initiatives like weatherization) is one of policy rather than hard legal obligation. Staff confirmed the BP contract has arrived but has not yet been signed. Council directed staff to hold off signing while they deliberate ahead of the second reading.

Vote: No vote taken; first of two readings. Public hearing closed.

Public Hearing: Gas Connection Fee (1 of 2)

Staff proposed increasing the residential gas service connection fee from $340 to $1,950, effective January 1, 2027. The previous fee covered only materials; the new fee reflects the full cost of labor and installation for up to 150 feet. New gas connections have declined 75% over the past seven to eight years; only 7 of 95 new connections last year were in the city. Council and a community speaker from the Community Climate Collaborative expressed support for the change as a step toward reflecting the real cost of connecting to fossil fuel infrastructure.

Vote: No vote taken; first of two readings. Will be placed on consent agenda for June 15.

Children's Services Act Funding Appropriations (Items 12 & 13, 1 of 2 readings each)

Social Services Director (identified as "Leon" in the transcript, likely Leon Henry) explained that CSA costs have escalated sharply: children in foster care have doubled over two years from 48 to 105, substantiated referrals rose from 323 in FY24 to nearly 500 in FY25, and special education placements have grown. The two related resolutions together appropriate $2,076,696 in additional state/federal funds for at-risk children and families, return $1,848,424 in previously over-transferred general fund money from CSA fund balance, and add $423,546 in city funds to cover current-year CSA obligations. Councilor Payne flagged anticipated worsening impacts from federal SNAP and Medicaid cuts; the director noted Virginia expects over 300,000 people to lose Medicaid and ~50,000 to lose SNAP, with further guidance due June 6.

Vote: No vote taken; first of two readings. Both items to be placed on consent for June 15.

CAT Transit Capital Projects — $16,846,224 Appropriation (1 of 2)

CAT Director Mr. Williams presented a request to appropriate $16.8M in FTA and DRPT grants (with a $673,849 local match) covering FY25 and FY26 award cycles. Funds will purchase battery electric buses (arriving within two weeks), diesel expansion buses, and a major upgrade to the automatic vehicle location (AVL) system for real-time bus tracking. Council discussed the decision to purchase diesel rather than hybrid buses for the expansion fleet: staff cited a cost differential of roughly $500,000 per bus and noted the priority is building the case for a $35–40M maintenance facility upgrade needed to support any large-scale alternative-fuel fleet. The three initial battery electric buses are being evaluated in partnership with the Office of Sustainability over a two-year pilot. Council also noted delays in Dominion Virginia Power completing electrical infrastructure work needed for charging, with a target of completion before end of September to avoid hurricane-season resource conflicts.

Vote: No vote taken; first of two readings. To be placed on consent for June 15.

Key Takeaways

Vibrant Community Fund reform is on the horizon: Council gave strong direction to rethink the VCF structure — moving toward fewer strategic focus areas, longer multi-year grants, shared outcome metrics, and separating arts organizations into their own review process by FY28. Major redesign is targeted for FY29.

Participatory budgeting is moving forward: Council unanimously directed staff to develop a participatory budgeting program, likely via RFP, with project implementation targeted for FY28 — reviving a process that was started but abandoned in 2019.

BP carbon offset contract is in question: Council signaled it does not want to renew the BP carbon offset contract, even for one year; the unsigned contract is on hold pending second-reading deliberations, with the city attorney researching whether the rate ordinance can be adjusted before final adoption.

Utility rates rising ~$10/month for average customer: FY27 rate increases are slightly lower than last year's but part of a sustained trend; staff projects 8–9% annual increases for several years driven by RWSA's Community Water Supply Plan.

Unhoused residents at Free Bridge lack basic resources: Multiple speakers and council discussion confirmed the city has not yet secured porta-potty access near the encampment due to property owner refusals; city is pursuing a lead from the Rivanna River Company and is in ongoing discussions about a potential overnight shelter at Holiday Drive.

AI-generated summary from voice-to-text transcript. Not the official record. Verify important details with the source documents linked above.

What happened at this meeting

Report: Investing in Community

# Summary: Report: Investing in Community

Grant Program Manager Taylor Harvey Ryan presented the city's eight grant programs providing resources to nonprofits and community partners, with detailed focus on the Vibrant Community Fund (VCF), which serves as general operational support for organizations serving Charlottesville residents. Staff outlined significant process improvements for FY28-FY29, including eliminating the $75,000 site visit threshold in favor of a risk-based approach, expanding technical assistance to new organizations, and improving applicant accessibility. However, the VCF faces substantial challenges: in the last cycle, 84 applications requested over $5 million while only $2.4-2.7 million was available, creating funding gaps and confusion among nonprofits about whether VCF funding is guaranteed versus competitive. Council members, including Lloyd, raised concerns about fragmentation across the city's $2.3 million in grant funding, recommending a more coordinated, top-down approach with dedicated funding by subject area (~$600,000 each for topics like re-entry and mentoring) and oversight committees similar to the Housing Advisory Committee model. Additionally, staff reported on the Human Rights Commission's 2025 community engagement work, which discovered that mental health emerged as the top community concern even above housing, and emphasized the need for expanded stakeholder outreach and improved formal dialogue between the commission and city council regarding how recommendations are received and implemented.

Report: Participatory Budgeting 5:30 PM Closed Meeting (CRHA interviews) 6:30 PM Business Session

# Participatory Budgeting Discussion Summary

Staff presented participatory budgeting as a democratic process enabling residents to vote on community-proposed projects for city funding, framing it as an opportunity to rebuild trust following a failed 2019 pilot where the city allocated $100,000 but did not execute. The proposed timeline includes idea collection in August/October, proposal development through February, voting in April, with earliest implementation in FY28, and potential projects range from playground improvements and public safety lighting to neighborhood signage and pocket parks. Council members, including Chrissy and Councilor Ashton, raised concerns about project feasibility verification, cost validation, and ensuring broad community representation beyond neighborhood associations, prompting staff to emphasize robust outreach using multiple methods (street outreach with incentives, online submissions, media engagement) to reduce participation barriers. Staff clarified that projects need not be highly technical and that a vetting process would eliminate infeasible ideas before voting, while noting the inherent tension between process speed and meaningful engagement. Council emphasized that recommitting to participatory budgeting requires specifying funding amounts for FY28 and potentially demonstrating the concept through a single neighborhood pilot to rebuild community trust in government responsiveness.

Resolution: Resolution to Authorize Reallocation of $6,300 of Previously Appropriated Funding to Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs (SEE) for FY 2027

Staff presented on the reallocation of previously appropriated funding to social services, explaining how funds are used to stabilize families and prevent foster care placement through kinship support, counseling services, mentoring, housing assistance, and food support. A council member asked about the funding source and whether the allocation would last through the end of the fiscal year, which staff confirmed. Council members expressed support for the actions, with one noting the importance of highlighting the behind-the-scenes work, and raised concerns about anticipated impacts from SNAP benefit cuts and Medicaid changes affecting over 300,000 people statewide, with staff reporting that 30 immigrant families had already lost SNAP benefits since August 2025 and 8 more were anticipated by October.

Resolution: Resolution to appropriate the Virginia Department of Social Services Family Assistance Management (FAM) grant in the amount of $20,000 (1 of 2 readings)

# Summary

A staff member presented a request for additional Children's Services Act (CSA) funds totaling $2,700,600.96 to address significantly increased costs driven by a doubling of children in foster care (from 48 to 105), rising substantiated referrals (from 323 to nearly 500), and expanded special education programs. Chris Cullen, Director of Finance, subsequently presented a resolution to return $1,848,424 to the General Fund while appropriating an additional $423,546 to the CSA Fund, noting that the city's initial FY25 transfer had resulted in excess fund balance due to lower-than-anticipated actual costs. The increased demand for prevention services—including mental health, substance use, domestic violence support, and emergency housing assistance—has driven the need for additional CSA resources to keep families together and prevent children from entering foster care. After confirming that available funds were sufficient to cover end-of-fiscal-year needs, the council agreed to place this item on the consent agenda for the June 15th meeting.

Public Public Hearing and Ordinance to Amend and Reordain City Code Chapter 31 Hearing/Ord.: (Utilities) to Establish New Utility Rates and Service Fees for City Gas, Water, and Sanitary Sewer (1 of 2 readings)

# Summary: City Manager Report

City Manager Sanders introduced multiple departmental updates, beginning with the Office of Human Rights annual report presented by Todd Niemeyer and chair Heather Roberson Gasin, covering the division's six key work categories and recent staffing changes including a new policy and impact analyst position. On operational matters, Sanders reported staffing challenges in plan review and inspections despite recent hiring efforts, noting that a 60-80 person meeting with the building community was held to discuss concerns and potential solutions, with one Council member advocating for more flexible code enforcement approaches. Sanders also updated Council on homeless services coordination efforts, including facilitation of a learning panel in Chapel Hill and work on an operations plan for Holiday Drive, while acknowledging that encampments along the Rivanna River present challenges due to property owner restrictions on sanitation facility placement. Deputy Director of Utilities Jason Mackley presented a comprehensive utility rate proposal showing an average residential increase of $9.54 monthly across four utilities, driven primarily by Ravenna Water and Sewer operations costs and capital improvements, with water rates projected to increase 8-9% annually over five years and natural gas rates decreasing due to lower commodity prices and Columbia Gas credits. The presentation included details on proposed service charge increases of $2.50 each for water and wastewater, a 25% increase in water service charges across all meter sizes, and a policy debate over the city's $300,000 annual BP carbon offset agreement, with public commenter Sybil Finn and Council members questioning whether those funds should instead support local weatherization and energy efficiency programs.

Agenda items (20)

Procedural (20)

1ProceduralReport: Investing in Community

The city will present a report on its community investment initiatives and programs.

What happened

2ProceduralReport: Participatory Budgeting 5:30 PM Closed Meeting (CRHA interviews) 6:30 PM Business Session

A closed meeting will be held to interview candidates for the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority, followed by a public business session discussing participatory budgeting efforts.

What happened

3ProceduralOrdinance: Ordinance repealing Sections 3-1 and 3-2 of Chapter 3, Amusements, of the Code of the City of Charlottesville, and Reserving Chapter 3 for future use (2nd reading)

City Council will vote on removing the old amusements regulations from the city code and clearing Chapter 3 for potential future use (second vote on this proposal).

4ProceduralResolution: Resolution to Authorize Donation of Easements in City-owned land to the Virginia Department of Transportation for the Route 250 and Route 20

The city is donating easements on city-owned land to the Virginia Department of Transportation to support improvements to Route 250 and Route 20.

5ProceduralResolution: Resolution to Authorize Donation of City Right-of-Way to the Virginia Department of Transportation for the Construction of a Roundabout at Route 631 and John Warner Parkway

Charlottesville will donate right-of-way land to the Virginia Department of Transportation to enable construction of a new roundabout at the intersection of Route 631 and John Warner Parkway.

6ProceduralResolution: Resolution to Appropriate $356,805 in Additional Funds to the Streets and Sidewalks Division Operating Budget (1 of 2 readings)

An additional $356,805 in funding is being requested for the city's Streets and Sidewalks Division to pay for operations and maintenance work (first vote).

7ProceduralResolution: Resolution to Authorize Reallocation of $6,300 of Previously Appropriated Funding to Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs (SEE) for FY 2027

The city is reallocating $6,300 in previously budgeted funds to Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs (SEE) for the fiscal year 2027.

What happened

8ProceduralResolution: Resolution to appropriate Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services Victims of Crime Act Grant Award FY26 - $123,600 (1 of 2 readings)

Charlottesville is accepting a $123,600 state grant from the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services to support crime victims (first vote).

9ProceduralResolution: Resolution to appropriate the Virginia Department of Social Services Family Assistance Management (FAM) grant in the amount of $20,000 (1 of 2 readings)

The city will accept a $20,000 state grant from the Virginia Department of Social Services to help low-income families (first vote).

What happened

10ProceduralPublic Public Hearing and Ordinance to Amend and Reordain City Code Chapter 31 Hearing/Ord.: (Utilities) to Establish New Utility Rates and Service Fees for City Gas, Water, and Sanitary Sewer (1 of 2 readings)

After a public hearing, City Council will vote on new utility rates and service fees for city gas, water, and sanitary sewer service (first vote).

What happened

11ProceduralPublic Public Hearing and Ordinance to Amend and Reordain Chapter 31 (Utilities) of Hearing/Ord.: the Code of the City of Charlottesville, 1990, as Amended, to Establish a Connection Fee for New Gas Service (1 of 2 readings)

After a public hearing, City Council will vote on establishing a new connection fee for customers requesting new gas service (first vote).

What happened

Staff presented a proposal to increase the gas service connection fee from $340 to $1,950 for residential customers (up to 150 feet of installation), effective January 1, 2027. A consultant review identified previously uncaptured labor costs that justified the increase. Council member Natalie expressed support, noting the original $340 fee seemed insufficient to cover actual labor costs, and Michael agreed it was a move in the right direction. Public commenter from the Community Climate Collaborative welcomed the increase as necessary to help residents understand the true cost of connecting to fossil fuels, though they noted the previous small fee increase had not discouraged hookups. Staff reported 95 new gas connection requests in the past year (7 in city, 88 in county), continuing a 75% decline over 7-8 years.

12ProceduralResolution: Resolution to Appropriate $2,076,696.00 in additional funding from the Virginia Office of Children’s Services to support at-risk children and families (1 of 2 readings)

The city will accept $2,076,696 in state funding from the Virginia Office of Children's Services to support at-risk youth and families (first vote).

What happened

The Mayor acknowledged that this was the last rate-setting moment for Lauren Hildebrand (appearing to be a utility staff member), who has announced her retirement effective August 1st. The Mayor and Council expressed appreciation for her steady leadership and dedicated service to the City of Charlottesville. A resolution to appropriate $2,076,696 in additional funding from the Virginia Office of Children Services to support at-risk children and families was introduced as the next item on the agenda.

13ProceduralResolution: Resolution to Return $1,848,424 to the General Fund and Appropriate an Additional Transfer of $423,546 to the Children Services Act Fund (1 of 2 readings)

The city will return $1,848,424 to its general fund and transfer an additional $423,546 to the Children Services Act Fund (first vote).

14ProceduralResolution: Resolution Appropriating funding from the Federal Transit Administration and the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation supporting multiple Charlottesville Area Transit capital projects - $16,846,224 (1 of 2 readings)

Charlottesville will accept $16,846,224 in federal and state transit grants to fund multiple bus and public transportation capital projects (first vote).

What happened

# Resolution Summary: CAT Transit Funding Appropriation

Mr. Williams presented a resolution to appropriate $16,846,224 from the Federal Transit Administration ($4,000,716,943) and Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation ($11,455,432), with a local match of $673,849, for multiple Charlottesville Area Transit (CAT) capital projects including battery electric vehicle purchases, infrastructure upgrades, and an upgrade to the CAT AVL system for real-time bus tracking. When a council member questioned the decision to purchase diesel buses instead of hybrid alternatives as part of a pivot from the original zero-emission plan, staff explained that diesel buses cost approximately $500,000 less than hybrids and that the fleet plan includes battery electric bus deliveries expected within two weeks, with additional BEVs arriving in March and diesel buses scheduled for February or March 2027. Staff committed to providing a detailed chart comparing lifecycle costs across diesel, hybrid, and battery electric options, with final Virginia State contract pricing expected by the end of July. Over the next two years, staff will collaborate with Gillig and the Office of Sustainability to evaluate the BEV pilot program by tracking metrics including vehicle usage frequency, electricity consumption, range, mileage, and mid-day charging requirements.

16ProceduralThis is an in-person meeting with an option for the public to participate electronically by registering in advance for the Zoom webinar at www.charlottesville.gov/zoom. The meeting may also be viewed on the City's streaming platforms and local government Channel 10. Individuals with disabilities who require assistance or special arrangements to participate in the public meeting may call (434) 987-1267 or submit a request via email to ada@charlottesville.gov. The City of Charlottesville requests that you provide 48 hours’ notice so that proper arrangements may be made.

Meeting access information: residents can attend in person or join via Zoom webinar at www.charlottesville.gov/zoom, watch on Channel 10, and those needing accommodations should call (434) 987-1267 or email ada@charlottesville.gov at least 48 hours in advance.

17ProceduralThe presiding officer shall ensure that individuals address their comments to City Council at appropriate times, in accordance with the meeting agenda and Council’s Rules of Procedure.

The meeting chair will ensure speakers address City Council at appropriate times following the published agenda and council rules.

18ProceduralNo person who is not a member of the city council shall orally address it until leave to do so has been granted by the city council or until invited to do so by the mayor. (City Code sec.2-71)

Only city councilors may speak without permission; all other speakers must request and receive approval from the city council or be invited by the mayor.

19ProceduralRemarks and actions that disrupt the progress of the Council meeting, and remarks from persons other than councilors, the City Manager, the City Attorney, or a presenter for an Agenda

This section describes prohibited disruptive conduct during City Council meetings.

20ProceduralThe presiding officer shall call an individual to order, including a councilor, when that individual goes afoul of these rules. The following are examples of remarks and behavior that are not permitted: i. Interrupting a speaker who is addressing Council at the speaker's microphone, or interrupting a speaker who has otherwise been invited to address Council during Community Matters or a Public Hearing ii. Interrupting a councilor who is speaking iii. Shouting, and talking (either individually or in concert with others) in a manner that prevents a speaker or a Councilor from being heard or that otherwise hinders the progress of the meeting iv. Blocking paths for emergency exit from the meeting room; engaging in any conduct that prevents a member of the audience from seeing or hearing councilors during a meeting; standing on chairs or tables within the Council meeting room v. Threats or incitement of violence toward councilors, City staff or members of the public vi. Engaging in conduct that is a criminal offense under the City Code or the Virginia Code vii. Campaigning for elected office viii. Promotion of private business ventures ix. Using profanity or vulgarity x. Personal attacks against Councilors, City staff or members of the public xi. Behavior which tends to intimidate others

The meeting chair may enforce order by calling individuals to order for prohibited behavior, including interrupting speakers, shouting, threats, profanity, personal attacks, and other disruptive conduct.

21ProceduralDuring a City Council meeting the presiding officer shall have control of the Council Chambers and the connecting halls and corridors within City Hall, and any other venue where a Council meeting is being held. In case of any conduct described above, the presiding officer may take measures deemed appropriate, including but not limited to suspending the meeting until order is restored, ordering areas to be cleared by the Sergeant at Arms, or requiring any individual to exit the meeting room and adjacent premises (connecting halls and corridors.)

The meeting chair has authority to control the council chambers and may suspend the meeting, clear areas, or remove individuals from the room if order cannot be maintained.

Additional votes recorded in minutes

Adopt meeting agenda

aye 5

Jen Fleisheraye

Juandiego Wadeaye

Lloyd Snookaye

Michael Payneaye

Natalie Oschrinaye

Convene closed session

aye 5

Jen Fleisheraye

Juandiego Wadeaye

Lloyd Snookaye

Michael Payneaye

Natalie Oschrinaye

Certify closed session

aye 5

Jen Fleisheraye

Juandiego Wadeaye

Lloyd Snookaye

Michael Payneaye

Natalie Oschrinaye

Adopt consent agenda

aye 5

Jen Fleisheraye

Juandiego Wadeaye

Lloyd Snookaye

Michael Payneaye

Natalie Oschrinaye

Adjourn meeting

aye 5

Jen Fleisheraye

Juandiego Wadeaye

Lloyd Snookaye

Michael Payneaye

Natalie Oschrinaye

Verbatim transcript available

834 transcript segments indexed

I call the Charlottesville City Council... Take the feedback. Just a moment. Not sure why. Okay. Let's try again. Okay. I call the Charlottesville City Council June 1st, 2026, meeting to order. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

Yes. Councilor Washington. Here. Councilor Payne. Here. Councilor Snell. Here. Vice Mayor Oshrin. Here. Mayor Wade. Here. Is there a motion to approve or amend the agenda? So moved. Second. Okay. All in favor, please say yes.

Yes. All opposed, please say no. Great. The motion passes five to zero. This meeting will be divided into three sections. The first is a work session to hear and discuss presentations that do not require a council vote, followed by a closed session, and then the regular business meeting at 6:30.

We do have closed session today. And today we're going to hear about investing in community and participatory budgeting, and Misty Grave and Chad will discuss that. Actually, so sorry. I will take over for a quick moment.

Yeah. Taylor Harvey Ryan is going to present to you Investing in Community. I'm going to do Participatory Budgeting. Misty is online in case we need her- Mm-hmm ... for the Vibrant Community Conversation.

But just to frame this evening for council and for the public, there's been a lot of conversations that you all have had in my almost five years now of you going through the Vibrant Community Fund process.

And we're going to let you have a little more fun today by talking to us about any changes that you might be interested in considering, any questions that you might like to pose that we can give answers to, but to go beyond Vibrant Community, just to really take a look at all of our investment opportunities in community, so our HOME CDBG, our CAF, our HOP.

So we have the staff representatives for those various efforts who are here. But Taylor, as the Grants Program Manager, is focused on compliance, getting our agreements initiated each year, conducting site visits, and more or less keeping track of all of the city's grant-making and grant processes across the city.

So I'm going to turn it over to her and have her give some general overview for how things shape up in our current budget process, and then I will talk to you about participatory budgeting after you have engaged in whatever you want to talk about in regards to Vibrant Community Fund and any priority setting that you might be interested in.

Taylor. Hello, Mayor Wade, City Councilors, and City Manager Sanders. My name is Taylor Harvey Ryan, and I have the privilege of serving as the city's Grant Program Manager. All right. Today I will be providing a brief overview of the city's grant funds, specifically the funding that the city provides to nonprofits and community partners.

I will review the city's grant opportunities, the grant processes and timeline, as well as a brief mention of our compliance protocols. The city provides grant funding through eight different programs.

They're listed on the screen. So we have Intergovernmental/Contractual, Fundamental Organizations, Vibrant Communities Funds, Charlottesville Affordable Housing Fund, also known as CAHF, Housing Operations Program Support, HOPS, Community Development Block Grant, CDBG, HOME Investment Partnerships, HOME, and Small Business Energy Efficiency Incentive Grant Program.

I will give an overview of six of these programs, and I will let the Department of Human Services give you the full run through of Vibrant Communities Funds, and then today we will not discuss the Small Business Energy Efficiency Incentive Grant Program, as that runs on a totally different timeline through Office of Sustainability.

All right. So first I'll talk about Intergovernmental/Contractual. The City of Charlottesville provides funding to organizations through a funding agreement or MOA or MOU for services to or for city residents that we're either contractually obligated to provide or provide a required benefit for the city.

The list of Intergovernmental/Contractual agencies is there on the right side of the screen, and there are about 22 of them, with the note that Region 10 is only counted once, even though we support multiple of their programs.

Next is our Fundamental Organizations. Fundamental Organizations is now in its second cycle of the formal designation by the city.They are any entity designated by the city which provides a unique, unduplicated service to the residents of the city of Charlottesville.

The service provided must be in alignment with the priorities of the city as indicated in the strategic plan framework, as well as be a service that if not provided, the city would either need to take on itself or fund another service provider to provide.

Please note that we don't take applications for the designation of fundamental. We just designate you, and then you apply for funding as a fundamental. And then there are 10 organizations that are designated as fundamental so far, and these are their reasonings for their designation listed there.

Next, we have our CAHF and HOPS. Our neighborhood development services team manages CAHF and HOPS. CAHF is our Charlottesville Affordable Housing Fund, which provides critical resources to nonprofit organizations and developers for the creation, preservation, and rehabilitation of affordable housing units within the city.

The goals of that program are to increase the affordable housing stock, preserve existing affordable housing, support long-term affordability, stabilize neighborhoods and prevent displacement, and also promote inclusive growth and housing equity.

HOPS, or our Housing Operations Program Support, provides funding to support the operational needs of nonprofit organizations that provide essential housing-related services. The HOPS funding aims to ensure housing stability and prevent homelessness by assisting organizations that serve vulnerable populations, including low-income residents, individuals at risk of eviction, and those experiencing homelessness.

And unlike the CAHF, which targets development and preservation, HOPS focuses on service-oriented programs such as rapid re-housing, permanent supportive housing, and eviction prevention. And the goals of that program are to enhance housing stability, support vulnerable populations, promote continuum of care or CoC alignment, and then strengthen program capacity and operations.

Then we have our CDBG and HOME, which is the Community Development Block Grant and our HOME Investment Partnerships grants, which are both funds provided to the city from the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, also known as HUD.

CDBG is used to provide funding that helps Charlottesville nurture healthy and vibrant communities with special emphasis on fostering benefits for income-eligible residents. And the eligible activities under CDBG are economic development, public facilities and infrastructure enhancements, affordable housing activities, public service activities, and planning and administration.

We also have the HOME, which is managed by our partners at TJPDC on our behalf, and it provides funding for housing rehabilitation, down payment assistance, and new construction for qualifying households in the region.

So that was an overview of a vast majority of our grant programs, and now I'll talk to you about the process and timeline, and this is just a high-level overview. So organizations must submit an application unless they are told otherwise.

So if we have an MOU or MOA, then you might be exempted from having to submit an application. Otherwise, you do apply. And the only exemptions are within our intergovernmental and contractual category.

All others are application only. We do have a, I'll say new grants portal, which is our Neighborly software, which we introduced last year formally. And so we have had folks through CAHF, HOPS, CDBG, HOME, and Fundamental apply through Neighborly so far.

And then this year, Intergovernmental and DCF will come in through our Neighborly portal as well. So we do put out a notice of funding opportunity. We normally post it by July 1st, which lists out all of the application timelines for the entire fiscal year.

We are amending those timelines this year so that it better aligns with the budget process. So typically, we have had applications range from summer all the way through winter. But now we are tightening that timeframe, so it's just summer and fall.

And then we will have our review process with all of our reviewers take place in winter-ish, so that we can have our recommendations for funding to council in alignment with that budget season. And I'll say this most aggressively impacts CDBG and HOME as that review process normally was January, February, so they're backing up.

Okay. And lastly, I'll talk to you briefly about compliance. So the city has implemented a new compliance model, which does include quarterly reporting, executing agreements, and monitoring site visits.

I will say we have been doing this in some way, shape, fashion, or form for many years, but we just did not have a systematic way of doing it. So now we have one. And so we are implementing that. And so unless you are an organization covered by an MOU or MOA, you will have an executed funding agreement or grant agreement through my office, which will indicate your funding amount, your scope of work, and all the other legal and technical terms that you folks need to know.

Those agreements also include your reporting schedule and your payment schedule, which is typically quarterly. We monitor your reports for completion and to track how organizations are doing in relation to that scope of work and meeting their outcomes.

So if we gave you X amount of dollars and you said you were going to serve this many residents, we are tracking to say, "You spent this much money. Did you serve this many residents?" So we are actually tracking that.

And we are also doing site visits, whether they be in person or virtual, to see how folks are actually doing with those services and actually going to be able to see those services as well. Site visits have been introduced, but they are going to be more robust and higher in number and cadence going forward.

And then alongside compliance, because I don't want folks to just think that we are going out and just checking up on you, we are also offering technical assistance, whether it be with your applications, your reporting, and then also helping folks to maintain that compliance so that we can ensure that the programs are operating at their best using the funding that the city has provided to serve the city residentsI think that's my last talking point.

And then is it back to you? Okay, cool. And then my last-- Yeah. Misty. Turn it over to you. Misty. Oh, Misty. Give it to Misty. Yeah. Is she online? I'm here. Okay. Yeah, she's there. All right. I think you should hide.

Good afternoon, mayor and council, and members of staff, and the public. My name is Misty Graves. I'm the director of the Department of Human Services, and tonight with my colleague, Reggie Allen, who is our human services planner, going to go over Vibrant Community Fund briefly, and then open up some facilitated discussion around what considerations council may have for future iterations of Vibrant Community Fund.

So the goal of our presentation for the next several slides, Reggie is going to give a brief overview of FY28, and we start planning FY28 in the middle of even submitting our FY27 budget. So we are ready to discuss some of those changes, and then, again, facilitate a conversation to get some clarity around council's vision for FY29.

Reggie? Okay. Thank you, Misty. So again, my name is Reginald Allen, and I'm going to be talking about some of the updates. The most obvious update, Hunter Smith would usually be here, but I am the new Hunter Smith, the new Michael Jordan when it comes to this process.

So bear with me. So again, I'm going to talk about some of the updates. One of the main updates that we want to talk about is the elimination of the $75,000 threshold. So as you may know, previously, site visits were based on a $75,000 funding threshold.

So we want to remove that threshold, and we want to become a little bit more strategic and our approach be more targeted, which ultimately streamlines this process and ensure that site visits are guided by program need, risk, and organizational factors rather just than the funding source alone.

So, again, we want to eliminate the $75,000 threshold. This change ensures that all programs receiving funding are subject to the same level of review, oversight, regardless of the amount requested. We believe removing the threshold promotes greater equity and consistency by ensuring that all organizations are held to the same expectations and standards regardless of funding level.

I also want to talk about how we're going to do that, what's going to be the criteria. We don't want to just eliminate the site visit because we want to have what's best practices. So there is a criteria that we have included.

So we're going to look at the program risk level, and these are going to be programs that we identify as higher risk due to funding structure, complexity, or other operational factors that may warrant more frequent monitoring.

Performance outcomes. Programs that are not meeting their established goals, benchmarks, or performance expectations may require additional support or oversight through site visits. And compliance history.

These are going to be organizations with prior compliance concerns, reporting issues, or findings from previous monitoring activities may be prioritized for site visits to ensure corrective actions have been implemented.

Could I stop you a second? Go ahead. You said one of the factors would be something about the structure that creates a greater risk. Yeah. Explain that for me. So as you know, there are new organizations that may apply for a Vibrant Community Fund, and so sometimes with their particular applications, there's some guidelines that they don't meet.

So if they're able to submit the application, we're able to go over there and ask some of these identifying questions. So that's what we mean by that, if that makes sense. So largely for groups that you don't know very well.

Yeah. Like new and emerging organizations. Uh-huh. Okay. Yeah. So generally, when new and emerging applications are submitted, they're usually asking for $10,000, $20,000, which we don't commit. Okay.

We don't do a site visit for them. So now we're looking at all organizations. Okay. Thank you. Okay. All right. And so another criteria is if there's been changes in operations, which means significant organizational changes such as leadership transitions, staffing changes, program restructuring, or modifications.

We're going to also look at those organizations and potentially do a site visit. As I just spoke about new and established organizations, we're going to look at new organizations because they could actually benefit from an increased engagement and technical assistance.

Let's see. Increased efficiency through targeted approach. We believe as we implement this model, we do anticipate a reduction in the overall number of site visits, but this reduction is intentional and reflects a shift toward quality and impact rather than just quantity.

And so let's look at some of the highlights. The Vibrant Community Fund process is designed to be transparent, inclusive, and result-driven. So these highlights reflect the transparency, community involvement, and accountability.

And so the first point that I have up there is recruitment of reviewers. We always want to highlight the reviewers because we understand that this is a critical component of maintaining a fair, transparent, and effective review process.

And so we intentionally cultivate a diverse review panel to ensure that applications are evaluated through multiple perspectives, resulting in more balanced, equitable, and informed funding recommendations.

So participation in this review process provides reviewers with valuable insight into community needs, available services, and the impact of local organizations. I initially started out with the Vibrant Community Fund as a reviewer.So being a reviewer, for me, it's been like a 360 just to be able to start in that process and then actually become one who's working on this process, to be part of the process.

Reggie, watch it, I started as well. I understood you were coaching me, so here I am. Yeah. Look where it's led. Yes. Yeah. And so I also want to highlight that as Taylor spoke, we do have orientation and technical assistance.

And so we provide orientation and this assistance as an important strategy for ensuring a fair, transparent, and accessible application process. We have ongoing technical assistance and office hours provided for applicants that they can just come in there and ask questions if they need me.

If they need some technical assistance, we'll give them a time, and we'll just allow them an opportunity to ask whatever they need to ask. And I also want to highlight that this process, we have a continuous improvement in accountability, which every year we get together and we identify improvements, we gather feedback from applicants as well as some of our reviewers, and we're just continually looking for ways to improve this process.

And let me see the last one, transparent and competitive application process. This process is based on transparency, it's competitive, and we want to also make sure that the organizations that are involved, that they understand the transparency.

And so with this process, organizations are encouraged to evaluate their programs, strengthen their proposals, and demonstrate measurable impacts in order to remain competitive. And so that is all what I have here.

I'll take it now, Reggie. Thank you. All righty, Misty. Reggie mentioned our commitment to continuous improvement, and so over the years, we have collected sort of a summary of feedback and challenges that we know to be true.

One, as you all know, the number of organizations applying and the amounts that they request far exceed the amount of funding available. Currently, in this last cycle, we had 84 applications, plus arts-oriented applications, and 10 cultural events applications.

And so that was probably over $5 million in requests, and we typically work with a 2.4 to 2.7 available funds in the Vibrant Community Fund. We also hear that it's challenging when we are not able to fully fund certain organizations.

As you know, there are certain tiers to the recommendations that the reviewers provide. And a lot of times funding is not going to be fully awarded to those organizations. So we are also considering, does that impact the feasibility of these organizations to be able to carry out their programs?

We also look at the organizations that have historically applied to Vibrant Community Fund. It is a competitive process, but Vibrant Community Fund has been a mainstay in this community to support nonprofits, to continue to support the good work that they do.

And sometimes, if we are going to make any changes to the Vibrant Community Fund in any sort of major way, we want to make sure that we fully share that kind of information out with our nonprofits. Especially if there's a different structure or a different priority or direction that council wants to go.

We want to make sure that folks that have historically gotten funds from the city are aware of any changes that we do. So we wouldn't implement any major changes until FY29. And again, that's what we're here for, is to kind of hear from you all about any expectations that council may have around that.

And then, at times, at the end of the review process and during the budget work sessions, council has augmented organizations, their funding requests in that budget work session. And that, at times, can interfere with the Vibrant Community Fund's reviewing, and also sometimes offers an imbalance and inequity around those other organizations that don't get augmented, and can be challenging if nonprofits aren't getting the same kind of access to those augmentations.

Next slide. So I'm just going to take a moment here and just highlight that the original intent of the Vibrant Community Fund was to start off as an operational support to a variety of nonprofits in the area that support council's vision.

And I wanted to just lead off to get some initial council feedback. When you think about the purpose of Vibrant Community Fund and what council hopes to achieve with that process, what are some of the goals that you all have as a sort of foundational principle of what the Vibrant Community is for?

I don't know if anybody has some initial... No. So you want comments now? Mm-hmm. Okay. Well, I can go to the next slide and then take all the comments together if that's helpful.Mm-hmm. You can go ahead.

Okay. Some of the considerations that I would offer up is that there's some things to consider that it may address some of these challenges that we've had year over year. Some localities will choose fewer priority areas for eligibility.

Currently, our priority areas align with the nine outcome areas that city council has adopted. Some localities may choose one, two, three, or varying number, but narrow the scope down so that only eligible applications would meet fewer pillars.

We are also looking at reorganizing the arts and cultural events process that will go through Sam Sanders for review and a separate process. So that would also help free up, potentially, some of the funds in the general allocations.

And we've talked at times about collaborative grant making. One of the challenges that we've heard is that there's several organizations that seem to have similar services, and how might we encourage folks in the nonprofit community to collaborate their funding, their services, and align them with a funding request in a more collaborative way.

And then there's a number of other things that we've heard, that VCF can be challenging, and that it may need to be tweaked or there's some adjustments, and you all have asked for this work session, so I want to just encourage you all to just engage in a conversation about what are the things that you want Reggie and I to leave this session knowing, and how we might take some of that input back to continuously improve and adjust the Vibrant Community Fund so it best meets council's vision.

So is it back to us now? Mm-hmm. It'd be good if you can bring up those questions again for the next couple- Back one slide The one about just the origin statement. What do you want- Yeah, maybe that one ...

what would you-- It's now currently a general operational support, much like the HOPS. It's general operations for services that meet the needs of residents in this community. Is that still the vision for the Vibrant Community Fund?

And what does council hope to achieve with having this opportunity? Right. Okay. Thank you. Michael, you have any thoughts? I guess to the questions posed, I would say one very small practical purpose I see of the VCF is if there are nonprofits who, if they can demonstrate that they have support from local government, can access additional funding sources, that there's a mechanism by which to do that, I think is important, too, more broadly.

I think just that there's a mechanism in the city by which to support nonprofit partners on programs that are making a measurable impact on improving people's lives in the Charlottesville community. And I would hope that what we can accomplish is over time, we are making an impact in ways that can be measured.

I guess some of the questions I have are would we have more of a measurable impact doing what we do now, which is more smaller amounts of money across numerous different nonprofits, or would it be us making larger investments into a smaller number of new programs?

And in addition to that, I know when the Vibrant Community Fund process was created, one of the goals was to try to get a more diverse set of nonprofits able to get funding so you didn't have as much of a dynamic where institutional connected nonprofits usually get the majority of funding.

So, and from my understanding, the VCF has been a success in terms of diversifying the amount of nonprofits that have been able to get funding, or newer nonprofits are able to get funding in a way they weren't before.

So there's a way to kind of continue and advance that work because I think that is a win for the VCF process. And yeah. And I guess the other thing is I know it's said every year throughout the process to nonprofits that the Vibrant Community Fund is not for your year-to-year core part of your operations budget.

This is for new programs or to do new things, but if you're relying on it to take care of your core staff or just to function as an organization, you're not approaching the VCF process correctly. And we hear every year from numerous nonprofits that many don't view it that way.

They are applying, viewing it as kind of a guaranteed, baked-in part of their core operational budget, and that without VCF funding, their concern is they may not be able to continue to function as a nonprofit.

So, what-What additional, if anything, can be done to kind of get that message understood that that's just not what the VCF is for? Because funding is never guaranteed year to year. It seems to me if we're going to do that, and that's a perfectly legitimate discussion to have, but then the purpose of VCF as proposed on this slide here would have to be changed because this purpose says general operational support.

To current- It doesn't say just new programs. So I can imagine, I can understand why nonprofits might be a little bit confused about what they're supposed to be doing. Yeah, and I guess maybe new programs is not the ideal word for it.

But I guess the core of it is just funding is not guaranteed year to year. So if your budget assumes that you get VCF funding, you're approaching it wrong because it's a competitive process. There's no guarantee- Yeah ...

you get it. And we do share that feedback with all of the applications several times throughout the process. I think I'm just acknowledging that historically, that has been sort of what Snook mentioned, is that organizations do and have relied on city support to continue their services.

Okay. Nan? We need to get little holograms of Chrissy saying, "One-time only money. One time only money." So, thank you for the presentation. My first question is about the site visits, where you said it's the elimination of the $75,000 threshold, which means it's open up to all organizations.

But then there's going to be increased analysis for more organizations, but then ultimately, you're anticipating a reduction in overall site visits. So is that like you're measuring twice, cutting once by doing more prep and analysis without a site visit?

Or how does that bandwidth work out? How is the workload reducing if it's expanding the opportunity for more activity? So we're saying it's going to reduce- Come up. Microphone. Oh. So we're saying that it's going to reduce on our end, but even as Taylor said, with the compliance part, they're going to be monitoring them and doing site visits as well.

So instead of us doing one organization having two or three different site visits, we will work with Taylor as well to see, "Hey, would you consider this particular organization? Do you think that we should do a site visit on that organization?" But that's what we're saying with my process, with the reviewers on my end, it could potentially reduce the site visits.

Because what we're finding is that we're going to the same organizations every year. So the VCF office and grants office will now coordinate site visits- Absolutely ... processes. Correct. Yes. And we would only review or we would only provide site visits if there was a compelling- Mm-hmm ...

for a site visit versus just a blanket statement that you- Yeah ... you have to. Yeah. Because in time past, it was 75,000 to 100 and just- Right ... guaranteed a site visit. Yeah. You know? Okay. And then, thank you.

Are the site visits announced, or is it like, "Surprise, we're here"? I don't know. What does a site visit entail? So, again, during orientation, all organizations are notified that if you ask for this particular amount of money, we're going to conduct a site visit.

And so what the reviewers would do, we will look over the organizations, and we will work out the logistics as to when we should meet them. But yeah, they're well aware of the site visits. We coordinate the time that best works for them, and we will meet them to do a site visit.

So it's less of a health inspector style visit and more of like a, "Hey, we're going to meet with you and talk with you about your program needs and try to- Yeah ... work with you on your application." Absolutely.

Yeah. Because there's some things that they cannot convey, the message that they're trying to get out to the community. They can't necessarily captivate all that, capture that in the application. So we're there to ask some additional questions.

Okay. Thank you for explaining that. Okay. Appreciate it. And then for the other consideration slide, there was talk about reorganizing the arts and culture event process. Is that reflecting the Arts Council, Arts Commission discussion that we've had?

That's part of it. So the desire would be for us to take the arts events, arts organizations, not arts events, arts organizations out of the VCF process, place them with the Arts Council, and fund that effort with folks who know what art is, know how to evaluate art, know how to appreciate it, award funding and supports.

And then the events today would stay with me and the city manager's office as a part of the Quality of Life Fund. That is the one-time fund that was originally set up that I have been using to support community enrichment events.

So an event that is meant for everyone that comes around on our annual calendar. Think Tom Tom, Soul of Seaville, Black Business Expo, Pride Festival- Third Thursday ... Cinberres, all the various things that have become a part of our DNA each year.

We ask a couple of questions to get details, and then it's a small, varying nominal amount, up to a large amount, depending on the size of the event and the scope of how many people might be attending, the economic development impact.

That then becomes more of a review of those types of events separate from-What is about program support for an organization's operations and ability to serve the community on a day-to-day basis year-round.

So it's to kind of split that out and let VCF just be about programming, safety net supports, strategic movements. Let the events be more of a community enrichment analysis by my team, and then have the arts-related organizations be arts council.

We could move the events to arts council. We'll have to determine that based on what becomes of the arts council and what that scope feels like. Thanks. And then where are we with the arts council, arts commissions process?

Is James over there? I can't see around this wombat here. We are setting up meetings with the folks who've been working on the arts council, and we're going to be following up on that. Our next step in the process is to release an RFP or otherwise put information out to get somebody on board to help us set up the commission and take the next steps to pursue the council.

What's our goal timeline for all of this? In an ideal world, we have stuff ready for sometime in the fall. But looking at capacity issues. Mm-hmm. Make sure we're set up to go. Okay, great. Thank you.

I'm wondering if, this is not the most important thing, but all the things you were just talking about, the arts events and the things that are lively activities for the community, that's part of what makes a community vibrant.

Mm-hmm. And so if it's changing to a more service and catching people falling through the cracks type priority for the VCF funds, I wonder if that's still the right title for it, if we're kind of shifting the arts out of it, if that's the thing.

Again, not the biggest concern, but I know semantics do matter at some point. I guess I don't have tons of major thoughts about this at the moment, other than I can appreciate the fact that it is difficult to have a food bank and a gallery in the same pot competing for the same money.

Even though both contribute to the community in totally different ways, it's hard to pit those against each other in a competitive grant fund or pool. I think one of the things that we all agree is that we spend a significant part of the budget process talking about VCF when it's ultimately a small part of- Yeah ...

the overall budget. And I appreciate the fact that we get to review this and can top people off here and there from our fund. But if there's any way to kind of streamline that, I don't know if there is or not, it might just be something that we have to do every year.

Okay. Cool. Thank you. Yeah. It's hard for me, this process, because I cut my teeth on nonprofits in this community, and a lot of them still have my number so Maloney. Well, I have a couple thoughts. The first thought I had is that I have been very critical of council coming in behind the VCF committee and changing allocations, either reducing or usually increasing the allocations in various ways.

When we have not reviewed the 990s, we have not looked at anybody's budgets, we have not done any of that other kind of stuff that I assume that the VCF committee had actually done. And so just from a sort of how you would set up a system to have the ultimate authority be in the hands of people who know less than the folks who started with the recommendations, doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Which is why I have, for the last few years, just taken the position of, I'm not second guessing the VCF committee. They did their work, and let's go with it. The broader concern that I have and what I'm really thinking about is not so much fussing about the process as looking at the substantive result.

We wound up with, I don't know, I figured out 10 or 11 different organizations doing some form of after school activity for kids. Some of it ostensibly mentoring, some of it ostensibly tutoring, some of it for sports.

We wound up in all of these different categories. Over $300,000 for mentoring activities, 130,000, $140,000 expressly for tutoring. And plus, some of the other grants had a component of each one of those things in there.

So my purpose in reciting all of this is not to try to come up with specific numbers, but rather just to point out that what we end up with at the end of this process is... It's sort of a, and I'm trying to think of an appropriate metaphor and I'm blanking, I guess.

But it's like putting together a jigsaw puzzle where you only have half of the piecesThat we know we are leaving gaps in the process, that there are people who ought to be covered, who aren't being covered.

An example would be we're funding the City of Promise, for example, and City of Promise was working specifically with kids at one school, and the proposal was, "Well, can we help them? Can we get them to do the same kind of activities in another elementary school?" We've got six elementary schools.

How is that all working out? And the answer is, an awful lot of the kids who might benefit from those services aren't having the services made available. And it's not their fault. It's simply the fact that the way we've set up this process is that unless somebody comes and says, "Here's a community I want to serve," we don't have a way of directing services to that community.

And so one of my thoughts had been out of all of this-- And I look at other examples. We had two or three different groups who wanted to provide financial literacy services. Again, different pieces of the spectrum, no continuity among them.

A couple different tutoring organizations, a couple different early learning organizations. Both YMCA and, to a certain extent, Ready Kids, although Ready Kids' award was for a lot more than just early learning.

But there was no sense at any time that somebody had looked at it from the top down to say, if this is a goal that we have of, let's say, however you want to articulate... Well, actually, one example would be, there are a couple different organizations that want to provide services to folks just getting out of jail.

How are we going to fund a comprehensive support for people just getting out of jail? A little bit over here, a little bit over there. That's an example of there's also a fair amount of money and effort coming from the jail itself.

And so we've got the jail itself. We've got OAR, which is being funded as one of the other contractual organizations. We've got these other groups, and there's no sense of putting it all together as though somebody is looking at it from above and saying, "Here's how we're going to direct this entire scheme." And I would really like to try to figure out if we were to say, "Okay, we've got $2.3 million.

Let's figure roughly $600,000 per subject area, and let's get a group together that's going to work on re-entry programs, however that may manifest itself. Here's a group that's going to work on mentoring programs." And have some organizational structure that would allow some group of people to look at the entire spectrum of needs and the entire spectrum of people who are willing to offer services in the area and perhaps maybe say to somebody, "We don't have anybody serving this community right now in this particular area, but you're doing something kind of like it.

Would you consider doing something else in that area? Can we get a more comprehensive approach to it?" I say all of this not because I've got a grand scheme that I want to implement, because I don't. I've got a lot of questions and a lot of concerns and a lot of thoughts that perhaps people with a lot more direct experience in this area might have a better ability than I to structure something.

But I would really like to think about a way to approach a problem from a whole picture rather than just the couple of pieces of the puzzle that get handed to us on a particular occasion. And how that would work out, like I say, I'm not 100% sure, but I think it would have a better chance.

One other comment I wanted to make. If our only limiting factor is that the programs that we choose to support have to support, in some way, the council's strategic vision and outcome areas, well, we've got nine different outcome areas.

I can't think of anything out there that doesn't come under one of those nine. That's not a limiting factor. To say that our vision is to be a city where everyone thrives is not a limiting factor. It's an enabling factor.

Maybe that's a good thing all by itself, but if we're looking for some way to say, "We've got a limited number of dollars, and let's try to be focused on certain problems," neither one of those criteria are limiting factors.

They don't help the decision-making process at all, as far as I can see. So I would like to see us focus on fewer areas with a more significant contribution in those areas, supervised by somebody, some group.

Maybe it's similar to what we've done with the CAF fund, where the Housing Advisory Committee has oversight of how those kinds of programs might fit together. Maybe we do something like that to deal with, for example, re-entry issues.

Maybe we do something like that to deal with programs for mentors. However we want to designate our topic areas, that's the model I would like to work toward. Thank you. Sam or Misty or Reginald, do you have any clarification questions?

I'd like to- No. Yeah. Jen, did you have? I didn't go yet, but- Yeah ... you can go. Yeah, but I'm just talking about for what Lloyd- Did you capture everything Lloyd was asking about? Is that what you're asking?

Yes. Okay. I'm coming back to you. Just bear with me, as always. Okay. Go ahead. Okay. Jen. Great. Oh, Jen's got ideas. Okay. So- You sound so ominous. I am. I had to write them down so I wouldn't lose my path, but they do kind of boomerang off of what you were saying, because we had spoken on this a little bit earlier in January.

But I need some clarity first. For the fundamentals, how often is an organization added to the fundamental list? Sorry, Taylor, I'm looking at you. Taylor, do you mind coming up to the mic and telling me how?

I mean, I could answer it, but go ahead. Oh, no. Go ahead. Sam. As often as I approve. That's not a system. It is a system. Because the desire has always been that fundamental was not supposed to be a place that people were striving to be, that fundamental was a selection based on a strategic commitment, priority, or need.

So they were standing out for a special purpose, a special reason for ensuring that their funding support was highlighting the prioritization of their effort. Okay. That makes sense. If you add need to that- Because everyone wants to be fundamental.

If you don't do it that way, everyone would be in line, everyone would be asking, "Taylor, how do I become fundamental? When can I become fundamental?" And my answer is, "When I say so." Okay. And that, in fact, has happened.

The people keep asking- Correct ... "I want to be fundamental." And- So- Sure. So to Councilor Snook's point, that's the limiting factor. Okay. Because otherwise, how would you manage that? Well, I worry that we have a couple that really could qualify to be fundamental if we base it on the critical needs of the very moment, i.e., the administration we're living in, like food pantry and sexual assault resources.

But you all haven't said that. Oh, okay. So I'm wondering if- I'm following your lead, remember? Okay. So we have to tell you what we think the thing for fundamental, and then get you in the mood to...

Right. Okay, got it. Okay. So- Because I'm following your lead. Okay. So if you designate priority areas, which you did when you set strategic outcome areas, you set nine. I asked you not to. We got you to reduce to seven.

I wanted to go even fewer. So for those reasons, then it then becomes hard to land where you're shooting because you're shooting in multiple places. So- I'm a three priority girl- Yeah ... so I got late to this train, so- So the question really is about how do we get to the VCF opportunity being more strategic?

Because that's what I feel like I kept hearing and why we're bringing it back to you this way to say, is there an approach that you would like the team to reshape? I've been here almost five years, and we've talked about vibrant community fund every single year.

Yeah. And we talk about being frustrated by it, but I'm going to make comments when you all finish, and I'm going to tell you how we're supposed to look at vibrant community just from my own past experience from before here.

Okay. So I would say that there seem to be a couple, and just like the arts and culture, there seem to be a couple in the VCF pot which would seem to be better served for the acute needs, at least, in fundamentals.

So that seed planted. Okay, so then moving up my difficulty ladder, is it possible that we can establish the mechanism that the Arts Council will eventually take over for FY '28, in that we set up the group that is qualified to review arts and culture applications, and we apply some of the community enrichment fund and some other set-aside fund from the VCF pool to start practicing that now now while the council gets stood up?

Could that be done sooner than FY '29? Is that when we're thinking that's going to happen, James? It's hard to talk to him when I can't see him. I know, me neither. Can you lean over? He said fall, right?

I was also distracting him with nonsense at the moment. Don't. Behave, you. You were saying fall- Fall- ... of this year ... fall of my term with the commission. I can't speak to when the Art Council will be ready.

I think they have a longer timeline to get up and running. Sure. But when does VCF open? You said summer. So July summer or now now summer? August. August. Okay. So- I- ... by August, could we stand up a crew that is- No ...

pulling out- Not going to answer ... arts from VCF? No. Okay. Because we need to go in a more orderly process, because how do we determine who's that group? Well, that's what I was wondering if it was possible.

Yeah. Okay. So at this moment, the timeline is that arts organizations would continue to apply until there is a receiving entity for those applications to either be diverted to or a separate application process established for.

But that doesn't exist today. So we're not cutting them off. We will receive them in the normal process, and then we will pull them from competitive consideration so that Reggie doesn't get a list that much longer.

It will be shortened by the removal of arts events and arts organizations. But in April of 2027, we will still be comparing food pantries to arts No, because we will have pulled them out of the competitive part.

Okay. We would have to figure out what our approach to looking at them would be, and it could be, I'm getting ready to go rogue. Okay. We may have to seat a review panel within VCF that is strictly arts focused.

That's what I'm asking. Can we do that now, now- Within- ... for 2027? Well, it's not now, now. It would just be the team that would be organized, would be within that system, because we're transitioning.

Super. So, we would get to your point. Yeah. Yes. But it would be when we start reviewing applications later this year. Great. Okay. Yeah. So it is FY28 that we would have a segregated arts pot. Yes. Okay, great.

We can make sure of that. Are you going to parse that out of VCF? We would have to. Are you going to give them extra funding? I don't know. Are you going to find extra money? I don't know. That's the question.

So that's another question. Okay. Because today, those groups are funded out of the 2.6- 2.46, 7 ... 2.7 that exists in that pot. When we did the Hops transfer, we pulled it out of the VCF number and then brought it down.

Okay. So, that's a budget question. So that's the other reason for not predetermining too much, because we have to get into the budget cycle. Got it. And you are really safe-- You don't want to do any from the community enrichment fund.

You want to keep that all for events. Okay. So events are now segregated-ish. Separate. They were separate. Yes, yes. Arts are- Going to be ... going to be for my second budget, yep, the '27. Then, if we're talking about real redesign in 2029, along the lines of what Councilor Snook was saying, if we wanted VCF to act more like a collective impact fund where every dollar is pointed at the same outcome, and every grantee is measured on the same data, could- That's a gigantic shift.

But it's so fun. So- You can do whatever you want. Okay. Because this is the other thing, because now what we're talking about are kind of tiers, because that would be also be a shift that maybe one year funding is not going to achieve.

Mm-hmm. So, you ready to hear the tier idea? Not tears like crying. Don't start crying. No. Don't cry. Okay. There could be fundamentals, that's our core agencies. They don't have to reapply. They get it year over year, right?

Fundamentals are year over year. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. They apply, but they still get it annually. Annually. It's not competitive. Then a collective impact cohort that, say, maybe closes the gap on academic achievement.

Let's say that was our thing, and that's a three-year grant. We shared, in our example, academic metrics, which it can be pretty broad. It takes a lot to close the gap. And then a small pool, an innovation pool, that's a one-year bet on new nonprofits, on new programs, new ideas, that is really programmatic, not so operational.

It's an innovation one year thing. Mm-hmm. Not crying. So- Okay. That's a re-imagining of the whole- That's a re-imagining. Yeah. I just feel like having run the Map to Health grants can't achieve anything in three years.

I don't know how these guys are achieving anything in one year besides operational staff support, ultimately. Some programming, maybe, but one year is unrealistic to move the needle on anything, much less achieve a strategic priority.

So, it seems like it's time to rethink how we spend this cash and make it a lot clearer that we are spending it to really get some outcomes, which everyone is measured against. So, I'm done now. That's big.

Well, if I could, this was not VCF related, but it's something that I've been talking about on a broader scale, too, which is we have these nine strategic outcome areas- Seven ... but we don't have seven or nine- Seven ...

outcomes. We've got a handful. We've got $10 million a year, or I guess strategic moves to, or goals to meet. We've got our goal of $10 million a year for affordable housing. We have our goal of decarbonization by 2045.

I forgot the years. That's okay. We have a couple of those, but I think if we expand that into a couple of other areas, that will help align our spending and internal operations. For example, when I was in Minneapolis for my conference a couple of weeks ago, one of their goals is by 2030-- They set it in 2015.

By 2030, 60% of all trips within the city will be not in a car. And so that has led them to prioritize expanding transit, expanding bike lanes, and the bike share program, and all these things. And so, what are some goals that we can come up with that will easily align our spending habits, our networking habits, and our internal operations habits, so that it's not as loose as environmentalism or education, but close the achievement gap by this much by this time.

Something more concrete that we can go towards, and then this might come into play aligning with that as well. So, yeah. And I was just coming up with those. Right. I haven't done any concrete- So- ...

consulting about that ... yeah. Jen, your tier approach-There's something that you said before about all of the nonprofits having to... I forgot the wording. Being able to- Show the same metrics? Yeah.

So if, for example, I'll keep going with my close the academic gap. Mm-hmm. And Councilor Snook was recommending maybe there's three of those. I just chose one to keep it simple, close the gap. But you could do reentry- Yeah ...

close the gap and, but keep it small. Then you would not say you weren't being successful if 40 people showed up to your after-school tutoring. We would say that the metric for success is better attendance rates, better grades, uh- Fewer fights ...

fewer, yeah, disciplinary actions. But everyone, whether you're the food bank entering for closing the gap would be measuring, or you're after-school tutoring, you're proving that your concept is helping to close the gap, and you are getting measured against the same data.

Mm-hmm. Does that make sense? It does. I just know that in this community is some nonprofits that have a full staff with grant writers and seasoned staff, and others who are not as seasoned, and they can...

You've written grants, you can write a report to bring you the morning paper. And the work may not really be done, but you can write it down. But I don't have the answer. I just know something has to be changed because like you said, Natalie, I think we all talked about this, that we have a, I don't know, $290 million or $80 million budget, and we spend 70, 80% of our time on, I don't know, this year it was down to, I don't know, $2,500.

It was pretty small there at the end. And that's just part of having an engaged community that's doing this. So, I think we've generated a lot of ideas. You had something you wanted to say. Yeah. Thank you.

We have generated a lot of ideas, and our decision was coming down to do we do a longer-term overhaul? Do we do short-term patches? And it seems like there's some interest in exploring a larger overhaul.

But in the short term, if that ends up being more feasible, something that I would be interested in wondering is, as you mentioned, sometimes grants can be used for seed money for larger things. And I'm wondering if the weighting process, like W-E-I-G-H-T, weighting process can somehow weight those requests higher so that we know that the money we are giving is going to actually go towards some kind of broader funding network.

So it's like, "Okay, we're giving you $5,000, but you're not just spending $5,000 and making a smaller impact. That $5,000 is going to net you $50,000." And so maybe it's worth funding that $5,000 more than something that only goes to the end of that cycle.

So I don't know if that's possible in the process, but we are thinking short-term for now. That's something maybe to consider. But again, I do think there's some appetite for a larger reconsideration of how we can make these dollars go further and- Have a deeper impact.

Yeah ... yeah, have a deeper impact. Thank you. So let's hear from... I'm sorry, Jay, were you going to say? No, I'm sorry. Go for it. And I'll try to- I was just going to add one thing, that I think the idea of having fewer grants, but those grants may be like a three-year grant, makes a lot of sense.

And particularly if it's being viewed as the whole system, the ecosystem of dealing with the achievement gap, for example, which have a lot of different parts. Yeah. Logistically, one thing I found complicated either to figure out while we were doing this process, speaking of reading a lot of the back-end pieces of data that we don't get.

Is it possible that we can see if we are contributing, not in kind, but I don't know the word for it, to an organization by paying their rent or contributing to their space so that can help us understand the full picture of what we're giving to them?

I don't know if that's explicitly called out when we did it or if I missed it. Yeah. Okay. So, in light of time, I would like to get Sam's feedback and guidance for the next step, and because I know we have one more presentation before- I'm doing that one, too, so I'll control that.

Before I speak, Misty, I wanted to give you a chance to react to what you've heard, and let's just see where her head is at the moment. I just appreciate the engagement and giving a little bit more clarity on where council is facing some of the ongoing challenges because I'd like to get to a place in which we address those, whether like Ms.

Ashrin spoke, maybe it's small short-term things that we can do as we work towards a larger project. I will say that weighting, we can certainly incorporate weighting, giving folks bonus points for whether they work collaboratively.

If two or three or more orgs submit an application that they're going to work on a project together, we canKind of look at some of the other communities that sort of offer an incentive for those kind of applications that would get to some folks, and Mr.

Snokes' comments around several organizations applying to do a similar service. So we can look at that. And then, the matches, we can certainly put a bonus point or something like that, that if the application serves as a match to a broader source of funding, then there would be a way to elevate that.

We can certainly look at that. I don't think that we would be in a position to necessarily implement that for FY28's application, but like I said, if any changes that we do, we would want to start deciding on those or talking about those now so that we can communicate proactively with our nonprofit partners.

So, Sam, just one quick comment. Mm-hmm. Thank you, Misty. I just want to note that I participate in many mentoring programs in this community, and I've always said that we need a wide approach net to reach kids because I've mentored kids through C4K.

They may not thrive as well at the Boys & Girls Club type of thing. So I think that if we said Boys & Girls Club or whatever, they have more kids or whatever, and so we may not do others. I just want to be cautious of that because we want to reach as many kids as we can.

We just have to decide if we're going to go deeper and wider. I think that's a question. But anyway... So I'll frame it by the notion that there's work to be done in our community of trying to send a clear message to our nonprofit partners because they deserve that.

And that message is that there's a change afoot in our approach to funding, and we need to be able to arrive at what that is so that we can communicate that. Kind of to Misty's point, that we can't make changes for the next budget cycle because our runway is short.

We're about to open that process, and we haven't been clear to them that they need to reorient themselves to how they look at this. But we know, and you all know, and past councils have known, that organizations have looked at the Vibrant Community Fund as a source of funding that they rely on.

And we need to send that message to them, if that is the message that you are ready and you're clear about sending, that to do so would be at your own peril, and that you are not guaranteed to receive any specific dollar amount each year because we hear references to people expecting that they will.

We hear references to, "I don't understand your process." Our process is very clear. We have a good process, in my opinion. And it is the same process that everyone goes through, and it's the same process that has had to be the set of hoops that people have to jump through.

So that is not a clear and accurate statement that it's not transparent. I disagree. It is very transparent because there's a site visit component, there's a rubric that they're using. It is all reviewed by staff to make sure that everyone is going through that portal the same way.

The output, that is, the recommendations, is reviewed by staff, reviewed by my office, and brought to council. So it's a multi-tiered process of looking at all the different things. We have individuals who are not getting what they want, and then they allege that it's not transparent, not fair, and I beg to differ.

So what I'm hearing you all say is that it's okay for us to start clearly communicating to them, "That's not how we see it. That is not what we think is happening. You should not expect to receive the same $35,000 that you got last year just because you applied again this year." One, because it shouldn't be expected that that's possible if 40 additional organizations applied this year versus last year.

It's virtually impossible for you to get the same $35,000 because there's more people in the pool. That is happening year after year, but yet we're being questioned as to the process being flawed because I didn't get the same amount as last year.

So I think there's clarity that we have to be willing to deliver so that you then don't have to go through what you go through in the work session where folks come and tell you that your process is not transparent or fair because they didn't get what they were hoping to get.

Having come out of this world, spent many a years writing grants myself, seeking grants at every level, I was never able to allow myself to believe that I was guaranteed anything. So for that, we had to apply, apply, apply.

And I think what we're asking is, is that the message that you want sent to the organizations because they are not all operating from the same place and the same belief that you're not going to give them what they need, which is why they come after the reveal and try to get you to change the reveal.

I think it needs to be appreciated that the process is the process, and the outcome is the award. And that's what we really need to embrace more of. I hear a desire for strategic investment. I hear a desire for measurements, measuring of the needle moving.

We can do all of that, prepare to do all of that, and tee that up for the FY29 cycle and give everyone the notice that that's what's coming, if that's what you desire. I think that's what I'm hearing.

I'll check in again with you when we do your retreat a little bit later where you can actually make a decision. Yeah. And we'll be sureHow to frame some of that. But that's the clarity that I've been looking for with the staff, because I feel like they've had to endure hearing their friends in the nonprofit world say that the process is flawed, and that's hard for them to take when they've worked so hard to get through this process.

And I've been very quiet up until now, so just wanted to share that with you. That's where I am, and I think that's the work that still needs to be done. Okay, before we move on, any other comments on that?

I think that's a bit... Michael, anything you want to? Thank you. Yeah. Okay. Now I'm getting on another soapbox. So the remaining time that we have is on participatory budgeting, and Misty's going to stay on because she was a part of a prior effort.

I'm using the same slide deck, Misty, so that you know it's not the full presentation, because I pulled some slides out. But there has been an expression of an interest in doing participatory budgeting here as an active program.

So wanted to just bring the entire council up to speed on the conversation and to measure where you all are, how you feel about it. If there's any additional information that may be needed, we can try to get that for you.

But I wanted to, in framing the conversation for the conversations that we have been having with a couple of you, said in FY 2019, in the adopted budget, the council set aside $100,000 in city funds for participatory budgeting process.

It was a pilot. The goal was to engage residents in more of building trust with their local government and being able to determine where city dollars would go in the community. Steering committee was assembled.

They were going to work between the months of December and April, and that effort was to try to determine how to go about making the decisions about what ideas had been generated, what opportunities were possible, how to allocate those funds, and all of that would've been wrapped into what is a participatory budgeting process.

They were to look at additional models and to figure out what was the best way to reflect our sentiments here in the city of Charlottesville. So just starting with the question of what is participatory budgeting, it's viewed as a democratic process where community members decide how to spend the money.

And it gives real decision-making power because whatever that group comes up with is what is funded. That comes with a few guardrails in that you can't just turn that over without full context, and our residents don't always know what projects might be in design phases, what may be part of other grants that we're seeking, and efforts that we may have, especially if it were an infrastructure project, say a street project.

There's a VDOT component that could be connected to that. So just because we have the idea doesn't mean that it is applicable for this particular moment, because there might be something already moving.

So there's a process for how you solicit the input, collect the ideas, go work through those ideas, and determine which ones are viable. And then you allow the committee to spend the time and energy to go through those and determine what is the actual recommendation for how to spend the funds.

So this is what it is, also what it takes. There's a steering committee involved just to make sure that the process goes as it's supposed to, and that it remains fair throughout the entire process. Residents will come together and brainstorm ideas.

That's where the ideas for what could be done with the funds, where that comes from. The proposal design team will work to develop the proposals because, again, you have an idea that we want to put this new splash pad in an area where one doesn't exist today.

Well, we got to make sure that the team understands how much does a splash pad cost, how much land is needed in order to do a splash pad. Do we already have that on a list? Is it really a splash pad, or is it something else?

All those different things come through that process. That's pretty cool. And then the residents will vote on the proposals and determine which projects will be submitted to myself and to all of you. And then the winning project is implemented over the next budget year, and the steering committee will continue to work to monitor the implementation, because the follow-through is everything, because you don't want to start a process and not finish it, which is what we do.

So the types of projects, the steering committee will recommend them. They can be a capital project, means a one-time expenditure. That's some of those physical improvements that might happen in the public right of way.

And then there are also other community benefits, like maybe signage for neighborhoods, beautification efforts. It could be a whole host of things that make its way through a process like this. In 2019, we went through the work of doing that.

We had $100,000 identified. We identified the area where the project would happen, and then we did not execute. So the question based on the interests that have come up from the expressions from council members is, are you interested in us embarking on this journey again?

And if so, we would ask you the first question of how much money are you interested in setting aside for such a purpose? And then we'll get to work on figuring out how to implement such a purpose. But the timeline for how this would particularly work would be in August or October, we would be collecting ideas.

From November to February, we'd be looking at proposal development, voting on options in April, and then looking for implementation to begin thereafter. This would be, as we're presenting to you at this moment, the earliest would be FY28 for the actual implementation of a project.

29 is possible, FY29 being possible because it all depends on how the idea generation goes, the consideration goes, the voting goes. And I think that's really what we want to point out to you, that it is a liftIt's a lift that we were embarking on doing internally, so we had a interdisciplinary team assembled to do that.

You could also contract it out, and contracting it out, that means that's procurement. We don't pick any one individual to do that. We've got to put that out, so there's a process that that has to go through.

We'll work on that, and we can make that happen, and individuals can respond to the opportunity to serve the community, serve the city this way in support of its community. So that would be what I wanted to just share with you as a conversation that has been coming up, I'm going to try to go back, coming up a little bit here recently.

And because we have just finished this budget cycle and now have FY27's budget set, then we can begin to start putting the parameters together for what would an FY28 participatory budgeting process look like, determine how much you would like to set aside for that, because that needs to be budgeted for.

So that means we need to set that up. So Chrissy's asking me how much she wants to spend. She's got to find this money, too. So we'd have to be able to do that. And then, of course, this all gets framed around this RFP, because if we're going to be recruiting someone to do that, we've got to pay them as well.

So that it's more than just the dollar amount that would be spent on the project. It's also going to be that facilitator if we go that route. Yes. This is not my thoughts about the whole thing- Mm-hmm ...

just one particular question. For the types of projects, can you give some examples of things that we've done recently or that are in our planning process that could be something that the committee would consider?

Meaning some projects that the city's already doing that could be- Yeah ... selected? That could have been part of the participatory budgeting process. Sure. Like I said, some signage for neighborhoods.

That's one. I'm going back to my old life. Beautification along a corridor that we think it's a special corridor, and we want to dress it up, and it'd be something that the community itself might respond to.

It could be, and help me out over here in the gallery, sidewalk sections that are missing that we do not have on any list that we want to try to get those activated sooner because it might just be that isolated piece that could be missing.

Stripling came up as one idea when we sent it out to the neighborhoods. Way back. But that was well before we knew how much that thing cost, so that- Sure ... wouldn't be appropriate today. But it could be that, no, to Chrissy's point, that any idea is a good idea until we verify how much it's going to cost and the capacity for getting it done.

Well, yeah. I guess my question is how technical or- It doesn't have to be ... right. So is there- It doesn't have to be ... something that ends up being too technical or too VDOT-y that it can't be part of this?

No, because it wouldn't be limited to that. It's not only a capital project. My appreciation for this is, this is also community spirit. It's community pride. What are things that fall into that category?

If I take a conversation I had with you, Councilor Ashton, about message boards and having message boards in a certain style, a certain fixated posture around the city or something to that effect, that could be something where the response from the group could be, "We want better communication, and we would like you to feed us that information in a digital format around the city." That could be something.

The goal would be that we would want to make sure, of course, that if you're setting aside 50,000 to $100,000, that it's something that you can connect to as the governing body for using the funds that way.

But because it's coming from the community, then of course, it's a small group that makes up the idea generating group, but there's a broader community that also has to appreciate it. So it could go in a number of different directions.

Okay. I would add, Sam, that when I was out- Oh, I forgot she was... I'm still here. Okay. In 2019, I went out into the neighborhood that was selected on a couple of different outreach opportunities and just teed up the idea of participatory budgeting and got some light brainstorming happening.

Some of the things that folks had expressed is redoing a playground or establishing a new playground. Could be related to lighting as it supports public safety or the perception of public safety. It could be even something like what one of the city schools did, like a community art installation and how might folks engage on what the art looks like and where it goes and things like that.

So those are some of the things that had come up previously. Okay. Pocket park. Right. Specialized bike parking to your point. There could be things like that that require some outlay of cash to buy something, install something, and care for something.

It could go in all those different directions. So my question is, a lot of times with... I know Michael has talked about this, but I don't think I've ever been part of it. But I have been part of different neighborhood association groups and been part of them, and a lot of times the neighborhood groups, they may be the people that if they vote on that, they are the groups.

They may not be reflective of the community, but they may be able, the ones to come to the meeting, and if they agreed to something and then we start installing, they were like, "We didn't know about this." But the majority of the people at the neighborhood meetingYou know, may have supported it.

So I'm not... And it's hard to overcome that, but what have you found it? Yeah, I mean, there's always a risk with that. I mean, communication is a big part of everything that we have to do, and one of the areas that we know we've got to do better at.

I think this would be a process, should you choose to do this, it would be one that comes with special attention. I think this would be something that we would be regularly talking to the media about.

There would be regular updates along the way so that the public at large could stay engaged with how it's progressing across the timeline. I think those would be some of the aspects of what, if we were to go the route of doing it ourselves or bringing someone else in to do it, those are component parts of the execution plan.

But yes, there's always a risk. Having done this for a long time myself, you can't make everybody happy, so you don't always try. And then for that, you try your best to make sure that you're working with representatives of the neighborhoods who are going and seeking that input and able to speak to that because I think that's what you want to make sure of.

I mean, we know that from our own experiences. If we pick up a plan that was laid out just two years ago and try to go and implement that today without any additional communication, we're likely to hear pushback because people have changed their minds.

People have moved away from the idea. They don't feel about it the same as they once did because it was a hot topic then. It's not a hot topic now. This would be a protracted period of time that we're working to keep people engaged.

Mm-hmm. I would also add that we started out doing engagement as street outreach. We partnered with an ice cream truck and went to the neighborhoods and kind of got kids involved, and their parents and caregivers out into the community to get the concept out into the folks, of the folks that we wanted to make sure knew about it and engaged.

So we prioritized some of those locations and places that we knew that we wanted the feedback to come from. Part of the other additional cost will be things like ice cream trucks. Maybe not ice cream trucks exactly, but those outreach and incentives to get community members out to do the voting activities, to do the brainstorming activities.

Because to your point, Mayor, we want to make sure that we're reducing as many barriers as possible for folks to be able to come out and engage. That's why it wouldn't only just be in-person activities.

There would be online opportunities. I think even we either stood up an email address that people could email ideas to or something- Mm-hmm ... to that effect. So we made sure that it was a lot of different outreach opportunities.

Okay. So we have some interviews, so let's try to- Yeah. So, I mean, obviously there's a lot of things to balance here, like speed versus engagement, actually spending money on the project versus spending money on the- The process ...

facilitation of the participation. And I wonder how much of this is civic engagement opportunity in general. I feel like we do try to do community engagement for projects. We don't always knock that out of the park.

We're trying to get better at that. But even beyond just this one particular issue, this one particular park, getting out there to do this is how your government works- Mm-hmm ... information in advance because one of the things I think we all are aware of is feedback from people who don't have the full story and can't properly weigh the tensions and trade-offs is less useful than feedback from people who have gotten an education on the topic.

Sure. So we have to make sure that we're doing that- Mm-hmm ... which I know is kind of the whole point, but that takes a lot. And so how is this different from implementing a small area plan process, or how is this preventing the squeaky wheel problem?

Does this create a more systematic way of addressing issues throughout the area? Like we did a, for example, we could say, "Okay, this year we're going to do a participatory budgeting project in this neighborhood.

Next year, we're going to do it in this neighborhood," so that it is equally distributed, and it's not just the loudest voice gets the project. Yeah. And then my question is what wasn't implemented in 2019?

Misty, do you remember what the project was, 2019? We did not implement the process. We did the outreach. Oh, so the engagement. Oh. It didn't- We didn't go any farther. Unfortunately, the project was stopped, and we weren't able to move forward with the design.

So it wasn't that there was a project that was chosen and engaged. It was like the engagement didn't even happen. The engagement did not happen. Got it. Okay. Thank you very much. The announcement that it's coming, and then we didn't come.

Right. So we're just very delayed, perhaps. Yeah. So yeah. All right. I mean, the problem that participatory budgeting solves is not a budget problem. It is a trust in your government problem that it's solving.

So all the data is not about this, that, or the other. It's like you are giving people direct, tangible evidence that their government is listening. So- Or it's like concrete community engagement. The community is engaged in painting this mural, in building that garden.

Because it's the follow-through. It's the follow-through. It's the implementation. Yeah. Which a small area plan takes a long time to do. This is a budget cycle implementation. So big cities, Seattle, New York, spend 3 million, 1.5 million on participatory budgeting for different boroughs.

So it's all about building trust and civic understanding and education. It is that tool. It's just using budgeting as the mechanism. And I think the I think it has to be RFP. This seems like a huge lift that we're already having capacity challenges, that to do this right, it would need someone managing that process.

But does the steering committee come from inside the city, or was that both? Both. Both. So residents- Inside and outside ... inside and outside. And eight months does seem to be the minimum amount of time that I've seen in the literature, but the dollar amount, the 100,000 was to execute the project, or was everything Ice Cream Trucks involved and the project?

Misty, do you recall if the 100,000 was meant to cover everything or just the project? That's one of the things that we learned in the design of how participatory budgeting could look in Charlottesville is that there was a lot of associated costs that weren't baked in.

And so- It's okay Yeah ... we were going to consider taking it out of the 100 as not just for the project implementation, but taking out the marketing and the outreach money part from that overall 100.

But we didn't get that opportunity. And I'm reminded from Christy that we also had $15,000 set aside as a recurring item in the regular budget. So that would've been where we would've started to apply things from.

But to Misty's point, that all probably still needed some attention to figure out if even that was going to be enough. And then maybe the next time we did it, it could've been a different number. So the last thing is, from what I've looked at, we can kind of limit it to say not all ideas are good ideas- Types of projects.

Yeah ... and say, "Okay, we're doing recreation, and all we're going to focus on for the six neighborhoods that we pick for pilot year one is recreation. Ready, set, go." And then the participants design the need under that.

You could do public safety, you could do anything, so that you are limited in that, and that seems to narrow down, use the eight months- Well, more efficiently ... yeah, more efficiently. But then you have to deliver.

Right. So you have to set up the expectations. We're not going to build an XYZ in recreation. It's got to be within this- The scope ... feasible, tangible implementation. Yeah. Okay. Which thankfully, the winning projects have to come to me so I can say, "Nope, we can't do that." Right.

Part of the process in Richmond, because it's a very specific process, and part of it is there's that dream phase, but then right after that the- Reality ... community and staff are at the same table as equals, and staff are winnowing down.

"That's not feasible. That would involve VDOT." And then only after that winnowing does voting happen. Right. So part of the structure itself is throwing out things that just aren't possible. And I would just say, I do think this would be important for the city to implement.

In my mind, the process is the most important part of it, and it's a skill set that once the city develops, could be applied in different contexts whenever we need to do more intensive community engagement.

I do think around $100,000 or so at first could be a good starting point, and to view it as a demonstration project. Maybe we just replicate what we started down in 2019, where one neighborhood is chosen, and it's just kind of demonstrating the process.

But I do think the most important thing is just doing it, demonstrating it can be done, and whether it's an RFP or done internally in the city, having it done in a way where it's not just a one-off, the city can keep using this tool.

Because in Richmond and other places, that intentionality of going out into neighborhoods, canvassing door to door, going to people rather than expecting people to come to city government, engages people who don't normally engage with city government, improves trust, people understand how staff think better.

And also, the community has expertise and ideas that sometimes the city misses because the city very much has expertise, but can be very much in its own bubble, and miss things as well. So, anyway. Okay.

So I'm feeling as though I'm hearing yes, but we need to figure it out. Yes. Okay. Yes. Got it. Okay. That's what I'm looking for. You all right? Yeah. Thank you. All right. Would you like me to read this?

Yes, please. All right. Pursuant to Motion 2.2-3712 of the Virginia Code, I move that this city council close this open meeting and convene in a closed session as authorized by the Virginia Freedom of Information Act as follows.

One, pursuant to the Virginia Code Section 2.2-3711 (1) , for discussion and consideration of prospective candidates to be appointed to the following boards and/or committees, the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority Board.

Second. All in favor, please say yes. Yes. All opposed, please say no. Okay. Thank you. We'll be back at 6:30. I'm cold already. I call the Charlottesville City Council meeting back into order. Madam Vice Mayor, will you read us out of closed session?

I will as soon as it loads. Hold, please. And others, if we're not logged into the voting, we can do that. I move that this council certify by a recorded vote that to the best of each council member's knowledge, only public business matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and identified in the motion convening the closed session were heard, discussed, or considered in the closed session.

Is there a second? I second. We'll do a voice vote for this. All in favor, please say yes. Yes. Opposed, please say no. Motion passes five to zero. Before we begin, we'll have a moment of silence. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Are there any announcements? One announcement, just that the City of Charlottesville is accepting applications for vacancies on boards and commissions. There are a number of boards and commissions with vacancies.

Most immediate one, Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority is accepting applications for multiple positions and has a deadline of midnight tonight to apply. The other boards and commissions have application deadlines of August 1st.

They include the Charlottesville Affordable Housing Fund Committee, Community Development Block Grant, Historic Resources Committee, Jefferson-Madison Regional Library Board, Minority Business Commission, Police Civilian Oversight Board, Planning Commission, Social Services Advisory Board, Youth Council, and a number of others.

If anyone is interested in more information or applying for any of these boards, you can visit boards.charlottesville.gov. And again, those deadlines are August 1st, except for the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority Board, which has a deadline of midnight tonight for multiple vacancies.

Thank you. Matt? And I have an announcement. As many of you know, May was Bike Month. And as part of Bike Month, the city, county, and state hosted a bunch of events to encourage people to get out there on their two wheels.

And two of the events that happened were that several cities were pitted against each other to see who could log more bike rides. And this was put on by the DRPT. I'm pleased to announce that the City of Charlottesville has won that challenge beating- Yay.

Beating Richmond, Roanoke, and Virginia Beach as the top four. We have almost double of the Virginia Beach trips. And we went back and forth with Richmond several times, so I'm really pleased that our community showed up and was able to pull ahead in the end.

Just because Bike Month is over, it does not mean that biking is over, so please keep going out there, and please keep logging your bike rides with the Connecting VA app so that our transportation professionals can continue to collect data on bike usage.

The other thing is this number one was the Bike Month Business Challenge winner, which is the-Company to Company Challenge and the City of Charlottesville has won that, so hooray to staff for logging in their bike rides Mm-hmm.

We're walking the road. We had 237 logged bike trips. I'm sure there were some more, so really awesome to get official recognition and to show the biking energy out in our community. So thanks for everyone for participating and again, keep riding.

Thank you. I did want to announce a couple of things. One, the dedication of Mel's Way that went on Saturday. Councilor Snook and I were there, and we read the proclamation. Again, it was a wonderful event.

A lot of people came out. His family came out. So now if you go on Main Street in that area between 7th and 8th Street, you'll see it is known as Mel's Way. We did lose another icon in our community, Dr.

Florence Bryant. She was 104 years old, and she was amazing. I think she was with her family in Richmond, but when I first got here in this community, her daughter worked with my father, and I needed a place to stay, so I was able to stay with her at her house by Charlottesville High School when I first got into this community.

Just very welcoming and just a great place to start my career, my life here in the greater Charlottesville area. So I think the funeral is tomorrow. Funeral is Wednesday. Wednesday, yes. You knew it tomorrow.

Yes. So, anyway, hold her and her family in your prayers. She lived a wonderful, long life. Mayor, one thing that the obituary alludes to but does not actually mention, it alludes to the fact that she was a published author.

She wrote a book when she was in her 70s entitled Memoirs of a Country Girl. And it is about her growing up in this area, now obviously 100 years ago, but it has a lot of interesting memories that if you are at all interested in the way things used to be, Florence knew it.

I think she was assistant principal at Charlottesville High School as well many years ago. Any other announcements? Somewhat on the same lines. The date and time for the Eddie Harris Sr. Park bench dedication ceremony has been set for Friday, July 31st at 10:00 a.m.

at Washington Park. So put that in your calendars now, and I'm sure we'll announce it a couple more times before then. Yeah. Thank you. If there are no other announcements, we're now at, I believe, the first opportunity for community matters.

There's 16 slots, only two people pre-registered, so the opportunity for 14 others. The first speaker is Laura Sigurney? Sigurney. Sigurney, I'm sorry. Thank you. I came before this council two weeks ago with my disappointment and disgust that there had been no engagement with the unhoused population for the city working meeting to talk about how to best serve that population.

In the two weeks since that time, the only engagement, quote unquote, that the unhoused population has received, to my knowledge as someone who works with them regularly, is police. More and more police harassment, more and more police surveillance.

And we've seen this playbook happen again and again in our community. I was there helping unhoused people when they were being evicted from Market Street Park, where they had access to resources. I was there last summer when people were being evicted from Free Bridge, where they had shelter under the bridge and were forced out into the elements using the same kinds of excuses that are being now used to, again, pressure camping people to leave.

And the problem is this city has provided no other options for them and no resources. These people, like all of us, need resources, not harassment. And resources were discussed at that city meeting. I don't think all the resources that should have been on the table were discussed, but even those resources that were discussed that were immediately actionable, and that meeting at this point was three, four weeks ago, that planning meeting, I've seen no action on this.

There are no porta potties, even though a local business owner at that working meeting offered to help manage that situation for you. We have community members stepping up trying to provide the resource gaps that you all have been unwilling or unable to fill.

And I have police, I have the chief of police coming down to campers and telling them that they are, quote, "too comfortable." That's disgusting. And this city council would have us believe that they have no power to stand up to luxury buildings that are displacing our historical generations of families who built this city, but they can wield all the power in the world against someone who has to camp in a tent.

They have all the power in the world to say where a tent can be erected, but have no power to say that these luxury buildings that are erasing our community and eroding our resources. They have no power against that.

I don't think that makes you leaders. I think that makes you capitulators with bulliesThis needs to be addressed now. This is all the same battle. All of us are affected by housing, and it will reach into your houses as well if you don't take care of it.

Thank you. The next speaker is James Webb. James Webb? Good evening. I'm not James Webb. No. I'm Allison Webb, and I'm reading my husband's statement. Okay. So, Jim is here representing the Love Thy Neighbor Coalition.

We live at 1880 River Inn Lane in Albemarle County. We're here today- Thank you ... to talk about an interfaith coalition that was formed out of concern over immigration enforcement practices. Last summer, a working group at Charlottesville Friends Meeting, also known as Quakers, organized a gathering on faith and immigration at the Northside Library.

A call went out to faith leaders and faith communities, Christians, Muslims, Jewish, Buddhist, and Baha'i, in the greater Charlottesville area, and about 130 people from an array of religious congregations and other people of conscience gathered to discuss ways that we could support our immigrant neighbors.

Over the past 10 months, Love Thy Neighbor has organized educational sessions and films screenings at churches to raise awareness of the fearful and inhumane conditions that our neighbors face. We have convened an interfaith gathering on the downtown mall, attended by hundreds, to show support for our immigrant neighbors.

Toward this end, the Love Thy Neighbor working group promulgated the following statement on immigration enforcement. We, as members of faith communities and people of conscience, are guided by moral values to support the family and to show compassion to the stranger.

We condemn the enforcement of policies that shatter immigrant families when neither parents nor children have been charged with violent crimes. We condemn detention without informing family members of the whereabouts of their loved ones or permitting communication and visitation.

We call upon you, our elected leaders and fellow citizens, to ensure that immigrant families remain together and are treated with fairness and humanity. This statement on immigration enforcement has been endorsed by faith communities, including the Charlottesville Friends Meeting, Sojourners United Church of Christ, Grace Church Red Hill, Tabor Presbyterian, and Westminster Presbyterian.

It has been signed by hundreds of individuals in the Charlottesville area. We appreciate the council's resolution condemning harmful immigration enforcement practices earlier, and we call upon you to continue to do everything within your powers to keep immigrant families safe and to assure that all immigrants are treated with fairness and humanity.

Our moral obligations to each other demand no less. Thank you. Who else would like to speak? Alicia then. Good evening. Excuse me. Good evening. My name is Alicia Lenahan. I live in the county. You overrode the decision by the Board of Architectural Review.

You're allowing the Fifesville project to go forward over the sustained objections by, and to the detriment of, the residents of the neighborhood. If history is a guide, you will allow UVA to systematically erase Fifesville, so like Gospel Hill, in a few years it will be gone.

The city built West Haven in a hole so it wouldn't be visible from West Main Street. If history is a guide, you'll allow the LB Collective project to shove it even further out of sight over the sustained objections by the residents of 10th and Page, and to their detriment.

We are talking about two luxury apartment buildings that will be marketed to students, and because developers aggressively manipulate the half-mile boundary, they are not required to include any affordable units, and they pay vastly reduced fees.

They gladly pay to buy out 100% of their affordable obligations, ensuring their buildings remain entirely occupied by high-rent tenants. Neither project will alleviate the affordable housing crisis, nor contribute to a more economically diverse city.

For both those projects, the reduced fees add up to $10 million. With that investment, you could intentionally create affordable housing. The repeated displacement of Black residents, of poor residents, did not and is not happening by accident.

It is happening through public decisions, public neglect, and public willingness to call harm by other names: urban renewal, market-rate supply, urban density. Interestingly, your approach also aligns with elements of the Trump administration's housing policy, which focuses on privatization and deregulation, choking off economically diverse housing opportunities.

Plans call for abandoning the Housing Trust Fund and therefore abandoning very low-income people. It calls for ending Housing First programs that work to reduce homelessness, and of course, it will discriminate against non-citizens, including their mixed-status families in federally assisted housing.

Voters will remember. They'll remember the $10 million. They will remember your utter disregard and disrespect for the residents and community members who have named the harm of these meetings for the last year.

Thank you. Ma'am I'm going to speak for the next three minutes, but I think it's kind of hard to imagine that you guys will listen after the last year of people saying that we do not want luxury student housing, and just every person in the city ignoring what so many people come every time to city council to say, come to other meetings to say, has been very loud about it and have just been ignored.

But what I want to say is in regards to the Free Bridge encampment, I was at that meeting a couple of weeks ago, that was closed comment, where you guys talked about trying to get people off of the area that they're staying regardless of how they feel about it.

And I wanted to point out that the reason there are so many people there is because the city is making everyone be there. People are getting pushed off of everywhere else in the city. And I can tell that the city councilors don't understand that when they say things like, "Oh, what if people just stayed at the Holiday Drive location?" As if it shows that they don't know that people are being run off of that location.

People are being run off of everywhere, and that's how we end up with so many people concentrated, and the issues that come with a bunch of people really concentrated in one spot that maybe don't even really wanna live together, but are forced that by the over-policing around the rest of the city.

It's also caused by over-policing because our police, people who live on the streets are arrested at much higher rates for things that people in houses do too. And that makes it a lot harder to get a job, and then it makes it a lot harder to get housing.

And so this problem is built by over-policing, and the simplest solution to it is to stop the over-policing. People will naturally spread out and you won't have all the issues that come with everyone being there.

You don't need to force people to leave. You need to stop forcing people to come to that area. And I also wanna say in terms of... Sorry. Also on the same line of our over-policing, people are arrested and getting charged with things like very petty drug possession, like for having small amounts of residue.

Things that people in houses do. People are getting charged with trespassing. I talked to somebody the other day in the jail who's in for trespassing right now, and I told them about what's going on, and they're like, "But that's my home." And I'm like, "Yeah, that is your home." And that's what city council is trying to force people to not have their homes despite not having anywhere they want them to be.

And I also want to make clear that if you did have somewhere else you want them to be, just letting people move to other areas is enough. And in the last 25 seconds, I'd like to also point out where the f**k are the porta potties?

That you guys said there's gonna be. You put out this announcement saying that there will be porta potties. And then nothing's happened. It seems like you guys asked Kosner's, Kosner said no, and then you never asked anywhere else.

You didn't look into any of the other parking lots in that area. And at this point, on the field side, where there's also lots of people by Zero East High, and Ravenna River Company says, "We will help you do this.

We really want this to happen really bad for our business, too." It would take nothing. Thank you. Anyone over here would like to speak? Hi. Sibo Flynn with the Community Climate Collaborative. C3 has been encouraging the city and Charlottesville Gas to stop buying carbon offsets from British Petroleum for the past few years.

I did some more research into the specific projects that we funded over the past year. They're even worse than I thought. After we shared our concerns with city council and utility staff, and you all agreed we should not renew a five-year contract with BP, we also strongly admonish you not to go ahead with a one-year contract either.

Here's what British Petroleum funded last year with Charlottesville gas rate payers money. Operations of a wind farm in Argentina owned by a massive energy corporation called YPF, which is focused on, quote, "Accelerating oil production in Vaca Muerta, bringing the Argentina LNG project to life." The wind farm's directly connected to YPF's Manantiales oilfields.

It powers that oil production expansion. We paid for a photovoltaic project solar in India, which in a July 9th, 2025 report by the international nonprofit Corporate Accountability, received the lowest possible score in the report for actual carbon removal.

That report also found that the Verra registry, which is responsible for most of the projects we're funding, contains the highest proportion of problematic credits worldwide. We're funding improved forest management at Hiawatha Sportsmen's Club in the Olympic Peninsula.

Sorry, in the upper peninsula in the UP, what's it? Michigan. It's a 35,000 acre members-only game grounds for hunting, fishing, and whatever happens in a country club. It is continuously member-owned for 100 years.

It boasts of being the largest private landholding in the Eastern US. We're purchasing more energy-efficient cookstoves for rural households in Vietnam with the object of reducing use for firewood. These projects cannot be audited.

There are known to be many duplications of these credits. Cookstove credits were found by a 2023 UC Berkeley study published in "Nature" to be massively overestimated, up to 9.2 times above what the study found as the real numbers.

In the Dominican Republic, heat from gas power generation is being captured to generate steam, but of course, instead of reducing the amount of fossil fuels being burned, the project description itself on Verra's registry says the total capacity of the plant will increase almost by half from the additional steam-generated energy.

These credits were awarded on the theory that the extra energy from the plant offsets energy from oil used on the national grid. In reality, energy use in the Dominican Republic, because of climate change, reached an all-time high during the summer of 2025.

Demand outstripped supply. The president announced an urgent need to produce more energy. These credits are not valid. Both Charlottesville Gas and the city are operating in good faith with the efforts to offset the utilities emissions.

But while offsets are a true quagmire, it seems this is very not likely what Charlottesville gas customers have in mind when they check a survey box asking whether they support the purchase of carbon credits to offset utility emissions.

Charlottesville must not sign a new contract with BP, not for another year, not for another dollar. Thank you. Anyone in this center here like to speak? Ms. Giles Good evening, everyone. Good evening.

My name is Latricia Gals. Excuse me. Latricia Gals, and I am the executive director of the Charlottesville Public Housing Association of Residents. And this is just coming from coming here for the past almost year to talk about the conversation on LV Collective and what's going on in Fifeville.

And so I just wanted to talk a little bit more about density, because that's a lot of conversations that I've been hearing people having and writing. So density, fairness, and who is being asked to carry the burden of growth in the city.

I hear a lot of people say that they support density, and I understand that. But if density is truly good for Charlottesville, then density should not only be concentrated in a few neighborhoods. It should be not kept for showing up aggressively near low-income and historically Black neighborhoods and lower-income communities.

If density is bringing opportunity, all neighbors should have their share and opportunity. If density brings tax revenue, then all neighborhoods should share in responsibility. If density is part of the city's housing strategy, then it cannot keep falling on the hardest communities that have already experienced displacement, disinvestment, and broken promises.

That is the concern. PHAR is not saying no to housing. We are saying no to change. Sorry. We are not saying no to change. We are saying to the city that it needs to be honest about where that change is landing and who is being asked to absorb it.

Because when luxury student housing, taller buildings, traffic, construction, parking pressures, and rising land values keep showing up near the same communities, that is not shared growth. That is concentrated impact.

And when other neighborhoods are protected from the same level of disruption, then we have to ask why. Charlottesville cannot say it supports equity while allowing growth to be uneven. Equity means neighborhoods participate in the future of the city.

Equity also means the neighborhoods that have already carried the most harm should receive the strongest protections. So my ask is simple. If council supports density, make it fair. Do not concentrate the burden in historically Black neighborhoods, low-income neighborhoods, and near public housing.

Create stronger protections for community already at risk of displacement. Require real affordability, not just luxury units and developer fees that they already know they can just give. And make sure that public housing residents, Black and Brown community residents, and low-income communities have power before the decisions are already made.

Density without fairness is not justice. Growth without protection is not equity. And development that only some neighborhoods are expected to absorb is not city-wide housing. So thank y'all this evening.

Thank you. I appreciate you. Anyone over here like to speak? Okay. Yes. Please state your name and residence. I'm Josh. I've lived in Charlottesville pretty much my whole life. And yeah, I feel that it's pretty clear to me that this city has a problem with unhoused people.

And I don't mean that unhoused people are a problem, or that it's a problem that they live in Charlottesville, or spend time downtown, or sleep in public parks. I mean that the people responsible for working on behalf of the Charlottesville community have a problem with unhoused people.

Recently, a number of things have happened. I won't go into details, but the result is that there's a community of people living near the Rivanna River. The city seems to believe that they have more or less solved the problem of homelessness.

If so, congratulations. At this point, the city seems to be taking a hands-off approach. Now that much of the unhoused population has gathered together away from the public eye, why do any more? And with a little time and a little encouragement from CPD, maybe the problem, quote unquote problem, will just take care of itself.

Not only is that incorrect, it's straight up cruel. The encampment at the river currently has no access to drinking water, no bathrooms, no basic safety precautions, and no place to dispose of waste. This is apparently intentional.

It's pretty clear that the city is aware of the conditions there, but either unwilling to do anything or actively opposed to helping, as some people have already brought up. And let's be honest, these are very easy problems to solve, and the fact that they haven't been solved yet speaks volumes.

How many of you have slept in a tent before? I'm guessing some of you, but not many. How many of you have spent a day without drinkable water or access to a bathroom? My guess is none. My guess is also that you haven't been to the encampment or talked to anybody who lives there.

If you haven't, I strongly encourage you to do so. What I hope is that you realize that the people living there are, in fact, people and your neighbors, and deserve at minimum some basic resources. I'm asking for a couple of simple things today: bathrooms, water, fire extinguishers, and dumpsters.

This is not hard to accomplish. These are very, very simple things to ask for. They're not expensive, and it will immediately improve the quality of life of people who are in the Charlottesville community.

If that isn't something that the members of the Charlottesville City Council are interested in, I'm starting to wonder if you should be on the city council in the first place. On a final note, we're all paying attention and we're not going away.

You may see more of us. You may see more of me. Thank you. Anyone else like to speak? My name is Emily Kingsley. I live in Charlottesville, and I am also here to talk about our town's housing crisis and the current lack of support and resources being given to unhoused folks, in particular at the Rivanna encampments.

And I first want to acknowledge the unspoken truth that seeing unhoused people in our town makes a lot of people in Charlottesville uncomfortable, probably because it forces us to confront how truly unequal this city is.

And instead of catering to the comfort of joggers on the Rivanna Trail, what we really should be doing is realizing that we should be really uncomfortable. We should be uncomfortable because of the systems that have gotten us here, and we should be uncomfortable with the fact that anyone does not have safe and secure housing in a town this filthy rich.

We change these systems, and we can change these systems by working with our unhoused neighbors and not against them, not by over-policing them. By listening to them, believing them, and honoring their stories and lives and dignity.

And as others have said, there are things that city council could do right now, not to solve the bigger system problems, but to tangibly improve the lives of folks at Freebridge, who right now, this is their home.

Porta potties, dumpsters to dispose of waste, fire extinguishers, safe drinking water, and ice and coolers. And right now, there are just folks in Charlottesville who are helping these people get those supplies, when really the city could be taking a much bigger role to support them.

And there are people who probably don't want the city to do that because those things would make living in the encampments more tolerable, and they're hoping that if it gets bad enough, those people will just leave and kind of disappear.

But pushing people who are already in a vulnerable situation further to the margins is one, unconscionable, and two, it will also never work. Our unhoused neighbors are our neighbors, and we will never stop fighting with them.

We will not stand by while our neighbors are displaced or harassed, threatened or intimidated. We will build the world that we want one step at a time, and our ask, our invite, is to build it with us.

Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else like to speak? I get you. My name is Joshua Ballou. I've been in Charlottesville since 2017. And I came up here from Florida with over $1,000 in my pocket on a train, had plans I made, just didn't talk to anybody about them.

I was surprising somebody in Washington. Turned out I got the surprise because I couldn't stay there. There were too many people there. And I ended up getting in touch with a friend who got me to Charlottesville, and he couldn't let me stay at his place either, because he got it through Region 10.

And the point is, since that time, I've never had my name on a deed of a house, never needed to, never wanted to, really, other than the amenities. Like they said, if you got water, food, stuff like that, the rest of this country was free, and the Constitution was put in place for that fact.

We just came up on an anniversary date, because April 19th was the day I got threatened that people were going to come down and set stuff on fire. They were a little late. But all the things that have been thrown out as far as what's wrong down there, they're now trying to tell us we can't have propane when propane had nothing to do whatsoever with the fire.

I didn't have a heater myself next to my couch, but I was holding an extra tank for anybody that needed it. And it took me sitting there running down to the river with a bucket of water, dumping it on that propane tank so it wouldn't blow up until the fire department got there.

And whatever their timing is, they're lying, because we sat there for over 30 minutes, and I had four different people running back and forth trying to put this fire out. I give them that a lot of the people don't want to live there together.

There's arguments, fights. It's breaking down quickly because of the fact they're left and right, and instead of people helping them, we're down there having another going, "What are they here for? What are they coming over here for?

They gonna try and make us leave?" And left and right, every time I hear them come down and say, "Oh, we're doing a wellness check," and all that, we're all well. And so far as wellness goes, I mean, just like man can't live on bread alone, he can't live on water and ice alone either, and that's the only thing that hasn't been brought by anyone who said they were coming down there to check on our wellness.

I stand for both human race and I stand for the Constitution that this country was founded upon, and any infringement upon either of those, you'll see my face. Thank you. Hi, my name is Maria. I am a resident and taxpayer of the City of Charlottesville.

First, I want to talk about the issue of affordable housing. I just spent about three weeks trying to help a family of refugees living in Charlottesville that were being evicted from their apartment and that couldn't afford the rent and deposit that the new affordable housing was asking from them.

Went to every institution or resource in the city to no avail. No help whatsoever for a family like this. If it wasn't for the amazing community of Charlottesville residents that opened their pockets to help us raise the money, this family would be living in their car right now, and her minor children would have been taken away from them.

Because this is the only thing that social services is good at, not for helping families when they are at risk of unhousing, but for taking their children away when they have run out of any other means of doing it.

And I also want to talk about what happens when people are living in tents. We all think that they are losers, that they just don't work. Just see the reality of the city. If the housing prices continue to raise so much, we're going to see more and more people living in the streets.

You see what is happening in LA right now, what is happening in mayor cities. You are not doing anything to really help affordable housing in this city. I think for people living in tents right now, what they really deserve is a dignified situation of living, a dignified housing, and we're not even asking for that right now.

We're just asking for conditions of safety and health. When they were moved out of the bridge, it was supposedly because of safety and health concerns. Safety and health concerns for who? For the people that walk by the bridge, and they don't like to see them there?

For the joggers that just come run every morning, and then they go home, they have a nice meal, they sleep in a bed, and they forget about it? But they are worried about the safety and health of our city?

And who is worrying about the safety and health of the people living in the encampments? Why is it so hard to ask for the minimum? Porta potties, enough places for shelter, and for heating during the winter and cooling during the summer.

That is all that we're asking for. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else like to speak? There'll be another opportunity at the end. Thank you all so much. We will now have the consent agenda, Madam Clerk.

Yes. Consent Agenda three, ordinance repealing Section 3.1 and 3.2 of Chapter Three: Amusements of the Code of the City of Charlottesville, and reserving Chapter Three for future use, second reading. Four, resolution to authorize donation of easements in city-owned land to the Virginia Department of Transportation for the Route 250 and Route 20 intersection and corridor improvement projects.

Five, resolution to authorize donation of city right-of-way to the Virginia Department of Transportation for the construction of a roundabout at Route 631 and John Warner Parkway. Six, resolution to appropriate $356,805 in additional funds to the Streets and Sidewalks Division operating budget, one of two readings.

Seven, resolution to authorize reallocation of $6,300 of previously appropriated funding to social and environmental entrepreneurs for FY27. Eight, resolution to appropriate Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services, Victims of Crime Act grant award FY26 $123,600, one of two readings.

And nine, resolution to appropriate the Virginia Department of Social Services Family Assistance Management Grant in the amount of $20,000, one of two readings. Thank you. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda?

Yes. So moved. Second. Oh, okay. Are we going to vote virtually on this? Okay. Yes. Everyone signed in. I was signed in. So if you are yes- I'm a yes ... yes, got you ... I'm not sure how to get back to the page that I was on a minute ago.

Okay. So if you could get him as a yes. Motion passes five to zero for the consent agenda. We're now at the city manager's report. Mr. Sanders. Good evening, Council and members of the public. First item is a presentation by Todd Niemeyer, Office of Human Rights annual report.

Good evening, Mayor Wade, Vice Mayor Ochs, and Councilors. Good evening. Clerk Robinson, City Manager Sanders, thank you for having us tonight. My name is Todd Niemeyer, I'm the director of the Human Rights Commission.

I'm here with Heather Roberson Gasin, the current chair of the Human Rights CommissionAnd appreciate the opportunity to give you a brief report about the work done by both the commission and the office in 2025.

I feel like you probably saw the annual report in full in your agenda packet. We're not going to go over all that data tonight. This evening, I'm going to try to provide a brief summary of the structure of the Human Rights Division, a review of our key roles and responsibilities under the ordinance, and a deeper look at the connections between the commission, the office, and the community, and why those connections are important.

At the end of the presentation, Heather and I will be here to answer any questions that you may have about either the report or the presentation. Let's make sure I get the button right here. Thank you.

All right. Okay. So beginning with a quick overview of the structure of the Human Rights Division, which is part of the city manager's office. The division was created by the Charlottesville Human Rights Ordinance, which was adopted by council in 2013.

It includes the commission and the office, and we work together in tandem to address human and civil rights issues within the jurisdiction of the city. While the commission focuses on systemic impact and the office focuses mostly on individual assistance, both have outreach and engagement duties, and we'll talk more about the importance of those overlapping responsibilities.

So this organizational chart represents the structure at the end of 2025. I want to acknowledge the work of everyone that's named on that chart there, because it takes leadership at every level to provide human rights services to our community.

So I'm grateful for everyone's collaboration and contribution. There's a few things that I want to note that have changed up there. In July 2025, we created the policy and impact analyst position. And the intent there was to better support the Human Rights Commission and increase deeper community engagement.

In August 2025, Lily Gates moved from the community outreach specialist position to the policy and impact analyst position, which left the community outreach position vacant and unfunded for the remainder of fiscal year '26.

As you know, Ashley Rhines-Marshall left the chief prosperity officer position in February of this year. Lily then left the policy and impact analyst position in March of this year. So the city's currently in the hiring process for both of those positions.

So the Human Rights Ordinance is basically the guidebook for both the commission and the office. Section 2-433 of the ordinance organizes the work into six distinct categories, and for brevity and clarity, I've given the categories short working titles in the report and in the presentation.

I'll give you a quick summary of each so you're just familiar with those if you haven't looked at them recently. Individual assistance focuses on addressing individual complaints of discrimination. Outreach engagement includes the various ways that the commission and the office communicates with the community.

City policies and practices refers to the commission's annual policy recommendations that they provide to council. The federal work shares concerns the agreements with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Fair Housing Equal Opportunity Office and the federal government.

The legislative program refers to the commission's annual recommendations for council's legislative agenda. And finally, commission policies includes the commission's recommendations to council regarding policies that affect the work of the commission and the office directly.

So I want to shift to talking about connections between the commission and the office and the community by first looking at the issues we're trying to address and how they're related. So this diagram, which I've labeled the continuum of harm, shows the relationship between individual discrimination and systemic discrimination.

Briefly to define those, individual discrimination refers to incidents in which a person was denied an opportunity to access housing or employment or public accommodations, for example, due to an aspect of their identity that's protected by law.

Systemic discrimination refers to the institutionalized policies and practices that, whether intentional or not, undermine people's access to opportunities, again, due to an aspect of their identity protected by law.

In the report, I use housing discrimination on the basis of source of funds to illustrate the connection between individual and systemic discrimination. In brief, source of funds was added to a protected class to the Virginia Fair Housing Law in 2020 and to our local ordinance in '21.

And that protection was intended to ensure that people with housing vouchers would have greater access to available housing. This change in law addressed the systemic gap in fair housing protections that had previously resulted in exclusionary practices, and it now allows us to enforce that law at a local level.

The challenge is that even when we disrupt the continuum of harm in one area, it can continue to emerge in another area, which is why consistent community engagement and outreach is important. And so as you see in this diagram, the commission tries to address discrimination through policy and practice recommendations at the systemic level.

Office tries to address the individual discrimination by processing individual complaints of discrimination. There's overlap in those duties in the sense that the office provides administrative support to the commission as it works on systemic impact, and the commission supports the office as a public hearing and appellate body for individual complaints.

But more importantly, we overlap in our relationship with the community.And that's where I come to community outreach and engagement, because both the office and the commission depend on community outreach and engagement to ensure that we're meeting the needs of the community.

And when I refer to outreach and engagement, I'm using outreach to mean communication that comes from us to the community about our services, how to find us, what we do. Engagement, I'm talking about that dialogue, that interplay, that two-way communication where we're receiving feedback from the community, information from the community about their needs that shapes the way we provide services.

Outreach and engagement are essential. If we're unsuccessfully communicating with the community, then we're less successful at breaking the cycle of discrimination. Without outreach, community isn't fully aware of the services we provide.

Without engagement, our knowledge of community issues is incomplete, and therefore, the result is that our services may not fully address community needs. I want to turn the focus back to the structure of the Human Rights Division for a moment.

And another way to look at the work of both the office and the commission is as a linear spectrum, which I have drawn for you here. On one end of the spectrum, you have individual assistance, on the other, systemic impact, and uniting the two is community outreach and engagement.

And because it's an annual report, I have to include some numbers. So I tried to give you some data there that shows how we are addressing our services and what data we're collecting across that spectrum of work.

And those are just some of the examples. There's many more in the report itself. In addition to that, the spectrum concept can also be used to show you how the roles of staff and commissioners generally align with the six categories of responsibilities in the ordinance that I showed you earlier, but as well as across this generalized spectrum of work.

And so you can see where on the far end there, for example, the intake specialist and investigator are focused on individual assistance, whereas policy and impact analysts, Human Rights Commission, they're focused on systemic impact.

Director and outreach are somewhere in the middle there. But in practice, the alignment is a little bit more nuanced than that. And so these gradient bars that I put below each role there are trying to show that every role touches this spectrum of work in all parts in some fashion.

If you take that a step further, it also gives you the sense that each one of those roles is interrelated, and there's a supportive and impact role that happens between each of those positions that you see up there.

And so it's important because when we have vacancies or gaps in any of the commission or on staff, we have decreased efficiency and effectiveness when we provide services to the community. So why does this matter?

Decreased efficiency and effectiveness of service provision matters because behind every number on this chart here, there's a person with a story. Each of those stories represents a moment in somebody's life where they felt their ability to thrive was limited because of an aspect of their identity or how someone else perceived their identity.

And so just like providing transportation, or fixing potholes, or making sure that people can live safely in their neighborhoods, the work of addressing individual and systemic discrimination is ongoing.

Things are always happening. The work is ever-evolving, and some of the situations we face by people who come to the office are familiar, or people who come to the commission are familiar. But more often, they're surprisingly unique and complex.

And so I think that tells us that we're a community of diverse human beings all striving to live our best lives, but we bump into the consequences of misunderstanding, miscommunication, and frankly, fear.

And sometimes the commission and the office are able to help conflicting parties listen to one another, expand their perspectives, find resolutions, but sometimes we fail, and we learn that our own systems have shortcomings that we may need to address by engaging more deeply with the community, making policy and practice changes, or even acknowledging when sometimes resolution is beyond our reach.

But our ability to succeed with both individual assistance and systemic impact hinges on our ability to engage in consistent two-way communication with the community. And this is an area in which we have room for growth and improvement and a need for support.

So in the meantime, the dedicated community members who volunteer on the commission and our committed employees who come into the office day after day will keep trying and keep listening and keep doing the work because when we succeed, we help the community take one more step towards being a place where everyone thrives.

So we're here for your questions if you have any. Thank you. Thank you. I'll start with you, Jen. Maybe. Thank you. Is it Heather? Yes. Thank you for serving on the committee. We appreciate you. Did you want to say something before we- No, I'm just here for questions.

Questions. Okay. I'm just here to answer questions if you have them. Yeah. Okay. Jen. Thank you. What is the biggest community issue you've discovered during engagement in 2025? What we do on the Human Rights Commission is we choose an area of focus every year, and that's because there are nine of us.

We're all volunteers. We can't solve every problem. So we choose a focus based on previous experience and2025, it was housing access and stability across protected classes and economic status. This year, we have broadened it a bit to make it economic stability across protected classes.

The reason for that is just that what we've discovered when we talk to our stakeholders and service providers in Charlottesville, that providing housing isn't enough to crack the inequality, the income inequality, and wealth inequality that we have here.

So we wanted to broaden the scope. Yeah. Great. Thank you. That's it. Okay. Lloyd? I have no questions. Thank you. Natalie? Can you talk a little bit more about what you just said about the project, the study, the results, and what you found needed expanding?

Yes. So we're just beginning our outreach to stakeholders and service providers. So last year we met with nine. I can give you the list. I decided I would bring it with me just in case. We met with...

Would you like to hear this? Sure. Okay. We met with the Virginia Poverty Law Center, Piedmont Housing Authority, Public Housing Association of Residents, Blue Ridge Area Coalition for the Homeless, Legal Aid Justice Center, Housing Opportunities Made Equal, International Neighbors, Cville Tulips, and Sin Bareras.

I feel like there was another group in there, but I'm not sure. So- Virginia Housing and Community Development. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I think that might be right. So what we do is we have usually a large meeting where a number of stakeholders will come and speak.

That could be a little bit more collaborative. They can play off of each other a bit. We also meet with our state representatives. Obviously, we don't lobby the state representatives. We might find out about what kind of legislation could come up at the state level, where there might be some movements that could impact our areas of interest.

But then obviously, we bring those recommendations back to you, not directly to the state, because that's not in our purview. So this year, I think that we'll probably touch base with many of those stakeholders, and we'll add a few more.

PACHAM, I think we'll probably talk to PACHAM. I think we'll talk to Salvation Army, NAACP Housing Committee. We've got a long list. Yeah. Oh, but the reason for broadening, do you want me to speak to that?

Mm-hmm. Yeah, thanks. Everyone says when you ask them, "What do you need?" The first thing is always housing. It's just always housing. But there are other things on the list like, "Oh, gosh, we have all of these people that we'd like to help, and they have vouchers for daycare, and they're eligible for supported daycare, but the vouchers have a time limit," like how long that voucher will stay good.

And there aren't enough day cares for them to get a spot before the voucher expires. So you just hear all kinds of stories like this, and if there's some way for us to have a conversation at the city level and say, "Okay, what is the story with these vouchers, and how does that work, and is there some way that we can help?" We just want to do that.

All right. Great. Yeah. Thank you so much. Michael. One, two questions. The first, I know there's been a long journey to enter into a FHAP agreement, so there's greater ability to do investigations into housing discrimination, and that happened right before there was a change in federal administration that has a very different approach to HUD.

How have things been going with that, and has that proven to be a barrier that is insurmountable at this point? Yeah. I'll speak to that briefly. So in the report, I give you a brief outline of the efforts that we took this year to get...

Or, I'm sorry, in '25 to get to Fair Housing Assistance Program. Well, I guess what I didn't relay to you is that when we finally got the confirmation that everything was substantially equivalent in our ordinance, and that we were under review, we finally got a denial because we protect gender identity and sexual orientation in our ordinance.

And as well, and I may have said this in the report, I believe I did actually, because that did happen in the fall of last year. They also said that they no longer want to work with localities. They want to work with state level agencies.

So for example, we have a FHAP office in the Department of Professional Occupational Regulation. That's where our Virginia Fair Housing Office is, which it's not historically what they've done because there are Fair Housing Assistance Programs all over the country.

Many of them are really wondering what to do now, and I've talked to a lot of people who work in those offices. But that's where we stand with that. They weren't interested in supporting us at this point, and frankly, I don't know that it would be in the best interest of the city to do so given the protections that are important under state law and our ordinance.

With regard to the FEPA, the Fair Employment Practices Agency, we haven't pursued that one either because we put all our energy into pursuing the FHAP for a while, but also looking at what's happening in terms of the trends and protectionsIn the EEOC, I'm not sure that that is also in the best interest of the city right now to enter a work share of that type.

But happy to talk about it further if you have a different thought on it. But that's kind of where we're standing with it right now, just kind of waiting and seeing. But everything's in place to do the work.

It's just that we're not given that opportunity at the moment. I'd also want to, if I might, you had asked about stakeholder engagement. So one of the things that the report talks about is the policy and impact analysts work in that realm.

So Willie took that on in mid-August of last year, just before we were submitting our policy, our state legislation recommendation. So she engaged more in that deep community engagement work with stakeholders later in the fall.

So she didn't get very far because holidays happen, all that stuff. I think she talked to 11 different stakeholders, I believe it was. One of the things that popped up as she did a big chart of all the things that people brought up.

She labeled a lot of issues. She categorized those by issue type, and the thing that popped up the most was mental health and the lack of mental health supports for people. So just to put that out there, because I think that was actually first over housing.

It's not to say that that's a complete snapshot. That's a small number- Sure ... of providers. She had a list of, I think, 120 that she was going to try to touch base with over the course of another year.

But anyway, just another thing to keep in mind, and we'll keep working on that when we fill that position. Great. Thank you. Mm-hmm. Okay. Well, and yeah, unfortunately, I don't think there's anything to really do except wait until there's a different federal administration, because I think clearly they just are actively against enforcement of housing and employment discrimination, and obviously want to remove protections for protection of gender and sexual identity.

So it's unfortunate and informally, you definitely hear that I think particularly in housing, that discrimination on source of income definitely still occurs in terms of landlords finding ways to de facto not accept vouchers.

They won't use those words, but it would be interesting to have an investigation that looked at the percentage of applicants with vouchers that were denied and the reasons that were stated for doing so, I think would likely get some interesting results.

The only other question is on the commission side. Over the years, legislative recommendations would've made it into the city's legislative agenda, some of which have become state law. Your recommendations have also informed funding allocations we've made with federal ARPA funds, and other areas of the budget.

But from a commission perspective, are there things you think city council could do to utilize the commission better, or to feel like there's more of a dialogue between city council and the commission?

Well, I can just say that we're very interested in that. I think that it's always good for us to be aware, when we're meeting with stakeholders and service providers, and this is such a clumsy way of saying it, but just what is on the menu?

What is actually possible to accomplish? We might make recommendations about expanding rental assistance, or we might make recommendations about something else at the city level, opening a low-barrier shelter, which obviously you have all been working on quite a bit, and we're aware of that.

But knowing where things are and how our recommendations land with you is just really wonderful for us, I think. So, to the extent that people are willing, I'll reach out and try to have some conversations about that.

And if you have anything, say it now, or we can meet about it. Yeah. Yeah, and I don't have ideas that I'm like, "Oh, this is the way to do it." But I know in some context we have at least one yearly joint work session with different commissions or have kind of a more formal council liaison that's either a member of the board or a non-voting member of the board.

I don't know if the commission had any ideas on what would be useful. We have talked about that. I wouldn't want to speak for the commission. I know that everybody has been enthusiastic when I have talked about reaching out to members of the city council, to just get more information about what works for all of you, how our recommendations are being received, whether or not you need more information, all of that kind of stuff.

Everyone is enthusiastic about those ideas. We don't have any sort of formal position on we would like a city council member to be on the commission. I don't think people would resist that idea. And we'd certainly love to have you at our meetings.

That would be wonderful for you to just schedule a time that you can come, and we can reach out to you about that. All kinds of ideas we can discuss. Yeah. Thank you for asking. That's it for me. Thank you.

Thank you all so much. I don't have any comments. I really appreciate the work that you're doing, and we'll reach out to connect in formal and informal ways. Appreciate the work that you all do. Thanks so much.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks, Todd. Good job. James had an item as well. All right. Good evening, Mayor Wade, members of council. James Ruiz, deputy city manager. As many of you are likely aware, we have been experiencing significant delays in our building inspections and plan review side of the house.

And I just wanted to offer some context for that, and let you know some of the things that we're working on. Broadly, we experience a steady state of a high level of permit activity. And in particular, over the last year, we've seen some significantly large projects that have come in and taxed the capacity of staff.More immediately, we abruptly lost two building inspector positions, and we've had extended leave for medical and other reasons.

So that confluence of factors has put us in a hole in terms of plan review and inspections. It's not to say that some of this wasn't anticipated as we were preparing for the budget last fall. We did our data analysis that we do, understanding where we are with plan permitting activity, and determined that our greatest need was in residential plan review.

And so at that time, we took an existing position that had gone vacant recently, and we turned it into a new plan review position. But unfortunately, we haven't been able to fill that position. And we've recently upgraded that position in order to hopefully make it a more attractive position, upgraded it in terms of pay, to hopefully make it a more attractive position.

We also began, quite a while ago, the procurement process to get some on-call positions in place to provide inspections for plan review purposes. We've succeeded in having two on-call companies in place.

But we haven't been able to get those positions certified. Up to date, we will only have one additional plan reviewer who will begin work this week. All of this to say is that there remains a high level of concern.

This is an important area of work for the city. It's really an essential service, both on a public safety side and an economic development side. So this morning, Kelly Brown, NDS director, Chuck Miller, our building code official, myself, hosted a meeting over in City Space about 7:00 a.m.

with our building community. We had a substantial turnout. I didn't get the count of how many people showed up, but it was probably in the 60 to 80. And we had a robust discussion. A great deal of concern was presented, as you would expect, around this situation.

And we talked about what we are already doing and what we could potentially do further. For one thing, we're going to open up, or I should put it, loosen the policies around our third-party inspections so that more people can get in to do third-party inspections.

And we're going to continue to analyze the data coming back on permit activity and plan review to see if it warrants a more robust request in the upcoming budget season. So a lot of activity going on.

A great deal of attention is being put onto this issue. And I'm happy to answer any questions. That's a lot for a 7:00 a.m. meeting, so I think people are really interested in this item. On a Monday, no less.

Yeah. Yep. Understandably interesting. Yeah. I-- Oh, sorry. Yeah, go ahead. No questions, but I would just say I'm definitely fully supportive of allowing approved third-party inspectors, which I know is common in a lot of localities, including Richmond.

So I hope we definitely move in that direction so we're not needlessly holding up things. And then the second is just more broadly, I hope with inspections on the building code and fire code, we can adopt an institutional attitude of flexibility and wanting to get to yes, and not having a perspective that...

Of course, we always follow the letter of regulations and law, but not having recommendations saying, "Oh, a bike lane can't go here," or, "These requirements must happen." And then when you look at the letter of the regulations, it's not actually required, and it's preventing things.

So I just hope we can build that kind of positive, flexible culture. But that's it. Okay. All right. And the last item I have for you is update on homeless services. I was able to facilitate a homeless services panel in Chapel Hill last week for a chamber visit.

We were able to hear from their chief of police, the community relations coordinator for the town of Chapel Hill, as well as UNC director of local relations. The key takeaway for me was coordination. And as you've heard this evening, this is a very complicated and heated conversation, a very difficult situation to address.

It's complicated. I think that's what we all know. I was able to hear from our community foundation that they are working with our continuum of care. That is the group of organizations that are working on homelessness on a daily basis, working to bring forward that operations plan for Holiday Drive to explore opportunities to engage with city staff and just to continue the alignment as true partners.

The city remains focused on encampment protocols, staffing allocations, internal coordination, and leadership alignment. We're going to continue to make sure that the focus remains on trying to serve as best as we possibly can, but acknowledging that we've made it clear that those that are in jeopardy closest to the river cannot remain in that location.

We have to work towards making sure that that becomes a managed process, but it is not a tenable long-term process. I'm meeting with Holiday Drive business owners as promised when we bought the Holiday Drive building.

So I'll meet with them on Wednesday of this week to bring them up to speed as to work that's been going on. And I have a follow-up meeting with Posham later this week because we're looking at trying to get the overnight shelter possibly opened at Holiday Drive, but that's a big question, and then to discuss their budget needs.

So just sharing again that the city is working and that we are not tone deaf on this issue. Thank you. Does that conclude your- That is the report. Thank you. Could I just- Yeah. We heard a couple folks tonight saying that they thought that there was a commitment to get porta potties and things like that On site, down by the Rivanna River.

I don't remember specifically a quote commitment in that respect, but I do remember a lot of discussion about the need for something like that. Sure. Where do we stand with that? There's been consideration.

There was consideration of doing that. We have found it difficult to actually get that done. The group of folks that are assembled closest to the river, none of the adjacent property owners have permitted access.

So we have been unable to get a porta potty placed and serviced, and that's the issue. Getting it on the site is one issue, getting it serviced on a regular basis means they have to be able to access it.

The reference to Cosner Brothers was the last hope that we thought we might have, and that was no. They made that decision that they did not want to support that. We are aware that the Rivanna River Company has expressed the willingness to support porta potties there, and we're looking into that right now.

But again, the other requests are all things that support the notion of staying in place, and that is not the posture that we're taking. Okay. The next item on the agenda is an action item. It's a public hearing, an ordinance to amend and re-ordain city code chapter 31, utility, establish a new utility rates and service fees for gas, water, and sanitary sewer.

And this is the first of two readings. Chris? All right. Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council. My name is Jason Mackley, I'm the Deputy Director of Utilities. And I am joined by Chris Coleman, the Director of Finance, and by Lauren Hildebrand, the Director of Utilities.

And tonight, we are pleased to present to you the FY27 utility rate report. So I'm going to start off and give a little bit of background on programs and operations from utilities, and then I'm going to hand it over to Chris for the financial summary.

So a little bit about utilities. We own and operate four utilities throughout the city, and then one that reaches into the county. First, water and wastewater systems, we have about 14,800 customers. 94% of those are residential.

And for the water system, we own and operate 179 miles of water main. And for sanitary sewer, wastewater, we own and operate 169 miles of pipeline. Next is the stormwater utility. We have 15,700 billable customers.

78% of those are residential. And then we have 125 miles of conveyance piping that is either in the right of way or on private property that we maintain. Then lastly is the natural gas distribution system.

That reaches into the county as well as being here in the city. So we have 21,270 customers, 55% of which are in the city and 45% are in the county. So with that reaching into the county, obviously that's a bigger system, so we have 341 miles of gas mains that we own and operate and maintain.

So when we think about rates, we think about several things, and two of those items are reliability and water quality. One way that we maintain that reliability is to not have water service disruptions.

I'm sure that you all will recall in the winter of 2025, there was a pretty major water outage in Richmond, where a winter storm actually caused an equipment malfunction and several hundred thousand people were out of the water for five days.

This has happened on smaller scales all around us at other localities, Greene County, Louisa, Orange, Harrisonburg, Staunton. But obviously, we try to keep disruptions to a minimum or to zero. So how do we do that?

We take a proactive approach to address our aging infrastructure. Every year we do a satisfaction survey. And so one of the questions that we ask is, "What is the reliability of your water service?" So 100% replied back and said that they rated our system as either satisfied or neutral of the reliability.

So very positive numbers there. So our proactive approach is to have an aggressive capital improvement program to address aging infrastructure. I'm sure that you all knew about our Locust Avenue phase one water main replacement that occurred from High Street to the 250 bridge, where we replaced about 2,100 feet of six-inch cast iron main with eight-inch...

I'm sorry? Sorry, I've got a question about that project, but I'll let you finish. Okay. All right, no problem. Thanks. So, about 2,100 feet of six-inch cast iron main with eight-inch ductile iron. So now we're getting ready to start phase two of that, which is from the 250 bridge to Locust Lane.

In that stretch, since 2007, we've had seven main breaks. So if we don't address that, that will just continue to get worse. That project is 3,400 feet of six-inch cast iron main that we are upgrading to eight-inch ductile iron pipe.

Another project that I'm sure that you all have heard about is our West Main Street water and gas infrastructure upgrades. We are replacing the water and the gas mains from Ridge McIntire all the way up to the Beta Bridge.

The water will go from a 10-inch cast iron main to a 12-inch ductile iron main, which will increase the reliability and capacity through that area. Phase one of that is beginning. That will likely start over the next month, and that's natural gas only.Those upgrades will occur in Rugby Road, University Avenue, Madison Lane, and Chancellor Street.

Then once we finish that in about four to five months, we'll figure out where phase two is and move through that progress. Yes? So we had folks from the neighborhood along Locust writing in about the road condition.

Mm-hmm. And we got a response from our team that there has to be a settling period before the full repaving. Yes. Can you briefly talk a little bit about that? Sure. Just so if anyone's tuning in, they know what to expect.

Yeah. So generally the way that works is we will finish a utility project, then Public Works will come behind us and mill and pave the whole street. Generally, you want to wait at least one year for any settlement to happen through the trenches so that it doesn't show back through the final asphalt.

Plus our contractor, we have a one-year warranty with them, so we don't want to go in and mill the road, and then they come in and cut up the road again to fix settling that occurred in their trench line.

So that's generally why we wait that one-year period to mill an overlay. So it's going to be a little rough for about a year, and then it'll be settled and ready to repave by next spring. Correct. Yes, and then Public Works will need to decide where that lands on their priority list to pave.

They did smooth it out some. Yeah. I know my scooter's on it every day. It's much better. Yeah. Yeah, they actually did a pretty nice job of going back and milling and overlaying those trench lines. Yeah.

Okay, great. Thank you so much. You're welcome. The next project that I want to highlight, that you all are very well familiar with, is the central waterline that Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority is administering.

That's five miles of 24-inch and 30-inch waterline that will connect the Observatory Water Treatment Plant with Long Street down to Pantops at Free Bridge. This project is important for the community.

It improves hydraulic connectivity and efficiency through the urban water system. Phase one is currently underway. They are on stage two of phase one. So phase one is from Herfford Drive at Stadium Road over to Market Street.

That was a little over a $47 million project that they're working on. And like I said, they're on stage two, which stage two is in Jefferson Park Avenue from about Stripling down to Cleveland. So they're about six to eight months into a four-year contract here.

So more to come on that as we progress through over the next couple of years. And a similar vein with that project as it moves into the next phase. Obviously, the reality is it's going to be through Main Thoroughfare in the heart of Fifeville, and it's going to be a lot of lengthy disruptions, as well as noise, other things, and that's just the reality of it.

Mm-hmm. Once it moves to that, if people have complaints around noise, or they have a concern, "Did this do something to the foundation of my house?" Who do they contact, and what's that process? Generally, they can contact us, but they really need to contact the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority.

So if there's any questions about who they need to get in contact with, they can certainly reach out to utilities, and we can point them in the right direction. But RWSA will be the main- Yes ... contact point.

Okay. Thank you. Correct. You're welcome. So staying with reliability and water quality, our number one priority is always the safety of our customers. So you can see on that same annual survey, safety of the drinking water, 96% rated us as having satisfied or neutral on that question.

And then annually, we do a consumer confidence report, which we're proud to say that the quality of the drinking water meets and exceeds all regulatory requirements. That's from testing that's performed throughout the year from us and Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority.

And then another item for safety is we completed our lead service line inventory in 2024. And through statistical analysis, excavation, reviewing historical records, we're proud to say that we found no evidence of lead in either the private or public water systems.

So we encourage the public, our customers, if they replace their line, to get in touch with us, so we can add it to our service line inventory. So I want to talk just briefly about a couple of energy efficiency initiatives that we have.

One very popular one is our Energy Saving Trees program. We do this to promote safe digging practices and strategic planting for energy. Since 2022, over two events, one in the fall and one in the spring, we've given away over 1,300 trees to city residents.

Another program that we have is the free weatherization to income-qualified households. So we partner up with LEAP, the Local Energy Alliance Program, and offer no-cost energy efficiency upgrades to natural gas customers who are income-qualified homeowners or renters.

So again, it's been a very good program. To date, 271 households have participated, and we've invested over $370,000 in that program. Yes, ma'am? For the tree building program, it's great to see that that many trees have been given away.

As you're giving them away, do you let people know how to make sure they're planting them in a safe place, and what does that process look like? We do. So in order to dig, you're supposed to call 811, right?

Miss Utility. So we make sure that message is clear, and then we also provide service to an arborist or somebody, so they can call and figure out how to maintain their tree.So, not only do we make sure that they're planting it away from the utilities, but we also make sure that the tree lives.

Great. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Our next program to highlight here is free attic insulation self-assessment tool. So this is something that utility staff actually developed in-house, and what it does is it allows people to perform an evaluation and provide guidance, or they provide guidance on how they can improve their energy efficiency through attic insulation, whether they need more.

But we've had 1,000 views on the webpage, and so far, 38 households have started the process. So again, that's something that we continue to hopefully see people take advantage of. And then on the right, you can see the rebate programs that we offer, the thermostat programs, the attic insulation rebate that I was just talking about with the tool, and then attic air sealing.

So again, several ways that we are trying to help people be more efficient with their energy needs. Now with that, I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Cullinan. Thank you, Jason. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of council.

I'm Chris Cullinan, the city's director of finance. To ensure the reliable, safe, and high-quality utility services and infrastructure that Jason was highlighting requires adequate financial resources.

Just as a reminder, our utilities operate as enterprise funds. That is, each utility is standalone and financially, water rates and fees pay for water services and infrastructure, wastewater for wastewater services and infrastructure, et cetera.

They each are financed and accounted for separately. And they're designed to operate on a break-even basis as municipal-owned utilities. So this chart that you see before you here, this is the impact on an average city customer with proposed utility rates and monthly service charge that would go into effect on July 1, compared with those same figures from a year ago.

And overall, we are asking folks to pay more for these four utilities. In total, it's about just a little less than $10 per month or $9.54. For a point of comparison, a year ago, when I was before you, we were looking at a $12.84 increase.

So it's a little bit less, but nonetheless, we are asking for additional funds to finance the operations and infrastructure associated with the utilities. And what you see here, this is the impact on the average customer.

The average residential customer uses about 400 cubic feet of water per month. That's slightly less than 100 gallons per day, 4,600 cubic feet of natural gas, and has an average-sized lot in terms of impervious surface for the stormwater calculation.

Now, I'm going to go to each one of these in a little bit more detail over the next few slides, starting with water. The total revenue requirement for the water utility is just a little over $23 million in the upcoming fiscal year.

That's up at about $2.5 million over the current year. Of that $2.5 million increase, the largest portion of that is the city share of Ravana Water and Sewer, both their water operations as well as the city share of water debt service for their capital improvements for those projects for which we are responsible for.

As you see there in that pie graph, the largest portion of a citizen's water bill goes to Ravana for utility supply purchases. That chart looks similar for the last few years, although the percentage of that is going up, and we are projecting it to go up even more over the next few years as Ravana fully implements and begins construction of the community water supply plant, which I'll touch on here in just a moment.

You see there on the left, as part of the customer satisfaction survey, we asked the question, rate the value of what you pay for your water service. And I think that's one of the messages we try to convey every year when we come before you, is that we don't just set rates for the purpose of setting rates.

They are to provide reliable, safe, high-quality utility services and infrastructure. And so that's really what we're trying to propose is the value proposition. That yes, you are paying for these things, but in turn, we think we're providing a good value.

And so we ask this question very deliberately for each of the utilities. 91%, in and of itself, that's a great figure. I will tell you it's slightly lower than it has been the last few years. So that certainly sends a signal to us for many things, certainly communicating and making sure that folks understand what they are getting for that, but also to ensure that we are being as diligent financially as possible to ensure that we are being mindful that, yes, we are asking folks to pay for these services for what they use.

Were the folks who were unhappy the ones who had their water line break out on Locust Avenue? You know what? It could be a possibility. We don't really know who answers these questions, but certainly, that is a possibility that folks may have had an interaction with our utility staff or may have had one of the very rare disruptions that we do have.

But to those folks, I would opine that I believe that water line was over 100 years old. Yes. So unfortunately, they were living there at the time in a 100-year time span that it happened to be replaced.

But infrastructure is one of those things if you do it right, it pays you back generation after generation. I think that's a pretty good example of the folks who put it in 100 years ago certainly got their money's worth and useful life out of it, andIt's our hope that we do that for the next 100 years.

But unfortunately, the folks who are there today are the ones having to bear the brunt of that construction. But again, in the long run, we hope that it pays off. Can I ask what the expected lifespan of the new ductile iron is?

I'll leave that to the engineer. So ductile iron is typically a 50 to 100-year lifespan, but- It's a pretty big range ... we're more on the high end of that. But it hasn't been around for 100 years, so we don't know exactly.

But they say that it's 50 to 100. Okay. And is that the industry standard? Yes. Okay. Thank you. Mm-hmm. And I think it's also important to note that it's not just you put it in the ground, turn on the water, and forget about it.

It also requires adequate asset management and maintenance as well to get as much of that useful life out as possible, to avoid those expensive replacements, that you have to get as much useful life as possible out of the infrastructure.

Thank you. And as I mentioned, Ravenna's share of the cost of the water utility represented about 56%. That's a little bit higher, and again, we're projecting that to get larger as RWSA fully implements the Community Water Supply Plan.

You've seen this chart before. This is updated as just the beginning of this calendar year, showing the status of the different sections. You can see when they've been awarded, the cost differential between the city and the county, and the total project cost as it was envisioned at that time.

Bottom line, of the $264 million of the total project, the vast majority of that is related to ACSA, but the city utilities are responsible for $77 million of those projects. Any questions on this before I go past it?

Because as you look at water rates over the next few years, we do detail this a little bit more in the utility rate report. This piece of the water budget is going to get bigger and bigger as these projects come to fruition, Ravenna issues all the debt associated with those projects, and that debt service is fully online.

So obviously water rates have increased over the past six, seven years significantly, with more to come with these projects. Have you calculated out yet, like a ballpark estimate of over the next three to five years, how much this is going to increase rates?

So we do a projection over the next five years, not just of the Ravenna piece, but all the other pieces associated with the utility rates. I believe the average is about 8 to 9% per year over that time period.

Again, those are ballpark. It varies a little bit from year to year. I would caution you though, that big pieces of that are associated with not only Ravenna's infrastructure, but our infrastructure as well.

Projecting capital costs has been difficult in recent years, and I can't imagine that getting any easier going forward. So again, it's based on the best information that we have available. But then every year as we set utility rates, we're getting better estimates of those figures.

So again, we provide that to provide some projection of what we think they are, and that's where it is now. But again, I would caution it with that caveat that so much of that is based on capital improvement projects.

But I guess you could say, with all those caveats, that people could expect at a minimum around 10% increases annually for a number of years. I wouldn't go so far as to say that. Again, the ballpark is 8 to 9% on that average based on projection of what we know from Ravenna, our historic costs for some of our things, the debt service associated with city projects.

We know what we've issued in the past. We have some idea of what we're going to be issuing going forward. So that 8 to 9% is the best information we have available for all of those pieces. What they ultimately will be, unfortunately, my crystal ball isn't quite that clear.

Thank you. Can I ask a follow-up on that same note? Were there several years recently where rates didn't go up, and now we're- No ... making up for that? No. Water and sewer rates, and since I've been here in 2015, have gone up to some degree or another over that time.

Except for the COVID year, we held them flat, just given the circumstances of what was happening at that time. But they have gone up to some degree over that time. And earlier today, I looked at it just as an interesting benchmark.

Since 2019, that compared to what's proposed, was just on the water and wastewater side, $50 less per month for the average customer. So between 2019 and what's proposed, the yearly bill for the average customer has gone up about $600 just on the water side.

So it is- For a year. Right, for the year. Okay. So pretty meaningful. Absolutely. Again, as Jason mentioned, safe, reliable, quality utility services are not inexpensive. And again, they're funded by the water customers, the wastewater customers, and so forth, individually.

And so, not to go too far down a rabbit hole, but unlike, say, real estate taxes, which appreciate and the reassessment goes up every year, so that revenue base is expanding, again, our water and wastewater utilities are more or less built out in terms of number of customers, in terms of number of cubic feet of water or wastewater that are generated.

So they're somewhat static, yet the costs associated with that do continue to go up. So just the way the math works, you do see those rate increases.On wastewater, the total wastewater revenue requirements for FY27 are roughly $20.5 million.

This is up $1.4 million from this year. Related, similar to water, Ravana Water and Sewer makes up the biggest chunk of the bill and makes up about $830,000 of that $1.4 million increase in the revenue requirements from last year to this year.

Again, on the left, you see the value that folks rate their wastewater service 92%. Again, a good number by itself, but again, it's slightly less than it has been. So, similar to water, that certainly makes us aware of that to make sure that we are doing as much as we can to communicate, but also ensure that there is a value in what folks are paying for their utility services.

Stormwater. Total stormwater revenue requirements are just a touch over $5 million. It's about a $906,000 increase. The big drivers of that are infrastructure related. The cash portion of the CIP of capital projects that are going to be funded is up about half a million, as well as an increase in debt service for stormwater projects that have been bonded.

It goes up about $285,000. One thing I note on this, the 89%, this is the lowest of the utilities, which again, taken by itself, maybe not a bad number, but it is lower. And from what Jason and Lauren describe is they've really seen that the folks don't really totally understand the stormwater utility.

What are they getting? What's it used for? So there's been a real effort to do additional outreach. They've referenced the Stormwater Drain Art program, which I think some of you have seen. Very popular.

Just to better communicate exactly what the stormwater utility is and what those funds are used for. So, hopefully that number will be going up as a result of those outreach efforts. And then finally, natural gas.

The total revenue requirements are just a touch over $34 million for the upcoming fiscal year. That's about $1.3 million less than they were a year ago. The big driver of that is the decrease in the cost of natural gas, which we're projecting is about just a little over $800,000 less than it was a year ago.

You'll see the various gas supply purchase makes up the largest share of that utility bill, and you can see the other relative pieces of that pie that go along with that. Again, 93%, excellent, good, or fair value.

One of the other things I did want to mention is we are applying roughly $600,000 of credits we received as a result of a rate case involving Columbia Gas. Ourselves with a whole host of other Columbia Gas customers, they're our supplier who actually ship us our gas, were involved in a rate case against them.

April and May of last year was when their new transportation rates went into place. Our customers paid those much higher than they should have been, as the courts ruled in favor of the defendants in December of 2025.

And so to get those funds back to our customers as quickly and as efficiently as possible, we're using those credits to offset some of the revenue requirements associated with the gas utility. So that does help the rates to a degree, again, for all the folks who are customers and relative to how much they used.

We've done this in the past. We've had another rate case, I want to say two, three years ago. We applied the same methodology again, the idea being that folks were charged more than they should have been.

And so we worked as quickly as we could to efficiently get those funds back into folks' pockets and to make sure that they didn't actually overpay to get some financial benefit from that. And so to start wrapping this up a little bit, so when you look at utility bill for water, wastewater, and gas, there are really two pieces of it.

There's the portion based on how much you use, the volume metric, the volume you consume, and then the monthly service charge. For the part of the bill based on what a customer consumes, you can see those changes there.

As I noted, natural gas is actually going down slightly as a result of the decline in the price of natural gas, but also to a lesser degree, the refunds, the credits that we received as part of the rate case.

And then the other part of the bill, the monthly service charge. For water and wastewater, right now it's each $10 per month for somebody with a five-eighths inch water meter. That's your average residential connection.

That's roughly 94% of our customers as you see there. There's a $2.50 increase proposed for both water and wastewater to bring that from $20 to $25 a month. And the concept behind the monthly service charge is that there are aspects of the utilities finances that are fixed regardless of how much of the utility you consume.

There are just certain costs associated with either being a customer or costs that the utility is responsible for, regardless of how much we actually wind up using. Debt service is actually a really good example of that because we have an obligation to pay that no matter what.

And you see that it does vary based on the size of the water meter going all the way up to a 14-inch meter. We only have one of those. That's the University of Virginia. Their water bill is quite large.

So the number you see there is large, but it's proportionate to how much they also use. But again, for 94% of our customers, it would be a $5 a month increase for those two monthly service charges. There are no changes being proposed to the natural gas monthly service charge, which is $10 per monthThat concludes our formal presentation.

We're happy to answer any questions you might have now. As a reminder, this is also a public hearing. And so- Just in time. Thank you. You're losing some of us, man. Just in time. We were asking questions as we were going along, but are there any questions now?

Sure. What you just spoke on the gas credit, why do we do a rate reduction rather than a bill credit? We don't do the bill credit because it was based on certain... To do that, we haven't actually done this before, but just as I thought through the exercise of doing that, we would have to go back to figure out who were customers at that time, how much did they consume, what was the price of gas at that point in time.

And then, another real challenge would be, given the transient nature of our community, can we find those folks? Now, majority of folks are still at the address where they were, but certainly not everybody.

And again, doing the credit is not as precise as well. But it seems to me that the machinations that I've just described to do that versus we got the credit, we can apply it against the gas rates, that goes out to everybody who's a customer.

And again, it does vary. It will vary based on how much they used at that time because it's actually in the volumetric rate of that. So, perhaps there's no perfect way of doing that, but that seems to be the most efficient, most timely way of getting that back rather than taking more and more time for us to try to figure out those things.

Thank you. I have one more question, which is, what affordability protections exist for low-income utility customers? Sure. For natural gas, the largest one is the LIHEAP program, the federally administered LIHEAP program, that actually is administered on the local level by our Department of Social Services.

They handle that. It's income-based. There's a whole process associated. That's a very well-established federal program. We do have some funds within our gas budget, within those revenue requirements that you saw for assistance programs.

Similarly, we also have local funds available for water and wastewater as well. Last year, we increased the water and wastewater credits from $150 per year per utility to $250. So it went from 300 in total to 500 in total.

The simplest explanation being that the 150 was put in in roughly 2012, and obviously, as Council Member Payne referenced, utility rates have gone up over that time. And so the math actually just kind of worked out that if you compound those increases on top of the 150, it gets you to about 250.

So again, that adjustment was needed and due to make sure that the assistant program was keeping up with those rate increases. And so if residents need to activate that, they contact you or...? They contact our utility billing office.

Utility billing. Thank you. That's it. Is that it? Can I pronounce it? Lowe, do you have any questions or comments? Ned, do you have any additional- Yeah, I have a couple questions that I've already gotten a chance to ask, but I wanted to ask them for the benefit of the public.

I don't know if it's worth bringing up this slide, but the last one with the proposed monthly service charge and the adjustment. One of my questions was, it's a 25% up charge across the board. Was there a way to do a stepped-up charge, so the larger the water meter, the larger the increase to offset some of the lower ones?

And you answered. The short and simple answer is no. Because again, that table is based upon the size of the water meters, and so you want to maintain some proportionality between how big is a 5/8-inch water meter versus a 14-inch water meter.

And again, that's a set ratio. And so, in order to equitably distribute those fixed costs across those customers based on that, you see that it's 25% per water meter site, even though the dollar amount does differ accordingly.

Thank you. And then, one of my other questions was, since there's savings in the gas side of things, why can't that rate stay the same and we discount one of the other utilities? Sure. As you explained.

Sure. So again, it goes back to the concept of enterprise fund accounting in that each one is separate. Gas payers pay for gas service and infrastructure, not water, not wastewater, not stormwater. And that's true for each of those, so there's no crossing of money across the utilities- Thank you ...

as a result of that. Thanks. Even though it's managed by you all, it is separate. Correct. Each one is a separate- Good ... pot of money, for lack of a better term. And then, for the offsets that were mentioned earlier, some of this price increase goes towards purchasing offsets, right?

So, in the gas utility, I believe the amount is just a little over $300,000 for next year. So that is built into those revenue requirements that you see listed on that chart and built into the rate calculations accordingly.

Okay. And can you remind me what we're doing with our offsets? I'm going to defer to Jason Ward on that. Please. Sure. So when we had talked about that the- The thought was to renew for one year to give the Office of Sustainability a chance to see what else was out there.

So then, if there's anything local, any other programs that we can invest in, we could do it at that time. But that was the direction that we were provided, and that's what we went with. And for the projects that are available on the menu, how much control do we have about picking them?

We do have some control. I wouldn't say we have absolute control over that, but we can provide our supplier with what kind of projects we would like to see happen. But we're not going to be able to say, "We want to do this specific project." And have we provided that information?

We have not. We're actually in the process with the contract now, so we have not had those conversations yet. Is the Office of Sustainability in these conversations? They will be, yes. Okay. Picking those projects, yes.

And I think they were, if I recall correctly, they were involved the first time when we first started with carbon offsets back in 2021. Okay. I certainly don't want to speak for everybody here, but I think if we do have any kind of say in the direction of where we can point that money, making sure it is highest, best use, definitely not a wind farm funding an oil rig.

Or, just making sure that that is going towards as high a quality project as we possibly can direct it while we do look at how we can spend that money differently next year. Understood. Can I say that everyone- Yeah ...

is on board with that? Yes. Okay. Yes. Thank you. Michael? I want wastefulness. Along that line of questioning, so a small portion of the natural gas utility fees obviously go to carbon offsets, so it is relevant to this conversation.

When is the deadline for making a finalized decision about whether to continue with BP carbon offsets for one year or not? Well, we actually just got the contract today. So that has not been signed, but we were planning on moving forward with that.

So, if those conversations need to happen, then we need to speak with city management and figure that out very quickly. Yeah. Well, I would certainly say my perspective is I don't think it should be renewed for a year.

I think we would be better off investing that money into local initiatives. I just structurally don't think there is a way for those BP carbon offsets to accomplish what we want. So that's at least where I am at.

Sure. And that's good to know. Time is urgent, but it isn't finalized yet, but I guess it's approaching the deadline for when you make a decision to extend by a year or not. Correct. Do you know when that final decision will occur?

No, I do not. I do not know at this time. I don't know what that deadline is. But we were planning on moving on it very quickly, because like Chris said, we've baked it into the rates, and that's what we were going to do.

Can I follow up on that? Do you mind? Sure. So that is something that at least I know I've expressed as well, that we're not gung ho about the one-year extension, but what was explained to us was that there was a fiduciary obligation to ensure highest certification of whatever the money goes towards or something.

Can you explain a little bit more about why we're doing this or why we've been kind of... Why we're doing what? The one-year extension instead of a quicker turnaround in figuring out what locally we could do instead, or regionally.

Part of why we haven't moved on locally is because we haven't identified what the local alternatives are and whether or not there are mitigation offsets clearly understood so that the trade-off would be known, therefore to be considered which projects should we invest in.

Right. That's what I mean. We have a fiduciary obligation to spend the money on something that is certified, and I don't know the lingo, but it can't just be something that we know will be good locally.

There's some qualifying board that has to approve it or something. This is the understanding that this is using enterprise funds, right? So we are obligated to use the money that people pay as part of paying for their gas service towards things that actually relate back to the gas utility.

And so if we're using the money to offset the carbon impact, that's a qualifying use. But we have to demonstrate that in fact that those dollars are actually going to offset the carbon. So when we refer back to the local ones, we looked into this issue at anything that might resemble a local project.

In order to offset the same amount of carbon that these other projects are offsetting, it would require something like, I'm not going to remember exactly, but it's something like planting a forest that was three times the size of the city.

Right? The enormity of the scale and the cost to apply it here locally meant that we would be not coming anywhere near actually offsetting the carbon impacts of the gas usage below what we're doing. So that is the reason for the one-year study period to look into this is-What are the actual options and what are the things that we can do that meet our fiduciary responsibility to those rate payers for the level of, for what they're meeting the expectation, which is to offset the carbon use, not to do projects that may have that benefit to a limited extent, but don't do it to the extent that- So the metric we're trying to meet is the carbon offset, not the spending- Right ...

of the money. And what is the risk we take? Is someone going to sue us, or who is holding us to that obligation? For carbon mitigation? Is that what you're saying? Yes. Right. So the carbon offsets that we use give us a very high carbon offset.

Sorry. No, I mean- Spending the money. Yeah. You said we have an obligation to do this. An obligation to whom? I can say it's a question I've considered at great length. However, it's a well-stated principle of law that we do have to use enterprise funds for costs that are attributable to the enterprise itself, and if we're seeking to offset carbon, there's not some magic number.

You offset this much, you're good. You offset this much, you're not. But whatever project we put money into needs to be traceable back to the lack of a better term, damage that is done to the environment by our burning of fossil fuels.

If it's very high that we're offsetting the carbon, we're obviously meeting that standard. If it's not, somebody else could potentially have standing to sue because they are paying money for this enterprise, and if it's being turned to something that is not actually arguably meaningfully offsetting or attributable to a cost or damage caused by the utility itself, then they could potentially bring suit on that basis.

So, basically the way that money was marketed to people, their expectation is that this is doing a certain amount of carbon offsets. That's correct. So a potential recourse for us is that we change that description so that people would- Change the objective.

Right, change the objective where- So right now we're offsetting some significant percentage- Yeah ... where we could offset far less. Yeah, and we could tell people instead of this money going to buy carbon offsets, it's going towards local projects with some different scale of metric, measurement.

And then the other element of it is the certification, right? Being able to say for good, bad, or indifferent, the program we're using today is certified by some standard as far as the offsets that are being offered.

Well, only for advertising carbon offsets. I want to be clear. I'm not saying there's a marketing kind of risk, that we're- Right ... engaging in false advertising or something like that. It's just the principle that enterprise funds need to be used for a cost attributable to the enterprise.

We have a lot of latitude there to use the funds, and if it's being used to offset a tremendous amount of carbon in one way of spending the money, or it's being used to, but the council wants to make a trade-off and spend it locally, but you're also offsetting a far lesser amount of carbon, as long as it's still tied to the utility and a cost that's attributable to the utility, then it's my take that we would be okay from a legal standpoint.

Okay. And so then, so that's what we're looking for? But as you can see in the conversation we're having right now- Yeah, we know that's where- We're asking for time- ... that's the problem ... to study this issue.

And- And in the meantime, suggesting that we continue for another year ... and we're not able to just pause for a year? We could pause, but that is also in the rate already. We've already put that into the revenue.

And we can't collect that money, set it aside, spend it next year once we have the project sorted? Do you want to speak to that, Chris? That appears to be inappropriate. You're collecting for something you haven't yet done.

Yeah. And even though the dollar amount may not seem much, it's still the practice and the legal guidance that's just not a good thing to do if you can avoid it. And so, the only fix to that would be today, or I know this is the first advertisement.

When is it due? How much time do we have left to re-advertise a different rate? I'm not sure if they've made an amendment. We recalculated. Do we have to re- You have to redo the budget. If it's reduced, do we have to- I don't know ...

to re-advertise it? But these rates do need to go back- Rate or tax rates ... 30 days. I've not looked into that question of whether we have to re-advertise if the council decide to change the rate between this meeting and the next.

Mm-hmm. I can certainly look into that though and give you an answer if that would be helpful. Sure. Sorry. Is this, not menu item, agenda item , is this public hearing? Yes. Okay. For the first one. Okay.

And I would just say briefly, as I understand it, I think the question of carbon offsets is a policy question for city council. As I understand it, we are not legally obligated to use BP carbon offsets.

We are not legally obligated to have it fall within the grading metric that BP's offsets use. We are not legally required to have the carbon accounting look the same for a local offset versus what BP's offsets would do.

So it really does come down to a policy question for city council of do we weigh what on paper BP's offsets say they're doing versus what would be a lower amount on paper without question for a local offset?

And again, where I'm at is I think the proper approach would be to not renew the year extension for the BP carbon offsets, and I do think that would give usForce the city to find alternative local offsets, which I think we would be able to do.

But I think the year delay just kind of allows us to have a year of not needing to do that. That's not the agreement that's been offered, so I'm just pointing that out. This is not a tactic to avoid making a change.

This is to buy us the time to make an informed decision. Understood. I just think we would have a little bit more urgency to get there, otherwise, without an extension. But that's it for questions on my end, and again, would just acknowledge, since 2019, just on water and wastewater, the average yearly bill going up by $600, just acknowledging that absolutely this requires investment and costs are always going up, but just important to acknowledge.

That's a real hit people feel. Understood. Okay. So if there's no other questions or comments at this time. I don't think there's anyone here for the public hearing, but I will open up the public hearing.

Anyone? Yes. Yeah. Sybil Finn, Community Climate Collaborative. Obviously, I just would like to respond to a couple of the pieces that I was hearing. Around offsets and around our fiduciary responsibility and everything carbon offsets, the carbon offset market as is well understood, I think by most people who are making these decisions, it's a voluntary market.

It's not regulated. As Councilor Payne said, we're not obligated to use BP. We're not obligated to use this one particular type of methodology. As I mentioned, Verra Carbon, which was the holder of four of the five projects that we funded last year that retired credits on our behalf without any say-so from the Office of Sustainability, they are the worst offender for problematic credits.

For example, the American Carbon Registry has some kind of slightly more palatable nature-based offset projects that you can look at, but we are subsidizing, if we want to talk about vulnerability to not actually meeting the purpose of the enterprise funds, we have been funding the operation efficiency of expansion of oil fields in Argentina.

That is a fact. That's a fact I can show you all. I will be sending you all of this stuff, but we could decide, you could decide, I know it's annoying, I know it's tough, but that's $300,000 is what we were told, we were shown was put into weatherization energy efficiency last year.

That's how much we're just saying, "Okay, can we buy ourselves some time for a whole year?" That's the entire amount that we put in last year to weatherization from the enterprise fund, as I understood the presentation.

You could just double that, like that. We have the infrastructure. We know that we can pay into existing home weatherization groups. We can pay LEAP to do this type of stuff. There are a lot of Charlottesville gas customers that could benefit from this directly.

It seems like the obvious thing to do. I guess that's all I can say. Thank you. Other public comments at this time? If not, I'll close the public hearing, and we'll vote on this at the next meeting. But is there other comments from council to give staff direction?

I think the big one is if we-- I don't know if we have to do that with this motion to approve whether we extend the agreement for another year. Did you need direction from us? I have a contract coming.

If you're choosing to not do that, then I need that direction. Okay. So if we could just, because we have other hearings, just kind of go down and let them share your thoughts. Jen, would you support the- Could I, before we chat, is this something that you could know by the end of the week, or do you need to know right now?

What do you mean? If we want to- Whether to sign the contract. Yeah. Yeah, you'd have to tell me. Right, but by the end of the week or right now? You have to do it in a meeting. That would be a vote. Okay.

It is a policy decision. Yeah. That's really where you are at this moment. This is a crossroads moment, is what it should feel like. If we're not going to extend the carbon offsets, you have to give that direction.

As we have brought forward the utility rates, the assumption was that we were working with the agreed plan that we would extend for another year, give us the ability to do the work to figure out what good quality local options exist, put a package together as to what we might even recommend on how to deploy those funds.

We might even ask for more funds, depending on what those things are. And then if that is the pleasure of this council, that would be the action that we would take going forward. That's the plan that we are working today.

Not optional, a commitment. Jen? And the piece about still taking a year to find a use, but this year doubling the- The reference to just doubling weatherization, I have no way of knowing for sure that we can do all that work in a year.

So is kind of our option- So part of that work is to do exactly that ... we either extend a year or don't for a year, and we wait until- Where you are today is what you have directed or authorized is to extend it for another year Right If you're looking to change that, then you have to take that action for me.

And I remember seeing there was a rate calculator where if you buy one year, it's this much money. If you buy five years, it's this much money. I feel like we are not excited to re-up with BP after the one year.

We're not even proposing that at this time. Right. I'm just making sure that there wasn't a rate input. Never mind. It's not really that important. Well, I guess then, is there any future rate implication by action of signing the agreement?

Whatever agreement is about to be signed, is it just this one year? As far as I'm aware- We would have to re-sign ... it's for one year. Then we can get out of the contract. Well, I have an attorney over there.

We'll make sure he verifies that there's no commitment. We haven't appreciated that there's a commitment because we sign this regularly. Well, if we don't end up spending the $300,000, the vote that we've got to take, separate from your decision- Mm-hmm ...

the vote that we have to take on rates is, we're not voting on the entire enterprise fund budget. We don't have to approve everything in that budget. Right. And if it happened that the numbers, because we didn't end up spending that $300,000, if it turns out that the enterprise fund turned a little bit of an added gain that was perhaps unanticipated, I don't think that that's a legal problem.

No. My inclination would be... Actually, let me ask. $300,000, as I recall from the numbers, it was like $20 million worth of gas money, something like that. So we're talking about 1.5%, something like that.

Are you referring to if we took the $300,000 out? Yeah. It's 1%. Yeah. Roughly 34 million. And we've already charging a lower rate this coming year on gas. So if we decided that we had so little confidence in BP, that we didn't want to give them another $300,000 of our money...

As I recall, when we looked at these numbers, maybe it was just in independent meetings or something, maybe it wasn't in a public meeting, but we looked at the numbers and decided that it would be basically impossible to duplicate the numbers that BP was telling us they were giving us.

Sure. Because maybe you mentioned it would basically mean planting a forest that's three times the size of the city of Charlottesville. But if the numbers BP is giving us are bogus, then all bets are off in that respect.

I'm toying. I'm really trying to figure out how I think about it. I will admit that I've always thought that the notion of paying for carbon offsets for something that's happening halfway around the world that we can't personally verify is always a little bit...

I've never been very happy about that. I think I said so in an earlier meeting. But if we think that the numbers that BP is giving us are accurate, or I suppose another way to look at it is, if we think that they are not reliable, or if we think that the amount of actual benefit to the world ecosystem is not, in fact, all that it's cracked up to be because the energy is going to more oil drilling, then that's a decision that bothers me a lot more than I was expecting to be bothered before Mr.

Flynn talked about all this stuff. And I don't know. I'm happy to assume that you are reliable in this respect, and I'm happy to assume that there are, in fact, some details and some facts behind all of that.

Because we're on a first and second reading basis, I don't know that we need to resolve the problem tonight, but I will say my inclination is to say if I had a choice between sending money to BP for things that I'm not sure that I trust them on versus doubling the size of our weatherization budget locally, my bias would be towards doubling the size of our local weatherization budget.

Can I clarify? I think the choice is between one more year of BP and a year of not doing any kind of carbon offset program or local investment. I suppose that's also an option. So I think we know- Well, I really appreciate that this is probably crazy frustrating for staff who did their due diligence and talked to us in advance and tried to get where we wanted to be.

I think I also was under the impression we were a little more constrained than we actually might be, and if we do have the latitude to pause for a year during the year we study instead of spend for a year during the year we study, I would be inclined to pause Oh, yeah.

As I've said and said again tonight, I think my perspective is to not renew for a year. I think we could easily... We've got partner organizations like LEAP doing work on the ground that could easily deploy $300,000 and have some sort of counting about carbon reductions through the weatherization and energy efficiency work they do.

That's where I'm at. I know we never had a motion related to the one-year contract extension, so I don't even know if we need a motion either tonight or at the next meeting, but... Right now, the only thing on your agenda is a public hearing on the ordinance about setting the rates.

So, it wouldn't be completely out of order for you to amend and make a motion now. However, I would maybe suggest waiting until the next meeting to do so. Yeah. And it's different than the tax rate where we can advertise whatever we want and then charge anything below it.

This is advertising for the actual rate, correct? As I said, I have not delved into this question in any great detail, and the question's just now being presented to me. So I'll be happy to research that in between and get utility staff an answer just as quickly as I can.

Yep. And just to be clear, the question is, do you have to go with this rate, or can you lower the rate and adopt it at next month, the next meeting? I will look into that. For the lower rate. Yes. Yep.

Okay. Thank you. The next- And again, thank you, staff, for trying to understand where we were in advance. You want me to at least pass it on to the next meeting? Yep. Yeah. Because it's a closed public hearing- Right ...

and as I mentioned, it is first of two readings. It sounded like you were wrapping up and... Never mind. Yeah. No. I am going to item number 11 if we're ready. Public hearing and ordinance to amend and reordain Chapter 31 of the Code of Charlottesville 1990, as amended, to establish a connection fee for new gas service to first of two readings.

All right. So as you all are probably aware, we started a new connection fee for gas connections, and that went active or went live January 1st of 2025. That was $340 for that connection fee. What we are proposing...

Well... It's not up yet. Hmm? It's not up yet. You're pushing- Yeah. Remy, do you have a slide deck? There we go. Not that one. That was a graph that I was potentially interested in if somebody wanted to talk about that.

Yeah. Well... There we go. All right. Thank you. So for the background, so requests for new gas installations, you can see here, they have significantly decreased over the past seven to eight years. This past year, we had 95 new requests, seven of which were in the city, 88 were in the county.

So that decline has been 75% over the past seven to eight years. Currently, as I said, we offer installation of gas services at $340 up to 150 feet to residential customers if the gas use is for qualifying appliances like furnace or water heater.

Generators are not a qualifying appliance, but as an example. So what we are proposing, we had a consultant look at our rate, and they found some opportunity costs that we had not included before, mainly labor.

And so what we're proposing is that starting January 1st, 2027, we would no longer offer the service line installations at $340 for residential customers, and we would have a new connection fee of $1,950 for residential service for up to 150 feet of installation.

Then any service that's longer than 150 feet, as it is now, the customer would be responsible for paying for that installation cost. So the connection fee, as I said, it's a cost to service fee. It's what it costs us to actually go out and install the line and the meter and all of the appurtenances involved with that.

But again, $1,950 connection fee is what we're proposing. And with that, I'll take any questions. Natalie? No, I'm just happy to see this. I know this was something- Yeah ... that we had talked about last year, and it seemed unfathomable that $340 captured the- Mm-hmm ...

extent of the project. This feels more in line with what I would imagine the actual labor- Mm-hmm ... costs are, so I appreciate looking into that readjustment. And that's all I have- Okay ... for questions.

Thank you. Lowell? So this is basically the marginal cost. Correct. But the full marginal cost- Correct ... as opposed to- To just- ... what it had been. Right. Yeah. To just material. Jenn, you have any questions?

No. Michael, you have any comment? No. Likewise, I think it's a move in the right direction, but no questions. Yeah. That makes sense. I'll open up the public hearing if anyone wants to speak on this.

Yeah Thanks. I will plan Community Climate Collaborative. Just want to welcome this. This is a good move. We raised this last year when the very small amount of additional connection fee was put up. It just clearly was not going to disincentivize anyone to join into Charlottesville Gas, really.

And this is a much needed measure so people can actually start to see the real cost of connecting to fossil fuels in our community. So thank you for this move. Thank you. Any other comments? Quick question.

Do we know how many hookups were added in the last year? Just for reference. It was 95 total. Seven were in the city, and 88 were in the county. Okay. And do you know if they were large scale or small scale, residential or commercial?

I don't know that off the top of my head, but I imagine most of them were residential. Okay. Thank you. So I will close the public hearing, and this is the first of two hearings, so we'll vote on this at the next meeting.

Does this one go on consent? It's fine with me. Yeah. I think it's pretty simple. Great. Thank you. The next item is a resolution to appropriate $2,076,900 and 700... I'm sorry. $696- Lauren. I'm sorry.

I was going to let you finish ... in additional funding from the Virginia Office of Children Services to support at-risk children and families. First of two readings. Mr... Before you do that, Mr. Mayor, if I could have one indulgence.

Ms. Hildebrand, would you come up? I just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge Lauren has announced her retirement. Oh. So this is her last rate-setting moment. Did you just make that decision? If she hadn't, she would have.

So just want to acknowledge her service, her dedicated service to the City of Charlottesville. She has been a model strong leader, and just wanted to give a chance for you all to share anything that you would like to, because there's only two meetings left, because August 1st?

August 1st. August 1st will be it for her. Okay. So, just wanted to give you a moment to acknowledge that as well. Yes. So, I'd just like to say is that steady leadership in a position like this is critical.

I just been to a few conferences, in my capacity in Charlottesville Gas and Utilities is just one of those things that is a shining bright star for the city particularly, after what happened in Richmond.

And I recall when that happened last January, I immediately called Sam. He said, "We good." He said, "We good." I recall that. So thank you so much, and I hope that you can enjoy retirement. It's one year for me, and you're going to be like me.

You're going to wish you had done it years before. So anyone else like to say anything? Thank you so much. Thanks. I joked the other day, or I shall say again, that utilities gets beat up a lot because I think there's this awkward thing where the city has our climate commitment, and the natural gas utility is a fossil fuel infrastructure.

But it is funny that I always think of utilities as our most socialist department because you're a publicly ran major part of our market. In many localities have privately ran ones. And in all seriousness, I think it points to the fact that cities really can run public infrastructure and have it run extremely professionally, competently, and well over a period of decades, which is what our utilities have been.

You look at Petersburg, Richmond, other peer localities. We haven't had issues with payments, with quality of service. So, I don't know. Utilities gets beat up sometime, but the quality and professionalism of service really is, I think, the best in Virginia, which I think I've always noticed as a councilor.

And it's not the most important thing, but it's certainly not insignificant, which is often leadership, especially in departments like public works, utilities, and government in general, is often very male dominated.

Mm-hmm. And so I just wanted to appreciate the fact that seeing you in a leadership position is a benefit to other folks who are either looking to lead or also in positions. So, up here, I remember my first meeting when you showed up, I was like, "Cool!" So little boosts like that really are helpful.

And so I really appreciate you for your leadership and dedication to the city. And I would just add that the best thing about you and your job is that you have not been in the news. Yeah. I've often said my grandfather was a borough engineer of Middlesex of Metuchen, New Jersey, and the county engineer in Middlesex, New Jersey, Middlesex County.

And he used to say, "If your business is infrastructure and it's exciting, you're doing it wrong." You're doing it right. Thank you. Enjoy. Thanks, Lauren. Leon, I think you're next. Chrissy. Oh, did I miss one?

Who's presenting? Chrissy? Leon? Leon. Thank you. Nose goes. I didn't know I was presenting yet. I thought I was- ... going to ask questions if there was any questions. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I'll read it from this.

So what we're asking for through the CSA funds, which is the Children's Services Act, we are asking for more funds to be allocated to our department for several reasons. But the primary issue is that over time, over this past year, we have increased in costs, so therefore, we need the money to be allocated to our department.

So I can explain why these costs have increased, but it's $2,700,600.96, but that's the portion of it, the entire portion that we're asking to be allocated to our department. A lot of those funds are also federal funds.

The portion that would be coming from the city is $423,546. So that would be the city's portion of those funds, and then there's also $133,147 as well that actually comes from the school system as well.

But that together would equal the total amount of funds that would be going into our department. It is a lot of money. It's a large increase, and what we're seeing is that, over the past three years, there's been increases.

Last year's increase was similar in size, but not to this level. But what we're finding is when you look at the past several years, there's been a large increase with regards to children coming into foster care.

So three years prior, there were 48 kids in foster care. As of the last time that I got information, which was last week, there was 105 children in foster care. So that number has increased about 100% within the past two years.

But this past year it's been actually stable with regards to the 105. But we're seeing that since COVID, there's also been just a significant increase in our cases. If you look at FY24 compared to FY25, there's been an increase in substantiated referrals, where in FY24, there was around 323 referrals that were substantiated.

This FY25, there was close to 500 referrals that's substantiated. So our caseloads have increased. So when you add the increase of foster care, and then you add the special education programs through the school, which is our largest increase, is through the special education programs through the schools, and then you also look at our prevention services, that piece where we're doing every effort that we can to try to prevent children from coming into foster care.

When you look at those numbers, in order to do that work, it's costing more. A big part of the increase in the costs are things such as there's an increase in mental health in the community. There's an increase in substance use in the community.

There's an increase in domestic violence in the community. There's housing issues. At times, we have to use these funds to prevent potentially a child from coming into foster care because of what's the issue at hand is housing.

A parent may be able to meet their child's social emotional needs, but with regards to if they don't have a place to stay, then we can't have children on the street. And in the absence of a family shelter, oftentimes it leaves us in situations where we may potentially have to place a family in a hotel with a potential plan and work a plan in order to ensure that the family stays connected.

So there's a lot of complexities around the work that we do. Really, we're making every effort we can to keep families stabilized. At times, foster care is the only other option, but one thing I think that I would share is that we also lead the state with regards to kinship placements.

But even in kinship placements, we're still providing financial support to ensure that these family members have what they need in order to meet their loved one's needs. There's times that we will use these funds for purchasing a bed, to food, to transportation for visitation so a child in foster care can see their family.

It could be funding that we use for, say, a mentor or for a child in the community to go out and have mentor support that they may not have that within their home environment. It could be just a variety of different- Thank you ...

of needs that present that we utilize these funds to meet. And as time goes on, and we look at socioeconomics and poverty, and we look at the increase in population, and we look at increased housing concerns, I can't predict if this number's going to be different or next fiscal year or get bigger.

We work with really complicated situations, complicated families, and in lieu of the fact that there's also certain things coming down the pipeline like, say, for example, SNAP benefits being cut, or for example, Medicaid and the work requirement and people being dis-enrolled, support for our immigrant population.

So there's a lot that's going on in social services. Our team members every day, we're doing everything we can to figure out ways to best support families as best as we can. The reality is that these resources are what we use in order to try to prevent kids from coming into foster care.

And one thing too I want you to keep in mind is that these decisions aren't just being made by say me as a director-When it comes to special education programs, do schools make decisions with regards to can they educate a child in the classroom, or do they need to have them in a program that actually provides a higher level of education?

And is that best for the child? So the schools are making those decisions. We're administering these funds, but we're not making the decisions with regards to if children are placed in special education programs.

Also, when it comes to some of these resources that I talked about with regards to these different purchases that we do to ensure that families have, say, counseling services or parenting groups. When a social worker gets a case and they do an assessment, and they identify these different resources that could be beneficial to working with the family, they bring this information to what's called a FACT team.

And that FACT team is a mixture of different community individuals that talk about these cases, and then they make a decision jointly with regards to if we're going to approve these funds or not. So once these funds get approval, then we are working with our vendors to get these services in place.

These decisions aren't just driven through social services. It's collective decisions by community partners, by the school system, and we're really administering these funds. But we also are really leaning on these funds, because without this support, our team members don't have the tool.

They don't have these resources that they need in order to help stabilize families, help them to potentially pay a light bill or rent bill to prevent them from being evicted. So these are- Thank you ...

the funds in which we're talking about. Thank you, sir. Sorry about that. Questions? Thank you for explaining everything so clearly. I think with regards to a lot of the concerns you brought up, you're preaching to the choir here, and we're- For sure ...

we're- It's just a lot of money. Yeah, there's a lot going on. I just mean in terms of you're making a case, and we're on board. Okay. But I do have a question about the funding allocation. Where is this coming from?

That's the next item. Oh, sorry. Never mind. Other questions or comments? No additional questions. So this just gets us through the end of the month? Yeah, this is for the end of this fiscal year. Okay.

For sure. Yeah, and likewise, I think pretty straightforward, and I'm supportive of the actions in front of us this evening. I think it's important for the community to be able to see and hear how much work you all do and the kind of things behind the scenes that are being impacted.

You touched on this a little bit, and I'm sure it's hard to predict, but I think literally just today, changes with SNAP and Medicaid are taking effect that I think over 300,000 people in Virginia are anticipated to lose Medicaid, and about 50,000 adults are expected to lose SNAP.

What is kind of the scale of the impact of that for this kind of work that you're anticipating? Sure. Yeah, I mentioned the SNAP benefits because many of the families that we work with are depending on SNAP benefits for food, it's pretty consistently.

When we're looking at the changes with regards to work requirements and those things, the reality is that people will be ineligible over time. The impact of that is hard to tell because it's happening over time.

I was just on the news on Friday. We just had an interview, and I shared that since August of 2025, we had, say, 30 immigrant families lose SNAP benefits. And leading up to October of this year, we're anticipating another eight families.

But with regards to overall scale, it's just hard to fully understand. I think with the Medicaid piece of it, that's going to be a huge impact with the biannual renewals rather than the annual renewals and then the work requirement there and the change in age in regards to eligibility- ...

and some of those changes. So, we're just prepared. We're prepared to ensure that we are available, and we're connected with community partners to help individuals get enrolled, and that they have the information that they need to not lose services.

But right now, there's so many changes happening on the state level, it's like every month there's something different. The guidance hasn't been shared. As of June 6th, we're supposed to receive some guidance.

And then that guidance will be pushed out on all of our city platforms. You can- But it's just hard to fully understand at this moment. You can send that to us when you get it. For sure. Thank you. And again, I'm supportive of this being on the consent agenda for next meeting.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Any other questions or comments? Could have been. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you. And so are we voting on this now or waiting till the next item? Consent. Oh, it's first. Unless, is there a reason why we should forfeit sit through?

Well, we can put it on the next agenda. Okay. Yeah. The next item on the agenda is a resolution to return, oh, these big numbers, $1,848,424 in general funds and appropriate an additional $423,546 to the Children's Services Fund Act.

This is first of two readings. Good evening again, Mr. Mayor, members of council. I'm Chris Cullen. I'm the city's director of finance. And as Mr. Henry alluded to in his comments, the previous agenda item and this agenda item are hand in glove with each other.

This is actually a resolution of appropriation to true up the financial relationship between the general fund and the Children's Services Act fund. Last year, in FY25, the city moved funds from the general fund into the CSA fund for many of the reasons that Mr.

Henry talked about, just the expected costs, the increased caseload, some of those sorts of things. But the actual costs were lower than what we had transferred over. And so what this resolution does, so those funds are currently residing in the fund balance of the CSA fund.

And so this item that you're being asked to considerMoves that money back to the general fund, so it's crossing funds. And then asking for your approval to, as the previous item noted, add $423,546 to the CSA fund in the current year to get us through the rest of the fiscal year, and that the remaining balance of that, $1,848,424, that is not needed in CSA, be returned to the general fund.

And so this item, as I mentioned, sort of trues up all of that and actually gets the money that you previously considered in the previous agenda item to where it needs to be. Okay. Any questions on this?

No. Likewise, I would be supportive of this on the consent agenda next meeting. Yeah. I just want to clarify, since this is to get us through the end of this fiscal year, are we sure there's not a need to rush this?

No, because we know we have the money. Okay. We're good. Okay. Thanks. Okay. So it'll be on the consent agenda for June 15th. The next item is a resolution appropriating funding for the Federal Transit Administration, the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation, supporting multiple CAT capital projects in the amount of $16,846,224.

Mr. Williams. It's a lot of money. Yes. It's a lot of money. Good afternoon. Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of council. The $16,846,224 is from two fiscal years, fiscal '25 and '26. The awards from the Federal Transit Administration equal $4,000,716,943, and from the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation is $11,455,432, with a local match requirement of $673,849.

This allows us to do our purchases of our battery electric vehicles, a number of other vehicles, and a number of other capital projects that we're trying to consider. One of them being a major upgrade to our CAT AVL system, so our buses will be recognized in a more efficient way, and also support- AVL?

AVL. The AVL system basically is the automatic vehicle locator system- Ah, okay ... that allows individuals when we put it into the app to know where they are, and also hopefully move us closer towards real-time recognition when you look at your app.

Thank you. So these are all the projects that we are hopefully getting funded by FTA. The major components of being able to pay for the battery electric vehicles that should be here at the end of the month.

So we're coming to you to appropriate these funds so we can actually pay when they arrive. Any questions? Nope. Any questions on this? One question. So let's get into all the fun climate things today.

Sure. Lots of good investments here. I think, on the battery electric buses side, the investment in the infrastructure, I think, is the most important thing. Yeah. Because that sets the foundation that allows us, if and when federal funds are restored, that's the foundation to increase adoption beyond the battery electric buses that we're already planning to purchase.

But anyway, the question is, so I think everyone recognizes that federal funding for zero-emission buses was cut, and we had to pivot our posture from the plan we adopted. I think everyone understands that, and the vast majority of the community understands that as well.

What is the reason diesel buses and not hybrid buses as part of that pivot? It was a cost. We looked at the cost factors. So if you look at how much it costs for a diesel bus versus a hybrid bus, it's almost a half a million dollars more.

So when we were going through this exercise, remember, these are the funds from FY '25 and '26, so that's two years ago when we made the assertion about potentially buying these vehicles. The costs were much cheaper.

And as we've gone up, we've seen the escalation of costs over 20%. So we just made a rationale decision about as we made a pivot this time, to just use the lower cost until we can get to a point where hopefully more funding is coming from the federal government when this administration changes hands, hopefully in two years, that those funds will be available to us again, and we'll offset the cost for getting the bus back on track to do our transition plan.

Mm-hmm. I know, like for all buses, the majority of that is not covered locally. Is the concern that their higher costs would hurt our competitiveness with just funding applications overall or? Yes. Part of what we're concerned about, what I'm concerned about with my team is, we're going to be asking the state, in fact, for a lot of money because there is a requirement that we need to do a significant upgrade to our maintenance facility to maintain whatever level of alternative fuel vehicles that we're going to go to.

So that is probably, we're looking at in the range of $35 to $40 million. So that's a significant ask, and then we're going to be coupling that with asking for much more funding associated with the vehicles themselves.

At some point in time, they're going to beg to say, "Whoa." So we need to really focus our energy, I believe, in the first couple of years of getting the facility built, and then allow the federal money to continue to flow, and then we can get back on track.

Mm-hmm. And no matter what, our fleet expansion plans will require an upgraded new facility, correct? It will. So this is just the replacement. So anything that we're doing for expansion, we've taken the liberty of all the battery electric vehicles that we're buying are actually expansion vehicles.

They're not a part of the replacement plan. So that's a good thing for us in our category. So we're expanding our model. We're also replacing what is existing. So we're still trying to stay on track in that manner.

But this allows us to particularly, like I said, feel out what's going on at the federal level and then move quickly when we have an opportunity to do so. Thank you. That's it. When do we expect the buses to arrive?

The battery electric buses? Hopefully in the next two weeks. Yeah. So remember, we ordered them two years ago. Yeah. It takes almost two years to get them here. And we ordered the three. So, if you can see in the document, we asked for 11, but depending on how you look at the funding model, it's going to be less than that because we asked for a certain amount two years ago to fund this, and the vehicles are significantly higher than that.

So we will use the funds and buy as many vehicles as we possibly can. We don't have the ability to go back and ask for more. So that's for the diesels? For the diesels. And when would they likely come?

So we've talked to Gillig, and they've moved us up in the model, so we're anticipating potentially three. Well, they moved us up in the model, so we're going to get two more battery electric vehicles next March, and then we're hopefully going to get the first three diesels, if they move us up in the model, it'll be February or March of '27.

If it's not '27, then that will be pushed out to '28. But it- So we're hopefully getting funded so we can show them we have the money and hopefully we get moved up in the slots. So that's why- Okay ...

there's this rush to try to get the money in. All right. Do you have the? Me? Yes. Sure. Okay. Do we have a sense, or a quote, or some sort of documentation that shows us the diesel versus the hybrid so we know what we've made the trade-off for?

You're saying it's much more expensive to do the hybrid, but do we know how much we- Yeah ... saved? So we have a chart that I can share with council that shows how much I've allocated. So we have a replacement schedule that shows how many buses we can place per year.

And we've laid out a scenario, whether it's diesel, hybrid, or battery electric, we can show you what each one of those cost and what the city's. Based on the current, the last order that we made was the Washington State contract.

We don't know what the new numbers are, so we're using those numbers as a means to just show you the amount in difference. But we don't know what the new numbers are going to be. The Virginia State contract, which was null and void, just went up.

So we won't know what the numbers are. They're finishing that. Hopefully, we'll know by end of July, and then we'll hopefully be able to make our next order associated with the amount of money we have available to us.

Okay. Thank you. And then the next question is for the BEV pilot, how do we assess if that's successful? What's the framework for that? So we're going to be working with Gillig and the Office of Sustainability.

We're working out on methodologies to track how many times we use it, how much electricity we're using, how often, how much range and mileage we're going to get, how often we have to charge it in the middle of the day.

So all of those things are being worked out with us and Office of Sustainability. They're going to help monitor that for us and work with us. But we are planning to, when we first get the vehicles in hand, we have to do a significant training program with our team.

So as we work through that, we'll be working with the final details of Office of Sustainability to figure out- What the evaluation is ... what the evaluation- Okay ... really looks like. Great. And that's over a year, or how long is that evaluation?

It's over probably the next two years, and then we'll be able to show you. Two years. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. That's it. I know it's been less than a week, but in CARTA last week, you mentioned that we're awaiting Dominion's schedule to start doing work for us- That's correct ...

with the charging and upgrades. Do we have any news since then? Unfortunately, I do not. We're still waiting on... So I mentioned at CARTA that Dominion was on property to basically lay out where the lines will be coming in.

So they've done their marking, and we're waiting on them. I believe there is an agreement that needs to be done to allow them on our property. That has not gone to legal. We have not seen it yet. So that will be the first indication that they're ready to start their process.

The goal for us is to try to make that happen before the end of September, because if we don't, then we're concerned that they're going to be in the hurricane posture. Mm-hmm. And then that will pull resources away from getting this done.

So we're eagerly anticipating them sending the contract our way, and then we can give you a better timeline. Before the marking paint washes off. Yes. All right. Yeah. Thank you very much. Mm-hmm. You're welcome.

Micah, did you have any other questions? No, just a comment that I hope in the future, I hope... I would be interested in really, as we've pivoted, the diesel expansion being a larger part of it for council to have the ability to explore.

Could it make sense to have diesel hybrid be a real part of that? Because as I understand it, our first hybrids sucked, and they literally had a faulty part. But that's been a long time now, so I'd be curious if the current generation of hybrids are as reliable and if there would be potential cost savings on fuel and just, again, given that we've had to pivot, is there a role for hybrid?

But I don't know too much about the current generation of hybrid buses. My team and I can prepare something for you in maybe in a 221, we can explore in more detail about this situation. But we've heard good things about the next generation of hybrids.

But there's a cost. They're not much cheaper than the battery electric, so it's only like $100,000 difference. It's not a lot. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. So do we want this on the consent agenda for- Sure ...

June 15th? Sure. Okay. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Last opportunity for public input. Anyone else like to speak? If not- I would just like to make one more small announcement- Mm-hmm ... that I meant to do at the beginning of the meeting, which is just to say June is Pride Month.